squidbag

Read or Die.

I work with someone who doesn't read.  This is not one of those people you run into all the time who mean to read and simply don't, or who read only easy entertainment and/or crap, or the magazine-oriented folk who keep advertisers in greenbacks.  Nope.  This is a guy actively opposed to reading.  He DOESN'T read.  His words.  Doesn't see the point in it.  Of course, there have been arguments - he sees the point of texting, pornography, and even arguments, just not reading.  It's like dealing with an alien creature.  And I feel that way, too.

So, in celebration of this guy being misguided, ignorant, & wrong,  I come to you with reading advice, information, and feedback.  Enjoy.

First up: If you're paying attention to my little booklist down there on the right, you know that I have recently read biographies of both of the guys currently running for President.  Actually, I recommend them both.  The interesting thing about both books, at least in my opinion, is that they are both a decade old.  As a consequence, they were written by different men than the ones we're reading about in the news everyday.  Faith of My Fathers, by John McCain and close personal ghostwriter Mark Salter, is enlightening, to say the least, in terms of McCain's personal philosophies about things like legacy, war, victory, and privilege.  If you're voting for this guy without having read at least his one book they turned into a TV movie, then you are not making an informed decision.  Dreams from My Father, from Barack Obama, was essential to me for three reasons: It is the most intelligent perspective on race I've read in recent memory; it bolsters my idea that the next President of the United States should be someone intellectual, introspective and thoughtful, and it's handy for fact-checking all this bullshit about Obama's supposed past that keeps popping up.  So read it.  I liked it.  I'm currently reading Audacity of Hope, which is less engaging, but still a good read.

Max and I are getting through James and the Giant Peach, which I have not picked up since the 3rd Grade.  It's darker than I remember, but then - it's Roald Dahl.

Some of the comics I'm enjoying right now include the Boys, from Garth Ennis, Ed Brubaker's run on Captain America, House of Mystery, from Vertigo, all the Secret Invasion stuff, Thor, the Twelve, Warren Ellis' X-Men book, recent Booster Gold and Magneto books, and Terry Moore's Echo.  Necronomicon from Boom is pretty good, too.  And the recently wrapped Hellboy: Crooked Man mini.  I've also been re-reading Alan Moore's Saga of the Swamp Thing run, some old Werewolf by Night, and Hudlin's Black Panther issues.

As far as webcomics go, I regularly read Girls with Slingshots, Diesel Sweeties, the Devil's Panties, Striptease, and the always excellent Freakangels, also from Mr. Warren Ellis & Paul Duffield.  Oh, and I recently discovered The Book of Biff, which is fucking hilarious.

Other blogs, some better than mine: Mimi Smartypants is always fun, Matt Olson out of Atlanta will teach you all there is to know about the world of wine, Sam Johnson is back at home, Jesse always has a perspective on a life unlike anyone's I know, and I find the I Am Emily X blog from Planned Parenthood fascinating.  Saint Vicious is a new film review blog which looks to be quite good.  Oh, and the Renzntzman out of Seattle is fresh and funny, too.

So read something.  Or your brain will die, and become not unlike tapioca.

McCain's Tongue

And no, not in any poetic way.

This is a pic of what I referred to last night as his "squirrel motions" right there at the end of the debate where, realizing he had gone the wrong way off stage - trailing Obama, as we hope he will do on the 4th - he did this little Chaplin-esque shuffle of "business" to goofily indicate that he had caught his own incidental error and was fixing it.  The REALLY weird part is that according to posted photos, he stood around with his tongue out, like a proud little puppy, for a few minutes after this.  It's all over the Internet now, and I'm sure has a few better captions than this.  But this is what I thought of.  The other interpretation being that Obama broke some particularly egregious wind right at this moment, perhaps even on purpose to catch John off-guard.

And it took us less than twelve hours to become disenchanted with Joe the Plumber, too.  Ah, Dame Fortuna, your fickle hands rest lightly upon your chosen and often, only for a scant and fleeting moment, relatively speaking.  Joe - Fame called, and your fifteen minutes are up.  Game over, man.  Please deposit forty quarters.

Happy Friday.

Third Debate: Plumbing the Electorate

First off, what's the point of having three different "major" American schools host these things if we're always going to have the same (or VERY similar) fucking set every time?  It could be on a soundstage anywhere.  "Tonight's debates are being broadcast from 30 Rockefeller Plaza.  Nope, it's Dealy Plaza.  Nope, it's the same soundstage where we shot the moon landings.  The candidates aren't even here.  Good night, America, I'm Max Headroom."  Stupid consistency and homogenization.

Well, after tonight's debate, the Squidbag is going to have to switch candidates.  That's right, it's a slam-dunk for Joe the Plumber.  I'm voting for Joe the Goddamn Plumber for Chief Executive.  The economy's in the shit, no one's getting the relief they need, and people are fed up, they're tired of everything backing up and nothing moving.  That's why Joe the Plumber, out of Wherever, Ohio's your man.  Joe will open up his toolbox, with all his fuckin' tools, and he'll get your shit correct.  So - while you're contemplating a grassroots write-in movement (ha) for Joe T. Plumber, here are some bullet points for your ass because it's 12:45 and I watched this debate on TiVo while folding my laundry.  That's right - I TiVo the Presidential debates.  I also flick you off while pushing up my glasses.

• My Friends, We're Angry.  In case you were unaware, the candidates are more than happy to point out to you that you're cynical & angry, and it's because everything sucks, and it has for eight years.  Also, certain blogs have been targeted as spreaders of ill will.

• Red Baiting? I'm not sure what decade John McCain thinks it is, but I'm pretty sure that part of his new combativeness towards Obama (which often comes off as a small child repeatedly kicking the shins of a grown up who simply smiles and imagines the boarding school brochures in his mind's eye) involves making us think Obama's a communist.  Don't believe me?  Repeated comments about "spreading wealth around" sound suspiciously like "...to each according to his need," and accusing him of health care socialism and "class warfare" just gussy up the package.  It's a little weird, and I don't think it's effective, since there's a part of both parties that suspects this anyway, and are already voting for/against him because of it.

• Sarah Palin: NOT QUALIFIED.  Everyone had a chance to answer whether Sarah Palin would be qualified to be President, and since you can't say, "Oh, fuck no, Bob - she's a political choice, window dressing, baseline pandering to the women in our party who feel disenfranchised and a cloying, manipulative move for fence-sitters and undecided voters.  But President?  I think Lady Liberty would shit a green brick if that happened," they told us what a great mom she was, and how she helps autistic kids, and how she fought oil companies and corruption, and no one, not even John McCain, said she was qualified to be President.  You can probably guess why that might be.  But Sarah can't.

• ZZZZZZ... Was McCain snoring off-camera during Barack's answers?  I know O's long-winded and McCain's old, but come on.  John's behavior tonight was erratic; he laughs at his own jokes and looks around to see if anyone else is also laughing, he had squirrel motions right there at the end, and the new aggressive posturing is unattractive.  One wonders if he's not on 100 energy drinks or something.  By that same token, I want whatever Barack's smoking that makes him so unflappable.  We're going to find out that he takes giant blue downers or something someday.  No one's simply that cool.  Barack Obama has a jukebox at home that he activates by bumping it with his elbow.

That's it for now - you can look for ('cause I know you're excited) separate entries on Ayers, nuclear power, the "rights" of the unborn, and McCain's elusive "fabric of democracy."

I'm a little sad these are over.  I think I'll go vote tomorrow, though - JOE the PLUMBER '08!

Keating Economics

Even if you're old enough to remember this, (my readers are a weird demographic in this regard - some of them will and some of them won't) there's stuff in here you don't know.  I don't think this will bring any solid McCainiacs around, and won't have much of an effect on the truly old, since they already know all of this and have made a decision either way already, but it is truly useful information to have, and shows what an "insider" truly is.

"Maverick," my ENTIRE ass.

Brain Scars

My favorite model of the brain is one that posits that each wrinkle and crevasse is a place for information to live.  You could, if you were so inclined, pour an information-rich stew over a brain, and some of it would work its way into the nooks and crannies and just stay there to form deep pools or gather or grow and collect.  Or.  There's me coming after your brain one thousand and one times with a rusty knife dipped in Scotch bonnet pepper sauce and suffused with depleted uranium and carving shit in there you can't get rid of when I'm done because it burns like fire and glows like cheap neon.  I'm fond of that image, too.

This is posted entry 1001 for The Squidbag.  Thank you.  Since 2004, this blog has witnessed the birth of my daughter, the deaths of two of my friends & two grandfathers, two major hurricanes, our terrible times in Pensacola and our release from there, multiple birthdays & many of Max's milestones, such as his stage debut, or the creation of the ever-popular (but also vilified) Bacon Man.  I have typed the word "fuck" about a skillion and four times, and taken to task our current President almost as often.  Organized religion often tastes the blunt end of my rhetoric, and occasionally, has responded.  There has been poetry and joking and history and reviews and analysis.  This blog got me fired once.  I have thoroughly enjoyed myself.

I have stepped on people's toes.  Though not nearly often enough. We need more commenting around here, dammit!

I realize, sitting here, that I could easily have written the Great American Novel given four years, one thousand and one pages, and the time it took to do this, but such is life.  I'm looking forward to blogging for four more years, until no one but me and ten select others is doing it anymore, because it is so passe.  Hopefully, the world will take a more pleasant turn soon, but if it doesn't, I'll still be here to spit back into its ugly face.  And write poetry.  Heh.

2nd Debate Reactions

Tonight's debate: at the University of Belmont campus on a crappy, rainy, Nashville day.  There was plenty of finger pointing and attempts to portion out blame, but this was nothing new.  You expected that.  There was an atmosphere between the candidates that I could have kept a side of beef in, but this, again, was also no surprise.  So, with no real surprises extant, I will use this and future encounters to highlight and address the questions I keep getting, the seemingly eternal, "Why Obama?"

Why?

Well, it's not Pakistan, where if you were listening carefully, you actually heard them say the same thing, despite claims made by McCain.  They're both essentially saying, "You negotiate with Pakistan, you encourage democracy and you give them carrots for it.  When that fails to work, or when & if it looks like they might drop the ball instead of the bomb on Bin Laden, then America does the job and apologizes later."  This secret plan of McCain's might be brilliant, but you'd never know that, because he only insinuates that he's got one, and that does not inspire confidence.  Describing a policy of negotiation and action combined in an articulate way does not constitute telegraphing your punches.

It's not the economy, where, if you'll permit me, they both seem to be like, Sooo Four Months ago, y'know? (smacks gum)  Aside from talking about Joe Homeowner being able to negotiate his mortgage debt down a little and the "revelation" that this rampant greed monster was born from the unholy union of Bush & Cheney, nothing new was really discussed here, nothing groundbreaking.  McCain associated himself with that blackguard Joe Lieberman, and took Feingold's name in vain, while Obama discussed non-specific sacrifice and "sharing the burden."  I imagine when the elections are over, the sacrifices will become more specific.  I'm thinking of dressing up as 2009's specific economic sacrifices for Halloween, since that's vastly more frightening to most Americans than anything else they can think of.

No - it's not policy, either foreign or domestic, and it's not Obama being raised by a single mom who used to have to get green stamps to feed them and who is - we get it - a product of Hope & Opportunity.  It's not McCain, whose "responsible military record," upon which he would proudly stand includes taking out power lines with his fighter jet over Spain, depriving half a village of power, or being shot down while going after a target in defiance of orders.  Even these things are nothing new, nothing that would particularly sway a person in one direction or another.

It is this:

As you listen to these two men speak, you realize that while Sen. McCain is still capable of sectioning each issue, regardless of size, out into it's own little pigeonhole - what all walks of government people have historically referred to as 'compartmentalizing' - Sen. Obama is not.  He is not doing that.  I don't know if he even can, and I don't think that he should.  It is an approach that those of us down here in Holistic Alley have been waiting for now for quite some time.  Are you having trouble seeing how a question of Energy Policy ties into relationships with Iran, and how that relationship is a part of what determines our country's response to an Economic Crisis, and how that in turn affects our future policy in regards to Medicare and Social Security?  If you are, then you did not bring your gameface to this debate, and neither did John McCain.  I think it is simply a matter of intelligence, of judgment, of being able to look at issues which are part of the American experience in 2008 as parts of a unified whole, not reacting to shit as it happens and then wondering why the rubber band broke in Afghanistan while you were pulling on it so hard in Iraq.  Simply of analysis, of seeing systems moving in concert, of being able to see causality, and using that sight to make predictions, instead of always acting when it is too late.

Some people would call this 'vision.'  I won't do that, as it would nullify the remaining credibility I like to imagine I retain.

But it is one reason why The Squidbag supports Barack Obama, and while that should be enough, I know it will not be for some people.  I simply hope that they are in the minority in November.

First Weekend in October

What do you do with your three days off in a row?

I don't get three days in a row very often, so I fully intended to make seriously good use of them, and I believe I did.  I did all of our household's laundry, hit a comic book store, went to hear C sing in a choir, took in a high school homecoming football game, got free nachos, went to a cultural festival, played catch with my son, paid my cable bill, bought new books, made a huge Tex-Mex meal, picked up 25% off coupons, explored part of the city with which I am not familiar, spent lots of time with my kids, read a good chunk of the book I'm on, watched a bunch of cartoons, ate outside a couple of times, and generally packed a bunch of stuff into my weekend.  Highlights:

Abby likes construction equipment.  We spent a good ten minutes at one point parked in front of a building site, watching first a cement truck, and then a backhoe and dump truck.  She points excitedly and yells "big trucks!"  Abby also spent an entertaining few minutes today at lunch proclaiming herself to be a "ding-dong."  As in: "I'm a dinnnng-DONG.  Ding-dong."  Hilarity ensues, as Max nearly chokes on his sandwich.  Abby also makes friends wherever she goes, including getting free nachos from the nice laundromat lady who is from Chiapas and who also gave me free hangers and put on Spongebob for Abby.  Abby shared no nachos with me.

The alumni at the homecoming game took the cheerleaders - well, took them to school.  A fifty-five degree evening is cold to a scantily clad Nashville teenager, and so they were doing a lot of standing about and shivering, likely while texting.  When they finally got around to doing an actual cheer, the Alumni had had an ass full of their inactivity and decided to show them how it was done.  There's nothing funnier than a bleacher full of adults animatedly doing a cheer while a group of young girls exercises their emotional range from confused to pissed to embarrassed.

The game of catch gets harder and harder as the sun goes down.

Do not drink this product.  It is disgusting.  Spit-take disgusting.

If you warn a two-year-old not to drop something off of the second floor down into a first-floor lobby, the act will immediately occur, and it will not be purposeful when it does.  It will just spontaneously happen, like reverse using the Force.  The object will of course be, a plastic hammer.

Max picked up Understanding Comics in the bookstore and read a good chunk of it before bringing it over to me and asking if we could get it.  "Dad, this analyzes comics."  "I know.  We have that already."  "Cool.  I'm going to borrow it, but first, I'm going to go read Halloween books."  Ah, to be seven again.

Vanderbilt fans are so well-mannered that it is difficult to tell when they have won.  They beat Auburn by one point over the weekend, and the Borders we were leaving is literally in front of the stadium, nearly on campus, so we were packing the car and negotiating West End in post-game traffic, and had to ask passers by who won.

Tomorrow is another Monday.  My kids are in bed.  I should be, too.

Body Mod

Body Mod.  We'll start with the statement that I do and do not understand it, simultaneously. 

Standard regular tattooing is not included in this particular excoriation, nor is basic piercing of the sort that enhances a body part.  If your ears, eyebrows, nose, navel, nipples or genitals are improved in your estimation (or someone else's) by jewelry, then more power to you. However, if you choose to stick four pounds of steel into your flesh, morphing it into what is essentially an unrecognizable pincushiony kind of thing, that's when you go around Reasonable Corner into Freakland.  Or when you start chopping shit off you, predicted by my friend Eric P over a decade ago.  Or inserting things under your skin that don't serve another function, like GPS tracking or birth control.  My general assumption about people who radically modify their bodies is one of two things: You hate who you were so much you had to do a major restructuring, or that these are people who have missed out on being hurt and modified by spontaneous life experiences, so they must manufacture change and pain.  These aren't the points I came here to address, however.

It must be expensive.  I know that the body modifications I've had - the wiring, the pins, the replacing and surgeries - are always expensive.  Usually, someone else picks up the check, which is always nice.  Where do these people get the money?  And when they get it, why don't they buy something else distracting with it?  Comic books, trips to Europe, hookers and cocaine, lost weekends in foreign places, an RV, extreme sports, crates of novels, paying people to fight, buying everyone a drink - these are all alternate ways to spend money and distract yourself.  Or perhaps the point is to come away from the experience with an obvious, permanent, irrevocable physical alteration.  All right.  Get hammered and pick a bar fight with someone larger and more skilled than you are.  A barstool, swung just right, will provide the changes you are seeking.

Who helps these people?  You can't stick stuff in your back without help.  At least, I don't think I could.  You can't accurately chop up your genitalia without help - or at least, a steady hand and some mirrors.  And what if you bleed out?  Is there someone in the next room watching the History Channel, dialing 9-1, and waiting to hear an audible "WHUMP" from the next room?  When do these people find the time?  I don't think they're shopping around for qualified health professionals willing to stick a beer can into their cock, I think they do this themselves, at home, in a non-sterile environment.

You know, if I'm wrong and there is a devil - he's going to have to be really fucking creative.

Palin vs. The Rest of the World

After two days of serious training which included a jogging "accident," the GOP was ready to counter the effects of the horrifyingly odd CBS interviews with Sarah Palin.  Much like any homunculoid can be coached to be a witness for trial - you tell it what the questions will likely be about, coach it as to what not to say, drop in a couple of buzzwords, for instance, say, "maverick" and "reformer", and send it out there - Sarah was ready for her debate, and despite not really saying anything, never answering any question posed to her, not imparting any real information and talking weird a lot - I think she did okay.  I mean, expectations for her performance were in the toilet, so even a command of the English language was seen as a victory by some.

She did say this, though, and Sarah's words will be represented here in lipstick pink: "Well, as the nation's only Arctic state and being the governor of that state, Alaska feels and sees impacts of climate change more so than any other state. And we know that it's real.

Wow.  "More so than any other state?"  There's probably some people along the Gulf Coast who would take issue with this.  New Orleans was devastated by hurricanes and floods - I don't recall Anchorage being subsumed by glaciers.  I mean, I've been scanning the weather websites for days now looking for movement on the glaciers, but it's - well, glacial.

I'm not one to attribute every man -- activity of man to the changes in the climate. There is something to be said also for man's activities, but also for the cyclical temperature changes on our planet.

"Something to be said," surely.  But what?  We don't know.  She doesn't say it, at least not in any way I can parse.

But there are real changes going on in our climate. And I don't want to argue about the causes. What I want to argue about is, how are we going to get there to positively affect the impacts?

We have got to clean up this planet. We have got to encourage other nations also to come along with us with the impacts of climate change, what we can do about that.

Once again; what?  Come along with us, with the impacts.  What we can do about that.  What?

We've got to become energy independent for that reason. Also as we rely more and more on other countries that don't care as much about the climate as we do, we're allowing them to produce and to emit and even pollute more than America would ever stand for."

Other countries are polluting the world with their emissions, and they don't care as much about the climate as we do.  Because it's inherently American to care more about the climate?  Is this a surface area thing?  Because I would think Russia would care more than we do, in that case.  Luxembourg and Monaco wouldn't care at all.  Does it signify that we care more because we had a President who didn't even believe in it until forced to?  Or is it because we're the world's only industrialized nation ignoring the Kyoto Protocols?  Is that what it is?  Or does she just have a hankerin' for some drillin'?

Is there an abstinence only approach to claiming America's energy resources?  Something that doesn't involve fucking the planet?  I think Sarah would like that.

I Warned You.

I fucking warned you.  Me, and a bunch of other people.  We ALL goddamn warned you.  Every time I passed someone on I-440 who was texting their ass off while swerving & blocking traffic, or when the asshole stepped out in front of my car while texting only yesterday, or when the guy at the pizza place knocked some kids over without even noticing because he was fucking texting, I have repeatedly, like a sackcloth-clad prophet screaming in the woods, eating bugs and honey and yelling about the future, warned each and every one of you that TEXTING IS AN INHERENTLY DANGEROUS ACTIVITY WHEN ENTERED INTO BY SHITHEADS INCAPABLE OF PRIORITIZING OR MULTITASKING.  Many people can't type at all, much less type on a tiny-ass keyboard while concentrating on life.  So they just leave life out, and focus on texting.  Because they have no sense of priorities.  They'll drop work, driving, even real conversations to fucking text their idiot BFFs.  Fuck you and your FBFF, texter.  I have also repeatedly  proclaimed hat someone would die from this bullshit, and notwithstanding that "guy cut in half" urban legend video (that came attached to a text, natch) from a co-worker's phone, now you have 25 people dead over texting.

A commuter train driver (because this man engineered nothing) apparently spent about 60 seconds composing a message he then sent 20 seconds before running a red light and causing this mess you see above, killing himself and a two dozen others.  Essentially, because he wasn't paying attention.  He was texting, making sure that his non-thoughts got turned into a permanent record.  And 25 people died. 

Is blogging the same thing?  Of course.  But I rarely kill anyone while blogging.  And I never do it while I'm driving trains.