Why I voted for Bush- 50 words or less

I didn't.

But if you've been poluting other people's blogs, chances are you did. I may not be blogging nearly as much as I used to, but I have been visiting other people's blogs and in doing so I've noticed a startling new trend.

Whenever an obviously democrat blog decides to make some sort of political commentary (not always derogatory) about the decisions of the current administration, there is always some yahoo, generally logged in anonymously, who decides to put in their two cents about why democrats suck. I mean it's so ubiquitous that I'm tempted to believe that there's a new federal agency devoted to counterpointing democrat blogs. At least, I'd say that if I was paranoid. By the way, hello agent Smith.

These republican rants generally all take the same form: "Yeah, well, it's not like democrats don't lie. Remember Clinton, huh?!? Remember him. He got a blowjob and told the country that he didn't have sex." Yes, you're right.

Bush, on the other hand, knew about 9/11, didn't do anything about it, lied about his knowledge, used the attack to provoke a war in Afghanistan so that he could get an oil pipeline run through their country and then decided he wanted Iraq's oil so he fabricated a story about weapons of mass destruction, invaded, involved America in a ground war that has now claimed more lives than 9/11. I won't discuss his policies that he openly admits to--I'm just saying that you baby boomer republicans better not come crying to me when your social security disapears so that we can attack Iran. I should, of course, mention Florida where before 9/11, Bush rigged an election. But Clinton was dishonest too. He got a blowjob. I suppose I have to concede that point.

Here's the thing though, these republican anonomous blog commentators, besides being too cowardly to list their own blogs, never ever touch the real issue. They want us to think that they are pretty much like us democrats, they too don't trust the republican administration, it's just that they trusted Kerry even less. Let me be the first to say, no. You are not like me. And personally, I don't care why you didn't vote Democrat. If you threw a party and caught someone shitting in your punch bowl, would you really give a crap if they had a good explanation for why they didn't use the toilet? No, you'd want to know why they were shitting in your punch bowl.

Therefore, today's blog is for you, republicans. Crawl out from under your anonymous postings, grow a sack, and tell us why you voted for Bush. Not why you didn't vote for Kerry, why you voted for Bush.

Your answer may address the following:

• Your homophobia
• Your belief that the founders of our country were heretics for attempting to seperate church and state
• Your racism
• The empty hole in your life that can only be filled with images of war
• Your desire for the rest of the world to kiss your ass
• Your attraction to people who lie to you
• Your belief that poor people who get sick should die and decrease the surplus population

Don't discuss Clinton's blowjob. Go right to the heart of the matter. Tell us-- really, we want to know--why the hell did you vote for Bush?

the book to throw at you

Today, ladies and gents, I am writing Shock Tea. This is good. It gives me something to do. Oh, I know what you're thinking..."what about your Ultramarine Land Raider." Well, its nearly done...nearly...I think. I've got this idea to put little techmarines scrambling over it. In any case, a few parts still need to be painted and all that. Regardless...

I am preparing scenery for Avram's visit. It will most likely be a horrendous time of blasting away Chaos, Eldar, Marines, and Harlequins. At Big Lots today, I saw that for $4 I could get a tank that looked pretty much exactly like a Leman Russ, and well... You all don't care. 40k shit. I'll stop.

So, the Shock. I began writing Shock Tea something like five years ago. I wrote the first eighty pages with crazy energy. Since then the energy has sort of fizzled, but I'm still keeping at it. I want to finish. I want to publish. I have fantasies about defending the book to ultra right wing Christian organizations, and appearing on day time talk shows with a hood over my head--like later stages Cobra Commander--but those fantasies can not come true if I do not finish the book.

My job thus far is a bit easier. I have the next chapter completely mapped out--scene for scene--which is something I don't normally do. Now all I have to do is write the scenes. So I sat down to write the next scene, got a great idea for a different scene, wrote it, and now I'm off my outline again. Christ, when will it end. I'm happy with the scene I wrote mind you, but I just want to be done. I just want to get Broken Bobby out of the mental ward so that I can begin the end of the book.

I'm ranting, but there's a point to all this. Listen folks, I am in the middle of what I consider the second of three parts to the book. In Lord of the Rings jargon, I just leveled the first of two towers. Just one more tower to go and then the Hobbits can start weeping. Tolkien's book, however, was three volumes. He could afford to be on page six hundred or whatever and still only be half done. Fantasy fans love that kind of shit. I'm not writing fantasy. It's close. I'm not going to lie to you, it's really close, but no cigar.

And I am on page 418. I'm half done and I'm on page 418. Now, even if that was a lie. Even if I were two thirds done, I'm still on page 418. Does anyone know a publisher? Could someone ask for me: what are the chances of getting published when your first work is 600 pages. I mean, that's ridiculous. I love to read, and if some guy comes out, no short stories, no other novels, and the only thing he has is a 600 page postmodern monster of a novel, I'm not going to read him. I love David Foster Wallace, but I'm not touching Infinite Jest unless I have to.

Earlier today I came to the conclusion that I'm going to have to write another book, something in the neighborhood of a 100 pages, just to get published so that I can get Shock Tea finished. And so, I start thinking about the other book. And I start thinking, 'well, if that's the first thing to get published, doesn't it make sense to stop writing Shock Tea and start writing that other book.' But then I realize two things: 1--if I stop writing Shock Tea, I may never start writing it again, and 2--if the other book isn't like Shock Tea then when I try to push Shock Tea on my publisher, he's going to say, "this isn't at all like Wednesdays With Wimbley. Why don't you write another book like that instead?"--effectively putting Shock Tea on the back burner in an infinte regress.

And it is here that I have to be honest with myself. It's not a publisher I need at all. I need a psychiatrist. I am drawn to impossible to finish projects. I am obsessively living out the green golf ball joke. I have boxes filled with miniatures each of which will take me hours and hours to paint. I have bookshelves covered with books, each of which will take me days to read. And I am writing a novel, the end of which rests far beyond the horizon of my speculation. I've come to think that playing video games is a waste of my time, but I'm wrong. They, at least, end.

Cold

It's fucking cold.

I know what you're saying. "Sure it's cold. It's December. It's supposed to be cold." Yeah, well, it's colder than that. There's a cooler out on my back porch that had water in it. It's frozen. Not frozen over--frozen solid. Last Tuesday, there were swirls of white in the creek behind our house, letting me detect that not only was the creek frozen but it had a foot, at least, of ice. We had two days where the temperature warmed up, just to make sure that we didn't get a white Christmas, but then it dropped again.

Today, I am wearing thermal underwear, thermal socks, snow boots, a long sleeve shirt, a zip up sweater, a snow jacket, a beanie, gloves, and it is still fucking cold.

The heat pretty much just exits our house, so last week I put up caulk around all 22 of our windows and then put plastic up over 16 of them as well. This has helped heat disipation somewhat, but let's face it: it just stays 55 degrees for longer now. It's not getting much warmer than that. Outside it's about ten degrees, maybe less. Our all time low was -5. That's so far. Last Winter, -40. Damn that's cold.

The thing about negative temperatures is that, not only do they cause your skin to freeze up, they also defy math. If it's say 80 degrees (wouldn't that be nice), you can't say that its -16 times hotter than when it's -5. It's so cold that logic has frozen.

I can't complain totally. I've learned to enjoy some aspects of the cold. For instance, I like the way that ice sounds when you crunch it underfoot at 5 degrees temperature. It's very satisfying. Also, snow fall is much better than falling rain. It's graceful rather than oppressive. Also, when its sunny, Northampton, frozen over, is very charming--though twice as deadly to drive through.

The weird thing is though that you really do get used to the cold. If it's forty degrees, I think it's warm. There really isn't rain, so you don't get wet cold. It's just that the air is cold. Still, it's odd that I used to think of forty degrees as near freezing, and now, it's a warm day.

Of course, the Mass-holes will walk around in t-shirts when its twenty or thirty degrees, but they are, of course, deranged.

The semester in review

Well, I think I finally exhaled. The semester is over. Next semester will probably be worse (two quasi theory classes), but all in all, I'm done.

The paper I wrote for the Hawthorne/Melville class got me an A-, or as we of old Chico stock like to refer to it, an Aiping. I kind of feel bad about that. I realize that an A minus is really nothing to feel bad about, but nonetheless I do. For those of you who've never been to grad school, the papers are twenty to twenty five pages in length. I realize that its not realistic, but when you write that much you really do feel you should get an A just for the effort. In addition to said effort, I think I also made a pretty convincing argument, and it was a new argument. Do you have any idea how hard it is to say something new about The Scarlet Letter? Still, A-.

Why, you may ask? Grammer problems were cited, but that wasn't really the case. He didn't like that I called Dimmesdale "reverand" rather than "minister." How fucked up is that?! Also, I tend to have a lot of space between my subject and my verb. Technically that's not grammatically incorrect. It may be annoying, but it's still correct. Regardless, I'm not going to argue with the man. Near as I can tell, everyone got an A-, including the girl who didn't know what supernatural meant. Graduate level my ass.

As far as the AfAm class, I don't know. I scrapped paper idea after paper idea after paper idea. Finally I settled in on giving a reading of Everett's Erasure related to the usurpation of expressionist art by cubism. This resulted in something like the liar's paradox, but steeped about five levels deep. Recursion is a tricky thing to describe, especially when it relies on paradox. Hell, Borges made a whole career out of that sort of thing. Did I pull it off? I think so. What I've learned is that a year off without having to use my brain has put my writing skills in the shitter. Talk in class, fine. Read the books, fine. Pull off a twenty page argument, not so fine. I don't think it helps that I consider this "the big school." Trying to impress the experts is not helping my writing.

The problem is, of course, that I am a scholar. And I am no longer in school. Thus, I am relaxing, but at the same time, I haven't a clue what to do with myself. I'd paint some new stuff, but the Christmas snow that came the day after Christmas has made it impossible to put primer on anything. I got a Chaos Defiler and a Ruined Cathedral. I've been working on my Land Raider, but damned if I didn't lose a part. Maybe it's time to break out the dremmel, and figure out how to make things.

Mostly, I play Half Life answer the ten e-mails from my Winter session students (class hasn't started) and wander around the house. A scholar without school is a funny thing. I've lost track of which day it is. Last night, I wanted to put out the garbage, assuming that it might be Wednesday. I've started reading a number of books, but that's just it, started. I started Libra and Uncle Tom's Cabin. Now I'm on Vineland (thanks Kyle), which I think I'm going to stick to. It's damn funny. Well that's life on this gray late December day.