in addition to losing the shirt and tie, i’ve let my face get a little scrappy since i’ve been working from home over the last year.

i was thinking of tidying up until my neighbor said i reminded her of a cartoon character. she couldn’t place which one which is a second insult because there is a big difference between bluto and shaggy.

so now i’m stuck with this look until i decide its been long enough to shave without attributing it as a reaction to her comment…

as always, i am the most predictable rebel.

i miss the time zone difference being in new zealand. it made dealing with the states tolerable because the waking hours in the u.s. only overlapped half the new zealand day. the rest of my day was free of disruptions and therefore more productive and pleasant in general.

i was in gamestop yesterday seeking narcotics to help distract me from everything going on in the news. i rapped with the shopkeeper for quite a while about which titles possessed the greatest hypnotic affect and ultimately landed on two. grand theft auto san andreas to vent anger and frustration and kingdom hearts for simple, pure escapism.

at checkout the shopkeeper gave me, what i consider, one of the greatest compliment i’ve ever…

would you like an application?

i swear this site isn’t turning in to a political op ed column, but now that bush has come out of seclusion to panic the u.s. public in a prime time address i feel obligated to make sure everyone recalls the last time he was playing this game.

it was when he was lying to us about going to war with iraq and how we were going to enjoy a quick and easy victory.

back then bush also had ‘experts’ who guaranteed iraq had weapons of mass destruction and that our troops would be greeted as liberators and a litany of other tall tales.

now that he’s weeks away from riding off in to the sunset and realized there are still a few nickels in the till, he is planning a coup de grâce that will complete his plunder of the u.s. treasury.

there is no reason to rush a decision of this magnitude weeks ahead of a change in control at presidency and there is certainly every reason to question the motives and competency of everyone in this administration. remember, just weeks ago bush was saying there was nothing wrong with the economy. and during his campaign advocated tossing our social security funds in to the stock market.

and what’s with mccain? after casting the least votes in senate all year (by the way, the guy in second place suffered a brain hemorrhage) he wants to rush back to washington and take a break from campaigning? i’m sorry, he needs to stay on the campaign trail and to attend the debate. i want to know what his plans are when he potentially becomes the next president. it’s 3:00am and its time for a president who needs to take a time out, cracker please…

i sent the following to both senators of my state (find your senator here) hoping cooler heads will prevail:

Do not under any circumstance approve or promote the President’s financial market bail out plan. The magnitude of this situation alone dictates due diligence and I will not accept a rush to respond to this President’s fear mongering.

It would be reasonable to provide some short term plan that addresses the immediate bleeding but it too should be carefully considered and scheduled for review when the new administration comes to power in January.

i desperately want to avoid commenting on the cluster fuck that is raging at all levels of the u.s. political and economic systems just to maintain a slim chance that my head won’t explode.

but this whole mess is 100% the result of voters putting everything imaginable ahead of qualifications for the job when electing their representatives.

as the current administration has proven, you can both bomb a country back to the stone age, or legislate one there…

my dad is working in germany at the moment and allowed himself to be drug off to oktoberfest. i say drug off because he neither drinks, smokes or wears lederhosen, and judging from his picture below he was the only one there who didn’t…

i never bothered posting any of the notes i took on my impressions returning to the united states, but after looking at them again i thought at least these two should be shared:

the result of coaching a three and five year old through forty plus hours of airports and airplanes while trying to keep them from acting like the three and five year old they are will result in children who are completely immune to everything you say.

its ironic after returning home the first song across my ipod shuffle was the bloodhound gang’s “three point one four” with the lyric

“it’s hard to rhyme a word like vagina, calvin klein? kind of north carolina.”

since returning to the states i’ve been baffled (completely baffled) at how its possible mccain/palin have been statistically tied in the race for president of the united states with obama/biden.

over the past few days i’ve concluded the strongest explanation of this has to be race.

mccain/palin offer nothing (absolutely nothing) different than the last eight years of bush/cheney.

i don’t believe its arguable that the last eight years have been categorically a leadership disaster.

so when this showed up in my inbox yesterday, i knew someone else landed on the same conclusion…

this is your nation on white privilege
by tim wise

for those who still can’t grasp the concept of white privilege, or who are constantly looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it, perhaps this list will help.

white privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like bristol palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because “every family has challenges,” even as black and latino families with similar “challenges” are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.

white privilege is when you can call yourself a “fuckin’ redneck,” like bristol palin’s boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes with you, you’ll “kick their fuckin’ ass,” and talk about how you like to “shoot shit” for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible, all-american boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug.

white privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six years like sarah palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then returned to after making up some coursework at a community college), and no one questions your intelligence or commitment to achievement, whereas a person of color who did this would be viewed as unfit for college, and probably someone who only got in in the first place because of affirmative action.

white privilege is when you can claim that being mayor of a town smaller than most medium-sized colleges, and then governor of a state with about the same number of people as the lower fifth of the island of manhattan, makes you ready to potentially be president, and people don’t all piss on themselves with laughter, while being a black u.s. senator, two-term state senator, and constitutional law scholar, means you’re “untested.”

white privilege is being able to say that you support the words “under god” in the pledge of allegiance because “if it was good enough for the founding fathers, it’s good enough for me,” and not be immediately disqualified from holding office–since, after all, the pledge was written in the late 1800s and the “under god” part wasn’t added until the 1950s–while believing that reading accused criminals and terrorists their rights (because, ya know, the constitution, which you used to teach at a prestigious law school requires it), is a dangerous and silly idea only supported by mushy liberals.

white privilege is being able to be a gun enthusiast and not make people immediately scared of you.

white privilege is being able to have a husband who was a member of an extremist political party that wants your state to secede from the union, and whose motto was “alaska first,” and no one questions your patriotism or that of your family, while if you’re black and your spouse merely fails to come to a 9/11 memorial so she can be home with her kids on the first day of school, people immediately think she’s being disrespectful.

white privilege is being able to make fun of community organizers and the work they do–like, among other things, fight for the right of women to vote, or for civil rights, or the 8-hour workday, or an end to child labor–and people think you’re being pithy and tough, but if you merely question the experience of a small town mayor and 18-month governor with no foreign policy expertise beyond a class she took in college–you’re somehow being mean, or even sexist.

white privilege is being able to convince white women who don’t even agree with you on any substantive issue to vote for you and your running mate anyway, because all of a sudden your presence on the ticket has inspired confidence in these same white women, and made them give your party a “second look.”

white privilege is being able to fire people who didn’t support your political campaigns and not be accused of abusing your power or being a typical politician who engages in favoritism, while being black and merely knowing some folks from the old-line political machines in chicago means you must be corrupt.

white privilege is being able to attend churches over the years whose pastors say that people who voted for john kerry or merely criticize george w. bush are going to hell, and that the u.s. is an explicitly christian nation and the job of christians is to bring christian theological principles into government, and who bring in speakers who say the conflict in the middle east is god’s punishment on jews for rejecting jesus, and everyone can still think you’re just a good church-going christian, but if you’re black and friends with a black pastor who has noted (as have colin powell and the u.s. department of defense) that terrorist attacks are often the result of u.s. foreign policy and who talks about the history of racism and its effect on black people, you’re an extremist who probably hates america.

white privilege is not knowing what the bush doctrine is when asked by a reporter, and then people get angry at the reporter for asking you such a “trick question,” while being black and merely refusing to give one-word answers to the queries of bill o’reilly means you’re dodging the question, or trying to seem overly intellectual and nuanced.

white privilege is being able to claim your experience as a pow has anything at all to do with your fitness for president, while being black and experiencing racism is, as sarah palin has referred to it a “light” burden.

and finally, white privilege is the only thing that could possibly allow someone to become president when he has voted with george w. bush 90 percent of the time, even as unemployment is skyrocketing, people are losing their homes, inflation is rising, and the u.s. is increasingly isolated from world opinion, just because white voters aren’t sure about that whole “change” thing. ya know, it’s just too vague and ill-defined, unlike, say, four more years of the same, which is very concrete and certain.

white privilege is, in short, the problem.

i’m going to have to take up guns and religion because i’m quite bitter and don’t have anything to cling to…

the two ubiquitous lies on everyone’s voice response system:

“due to unusually high call volumes, you may experience longer than normal wait times.”

“at [insert company name here] we value your time and business. a customer service representative will be with you shortly.”

anyone who stresses barrak obama’s middle name hussein as an argument against his viability for president needs to be sent back to the elementary school playground where the other five year olds can respond in kind “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me”.

my realtor took this picture of a chipmunk trapped under a wire netted box at a house i’m trying to sell in a market that has been destroyed by the subprime mortgage crisis.

the wire netted box belongs in a stair well to keep leaves out of a storm drain and shouldn’t have been out in the yard in the path of the innocent chipmunk.

i didn’t take out a garbage loan or advocate the deregulation of mortgage companies but like the chipmunk i have found myself trapped in their wire netted box.

to complete the parable the chipmunk would have to fork over his winter stash to bail out the holder of the wire netted box and while he may be free of the first trap the second has left him without a food store for the long cold winter ahead…