TurkeyAmnesia

I have turkey amnesia -- a bird made me forget. This has happened to you too. I got to work and realized I was too relaxed to remember the small things, like what you say when the phone rings or how to be an editor. Added is my imminent resignation (off in the horizon getting closer every day) which equals less money for me but way more postings for you. You are lucky, whoever you are who reads and does not respond. You mute witnesses.

Comments.

I'd like to rewind the world back to last Wednesday so that I could eat and drink it all over again. Come back to me stuffing. Persimmon and pork, you don't last. Why? Food, drink and giggles -- don't end!

Work is not happening. And at all once I am excited to move to Seattle and sad to go. Much like how it is to be drifting all alone at sea, wishing you'd (macaroni and cheese) come back to me...and it hurts me more than you know, so much more than it shows, at at once.

HA!

Good Gift!

Here's something that I am avowedly not good at: giving gifts. I know what I want, but I have a harder time figuring out what you want. You've been on the receiving end of my urgent grasping tribulations in say, BestBuy, last minute. You've also gotten tube socks and a box of mallow pies. There are a few of you out there who have gotten a carton of cigarettes. It is practical (if you smoke) but so unromantic. Heck. Sometimes you've only gotten the promise of a gift. And then, no gift.

But what do you want? What is it that you don't already have? You pretty much have it all: cellphones, cars, stereos, posters. I cannot think of what else to give you. I simply cannot fly around the planet like superman, reverse time, infiltrate and sabotage the Karl Rove machine, tie up Bush and make him concede the election on Nov. 1.

Do you like electronics? Dolls? Witches and trucks only? A new sweater? How about a book? Music heals all ailments, right? Or maybe you need an electric can opener. Or some kind of organizational tool. A bouquet of balloons? Baboons?

Help out. You all know what I want. But this is not about me. We'll make an online pact: no shearling for me and no shearling for you. Just some tickets to a certain talk show.

Remembering Peter Murphy

He's not dead. I just forgot about him for a while, haven't thought of him in a whale's age, what with the election (You know. The one I can't seem to get over, that I'll never get over, the one I'm still fantasizing about. The aftermath of which keeps getting stupider and stupider, where I'm now getting concerned about the prospect of a President Condaleeza Rice in 2008. But I'll say this, I am really looking forward to the Bush-and-Condi-in-love scandal breaking...) and well, the holidays and stuff ...

Peter Murphy. I was a fan of Bauhaus, a posthumous Bauhaus since I was just a tyke when they were together. I liked their creepout songs and the shattery-guitars, the dancebeat drumming and of course, the lyrics and voicings of the singer, who was for me at the time some nameless artist-person. Then right around that same time, right around the same time I had to rent "The Hunger" (not bad, stars David Bowie and Catherine Deneuve as vampires!) because Bauhaus was in it for three minutes, Peter Murphy's solo record came out. I loved "Cuts You Up" from the first time I heard it and naturally gave the whole record a whirl since I was already i-n-t-o it. Back then in middle school it was kind of a requirement that any music I listened to be played by some sick-looking British person. And yet, completely missed out on a lot and so there are large holes in my music-brain the size of Black Sabbath, who I am only just not even remotely interested in just today.

However. Times change and the mind strays. I might even venture to say that there's too much music. Fewer choices. Less decisions.

Old Passwords -- 100% REAL

Like so many autumn leaves, they leave too. I forget them. Perhaps you can use them someday. It's recycling!

1999Party

grappa

egginthemorning

harpoonaspoon

sewing

hamblescramble

After a Huge Disapointment, A Windfall

I don't hate to keep thinking and talking about the election, because this is the biggest, most pivotal, election of my life. I have railed against the idea that it is decided and over and that we all have to get on to the healing. Like you I've gotten my share of emails detailing how to escape from America, that we should just fuck-the-south, and enough red/blue maps to start my own Rand McNally. I am so popular! Ha. It's encouraging, in a way, to realize that of course there are many "little girls out there" who feel just like I do, silly. That's a quote from my father. He, like my mother is a lifelong Democrat, or should I say, as soon as they arrived in America, they realized they were fervent Democrats. And now they are depressed and feeling repressed. They're biggest concern is the Patriot Act and how so many people are unaware of what that thing is capable of. Don't rest thinking that just because Ashcroft is out that the next attorney general will strive to protect your civil liberties. That guy believes we can't follow the Geneva Conventions. I just feel too realistically pessimistic for that.

I understand that I am not alone in feeling alienated and identifying in the United Cities of America and all that, it's just that I feel that the election and post-election round up has gone too fast and we're already on to the business of Bush's judicial appointments and I just feel like what about the division of the nation?

Another thing I wonder is how you become politically motivated. What makes you interested in politics and the law when a lot of people are just not. Is there some prediliction for caring about that stuff and what happens if you don't care? Do you just default to the Republican party, ooh, or even worse, do you start canvassing for Lyndon LaRouche, you know, the kookoo libertarian? And further, how do you become liberal? Is it your morality or your idea of ethics or did Bob Geldof and BandAid just grab you when you were young? Or what? Wait. I know. I'm just playing.

Awful!

P.S. If anyone out there (helloooo Internet!) has any tickets to the Oprah Winfrey show, please contact me. I'm taking a trip to Chicago with Hamlice and I really, really want to see the show. Of course, the rapid Winfrey fans have snatched up all the tickets ages ago and so, if you wouldn't mind and if you aren't using the tickets, I would LOVE to have them. I only really need one. Anyway, I'm going to be in Chicago from Dec 21 to Dec 27. Think about it. Seeing that show might just get me over this post-election slump.

Be a friend. OK?

In My Time of Need

I Need You



More of his brothers live here.

I want to touch them all!

Vitriol...or something like it.

A few things that have crossed my mind since the sheer heartbreak and despair have lifted (a bit) are:

We didn't lose by all that much. There are tons of people who get it -- who get that Bush is the worst president of all time.

Perhaps instead of people making these mass-exoduses out of places like Ohio and Iowa for safe havens in the industrial midwest, the northeast and the west coast, if people stayed the entire country might end up a bit bluer. (That said, I really hate the oversimplification of the blue states and red states -- since it really only serves a very shallow discussion of the electoral college.)

Why is Kerry getting lambasted for being a 'bad candidate,' the keystone of the criticisms being his long, wordy speeches? I take such offensive to Bush's style of "ITS HARD WORK" "GO VOTE" "GOD IS GOOD" that the idea that some Democrats have of tailoring future messages (see 2006) to this method is not appetizing for me and I don't think it works to act like Republicans in order to win. I think when people are able to understand that Democrats do have a moral basis for their ideas, the argument (Republican or Demo) is moot and you win votes: more about this here. Right?

On NPR this morning I heard this man explaining why he voted for Bush: because he in this man's view Bush needs to 'clean up the mess he's made.' I'm all for referendums but why use such a pivotal election for your protest vote? This is democracy, and it is true that Bush really has no one to blame but his own administration for the mess in Iraq, the deficit, the economy, etc. But to think that reelecting the person responsible will in some strange way clear up things is quite a leap-of-faith.

I've been enjoying reading Josh Marshall's site lately. I think his takes on things are thoughtful and very satisfying. He's here.

Voting was a snap

I stood in line for about 20 minutes and then spent about another 10 on the ballot itself -- there were about 15 ballot initiatives and propositions. I was surprised that there was a line at all regardless of what I'd heard on NPR. Living in California is a lot like not living in the rest of the United States.

The only trouble I can report is the sun was in my eyes as I waiting in line and All Star Donuts proves problematic as a polling place location since people are fussing over creamer and stirrers and donuts and the smell of donuts is distracting. I would have liked to have exercised my democratic rights without the frenzy of a business, just this once.

I don't understand why we can't be given a receipt though. I mean, I leave with my ballot stubs and a preachy "I Voted" sticker and nothing else. I have no idea that my ballot has been accepted or not. In San Francisco County we use the optical scan technique, which sounds highly technical but in truth requires the voter to draw a line between two broken arrows and their choice so that a big bold arrow points at it.

I checked and rechecked. It all seemed to check out.

Now the waiting. And the drinking.

Hard Hats

Nurse Django and

Dr. and Ms. Halloween