kirktastic

The good news is with a little Resolve I was able to get the vomit stains out of the couch after sitting through a few moments of the RNC this past week. I only saw a few minutes at a time but I did learn that John McCain was a POW, that 9/11 happened, and that Sarah Palin hunts moose. These are all critical things to think about when choosing a president. Palin’s speech was so inspiring for the first time in my life I gave money to a political candidate.

We’ve seen this movie before. A fundie governor with little experience from an oil state? She, like poster boy Bush in 2000 is the narrative the Republicans want. In fact I would bet some would like to see McCain step down. He’s old and busted, plus in the past he hasn’t really shown his commitment to the important issues like abortion, abortion or abortion. Many of the conservative christians felt he was too liberal. But the republican machine made a deal with McCain after they ruined him when he ran in 2000. If he was a good soldier, he’d get a shot after Bush. So they held their noses and supported him this year. Remember a year ago among candidates on the Republican side “none of the above” was the most popular in the polls. Palin is an effort to fire up the base and it is working. Favorite joke on of the week (after the Jesus was a community organizer) is “If you think Palin is a reformer candidate: I’ve got a bridge in Alaska to sell you.”

One of the things that Bush had going for him in 2000 was the conservative “outrage” over those horrible Clinton years. Bush promised to bring honor and dignity to the White House. And he ran on the idea of “change”. Gore couldn’t get the swing voters because he was too closely tied to Clinton. Had he had Clinton go on the campaign trail with him, he probably would have gotten a better turnout and make that clusterfuck in Florida not happen.

This year, Bush and McCain are at their distance. And for the first time in recent history the sitting president did not speak live in front of his party convention. Oh, sure there was Gustav. Bullshit. He went to sunny Austin and San Antonio Texas for photo-ops and then back to DC. You mean he couldn’t have bumped Giuliani or Thompson later in the week and appear live instead of on video? If Bush was was popular today, they’d find room for him in the schedule and McCain wouldn’t be trying to co-opt Obama’s message of change. It would be what Bush ran on in 2004: don’t change horsemen mid apocalypse don’t change horses midstream.

What also makes me sick is the hypocrisy and “do as I say, not as I do” on social issues. Had Obama announced that his 17y.o. daughter was pregnant the same people standing behind Palin today would go off the rails over it. Irresponsible parenting! Sex before marriage is a sin! Abstinence only! It would be 100% of their message. The Daily Show has had a great round up of this hypocrisy about this. Strangely Palin gets a pass on her parenting skills because she didn’t terminate her last kid and that the daughter and her redneck boyfriend are going to get married. So it is all OK. And we’re supposed to lay off the kid because it is a private family matter. Of course it is. But it became a public matter when Palin issued a press release saying the kid was pregnant. They didn’t need to disclose it. And they didn’t need to trot out the boyfriend onto a photo op at the MSP airport to meet McCain. Or show him in a suit at the convention. But they did. And now it is sexist even to ask about Palin’s experience in government and calling bullshit on her record. Again, the Daily Show is doing the work the real news should.

It looks like Gustav is weakening and it won’t even bring winds and rain in my direction. That’s good since there are medical evacuees and other people who drove up in shelters in town. I’m really upset at the local Red Cross for a) not providing cots for people to sleep on (except in the one Bush is expected to visit) and for its director saying “they need to treat this as a camping trip”. Although the Red Cross decided not to put out cots, that as a really fucking insensitive way of saying it. You usually don’t come back from a camping trip with your house and all of its contents just gone. I could see if there were so many evacuees that they ran out of beds, but that isn’t the case. The message from the state of Texas this time is if you can afford it, stay in a hotel or at a friend. If you’re poor, get your broke ass back to Louisiana.

Of course, George W Bush is also in town. What a dick. McCain and Palin lucked out since Bush was scheduled to speak up in St. Paul at the RNC. So there’s little chance of McCain and Bush hugging each other again and it showing up on in a new Obama ad.

There is a great weight on my deliberation to wash my car today. On one side, it is dirty. Why do I keep buying black cars? There is a 0% chance of rain this week in the forecast. However, I know that as soon as I get my car washed, Gustav could restrengthen, change direction and head right this way. This would mean the Texans may come to Austin for shelter. Wonder if they’ll get the cots out for them?

Flickr has been pretty famous for “as it happens” photos showing up on the interwebs. So I went and typed in Gustav into the search box and this came up.

I’m still in the state of disbelief over McCain’s pick of Sarah Palin yesterday for his VP. Of course the first thing I had to do is see what wikipedia had to say since I haven’t heard of America’s most popular governor (actually I had, his name is Arnold Schwarzeneggar, but that pesky constitution makes him ineligible for the position).

I’m stunned to find that “Mr. Experience” chose someone with so little experience. The Republican Talking Points play up she’s a governor of Alaska but fail to mention that although a huge land mass, has less than 700K people. More people live in my small city than in that state. Well, before that she was mayor (Karl Rove called it the second largest city in Alaska, but even in Alaska a village with only a few thousand people won’t make the top 10). McCain says she has experience with the military since her son enlisted (on September 11th no less!) and is going off to Iraq soon (and she’s also Commander in Chief of the Alaska National Guard). The Republican talking heads are already saying she has more executive experience than Obama and Biden (but fail to add McCain to that worthless list). She’s a maverick! She’s a reformer! She went after big oil! (she basically got a windfall profits tax for Alaskans — what Obama’s talked about on the national level). The complete moron Steve Dooce on Fox News claimed that she had international experience because Alaska is right next to Russia. I have more experience dealing with the Russian government than she does. She killed the “Bridge to Nowhere.” She didn’t kill it, Congress killed the funding for it and when Alaska had to pay for it by itself, she said no. Not because she was a maverick, but because she wasn’t an idiot.

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…write a post about Obama selecting Biden for veep. What I like about Biden is he’s not afraid to take McSame and keep Obama above the fray. He was the guy that said about Guiliani: “noun, verb, 9/11″. My only gripe from his speech with Obama yesterday was he said literally way too much. That he doubted Obama’s experience when he was running against him shouldn’t surprise anyone. Everyone running against Obama said he’s inexperienced. To me, McCain is going to need more than that. I think I read McCain is going to pick Mitt Romney as his veep. Yawn.

…write a post about the possibility of a transit strike. Just when I sign up for the pre-tax bus pass at work, the drivers/mechanics and the bus authority can’t come to terms on a new contract. They voted to strike last week. Now both sides say that doesn’t mean they will strike. CapMetro has a contingency plan to cover core routes but neither of the buses I take are core. Well, I just thank god that George Bush solved the energy problem and gas is cheap so I can drive. And now with Ford offering 45% of their F-150 pickup trucks I can go to work without a care in the world!

…write a post about TV. My cable bill is $170 a month. About $50 of that is internet. About $95 is is TV. The rest is taxes and fees and surcharges and a bunch of crap. I only watch about [adult swim], Comedy Central, HBO and Showtime. I used to like the History Channel but lately they don’t show history programs. Instead every time I flip past the channel in glorious HD, there is “Ice Road Truckers”. This is a show about these guys that drive across frozen lakes in Canada. There’s drama (the ice might melt, they might crash) but there is no history. There are plenty of shows not about history. I saw a show about french fries the other day. Yes, they did manage to shoehorn in some history (Thomas Jefferson introduced it to the US) and the machines used to take a field full of potatoes and make them into fries is interesting, but it isn’t history. I have the same gripe with the Travel Channel. They used to have great shows about exotic places covered by Lonely Planet and Rough Guides. But now, it is “America’s Best Hamburgers” and shows about Las Vegas casinos. This switch happened right after 9/11 where they decided that Americans weren’t going anywhere so they changed the format to talk about hamburgers and roller coasters. I don’t know when the History Channel lost its way, but in light of the administration and McCain’s recent “countries in the 21st century don’t invaded other countries” remark, perhaps the suits at History Channel think Americans don’t care about history either. Maybe the problem isn’t the TV programming. Maybe it is me.

…write about iPhones and shit. The iPhone 3G is getting a lot of flack the press for its problems getting on 3G networks. For the most part, the mobile carriers are pointing at Apple. This is nothing new, whenever I had problems with my cellphone’s reception the first thing the person at T-Mobile would do is try and blame my handset which I would buy from Europe since T-Mobile’s US handset selection sucks ass. 3G works mostly for me. Except I do think I’m running into capacity problems from time to time. In the mornings on the bus I get 3G with 5 bars for most of the route. In the much more crowded and awake afternoon commute, I will get fewer bars or switchover to EDGE. Since it is the same phone attempting to connect to the same tower at the different times, I don’t think it is the phone, ATT. A cellphone tower can only handle a finite amount of calls/data. So when I’m downloading pr0n on the bus, that means someone else can’t use its slot on that tower. This isn’t an iPhone specific problem, except iPhones exacerbate the problem because they are so damn awesome and people tend to use them more than other phones. On the old cellphone networks only 56 calls could take place simultaneously. I think you can get a few hundred now, but in areas with lots of 3G phones that could be pretty easy to fill up. Especially since iPhones and other data hungry phones are always downloading something. The 3G coverage maps only show it there’s a tower somewhere not how much capacity is available. Carriers first seem to build out the coverage area, then the density. And this is why I think many people who are in Manhattan or Chicago or San Francisco are having troubles. Sure, there’s coverage, but there are a lot of people trying to use the same tower at the same time. You just need to go back to the online forums to last year and see people with every brand of smartphone whining about 3G coverage to see this isn’t an iPhone issue. iPhone has the halo of the cult of Apple about it so it gets more press. People don’t stand in line overnight to get the Motorola Q phone or Samsung Blackjack. So when thousands of of people in a city block get a new phone on without new enough new capacity, people are not going to get the new signal. Only until the carrier builds out more capacity (which they are more likely to do than add smaller cities and suburbs) will this problem go away. When I was in Europe with my Sony Ericsson 3G phone in 2007 it would switch between the 3G and GPRS (slower than EDGE) networks sometimes. People forget the 3G network in the US is pretty young. You just have to remember back a few years to the dropped calls on the old cellphone networks. Until the carriers started building out capacity people whined about no coverage and dropped calls. Maybe the History Channel can do a show about that.

I don’t think Apple is blameless here. From what I’ve read, the 3G chipset isn’t the best on the market and Apple doesn’t have the years’ experience in engineering like Nokia has in this area. But you can have the best radio in the world and if there’s no room on the tower, you’re not going to get through.

I still find it pretty fucking amazing I can go nearly anywhere in the world and I can make and receive calls on a device the only weighs a few grams and fits in my pocket. It is fun to get a call from a friend asking to go out to see a movie only to say, “sounds great, but I’m in Paris…and it is 4AM here… and this call is costing me $2 a minute.”

My workweek theme song.

I believe I can see the future
Cause I repeat the same routine
I think I used to have a purpose
But then again
That might have been a dream
I think I used to have a voice
Now I never make a sound
I just do what I’ve been told
I really don’t want them to come around

Of course, I am a creature of habit. I like the morning tacos blancos con chorizo y queso en una tortilla trigo from Tacodeli. I like then to walk the twenty feet to Sodade for my coffee and Topo Chico (and if I’m feeling crazy a blueberry muffin). But there’s a huge difference in a routine you like to do and one you have to do. Although I do different things at the office, they involve having to put up with difficult people asking for things they know I don’t have and Microsoft Fucking Office. I constantly remind myself that I have a pretty good job. I could be busting my ass digging ditches for $5 a day. But I see the pointy headed bosses making the same mistakes and I see every day is exactly the same.

Who gives a fuck about an Oxford comma? I certainly don’t. Vampire Weekend has a catchy sound. I feel like I’m in Wes Anderson film every time one of their songs comes on the radio. I expect to see Gwyneth Paltrow or Bill Murray or Owen Wilson to show up. They never do.

Perhaps it was my journalism instructors’ almost religious observance of the AP style guide that made me feel the Oxford Comma is a waste of pixels. I’m not as militant against the Oxford Comma as I am against the use of an apostrophe for pluralizing acronyms. I cringe when I see people talking about getting a bunch of new DVD’s, CD’s and PC’s. The apostrophe should be used like it is with regular words, to connote possession (or as a contraction if you must). Yes, I’m talking to you New York Times. And don’t get me started about the Grocer’s Apostrophe.

Siriusly. I’m having to adjust to not having XM in my car and instead I’m having to learn to love Sirius. I really like the stations Ethel, Fred and Lucy on XM. Sirius has something similar but that just isn’t the same. The “Left of Center” channel is great and so is “Alt Nation” and “1st Wave” takes me back. My biggest gripe against these stations — and Sirius in general — is that the DJs step all over the beginning of songs just like the over the air radio. STOP DOING THAT! There are two non-family comedy channels on Sirius and they both suck compared to the XM channel 150. One of them is called “Blue Collar Radio” which features nothing but Larry The Cable Guy and that you might be a redneck guy. 24/7! The “Raw Dog” main comedy channel is “hosted” by the biggest douchebag in the world after Dane Cook. Jim Bruer was funny for about 5 minutes. But all the damn time? Sonny Fox’s interview are awesome. Jim Bruer’s interviews are just stupid and get in the way of the comedy bits.

Of course Sirius and XM merged and they have grand plans for bringing the channels together. Except, the satelites and radios are not compatible with each other. So the promises they made to the FCC about a la cart channel selections and having more selection was bullshit for 100% of the current radios in use. In two years there will be radios in new cars that will be able to connect to both satellites. In the short term, I’m guessing part of the “efficiencies” and “synergies” of the merger will mean they will get rid of the duplicates. And since Sirius’ name is first, I’m guessing XM customers will just have to learn to live with the Sirius way of life like I am. And by getting rid of some of that overlap, they’ll be able to simulcast Stern and Opie & Anthony on both. You’ll be able to get Martha Stewart and Oprah. In other words, I’ll the channels I don’t care about.

The Olympics looks beautiful in HD on NBC, now if only the announcers would STFU. I was in Germany during the opening ceremony in Turin a few years ago. The coverage was great and the announcers said very little (well, it was in German, but it just seemed to be “next, Canada” and not a bunch of bullshit. It would also be cool if it was shown live. NBC has five or six HD channels on my cable system for the games. Could they not have shown some of this shit live? It is the 21st goddamn century. Sure I would have been at work but that’s what the DVR is for. Instead if I want to watch the games on my schedule I have to use bittorrent. The other benefit is I can skip the NBC blabfest. It is OK not to be constantly talking. Really.

Georgia on my mind. The US has the balls to say that Russia is using too much force in response to the situation in Georgia. If Montana shot down a US plane and wanted to join Canada, do you think the US wouldn’t do the same thing? Yes, the Russians are using too much force but the US lost its right to moral high ground long ago. I hope the loss of life is kept to a minimum (BBC is reporting there’s a ceasefire so that’s good).

Some may be shocked that John Edwards was cheating on his cancer-stricken wife. It doesn’t surprise me much. Even the nontypical politicians are typical politicians. The only thing that did surprise me was in his mea culpa interview he said he didn’t love the harlot he was fucking. Does that supposed to make it OK?

There are 85 days left until the Election. Although the popular vote doesn’t matter, it seems that Obama has lost whatever lead he may have had. With the red states staying red and the blue states staying blue it comes down to fuckup states like Ohio and Florida again. I have a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that McCain will win by an even narrower margin than Bush did. And McCain may lead us to look back fondly at the good old days of $5 gas and the dollar being worth 60 euro cents that Bush gave us. Even though Obama is the better candidate, America will probably elect McCain.

I want Obama to win. Although more of a traditional politician than his original “change” campaign indicated, he’d still turn this country around. Where I live, Obama will win in a landslide. Just like Kerry and Gore did. But I live in a state that will go McCain. I do feel that in a lot of places a lot of people are just a little too racist to vote for Obama. And the Republican machine that Karl Rove perfected will capitalize on that.

I really hope I’m wrong. I would love to wake up on November 5th knowing that after all the votes are in Obama won.

At least hostilities have ceased in the the cat wars. I need to thank Jimmy Carter for his hours of help in negotiating a settlement that both cats can live with.

I’ve been able to get a good night’s sleep for two days in a row now. The cats spend a lot of time staring at each other about to attack. Peanut gives Doodlebug a ‘fuck you’ hiss each time Doodle tries any hostile action. In the seven years I’ve had these monsters there have been fights but this war has lasted the longest. Weird kitites can hold a grudge like this. I’m just glad they don’t have nukes.

After a cease fire yesterday hostilities broke out at about 4am this morning. I was able to get a restful sleep unlike last night until all hell broke loose. The cats have the advantage of seeing in the dark. I hear the fighting and don’t know where they are. I don’t want to get scratched and I don’t want one of them to knock my water glass onto my Mac. When they scared me awake I naturally yelled GOD DAMMIT DOODLEBUG! which I ‘m sure my neighbors appreciated as much as the yowling cats. I was able to get back to sleep after scaring Doodlebug into the living room.

Although I should not be taking sides in this conflict, it is hard not to be on Peanut’s side. Although 363 days of the year she uses her large size and attitude to get to the food bowl and pillow on the bed, Doodlebug is literally keeping Peanut from leaving my bedroom. Which means if Peanut needs to hit the litter box or get something to eat she has to fight to cross the border. I acted as a peacekeeper to scoot Doodlebug into the bathroom while Peanut took care of business.

As I’ve said before, this happens about once a year and usually a day later things are back to normal. This is lasting all weekend. I had originally planned to get out of town this weekend so I could have missed the whole thing (or possibly it wouldn’t have happened). I can’t wait for peace to return to my apartment. These cats have known each other 10 years. It isn’t like a brought a new kitten into the house (although that may bring them together as allies against a new animal… but it is bad enough a dude has two cats, three cats would be just sad).