Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Can we please all talk about this?

This is the funny version.

This is the one from the book.

This is the one where he gets caught flat-footed and leans on some pleasantly bleating sheep for support.


Seriously. I realize this is two months old but if anything that's more reason to talk about it, now that what puny excuse for initial furor there was has died down. Talk about it. Tell your friends. Print t-shirts. Chant it at "town hall meetings." This is not the mark of a stable and rational man with healthy relationships. And while I am a big fan of separating the political in the person, do we really want that guy talking with world leaders? For fuck's sake, turn this on him. Load up the big guns. Fire the cunt-cannon.

From now on I'm going to end every post with:

John McCain called his wife a cunt in public,
-R

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Hold on to your hats kids...

...it's a blog post about Barack Obama!

A short one, because I am somewhat sickly, and I suppose I don't have a lot to say that hasn't already been said. I'd just like to discuss my extremely tiny focus group, a handful of twenty-somethings in Seattle, Washington, the majority of whom have never been particularly interested in politics. Several of those who bothered to vote in the past election voted for Bush, because, well, everyone around them did (they weren't in Seattle at the time.) By and large the political world has always been something happening to them.

That is no longer the case. Almost every single one of them has been following this campaign with alacrity since Iowa, and pulling hard for Obama. Their reasons for doing so are varied and disparate; many of them have a particular pet issue (and yes, some of them are just virulently anti-Clinton.) But the single uniting factor is a feeling that pervaded my apartment over the faint scent of spilled soda and unidentifiable Tupperware contents, as we channel-surfed from network to network, watching the primaries unfold, a sense shared by this scattered handful of young Americans from all over the country:

What we do matters.

That is Obama's great strength - his power to mobilize the disenfranchised, to reach through apathy and willful ignorance with the promise that this time, things can be different. And it's a self-fulfilling prophecy, because the more of the electorate that participates, the more power they have. It's a shame that Obama: He Gives A Shit wouldn't fly as a campaign slogan, because that's really what it boils down to.

It's pretty goddamn cool to be watching history unfold.

-R

Look, Ma, I'm Blogging

Knowing my track record, this may be the only post I ever write in this thing. So I'm gonna come right out and get it out of the way:

Chuck Palahniuk is a fucking hack.

This may not be news to most of you - in fact, I rather hope it isn't - but there's been a wave of fresh publicity with his latest book and it really irked me.

Anyway, there may be more content here soon. I dearly hope so.

-R