I can’t say that these comments that I just deleted are terribly humourous… but they’re… amusing enough. I had to delete them because I’m worried about the possibility that things will go haywire and someone might end up with a 12 hour erection, and blame me for keeping the link up there… perhaps have John Edwards defend them in some cross-action suit. (And we all know how effective John Edwards has been as a trial lawyer…)

#1: If you ever want to get anywhere in politics, my boy, you’re going to
have to get a toehold in the public eye.

#2: Intolerance is the last defense of the insecure.

#3: Due to a shortage of devoted followers, the production of great leaders
has been discontinued.

#4: Carperpetuation (kar’ pur pet u a shun), n.:
The act, when vacuuming, of running over a string at least a
dozen times, reaching over and picking it up, examining it, then
putting it back down to give the vacuum one more chance.
— Rich Hall, Sniglets

#5: Buzz off, Banana Nose; Relieve mine eyes
Of hateful soreness, purge mine ears of corn;
Less dear than army ants in apple pies
Art thou, old prune-face, with thy chestnuts worn,
Dropt from thy peeling lips like lousy fruit;
Like honeybees upon the perfum’d rose
They suck, and like the double-breasted suit
Are out of date; therefore, Banana Nose,
Go fly a kite, thy welcome’s overstayed;
And stem the produce of thy waspish wits:
Thy logick, like thy locks, is disarrayed;
Thy cheer, like thy complexion, is the pits.
Be off, I say; go bug somebody new,
Scram, beat it, get thee hence, and nuts to you.

#6: SCORPIO (Oct 23 – Nov 21)
You are shrewd in business and cannot be trusted. You will
achieve the pinnacle of success because of your total lack of
ethics. Most Scorpio people are murdered.

#7: When the weight of the paperwork equals the weight of the plane, the
plane will fly.
— Donald Douglas

#8: Thompson, if he is to be believed, has sampled the entire
rainbow of legal and illegal drugs in heroic efforts to feel better
than he does.
As for the truth about his health: I have asked around about
it. I am told that he appears to be strong and rosy, and steadily
sane. But we will be doing what he wants us to do, I think, if we
consider his exterior a sort of Dorian Gray facade. Inwardly, he is
being eaten alive by tinhorn politicians.
The disease is fatal. There is no known cure. The most we can
do for the poor devil, it seems to me, is to name his disease in his
honor. From this moment on, let all those who feel that Americans can
be as easily led to beauty as to ugliness, to truth as to public
relations, to joy as to bitterness, be said to be suffering from Hunter
Thompson’s disease. I don’t have it this morning. It comes and goes.
This morning I don’t have Hunter Thompson’s disease.
— Kurt Vonnegut Jr. on Dr. Hunter S. Thompson: Excerpt
from A Political Disease, Vonnegut’s review of Fear
and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72

I watched a man shout out of his auto to a passing pedesterian. Best I can come up with is the pedestrian jay-walked or didn’t give the man the proper right-of-way… maybe. After giving the driver a nominal backward glance and shrug — more or less what I would do in that situation– the driver swirved to a park, rushed out, rushed over, and shoved the guy hard into the brick sidewalk.

“I’m calling the police!” the bruised, bloodied man shivered, as he tried to get himself up.
“I don’t fucking give a shit!” the man who just committed battery yelled back, muttering “Serves him right.”

I stood there, stunned. The rest of the crowd had more or less the same “WTF” reaction as I. I walked backward as a small crowd gathered necessary information, and left after I was certain someone had gotten the license plate number.

Somewhere in Florida, a man tried to drive over Katherine Harris. And another man threatened to kill his girlfriend for supporting Kerry.

Later, I watch from the distance the gathering of the weekly war protesters. Charming group, but I’m not sure any of them — or the majority of them — should be voting for Kerry. A majority of them probably will be or have, though certainly not all of them. From their perspective, I’m not certain there really is a difference. Granted, the two “Protest Warriors” (http://www.protestwarrior.com) with their Bush hats and their signs saying “Peace Through Ignorance” can say that there’s a difference.

I asked a LaRouchite why LaRouche endorsed John Kerry. The answer: “Basically we need to take over the Democratic Party.” Roughly the same answer that the peaceniks would have for why they’re voting for Kerry: vote for him, then hold his feet to the fire.

I take my leave. We’re at Orange, by the way. Which was the state we knew we’d be at now.

Page C4 of today’s Oregonian has what is, presumably, Rev Dr. Sun Myung Moon’s speech before NY, Chicago, LA, Washington DC on “God’s Providence to Establish the World Transcending Religions and Nations Based Upon the Absolute Values of True Love”.

Creepy stuff.

On the very next page, we have an article “Talk Radio Advice Torments Republican Leaders” about how the Oregon Republican Party chairman Kevin Mannix is upset that Lars Larson is telling his listeners to turn the ballots in as late as possible — which throws wrenches into the party GOTV efforts and ensures fewer Republicans end up actually voting. (Teachers always recommend doing your homework early for a reason.)

Funny stuff.

I admit that I never laughed at Bush’s pretzel foible. Small potatoes. Although, in the annals of the Bush Presidency, the pretzel incident marks a moment where the first chink was thrown into the post 9/11 hazed Bush armor. It was when the late night comedians could subtley turn from safely mocking Osama somewhere in a cave, being prepared for slaughter presumably, an toward something resembling the pre 9/11 Bush. (which would morph and change in various ways through the next couple of years.)

The post Gulf War Bush I image unravelled… I don’t know, maybe when he vomitted on the prime minister of Japan? Then again, the SNL sketch (from the Comedy Central reruns) had Bush provide a second joint-Congress appearance speech after the Gulf War victory, just because the first one provided him with such laudatory applause. This suggests, perhaps, that from the very beginning the one-note was turning into a half-note… “What else you got?”

Schwartzopft (sp?) was People Magazine’s “Sexiest Man Alive”. And today, Rumsfeld is nowhere to be seen.

We’re a small handful of days away from burying the endless supply of anti-Bush books… picking out the small handful that will survive the test of time and supply some cognent analysis of what just happened. And we’re a small handful of days from the return of Phil Hendrie away from a stupor of “super-hawk commentary” to intelligible all-sides get skewered social commentary.

Kerry? We’ll have to see.

I was going to vote for Kerry, until I heard Bush give this amazing and inspiring speech. It seems that if Kerry gets into office, the world will drift toward tragedy.

Then this ad sealed the deal for me. Apparently if Kerry gets into office, I will be eaten alive by a pack of wolves. I don’t want that to happen.

Ed Koch is right!

A vote for Kerry is a vote for Tragedy. A vote for Bush, on the other hand, and the world will drift into Tragicomedy. As any fan of the theater will attest, tragicomedies are much more complex in their depictions of human toils… you swing from happiness to sadness to schaudenfruede to relief and on and on and on.

(Or, you could go to that Simpsons episode where we saw victims of comedic injuries. Ah… it is to laugh!)

Curiously enough, during yesterday’s Red Sox – Cardinals game, the camera rolled to a fan in the stands waving a sign that read,

“We’re Idiots Too!”

I know what it meant in the context of the game (When the Red Sox were down in their series with the Yankess 3 games to nothing, “you’d have to be an idiot to think the Red Sox can win”, and now the Cardinals were down 3 games to nothing to the Red Sox, and…), but nonetheless…

BTW: this site urges you to vote for Tom DeLay’s opponent, Richard Morrison. (Whether or not you live in that Texas district, I don’t care… find a way to vote Afghan style!) But, then again, this site also helps fund terrorists and Iraqi Insurgents. (In fact, Struat.com was proudly responsible for helping the looters at Al Qaqaa!

Tom DeLay is an Idiot, too.

They’re part of the “Trick or Vote” campaign — young 18 to early 20 somethings tying Halloween in with the election.

They’re a marching band. One has badger ears. Another has bear ears. One is beating a drum. Another is playing some other instrument. And one is jumping out at cars in traffic, handing brochures willy-nilly.

I’m not impressed.