Agent of Change

Guessing Game!

2009-07-03T19:22:00.000-05:00

OK, Palin resigned so quickly that her staff thought she was just announcing she wouldn't run for re-election right up until her statement. She even sent out a Twitter about how she was going to not stand for re-elections a few minutes before she gave her statement...

Sorry kids, when a politician drops their office THIS quickly (and weirdly) there is usually a scandal they are attempting to evade, so let's all put on our thinking caps and try to figure out:

What is the scandal that caused Bible Spice to resign?

Today's political thought

2009-06-01T12:44:00.000-05:00

I am disturbed about the execution of Dr. Tiller yesterday. I'll admit that I don't follow the abortion debate any more, simply because no one's mind is going to be changed by anything anyone says. It's like debating emotions...people have deep feelings about it that can't be swayed by reasoned argument.

Myself, I think it should be legal. I find it to be personally wrong and would not use the option, but I have known far too many people for whom the option was needed. We have millions of unwanted children already, and if you are really and for true against abortion, you need to adopt a kid. No, not a cute little baby, but a special needs kid who isn't cute any more but desperately needs a home.

However, the terrorist execution of a doctor who performs legal abortions yesterday disturbs me more than I can put into words. Through the 80's and 90's, there were countless acts of domestic right wing terrorism that we in America seem to be unable to call terrorism. Doctors were killed by Christanist "pro-life" jihadists, government buildings blown up by right wingers upset they lost an election, public bombings by (you guessed it) Christianist jihadists, all here in the US. They faded after 9/11...partly because the right wing felt like they controlled everything and partly because the tactics were FINALLY thought of as barbaric and beyond the pale.

But now they are back, and egged on by the right wing media. Dr. Tiller was a particular target of the #1 show in cable "news", and those host said:

- He "destroys fetuses for just about any reason right up until the birth date for $5,000."

- He's guilty of "Nazi stuff,"

- a moral equivalent to NAMBLA and al-Qaida

- "This is the kind of stuff that happened in Mao's China, Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Soviet Union"

- "operating a death mill"

- "has blood on his hands"

- "executing babies about to be born

And we're shocked a terrorist decided that a man described like this needed to be the target of his wrath? Well, gee, he lost the election and thinks the current President is a Muslim, so somebody has to pay, so he turns on Fox News to find out who it should be...

This is just the first of a coming wave of right-wing terrorists. The media has been whipping them into a frenzy, claiming the US government is now socialist (which they imply means Nazi).

Still...someone answer me this: Why is it that ever since the end of the Vietnam War when the left wing loses, they fall back, organize and try again; while when the right wing loses, they indulge in domestic terrorism?

Dark days indeed.

Solitaire Rose Guide to the 2008-2009 season

2009-05-12T00:02:00.000-05:00

I like TV. I like it enough that I have a Tivo, satellite dish, etc... So, as this season winds down, I'm going to put down what I thought of the shows I watched this season and if I'll keep watching them. Oh, I know, some shows are done (like Boston Legal, Battlestar and a few others), but the networks have delayed announcing their fall schedules, so I'm going to decide what I'll keep watching.

Monday:

How I Met Your Mother – A solid sitcom with likable characters. This is never going to be a show where I run out and tell people about the great acting, writing or innovative plots, but a sit-com is a kind of comfort food. This one has enough laughs per episode that you'll laugh a few times, the characters are ones you don't mind spending a half hour with and it's worth the time for me. I hate that they feel they have to do cliffhangers, but it stays on the Tivo.

24 – Two years ago, I was ready to give up after a REALLY bad season. But a break due to the writer's strike seemed to help. The two hour movie last fall sucked me back in, and this season is one of the better ones. They have been slowly moving toward smaller threats. This season started with someone taking over the entire governmental computer network and now seems to be ending with Jack Bauer's daughter in danger (Cougar Alert!!!), which is the reverse of other seasons where the danger keeps escalating. I also laugh when conservatives use this show to justify their extra-legal actions when I see the show as a modern version of a movie serial...yeah, it's just as “realistic” as Flash Gordon or The Fighting Devil Dogs. Still, lots of fun and staying on the Tivo.

Monday Night Raw – The WWE's flagship show, but more often than not, the one I like the least. Too much of the show's time is spent on bad high school skit level comedy, and not enough time is spent on matches, feuds and the like. I watch some episodes by fast forwarding through so much of it, it takes a half hour to watch. Then again, they can also pull off some entertaining shows, so...oh hell, I'm a wrasslin fan. It stays.

Heroes – After season 2, I said I'd give it a try for the 3rd season. Oddly enough, I watched the first 3 episodes, fell behind and now I have 21 episodes on the Tivo. Must not be all that compelled to watch...but when everything else is all done, I'll buzz through it and see what I think. It's on the bubble on my Tivo.

CSI Miami – Oh hush. I know it's pure cheese, but I like the CSI franchise and the science based whodunits. The plots have been solid but I hate all of the personal life crap they keep putting in the show. The show itself is amazingly beautifully shot, and looks better than most big budget movies. Even though it's ion its fifth year, it hasn't shown any signs of decay. It stays on the Tivo.

Tuesday:

Reaper – Probably canceled, and a shorter season this year. It's still a fun little show, but it's VERY clear that they know they don't have any more than this year, so they are tearing through long-term plots at a frantic pace. The main idea (lead character works for the devil, returning souls to hell) is one that could become really dull, really quickly, but they have moved that to the background and deal with the lead characters. Funny, sharp writing and an inventive way to keep the series fresh. I'm keeping it, but the CW will probably drop it for another remake of a 90's FOX series.

ECW – On the SciFi channel...this used to be the worst wrasslin show in the history of wrasslin shows when it was “reborn”, but it's now settled into a show that only runs an hour, focuses on new talent and people who wouldn't be good in the “comedy” on Raw but can put together good matches, and in the end it's a wrasslin' show that focuses on wrasslin. Usually my favorite of the WWE shows for the week.

Fringe – My favorite show of the new year. It took a while to find its feet, and the lead character is still pretty much an empty vessel, but the week to week stories have been fine, and any Bigger Mystery is far enough in the background that you can actually ignore it if you want. It deals with X-Files type stuff, without the aliens, and if it gets better next year like it did this year, I may end up liking it more. That's right. I went there.

Better Off Ted – I THINK it's on Tuesday nights...with the Tivo, I can never really tell. This is an amazingly well-done sit-com which satirizes working in corporate American about a million times better than “The Office”, and still has characters you like. The writing is smart, fast and cutting, and the entire series seems fresh and funny. The Office may have episodes that knock it out of the park, but Better Off Ted is much more consistent. The best sit-com on TV and I'm keeping it on the Tivo. If you aren't watching it, go ahead and watch a few on-line to see if it is to your taste!

Tomorrow? Wednesday and Thursday!

Today's evil, anti-American thought.

2009-05-07T01:27:00.001-05:00

I think that here in America, when spend so much time and money on crap we neither need nor enjoy, but feel we HAVE to have that it has screwed up our society in general. We need to 100 inch TV set, the 200 cable channel connection, the newest cell phone, the house that costs 10 times what we make in a year, a new car every four years, replacing all of our gadgets every couple of years and so on, and so on, and so on. When we DON'T spend enormous amounts of money, we are chastised by the media and government that we aren't doing our part.

After 9/11, what did our President tell us to do?

Go shopping.

What is the solution to the current economic downturn?

Go shopping.

Buy more crap you don't need, throw it away and then go out and fill up the car AGAIN.

It's crazy. It's destructive to both body and spirit.

I was laid off at the end of last year, but I live so cheaply that I haven't started feeling the financial pinch until the last week or so. I have a part-time job to supplement my unemployment while I look for a new job, but I'm also using the time to get back to writing and creating. I don't buy the $120 concert ticket to see the band that hasn't had a hit since 1982, I wait and pay $10 to see the band that has been touring and working the road and makes their living from the CDs they sell. I work at a movie theater, so I get movies for free, and watch the stuff on Turner Classic or the DVDs I bought but didn't have time for. I read a LOT, I spend time in contemplation, I play my older video games and relish the free time I have for now because when I have a full-time job again, I won't have as much time.

Americans work more than most people in the first world. We have worse health, no savings, a terrible retirement and a huge income disparity. In the last 30 years, upward class mobility has all but vanished, and we allow corporations to run everything. The current economic crisis is being blamed on the poor by the rich (which is pure propaganda):

The right blames the credit crisis on poor minority homeowners. This is not merely offensive, but entirely wrong. - By Daniel Gross - Slate Magazine

Truth is, we've been living in a country that has extolled greed and waste since 1980, and maybe it's time we took a step back and thought about just how much better off we are after having a "Baby Boomer" consumption orgy...since we have nothing but garbage and debt left to us by the boomers. No great art has emerged, popular music is back to the model it was during the 40's and 50's when manufactured stars sing songs created by committees and our lives have become an endless treadmill or working to pay for the food you bought and ate three months ago. We've outsourced labor, science and now our military (just like Rome did before it fell).

Most Americans say the US is the best country in the world. But they never can answer when you say "At what?"

Punchline from HIMYM

2009-04-14T00:37:00.000-05:00

The joke they gave the setup for on tonight's "How I Met Your Mother" is one I actually know!

What's the difference between peanut better and jam?
I can't peanut butter my dick up that girl's ass.

Thank you, I'll be here all week! Don't forget to tip your waitperson, they're working hard for you!

Should I tell my 22 minute version of "The Aristocrats"?

My beef with Chuck Dixon's essay

2009-01-20T00:53:00.002-06:00

Chuck Dixon wrote a heartfelt essay going into detail able what he feels like is broken in comics.

First off, before responding, Dixon is a write who, when he is on the top of his game, I enjoy quite a lot. When he's not, well, everyone has to pay the rent, I don't begrudge anyone working at their craft to make a living. I just don't enjoy it as much.

The core of Dixon's argument is that new writers don't write stories that they should be writing, and they deal more with shock, breaking characters and disrespecting the idea of a Hero. I won't get into the irony of this being done by one of the minds behind the breaking of Batman's back and having him cured with healing magic...

Making iconic comic book characters more “realistic” or “grimmer” or “grittier” is most often the product of a bankrupt imagination rather than the opposite.

is how he starts, and while on the face of it, I can agree, but does anyone really believe that in EVERY case it is a bad idea to take a long running serialized character to a new place? I would say that the first character this was done with, Daredevil, was sorely in need of something. The book was one of the first Marvel heroes, but had fallen on very hard times before Roger McKenzie and Frank Miller changed him from being a gimmicky Spider-Man knockoff to a dark vigilante in a film noir version of New York? It was a new interpretation of the character having roots in the origin story and Made Daredevil a character that creators bring their "A" game to. There are a very few people who can say that the Stan Lee wisecracking, fake brother having, dating slang spewing character of the 60's is one of their favorites.

Did people go overboard with it in the 80's and 90's? Of course. Comics ALWAYS go overboard and end up beating a good idea into the ground. That's how they STARTED, and they keep doing it. If 1 is great, 2 is better and 40 is best.

He brings up Batman (a character Dixon has worked on and recently finished runs on a number of books in that editorial office), who I contend is a character who was lessened by the 90's characterization of Batman driven to such an extreme that Bruce Wayne no longer existed, and he was, quite simply, a psychopath who fought on the good guy's side. This wasn't going back to the character's pulp roots, this was lazy writing, boring storytelling, and an excuse for rote storytelling where any number of paint-by-numbers plots could have been plugged in.

Heroes do something about their faults so they don’t become permanent personality traits. We look up to them because they have the strength of character to do what we often cannot. They are meant to inspire us and show us our better angels.

In a single story, that's true, but in serialized fiction, the character HAS to keep their flaws if they are inherent part of the character. Batman CAN'T get over the murder of his parents, or he has no reason to fight crime. Spider-Man can't feel he has done enough or he no longer is driven by his inherent guilt. Green Arrow has to feel that the rich and powerful are hurting the weak and downtrodden or he loses his "Robin Hood" drive. Stan Lee's big revelation for the Marvel line was that the heroes had PROBLEMS, and if they were to be solved, the impetus for the character is drained away, fixed, draining that character of a reason to BE a hero.

Back to Daredevil, the character had lost that feeling that he HAD to fight crime to save men like his father, men who were weak, men who were scared, who needed a man without fear. By 1978, Daredevil fought crime because if he didn't there wouldn't be a new issue every two months.

There’s a cynical disregard for what makes these icons work but it only serves to mask their own inabilities to create within guidelines and restrictions.

Which is something each generation says about the next. I will point out that Dixon did a LOT of stories that "disregarded" what made an icon work. Dick Grayson was no longer Batman's faithful ward, the Punisher didn't fight mobsters and he wrote Batman as a psycho in a suit. Why? That was the take on the icon at the time. It took a person with "cynical disregard" for what had happened with the Punisher since 1986 to make the character entertaining again. Garth Ennis was asked what he would do with the character and he said, "He's going to kill a lot of people with vowels at the end of their name" and in "Welcome Back Frank", he did so, sweeping away the last 20 years and going to the core of the character and writing the first true classic Punisher story since Steven Grant.

When your favorite, beloved character is revealed to be a deviant basketcase or found dead in an alley after being sexually violated it’s more a case of unbridled hubris rather than unbridled imagination.

I'll assume he's exaggerating here, but there is this anger some writers have against the kind of "Everything you knew was wrong" that Alan Moore created, and SOME writers are able to pull off brilliantly. Moore did it with Swamp Thing, taking a character who had never been a big sales hit, and making it the core of an entire line of books. Morrison did it with Animal Man, making that character interesting and relevant for the first time ever. Miller with Daredevil. Mike Grell with Green Arrow. Howard Chaykin and The Shadow (and pretty much anything else he wrote for the mainstream in the 80's). Is it hubris or a case of a writer saying, "You know, maybe this will get some people to read this."?

Captain America was unreadable for years. Mark Gruenwald did a lot of bland stories that no one really remembers outside of camp value, then Mark Waid came in and made the character interesting again. When he left, again, a long run of forgettable stories until Ed Brubaker came in, shook things up and made it a must read comic, even with Steve Rodgers dead. If you list the story beats, they seem disrespectful, but if you actually READ the book, it is one of the best written comics of the last ten years and sets up all of the shocking revelations in a way that they WORK.

And THAT is the core of good writing. Anyone can have a BIG SHOCK in a story, and Dixon has more than his fair share of them on the last page of his comics to get you to trundle down to the comic shop the next month to see how it would be resolved, sometime in a page or two before a completely different story started. (Yeah, Chuck, I'm still upset about those old tricks...THAT'S lazy writing). A GREAT writer can shock you and still make it seem perfectly logical and part of a great story.

I mean, Ro9bert Bloch shocked us all about poor milquetoast Normal Bates. Does mean he demeaned the character in the first two acts of Psycho?

Largely, the creators have eschewed plot for characterization. They want to explore what makes the character work and have that be what drives the stories. Try that with your iPhone and call me on a landline later to tell me how it all worked out.

I don't know. It worked pretty well for Ulysses, ANYTHING by Dorothy Parker, The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, The Great Gatsby, The Shining, Simon and Kirby's romance comics, the entire run of Seinfeld, and so on. Just because you don't care for a style of storytelling doesn't invalidate it. Many excellent writers go by the theory that the plot is just there to show character, the Maguffin style of storytelling as I was taught in film class to call it.

Don Daley, my old editor on the Punisher back in the DeFalco days at Marvel, had a drawer full of scripts labeled “The Ultimate Punisher Story.” He let me read a few of them one time. There were scripts by wannabe and amateurs and a surprising number of top talents. They were of varying degrees of competence and professionalism. The one thing they had in common was that they were all the same story. In each story the Punisher accidentally kills an innocent. A child. A nun. A cop. Frank Castle then quits being the Punisher and becomes a priest. In every story. Every damned one. In some he quits being the Punisher forever and in others he’s dragged back into the vigilante game for some compelling reason. The other element that these scripts shared other than inciting incident, plot and resolution was that they got the core character of Frank Castle so entirely wrong that it was breath-taking. Unable to come up with a story for the Punisher, they decided to break the franchise and glue it back together in a new form they could understand.

That's a fine example of doing it wrong. I have another:

The Punisher discovers some nondescript evildoer with a complex plot. The story lasts five issues with a lot of the bad guys underlings being taken out as the Punisher tracks down the big bad, and when he does, they have a physical fight for some reason which the Punisher wins because, well, he punches the other guy harder than the guy punches him. Lather, rinse, repeat.

The best genre fiction knows that it can't change the hero much, so instead it concentrates on giving that character interesting adversaries. Judge Dredd is the best example: Instead of focusing on a VERY one dimensional character, the creators spend their time on the setting and the adversaries. They carry the storytelling weight because the main character can't. The Punisher plot listed isn't very good, but is it any worse than the endless array of boring thugs he "fought" through the 90's until the novelty of a hero who kills wore off? Nope. BOTH are bad ways to tell a story. It's just that one saw print and the other didn't.

Now, rather than ending up in a drawer of discards, this kind of scorched earth approach is at the center of multi-year event comics.

Really? Name ONE event comic that has done this. Infinite Crisis brought back the DC Multiverse and created interesting new villains for the first time is years. Civil War changed up the Marvel Universe and went back to the old dynamic of the "heroes" being on the wrong side of authority for a time (kind of like those old Stan Lee stories about the heroes being sought by the government/police, or ANYTHING done by Steve Ditko). 52 brought back the creativity of DC's Silver Age. House Of M got rid of the excesses of the 90's where there were more mutants than normal people and so on and so on.

Just because they don't fit what you wanted to read doesn't mean they were all bad.

Dixon really sounds like my grandmother talking about TV shows and movies showing some moral ambiguity and she hated movies like "The Godfather" and "Dog Day Afternoon" because they glamorized the bad guys and tried to make you UNDERSTAND them. Storytelling change. Comic books change. I have a friend who won't buy ANY comic book printed after 1969 because he feels that that is when they all turned to crap. Mort Weisinger wasn't editing Superman anymore, and he hated the approach Julie Schwartz took with his heroes. He constantly complained "Why can't they make comics like those any more." Comics like Big Bang Comics or reprints of those stories (ones he hadn't read) were passed over as he complained about the Superman and Batman comics of the 90's which he said were all crappy artwork and Big Stupid Events like Knightfall, Contagion and the like.

Rather than railing against those damn kids not having any respect, he could have just bought the stuff he liked and moved on from comics to other forms of entertainment he enjoyed.

Dixon too seems a bit disingenuous, seeing as how he was part of the team that had a killer take up the Batman uniform, ripped off the movie "Outbreak", destroyed Gotham City in an Earthquake and had the federal government declare it a "No Man's Land", and killed off Green Arrow in an explosion as well as other stories and events that drove the Grim and Gritty trend in the 90's.

But then, that's just how I see it.

10 Take Aways From the Bush Years - washingtonpost.com

2009-01-15T18:54:00.000-06:00

The Washington Post has another nice article from Bob Woodward where he gives advice to Obama, even though the article is a nice list of the BIG mistakes Bush made as a manager.

Bush's biggest mistake wasn't the war, the economy or any of the things people think about. It was not being informed, curious or interested in much of anything than advancing a right wing agenda. He keeps saying history will judge him, but I think we're all pretty clear on what history will say.

The Associated Press: US balks at backing condemnation of anti-gay laws

2008-12-19T09:51:00.000-06:00

The Associated Press: US balks at backing condemnation of anti-gay laws

I don't know if I can actually say anything here that can convey how irritated and disgusted I am by this news. I mean, I KNOW that there are a lot of bigots in our country, most of whom use a book of myths and legends to justify their hatred, but for our government's representative to actually say "Hmmm...I think making homosexually legal is just a bit too controversial for us"?

Baffling.

Disgusting.

And probably makes all of the troglodytes happy.

Today's political observation

2008-12-10T12:35:00.000-06:00

I see that Rachel Maddow was making fun of the IL governor's legal issues and was slamming him VERY hard last night. Can you imagine FOX doing that to any Right Wing Republican getting arrested?

Of course not. FOX labels Republican politicians who get arrested as Democrats.

You know what burns my ass?

2008-11-25T10:09:00.000-06:00

A flame about three feet high.

I keep hearing the right wing media calling this “The Obama Recession”.

Now, I could take the tack that this is just the Heritage Foundation’s way of manipulating the language so that the right wing doesn’t get any blame (or the bill) for the trough feeding frenzy that crony capitalism has had over the last 10 years of so. Instead, I think it shows the main difference between right wing world and the rest of the world.

Obama isn’t even in power yet, and already he is so amazingly powerful that he was able to destroy the economy a year before taking office. He was able to REACH BACK IN TIME and shatter big financial institutions, destabilize the dollar and cause a huge speculation bubble in oil and homes. Damn, that makes Superman and Thor seem like pikers.

Another group of people being blamed for it are the poor who had the temerity to think that some of the INCREDIBLE WEALTH being shoved in their face on a daily basis would trickle down to them. It’s not like they were lied to, pressured into anything, or given loans so complex that they needed a lawyer (that they couldn’t afford) to understand. Maybe I’m not that bright, but when I went in to buy a car a year and a half ago, three different car dealers offered me “low monthly payments”, and when I asked for the actual interest rate, or final payments, I got a lot of hemming, hawing, double talk and the like, and when I left and checked with my friend who was a car salesman, he explained to me how they were screwing me over.

Home loans make car loans look like working with those Duplo Lego blocks.

At the root of it all was the right wing myth that everyone is going to be rich. They have pitched this idea as a way of getting poor people to agree with giving rich people incredible tax breaks. In the waning days of the campaign, John McCain would say in every speech “I want everyone to be rich!” TV, music, movies, etc… now all push the idea that everyone is rich, and if you aren’t, you are not just to be laughed at, but there is something seriously wrong with you. Thrift is a joke, spending money is the only way to show that you aren’t a loser, a redneck, or a worthless human being.

We’re undergoing a historic correction, and I’m not just talking about the stock market, housing costs or the like. The years of spending endlessly for shit you don’t need are coming to a screeching halt…and the world is going to be a vastly different place in ten years.

How we deal with it depends on who we listen to. The voices of the Heritage Foundation, Limbaugh, etc… will tell us that we need to fear. Fear the unions, fear the poor, fear the line workers, fear everything that isn’t just like them.

But there are other voices. Voices that say it IS time to change, to live more simply. To help each other and quit thinking that we need a new car every three years, a bigger house, a 70 inch TV and instead make sure than instead of “I want everyone to be rich”, saying “I want everyone to live a decent life free from fear and need.”

That’s what change is.

The greed of the last 30 years brought us here. Now it’s time to wake up.

2008 Election Predictions

2008-11-04T13:51:00.000-06:00

First, the big one – Obama will pull between 350 and 360 electoral votes. He’ll pick up the states Kerry won as well as CO, FL, IA, MO, NV, NM, NC, OH, and VA. Republicans will allege all sorts of fraud and shenanigans just like they are doing with Olberman’s ratings and the new “people meter” radio ratings showing Limbaugh isn’t nearly as popular as we all thought he was.

Second, the Senate will not change enough for a filibuster proof majority, but it will be the end of any “Northern Moderate” Republicans.

Last, and here’s where I put on my Pundit hat:

The Republican Party under Bush has returned to a Regional Party, as it was through most of the 20th Century. However, it’s not going to be a New England/Western party this time, but a Southern/Western party. Why?

Under Bush, “conservative” has changed to a term defining far right Christianist views, a weird form of bailout crony capitalism, interventionalism, the biggest government welfare program of all time, sheer incompetence and lockstep adherence to denying facts. Fox may be the number one news network, but it is the mouthpiece for this group of people who never want their views challenged by facts. They have developed an insular media to the point where they have their own version of Wikipedia so they don’t have to let the world intrude upon their vision of How Things Are. An entire generation has been turned off by the blatant lying of the members of this media, Bush’s failures and their insistence on holding on to values that just don’t work for these people. They use gays are a fear tactic, while most people under 30 look at anti-homosexuality the same way us Gen Xers look at racism.

McCain’s campaign is a “last gasp” of these folks, living in a world where the economy is FINE, supply side economics works, and Bush and Cheney are heroes. The word “liberal” no longer has the fear stink to it, as it’s been used to demonize so long that it has lost all meaning. Obama “the liberal” is for nuclear power, fighting in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and “traditional marriage”.

Will the Republican’s rebuild? The Democrats have been rebuilding, bringing in a series of pro-military centrists and slightly right leaning politicians to build a new coalition, but it hasn’t been covered by the MSM because Republicans still yell the loudest. Starting at the local level, the Democratic party is being rebuilt, and for all the pissing and moaning about Nancy Pelosi, she has been working hard to bring in these new Democrats. I have read REPEATEDLY that Southern Democrats are told that they are to represent their constituents and not worry about party line votes. The national party under Dean has been working to get out the word about the national positions, as the polls show that the majority of Americans agree with most Democratic proposals, but the chattering class pushes the idea of the Limbaugh listener as the “average American.”

Don’t get me wrong, the Republicans still have a stranglehold on the media (except on line). They also have shown in the 80’s and early 90’s they actually do BETTER as an opposition party. They may learn from this election as they did in 1964 and 1976 and retool in such a way to regrow. However, the Palin thing has shown me that the right-wing attack machine has lost much of its power, and the explosive growth of left wing media like Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, Ed Schultz and blogs like Talking Points Memo and Daily Kos make me think that the stronghold is breaking.

Watching the cable news over the weekend, you’d think Sarah Palin is a rock star, John McCain is surging and Obama and Biden are hiding. They don’t mention the discrepancy in crowds, and shoot the McCain and Palin rallies in such a way that they look as big as Obama’s. I saw Palin on my TV almost all weekend as the cable news just showed speeches, and they NEED to make it seem like the race is tightening to hold onto their record ratings.

It didn’t.

If anything, Obama increased his state-by-state lead.

Now, winning power and keeping it are two different things. Carter oversaw the implosion of his party post-Watergate, and Clinton had to get his ass kicked in 1994 to start being a great President. The media will be out to pounce on Obama at 5 AM tomorrow morning, and Fox is salivating at the prospect of being able to be the opposition. Limbaugh’s tanking ratings will be bolstered by him once again being able to be the stone in the President’s shoe (he lost 12 million listeners from 1998 to 2008).

At least that’s what I think.

Fire BAD!

2008-10-27T11:55:00.000-05:00

Humans made fire 790,000 years ago.

Pretty cool for the fact that according to the Christian Churches that run things, humans have only existed for about 5,500 years. Oh, Ben Stein, does reading this story make me a Nazi?

Dear Republican Party,

2008-10-22T13:04:00.000-05:00

There is to be no more whining about all the money Obama has raised if you spent over $150,000 to make Sara Palin 'look good' with new clothes, makeup and the like. How can we trust you with the country's money, when you spend $150,000 and she still looks like those annoying women at the movie theater who want their soda 'Half diet coke, a fourth coke and the other fourth Mr. Pibb' while their teenage daughters are macking on the 23 year old selling tickets and pot?

What I'm thinking about today

2008-10-17T13:22:00.000-05:00

The Roommate has gone up north to stay with her mom for a couple of weeks to see what she wants to do with her life. One of the things she’s not doing is paying rent.

I was up on the roof last night for about three hours, putting on the coat of sticky, silvery crap that is supposed to seal the roof for winter so that it doesn’t leak. The “brush” fell apart repeatedly, the clothes I wore were ruined, the stuff probably sat at Home Depot for a few years before I bought it, and by the end my hands looked like an unmoving silver mitten. The instructions were “shake up a bit before using”, but all of the silvery stuff had become a solid mass at the bottom of the 5 gallon can, and it took over an hour to mix it to where it was supposed to be. If my roof leaks, it’s certainly not going to be due my lack of trying to fix it.

I got to spend over an hour scrubbing my hands and arms with pads meant to scrub pots in order to get the crap off of my hands. Watched TV while I was scrubbing, and didn’t get it all off, but I think I went through quite a few layers of skin.

Work is almost creepily calm. We are in the first week of annual benefits enrollment and we’re getting the only about 10% more calls we would get during a non-payroll week. I’m starting to get worried we’ll either get hammered during the last week, or the week AFTER with people wondering when they get to enroll for next years.

Haven’t heard back from Casually Dating Girl this week. Kinda typical, but this is a week I wasn’t crazy busy so I had time to go do stuff. Nice to have a few nights at home to watch Tivo and work on the coming webstrip.

John McCain is against "spreading the wealth around", yet his medical plan, mortgage plan and business tax plan will take money from MY pocket (and I'm middle class) and give it to people who make a LOT more money in the form of new tax breaks. So, in other words, he's against spreading the wealth of the wealthy but has no problem spreading the non-wealth of 95% of working people.

I have Sunday completely off. I’ll be honest, it looks to be a day where I go to the gym in the morning, make a huge pot of soup for the week and lay on the futon with a big stack of comics and a crime novel. In other words, Best Day Without A Redhead In A Corset, Fishnets And Gin Gimlets EVER.

Bob Dole can't seem to remember much.

2008-02-04T19:57:00.001-06:00

In a letter written about on Politico.com, Dole scolds Limbaugh telling him to get behind the Republican nominee. Limbaugh has been touting that he won't support the Republican nominee if it is McCain or Huckabee.

Dear Bob Dole,

Don't you remember that Limbaugh didn't support you when you ran against Clinton? I doubt he'll listen to you now that you don't have any power.

Bye Bye Mitt-bot 2008

2008-01-31T13:13:00.000-06:00

The AP is reporting that Mitt-bot 2008 isn't buying any TV ads for Super Tuesday. In other words, he woke up, looked in the mirror, asked his biggest contributor for a donation was turned down cold.

Looks like the Republicans have decided.

And with the news coming out about Bill Clinton's foundation, and my dislike fo the Clinton haterz, I've pretty much decided as well.

However, all I care about in my dark, evil little heart is that Rush, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity and Hugh Hewitt are going to have to shill for a man they hate. How long until they start backtrackign and justifying their "change of heart" about McCain?

Why Five: Favorite Albums

2008-01-29T12:32:00.000-06:00

Top Five Albums.
Wow. This is much harder for me than I thought it would be:

1) Beatles – Abbey Road. Some people swear by Sgt. Pepper’s, other people like the early pop albums, but me, this is the culmination of all of the work they did their entire career, the relentless pop work of the early stuff, the experimentation of everything from Revolver onwards. I love every song on this album.

2) Killing Joke - Extremities, Dirt & Various Repressed Emotions. No other song has hit me in the gut quite as hard as “Money Is Not Our God”, and they follow it up with “Age of Greed” and “The Beautiful Dead rapid fire afterwards. I like their early work, but this album made me a lfietime fan on the band and Jaz’s unique view of the world.

3) The Ramones - Hey Ho! Let's Go: The Anthology – Yeah, it’s a greatest hits collection, but the Ramones were a singles based band, not an album band, and this is a huge collection of their stuff showing that they were the band we needed. I have all of their albums, but when I want to listen to them, I pull this out and it works just as well as Rocket To Russia.

4) U2 – The Joshua Tree – Yeah, it was their big commercial hit, but it stands up to repeated listenings better than their other work, and each song still has impact. It took their punk roots and fused it with blues, country and gospel in a way that just makes the sound explode out fo the speakers.

5) Reverend Horton Heat - The Full Custom Gospel Sounds of the Reverend Horton Heat – Like most people sick to death of hair metal and pop, I was a customer of Sub Pop records in the early 90’s. I heard this band on a sampler, and it awakened my inner rockabilly fan. I quickly devoured all of their work, and I am still a huge fan, all because of this album. I can not listen to this album without getting a huge smile on my face.

Oddly enough, my favorite band, Rush, isn’t on the list. I was introduced to them through watching their concerts and mix tapes made by my college g/f, so I can’t really point to any album and say “That’s it. That’s my favorite.” I don’t think I can put a mix tape on as a favorite album, can I?

Dammit, I'm a punk

2008-01-28T13:42:00.001-06:00

At lunch today, I went with a guy in his mid 20’s and another guy who is in his early 40’s, like me and we were talking about music. When we got to talking about punk, it was VERY hard for me to describe punk to them because they knew next to nothing about it, and I had trouble describing it.

Why?

Punk wasn’t just the music. Sure, there were punk bands (and if you bring up the Sex Pistols, I’ll beat you to death with my Doc Martins…they were no more a punk band than the Backstreet Boys were a grunge band), but there was so much more to it. It was about stripping rock music down to its bare essentials, getting rid of the whole idea of being “rock stars” and getting the consumerism out of rock music. It was about working class attitudes, individualized thinking and a healthy disdain and sarcasm about mainstream culture. A punk is happy to rub people's noses in realities they don't wish to acknowledge. It’s the music and attitude of the outcast, and while it is realistic, it’s also amazingly idealistic. Appearances, however, are diverse, not uniform: clothes do not make a Punk.

The Ramones are the most influential band, not because of their musical talent, but because they reminded people that ANYONE can pick up a guitar or a drum set and make music. You didn’t need the London Philharmonic Orchestra, know how to write an opera, charge $75 for a concert, or have a stage show that rivals a Broadway production. The Ramones reminded us songs could simply be about what we want to do and what we don’t want to do.

Myself, every so often, I need to get back to my inner punk, which is one of my goals this year, but my punk comes through writing. How about you?

Saturday Night Live, the first five years

2008-01-27T14:27:00.000-06:00

Saturday Night Live, the first five years

I have started a new blog...no, not here on Agent of Change, but on my own website (as part of its restart). I will be watching the Original Five Yeas of Saturday Night Live and blogging about it, listing the bits and my opinions of them.

It just got it's first post where I go over the first episode of the series, and will get a new review every week. Come on over and give it a look:

http://www.solitairerose.com/snlblog.html

What I'm thinking about today

2008-01-24T10:19:00.001-06:00

-The car is making a noise I don't like. I'm hoping it is because ti is 20 below and not because the brakes need work.

-I may actually get one of the big projects at work done today. Then the editing of it starts.

-So far this year I have put together a low budget movie pitch, been invited to write a TV pilot, have two web comic ideas that may see print by the summer and have a friend pushing me to start a podcast.

-I'm a typical American in that I don't believe I will ever get out of debt.

-I was a much bigger fan of the Psychadelic Furs than I thought.

-Am I the only one who thinks that Bill Clinton is giddy that he's back on the campaign trail? People have forgot that he was SUCH a fighter and they are shocked he's an attack dog...just like Edwards's wife.

-BTW, if Obama thinks he's getting attacked now and it's a bad thing, just wait until the right wing slime machine puts them in his sites.

-I should run for President if it can nab you a wife like Dennis Kuscinich's.

-All things considered, things are going decently. A few big setbacks in the last week, but not half as bad as last year.

Hydrox

2008-01-23T10:02:00.001-06:00

Hydrox cookies were quietly discontinued a while ago. They were renamed "Droxies" a while back, but that didn't help falling sales, and the cookie is now gone. When I first encountered them, I thought they were a cheap, generic knockoff of Oreos, but they were the original and Oreos were the cheap knockoff.

Just goes to show, you can be the first with an idea, and still get your ass handed to you by someone stealing that idea.

Election Predictions

2008-01-03T10:09:00.001-06:00

So…it’s finally time. After a seemingly endless campaign, we get the Iowa caucus. Having been to a caucus, to declare a “winner” is just damn silly. People don’t vote, no delegates are chosen, and the process is amazingly complex. But, they will declare winners tonight, so here are my predictions:

Democrats:

Clinton wins, Obama comes in 3rd and Edwards gets second and becomes the “big winner” in that the media hasn’t been paying attention to him for the last few months, and he’ll be interviewed everywhere. One of the lower polling candidates (Dodd, Biden, Richardson) will drop out of the race in the next three days.

Republicans

Huckabee wins and all everyone talks about is how Romney collapsed. Ron Paul gets a smaller number than expected and his followers claim the process is rigged. McCain comes in second, and Romney has his Howard Dean moment, limps along for a while and is gone in a few weeks, never to show up on the national stage again. Rudy is ignored by everyone, Thompson drops out within the next three to five days.

Last prediction? We know who the nominees are by the first week of February and everyone loses interest for the next six months.

NaNoWriMo Progress for Solitaire Rose

2007-11-25T17:51:00.000-06:00

Last weekend is done.

I wrote Friday night, and then yesterday, I spent the day either relaxing or writing. I watched a couple of movies, caught up on some TV, and then wrote. And wrote and wrote and wrote. The story flowed for some of the time, and other times it wasn't easy. I finally got to the end of the Second Act last night, broke 38,000 words, and although I had planned to hit 40k by the end of the day, in the end, I was too tired, too drained and completely out of story.

I went to bed and tried to work out the problems I had set up for myself, and thought about how I had spent a Saturday night at my keyboard, pounding away. Today, I woke up, had breakfast, watched a little more TV and, around noon, started writing again.

My current word count is 43,050. I got my 5K for today, and I only have to write 7,000 words to meet the NaNoWriMo deadline. For the first time since the beginning of the month, I am ahead. Of course, I didn't get anything eaten, don't have anything made for lunch, and have two big loads of laundry to do, but I Am Ahead.

Story-wise, I have hit the Really Bad Scene, and it was where I had to stop. In previous zombie novels, characters have died. A lot of them. When I started working on editing the first one, I was surprised at who died...characters who had a lot of story left in them, but then, that's how life is. In this novel, there has been a grand total of one death, and because of that, I think it is all the more horrific. It MEANS more. I used the exact words I had in my head when I first imagined the scene a couple of years ago.

I have no idea how my characters are going to get out of the situation I have put them in. There are a few seeds planted, but I have no idea if any of them will work. I have 7000 words to go in order to meet the NaNo deadline, but the books will end up being longer. I have three “flashbacks” that I decided not to write because they will need a research I don't have time for. I have a couple of sequences I will go back and add because I know there are a few scenes that were in my head, I was sure I wrote them, but they never made it onto the page.

In terms of pure writing VOLUME, I'm pretty amazed. Over 12,000 words over the last three days. I am 86.1% done. It wasn't easy. It never is. Anyone who says writing is easy, isn't really pulling it from a place inside themselves, and the last three days, I have been pulling this story from my darkest fears.

Now, when I go back and want to know what I was going through as I wrote this novel, I have a record.

When I hit 50k, I'll set up a place on my website so people can see the rough draft. I'll probably take a break before finishing the novel, but I want to finish it up by the end of the year. Right now, though, it's all about those last 6950 words and wherte they are going to come from.

I missed Tuesday Night's entry

2007-11-23T20:33:00.000-06:00

So, we'll go back in time:

I broke 30K tonight. 30136.

Not bad considering that my computer crashed tonight when I was about an hour into my nightly writing, and I lost around 1500 words. I had set Open Office to AutoSave, but after the crash, Open Office assured me that it didn't have any document called "today" to recover, and I spent a good half hour looking for ways to try to coax those missing words from my machine.

And it won.

I remembered the plot points I had written: Helen had a panic attack and tries to convince our main group to go back for the missing people, but the leader of the group shoots her down, pretty brutally. A lot of character interaction, and what I feel is a good look at what goes on inside the head of someone having a panic attack.

Then, a quiet character steps forward to take the blame for their situation and gives her backstory, explaining WHY these people would leave a safe environment to go into danger.

Why?

Because they didn't know how bad things were. Now, they are on the run, trying to get back home. That's the overall thrust of this novel (and the next few if I continue it). There is a term in writing called "The McGuffin". That's the thing that starts the plot, even though it's not the POINT of the plot. In Casablanca, the McGuffin is the letters of transit, but the plot is the relationship between Rick and Ilsa.

Ray and Will, our two missing characters, are going to be out of the story for a while, to build suspense. The last we saw them, they were trying to get away from The Others, had been found and were under gunfire. All our other characters know is that they heard a few bursts of gunfire while they were getting away, and have no idea what it means.

Things I still need to do:

-Get a couple of good ideas of stories to tell about what happened while civilization was falling, or hidden backstory to one of the main characters as between chapter interludes
-Decide if the characters even GET to the Army base in this book, or if that's for the next one.
-Sort out what happened to Ray and Will. Things don't look good for them

As much as losing those words upset me, I think this version of the this passage is stronger, probably because I'd worked it through in my head, and tonight's 3000 words count as a second draft.

Still, I have 9 days for 20,000 words. Not insurmountable, especially with a holiday and two weekend days before the 30th. Last year, I plowed through 10,000 words on one quiet Sunday at the coffee house when an Ex Girl Friend showed up with her new boyfriend. It was a case where I channeled all of my negative emotion into the writing rather than deal with it. Hopefully, this year, I can get the same word count without the emotional upset.

Then again, every character is still alive. I don't know as any of the zombies novels has had THAT happen.

I see that this thread is getting a lot of views, so I thank you for your attention, time and interest. I hope that next year, we can get some of you readers to become WRITERS.

Agent of Change

Guessing Game!

Today's political thought

Solitaire Rose Guide to the 2008-2009 season

Today's evil, anti-American thought.

Punchline from HIMYM

My beef with Chuck Dixon's essay

10 Take Aways From the Bush Years - washingtonpost.com

The Associated Press: US balks at backing condemnation of anti-gay laws

Today's political observation

You know what burns my ass?

2008 Election Predictions

Recommended Reading

Fire BAD!

Dear Republican Party,

What I'm thinking about today

Bob Dole can't seem to remember much.

Bye Bye Mitt-bot 2008

Why Five: Favorite Albums

Dammit, I'm a punk

Saturday Night Live, the first five years

What I'm thinking about today

Hydrox

Election Predictions

NaNoWriMo Progress for Solitaire Rose

I missed Tuesday Night's entry