Nonsense

Short, late post mostly because this week and next week pretty have/will blow for me.

First Rabbit Day coming week 3.

This Week: 13-12-1 (.500)
Last Week: 23-5-1 (.793)
Rolling 3 Week: 53-30-2 (.623)
YTD: 57-28-2 (.655)

Regressing to the mean^sd. I sorta knew that after last week's absolutely wonderful week last week that I would suck this week. Though it is kind of weird that the week RN takes off, I have a week where I go .500. So, I'll take whatever rabbits I'm supposed to get.

Seriously? Sado Bunny? Was it that bad?

It was? Ok. Fine.

via kottke, two women play Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor on FAO Schwarz's piano. Sorta like Big, but more awesome.

Well, at least to me. Because I'm a dork, mostly.

Of note, I'm extremely happy with this title.

Ear worm you!

Seriously, I cannot get this out of my head.

First, read this. Then read this: The impulse behind the article seems admirable. Two people who worked for Obama's campaign are trying to dispel the notion that Appalachians uniformly opposed Barack Obama. But, they are writing about their time spent in "southeast Ohio." Obama's campaign dogged it in West Virginia and Kentucky. I'm not hurt. Obviously, Obama and his staffers know how to run an effective campaign and win an election.

If there's one thing I hate about election day, it has to be all these "I Voted" stickers. I voted. I waited in line for almost two hours. Granted, that's nothing compared to how long lots of people I know waited to vote in 2004. I didn't wear the sticker they gave me. Mostly because I don't like coffee from Starbucks.

Volume a lot.

reasoning:

(15:24:33) Bizzo: I know how to write "Amelia Earhart" in Korean.
(15:24:48) ditriech: ....
(15:24:52) ditriech: why?
(15:26:47) Bizzo: It's hilarious you expect there to be a reason.
(15:27:24) ditriech: I don't, actually. it just seemed better to type "why?" instead of "..." again.
(15:27:33) Bizzo: hahaha
(15:27:58) Bizzo: New York County absentee ballot instructions and samples.
(15:28:02) Bizzo: I saves them
(15:28:19) Bizzo: They include samples in Spanish, Mandarin, and Korean.
(15:28:31) Bizzo: And the sample election is between Edison and Earhart.
(15:28:49) ditriech: VOTE TOMMY E!
(15:28:56) ditriech: EDISON FOR AMERICA!
(15:28:57) ditriech: ...
(15:28:59) ditriech: shit.
(15:29:16) Bizzo: hahaha
(15:29:26) Bizzo: I was really tempted to write him in
(15:29:37) Bizzo: "But the instructions said!

So I've got Republican failure on the brain, obvs. But I'm still a little baffled by this week's tactic.

They seem to be trying to drive everyone to the conspiracy theorists. To campaign on the crazy stuff without directly saying the crazy stuff on TV. From the constant refrain of "we don't know enough" about "the real obama" to this ... very awkward ... thing.

The goal is obviously to get people to Google, and drive them to read the Atlas Shrugs / WorldNetDaily stuff about Obama not really having been born. Or being born in a tube under a cave in Saudi Arabia, and trained as a world-ending sleeper assassin. Or founding the Black/Muslim/Commie/Fascist Baader Meinhoff cell in north Chicago. The latest versions are always at the top of Obama search engine results, and if you try "Obama anti-semetic" or somehting, you'll have more Theories to read than you could get through this week.

Which will hopefully unnerve enough suburban undecideds to move PA, or something.

You can see the move in real-time here.

Wurzelbacher obviously got a phone call from the RNC after the first interview, and was read a page from the new playbook. Don't directly say a goddamn thing. No matter how awkward or stupid you sound, just direct people to vaugely "find more information." As long as it's not from the mouth of the Campaign, we can both run on it and deny we're running on it.

Which brings me back to the really big question - what the hell will McCain do if he wins?

Will he honestly nationalize the banks AND "freeze spending" AND "show Russia some backbone"?

Will he have Palin order that Investigation into all Democratic Congressmen to find out which ones are Anti-American?

Will he really treat Fatah like just as much an enemy as Hamas? Will he really cut off all aid to Palestinian civic organizations? In order to fight terrorism?

He's taken so many insane positions, burned so many bridges, and endorsed so many contradictions that I have no idea which ones he means any more.

And now his campaign is focused on obfuscating his actual goals and herding people toward voting on issues he will later have to deny exist.

What. The. Hell.

RIP David Foster Wallace. May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

I don't know how to react to this. I still feel like it has to be some fucking awful joke. I feel like this can't be true. Whatever faith I have in grace and order tells me this shouldn't be true. My love for DFW is greater than my affection for any other author, and as I write this I am palpably impacted by how feeble a connection this bond may be. His word have literally shaped the way I conceptualize life. I am not being generous when I say that, had I never listened to him, I would be a much more shallow and sad human being. As a graduate student, I teach composition at a major research university, and I have recently centered my courses around the Commencement speech he gave to my graduating class at Kenyon in 2005. On that day he spoke about our ability to control what he refered to as "the default setting," and to approach the world as a place where each of us are not the only meaningful being in existense. That is to say, that with a little extra effort on each of our parts, we could realize that the people around us have lives that are fully realized and fully separate from us, and that with a little extra effort we could consider the people around us as reacting to their own lives, and not existing only in the form which they affect out own lives.

Which is to say, that even as his suicide this evening affects me painfully and potently, I am trying to concieve of this event in a way that does not anchor around my personal feelings of loss and confusion. I am heartbroken that he will never write another story or essay, and I am also heartbroken that he will not have the opportunity to impact others  with new ideas the same way he has impacted me. But I am also grieved that he felt his life had devolved to the point where he felt the only option was to end his own life. He taught me that I am in control of what I decide is worth thinking about, and I mourn that DFW arrived at a place where he felt he had lost that control. I do not know what he was thinking about in his last moments, but it seems that whatever it was, it did not bring him peace. I can only pray (something I rarely do) that his words demonstrate for many of us a philosophy that guides us in positively evaluating how we lead our own lives.

Thank you for what you have taught me. May you find the peace and clarity you seek.

Te occidere possunt sed te edere non possunt nefas est.

I hate almost everything CNN does. They've got more people watching the wires and more cameras on the ground than anyone, and once they have the image or the lede they consistently do the shittiest, most half-asked job covering it.

Say, here. In this encouraging piece of news.

But I can forget, if not forgive, the "air the controversy" bullshit cable news always falls back on when it feels like doing no research and taking no stance. Because the fact that this statement is out there makes me happy.

Also, Georgia signed.

This ain't a sewn outfit homes, homes is about it

This is one of those sad situations where 95% of all grownups agree, and yet we do the opposite. "21" combines some our worst fantasies. We take a real fact of life (young people are reckless), and pretend we can control it with symbolic action and voodo responsibility.

Voodo as in, the month after this law gets changed a 19 year old will die. Just like every other month. But now everyone will feel bad, like their allowing the law to change somehow caused it. Which feelings will be milked by monomaniacs, and given free coverage on CNN.

Unlike now, when 19 year olds die, no one will go on the record saying how, no one that age is told or can be expected to seek help when too drunk, and jurors and soldiers are legal children. But Candy can sleep well at night, and dream that she re-writes human nature with every letter to Congress.

The fantasy can't end soon enough.