Marathon: Home Is Where The Books Are (5 of 13)

Fifth in the Marathon series. Fifth on the record. It's been a long time since Scalped #35, and while I'd say I have something for you all soon, I can't think of anything coming up in the pipeline except number six, which I'm not exactly jumping to write at this very moment.

(Of course this means I will probably find something that tickles the Eleven Names bud soon, but expect nothing.)

Oh. Station identification time. In May, we'll be completely down, as Blogger stops supporting the hardware behind Eleven Names because we're very obtuse in how we update. And, since Zach is in charge of the changeover, well, strike out June as well. Just in case.

Here's to life.

Number five, Home Is Where the Van Is, is about how scattered home is and not feeling comfortable in the suburbs or city, but living the spartan life of a touring artist, in a van. I know the feeling intimately. Well, at least one of those feelings. During my first draft, I jotted down these ideas before heading on a 4 hour trip to see my friend. I woke up once or twice in an antechamber to his house over the last decade and I always woke up feeling safe. Like I was home.

Keep in mind: Most days when I wake up, I don't have that particular safe feeling. I just have that feeling of "Oh, I'm up and I need to do things and the work is never done." It's not an obvious safe feeling so much as I do not expect violence or arguments to befall me as soon as I wake up. My first thought was being in somewhere familiar. My second thought was that I recognized where I was. And the third thought, completing the two was that I was safe. I could not be found by the demons in my life.

That feeling has always been home, where my doubts/fears can't find me.

What's great is that using the description of waking up in a friend's antechamber is that the feeling has happened twice, with two people I love to death. Life is good. But this doesn't mean anything for the place I reside.

Home as Allegheny is a different story. I returned to see Zach Marx and Thomas Carlyle, but Tom was in Pittsburgh, so we'll stick with Allegheny and Zach. I completely spaced on actually getting him to do some Eleven Names content, even if it was just voice and just about comic books and Blackest Night, since that's an easy topic of conversation. Just something, because that feeling of being together as part of a whole or a group towards a common goal is addictive and positive.

Home as Allegheny is different. This year, there is a cipher for an old nemesis of mine, whom among other things, is convinced that the BIble is the inerrant word of God. It's categorically inaccurate, but I didn't say anything. Mostly, home as Allegheny is based around the trinity of Zach, James and somewhere to sleep. (James wasn't around for much of the time I was at Allegheny, so the trinity wasn't entirely complete.) This time, I woke up safe on Zach's couch, then in James' bed (sorry!). Of course, I didn't end up getting that much sleep thanks to drinking and then early plans in the morning both days. Suddenly, I'll sleep when I'm dead carries more weight.

To the extent that I spent time with Zach and the fellow students, it felt immediately familiar and unchallenging, by which I mean nothing to prove. What (if anything) I have to keep up is more coherent and felt looser as opposed to tighter.

It's like playing a song on Rock Band on Hard, rather than Expert, basically. What I mean is that playing the song is less-twitch-and-you'll-miss-based. It allows for a little more expression and theatrics with the guitar controller while allowing you to interact with the other players. In this case, it just means I'm comfortable with the person I made myself into at Allegheny, though within that identity, there's still room for experimentation and ignoring what didn't work back when I was still trying to work and graduate.

Allegheny's more comfortable than it was before, a little bit because I don't have to work, but it only felt like home when I was playing Kings extremely drunk and explaining, loudly, that the point of the game is to facilitate embarrassment. Okay, I didn't use those two words specifically, but I'd been drinking.

Pittsburgh is a different story entirely and almost certainly a focus for later blogs. I am blessed with accomodating exes. Thomas Carslyle and another Tom were far too kind to me, inviting me to go dance, driving me home when I was drunk. As for the song this is attached to, I currently know the feeling of lying to my parents about how I'm doing. "If you see my mom, please don't tell her I don't have a home. Just tell her I'm a lightning bolt."

I guess home is evolution and growth with a sprinkling of safety. And if I'm not growing, or trying new things, then I'm not really home. I'm just waiting for something to happen to me somewhere comfortable.

Home as the United States is another thing. We've got the usual suspects of the conservative movement/Republican Party trying to whip up unfocused, ultranationalist bigotry into just enough of a frenzy that they'll be re-elected without pausing to look at anything. Growing up, there was always partisan sniping, but nothing this bad. I don't recognize this country, sometimes. Some of the liberals, though, are insufferable and callous and I don't want to discount that, but I don't remember anyone showing off loaded weapons to a presidential rally where they disagreed with the president.

Are pictures of Bush and Cheney around Christian images, twisted with Exxon Mobil, KBR or Haliburton equivalent to magic negro tapes and images of watermelon patches outside the White House? The Tea Parties seem to have no problem calling Obama Hitler, which I'm strangely sanguine about. God knows Bush was called that, so while I guess that's now part of the national debate, it means it's another feature of this country I don't recognize. I worry, at least on the outskirts of my mind about false equivalence. On the one hand, Bush threw people in an extra-legal gulag outside of terrestrial jurisdiction, started a war on false pretenses and said that anyone who disagreed with him was unpatriotic. Obama, on the other hand, has trouble closing said prison and wants to keep some of Bush-era wiretaps going. Not exactly the same.

To get bak to the people flinging anti-government rhetoric around now: I remember all those Freep-ers kneeling and kissing George Bush's ring when he was expanding government, throwing people in Guantanamo Bay for the crime of other people's bigotry, so hearing they're up for big social change is something I view with skepticism. I remember all those Freep-ers who were perfectly down with running the moderates out of the party, then wondering aloud what's going on and why the Republican tent is folding in on itself.

I'm okay with debate. I'm okay with getting angry, but the bigotry and disdain for logic is something that I don't recognize. Clinton at least got shit done with Congressional Republicans, but it seems like the posturing has become more important than doing the job. I don't recognize this political culture as home. I recognize it as painfully off-center, like a top long since winding out of a tight orbit. Eventually it's going to crash and somehow, I just don't see the end in sight. I'm convinced this is a rough patch in our political history, magnified with the glass of the first black president.

This as home, man? No. It's something familiar, almost comfortable, but twisted. I understand the contours of the discourse, but something sits wrong. Water and vodka are both clear liquids, but they weigh differently on me. Same idea here. Kenickie as performed by the Pussycat Dolls is what this political climate feels like. And somehow, it doesn't frighten me too much. To tie this back to the song, somehow, the political climate is something I rest in that could explode any minute. I have a frightening amount of comfort sleeping on a mattress filled with gasoline. I just hope I'm not near any lightning bolts.

The Fear The Fear The Fear

It's been an entire twelve days since the last post. Two weeks have happened, basically. In that time, I've been listening to the Steal non-stop. They're a raucous hardcore band that sounds like the first time you went downhill on your bike as fast as you could.

Go download all their records on their official website. The title is also the title of a Defiance, Ohio record, who are nowhere near as good as the Steal, but the title's stuck with me for years. Marathon #5 before the end of this month. And now, for a drastic change in tone.

Al-Qai'da's attack on Christmas doesn't register much with me. One, I didn't know it happened until a couple days later. There's been a lot of talk about how he evaded American security apparatus, but let's be honest: he got on a plane in Europe and came into America that way. Would New York airport security have caught him, I don't know. There's a lot of fear going around that something "could have" happened and that Al-Qai'da still has a lot of pull.

Let's examine what happened. Al-Qai'da attacks usually are redundant. By that I mean, if one plan goes down, there's still another one in place. 9/11 is an example. One plane failed. Three didn't. In this case, there was one (and only one) person, using the same method the shoe bomber did, which also failed.

The suicide bomber didn't even commit suicide. What he did manage to get past non-American airport security was incendiary, not explosive. (It burned as opposed to blow up.) I'm inclined to believe that's a victory. Al-Qai'da is also known for having camps devoted to these kind of activities, so they had to know that this device was improvised and "hoping for the best".

Fareed Zakaria puts it better: On Christmas a Qaeda affiliate launched an operation using one person, with no special target, and a failed technique tried eight years ago by "shoe bomber" Richard Reid. The plot seems to have been an opportunity that the group seized rather than the result of a well-considered strategic plan.

That's worrisome, but not terrifying. America is not some kind of fortress and even if it was, it wouldn't be America. America was not founded on the idea to keep foreigners and "dangerous types" out. It is meant to be a place with open arms. Those that would trade liberty for security deserve neither, Franklin said. It's worth repeating.

A young Al-Qai'da affiliate (think of the terror organization like a franchise) literally threw something together that didn't work the first time around, failed on putting an explosive on an airplane and they still managed to freak out the American public.

The fear currently going isn't logical. The evidence doesn't bear it out. There's a terrorist incident, speaking roughly, every 16.5 million departures, Nate Silver tells us. It is significantly more dangerous to take a car to wherever you're going. Those who practice suicide terror want us to be very afraid. Killing tons of people is a bonus, but the point is to strike fear a mass audience. And, like a charm, we're all very, very afraid. That's why Al Qai'da celebrated it.

And that's why I'm not at all hopeful about the war on terror.

December Wolves: Let Me Get This Straight

I know there's been a lot of comic book posts recently. One is because they're a big new status quo to talk about that can be done easily and they're done in a serialized format so it's easy to keep track of them and there's an entire month between issues to bounce ideas around.

So I'm going back to the world of politics, because that's...something I feel like I've neglected. I think it's just because these kind of posts are harder because I feel compelled to look for links as evidence. Or maybe I'm just tired and making excuses. Comics are new and shiny. Politics less so.

It's about Obama. It's about the expectations for Obama. It's about what the story about him is versus what he's actually doing. It's about everyone projecting something on Obama.

The Obama presidency is not producing rainbows and sunshine fast enough for the American people, so there's a bunch of douchebags running around asking where's the change. They don't take into account that the GOP, since being run out of office, has been blocking pretty much anything. How Bush got so much done was he helped guide the Republican Party towards ideological purity in this sad case, literally.

The Democrats, on the other hand, have to fix the economy, while being held to "fiscally responsible" budgets by a bunch of Republicans who spent money in the last eight years like it was going out of style. It's frustrating. The Republican suggestions to help pay down the debt and stimulate sales were more tax cuts. My response is: "cute, but no."

Obama was the candidate of change, not the candidate of pixie dust and hundred dollar bills growing on trees. Obama was the candidate of hope, not the candidate of telling the Blue Dog Democrats to shut the fuck up and vote the party line. It's frustrating that the narrative around Obama's candidacy was that he came in on wings of bullshit and promised a magic wand to fix America's problems in a way no one would disagree with.

This is not to say Democrats have been faultless. Pelosi rides into office citing ethical responsibility then looks the other way while Murtha and Rangel (Rangel was the Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee and Murtha was known widely as one of the most corrupt Senators around.) stuff their faces AND it comes out that Pelosi knew about the torture after she claimed what the CIA was doing was news to her. Let me repeat that faster, the new Speaker of the House lied on a core issue to her continued campaigning, which focused on ethical leadership.

This is not a little white lie. This is a lie about one of the bona fides. This is exactly the kind of behavior that Pelosi railed against the Republicans for and got into office on. While I'm railing against the Democrats, I'll pause here and say Keith Olbermann is a loudmouth toolbox, just as skeezy as the commentators he spews against. He may use bigger words, but the message is the same: EVIL. WRONG. RAGE.

Let me go back to those douchebags, though. It hasn't even been a year since Obama took office and already he's been called a magic negro, had policies that haven't even been voted on yet compared to Hitler's gas chambers and his eligibility to be president has been questioned based on gossip that sounds like it came straight from 4chan. And the worst part? All of those have been presided over by the Republican hierarchy. The "magic negro" song was made by Huckabee's national campaign manager who was, at the time, a frontrunner for the RNC chair, the gas chamber bit has been fanned by Michele Bachmann and Karl Rove, and the birth certificate bit...well, just Google GOP + birth certificate.

These people put too much on Obama, whether it's Democrats or Republicans. He's a liberal guy who is president in a country where the districts are gerrymandered, except for the ones that aren't, so there's a permanently entrenched groups of Senators/Representatives because they choose the boundaries of what districts they represent. And that's why the moderates are so scared, because they actually have a meaningful fight for their seats.

It's not like the people that disagreed with Obama went away after Obama was elected, for heaven's sake. These inspirational figures are supposed to be inspiring, not superhuman. They're supposed to make other people rise above. He doesn't make all the problems go away by existing as President. These figures are human. They make mistakes and they're subject to the whims of the American people. When was this forgotten?

I don't normally go for rant posts, but something about the righteousness of the groups arrayed against Obama mixed with their profound ignorance of what's actually written on the Constitution gets under my skin. No, tyranny is not people you don't agree with being in charge. Tyranny is a gun barrel in your mouth, a soldier living in your house and the people who disagree with the way things are going being disappeared after they register anything publicly.

(In short, ask any woman working minimum wage in Juarez.)

Ultimately, the person most at fault is myself. I'll explain: It's dishonest. It's politics. When did I, of all people, forget this?

Black Republican

I dream things that never were; and I say "Why not?"
-George Bernard Shaw



What if Barack Obama wasn’t the first black president? What if he was the second?

What if I told you the Republican Party had a universally-respected, erudite black man courting them for their nomination who enjoyed a razor thin edge over Clinton and was ahead of all his opponents? They’d be crazy not to pick him, right?

(Remember, we’re still in hypothetical.)

This black man was just young enough to project vigorousness, but with wisdom that far exceeded his years. He served with distinction in Vietnam. He had national security experience in the deified Reagan White House. He usually had something generous to say and when he didn’t, he kept his mouth shut.

Sounds bulletproof, right? It is, so long as you’re not being shot in the back.

He wasn’t far enough to the right on abortion, gun control and civil rights for the newly minted Faustian contract with America, so he had to be taken down. But how? You can’t assault him to his face and you can’t question his patriotism. This is a man who was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest rank one can achieve in the Armed Services.

Instead, the fix was in like this: Purple Heart, Bronze Star and multiple Distinguished Service medals (2 for the Army, 4 from the Defense Department) notwithstanding, Colin Powell was deemed a “milicrat”, that is to say, a paper-pusher, just with a different color suit. I wonder how it felt to be Colin Powell, to hear from people that had multiple draft deferments with no military experience that he was a glorified middle-manager.

To be fair, that charge has the élan (sorry, wrong elan) of the chicken-hawks. It’s factually, intellectually and truthfully wrong, but what takes it over the top is not what the slur is, but how it’s expressed. It’s dismissive in a way that utilizes a populist and class-ist rhetoric that hides just how sanctimonious and silly the statement is.

Colin Powell wasn’t a man who served in Vietnam, winning multiple citations for bravery and dedicated his youth to the service, he’s actually like your narcissist corporate shark boss, so went the line from the religious right.

The real despicable thing was the allegation of mental illness. But wait, you say. I’ve never heard of Colin Powell ever having a mental illness. That would have come up again, like when he was Secretary of State, right?

Well, yes. But it wasn’t Powell that was being accused. It was his wife.

His wife, who was not out on the campaign trail, not hustling for attention. His wife, who was raising two kids at the time. His wife, who takes medication for depression. To keep Colin Powell out of the race, the rightest of right wing, back in 1996, sent the message that if you keep going, we will make it personal and we will make it bloody. Powell would drop out of the race soon afterwards, claiming “he didn’t have the stomach” for politics and he was right.

It still begs the question, though. What if?

How would the political landscape in 2009 be different if the self-proclaimed Party of Lincoln was the first one to nominate a black man for POTUS? How would the political landscape be different 20 years from now when little kids grow up and the party animal they affiliate with is the elephant and not the donkey?

It’s not that the Republicans or the Democrats (or any party, for that matter) is the party of the future, but that in 1995 and 1996, the Republicans revealed their commitment to be the party of the past, which in a bit of black humor, would carry them surprisingly far into the future.

Cue 2008. Powell, after having his legacy and professional reputation destroyed by Bush’s War on Terror, had stayed quiet during the presidential campaign, not stumping for anyone and keeping a low profile. And then it’s announced that he’s going on Meet the Press, most commentators speculating he’s finally going to make an endorsement in the race.

He endorses Obama and as soon as he does so is branded a traitor to the Republican Party by the blogs, but the blogs were just in the numbers game anyway, they’re tangential at the moment. They missed the part where Powell speaks generously about McCain, a friend, and says that it’s lack of respect for the people surrounding McCain that led him to endorse Barack Obama, whom he believes is the right person at the right time to become a transformational figure in American political history. I wonder, though, when Obama was elected did he think, hell, it’s about time, or hell, it’s 12 years too late?

Demos: Live Grenades

Obama's in office now. I am going to sleep tonight knowing that the eight years of our long national nightmare is now officially in epilogue mode, I hope. Tonight I had a drink and very nearly did "We Didn't Start the Fire" with five other friends of Eleven Names, but owing to time, we all headed back. When Friday comes, I'll be in full end of week (and end of Bush) mode and the drinks will be raised in celebration rather than commiseration.

CNN and 24 hour news networks have been trying for a long time to find a way to speak about the momentousness of Obama's inauguration. I've got little to bring to the table except a sincere feeling of joy and being estatic. I'm a white, heterosexual, vaguely Christian male. People who like me have been President for a long, long time. I can't tell you, vividly, if at all, what it means to the percentage of the population that isn't like me. I'm, therefore, cynical of the people who are cynical of the inauguration. I literally cannot begin to fathom what hope and possibilities it awakes in the minds of the non-white communities in the U.S. and so to say it doesn't mean that much appears to me, to miss the point, if, in fact, I can plot the point on the map.

Right. This is supposed to be about records. Forgive me. You know how much I like Obama. The Gentlebeast (introduced as much to Thomas and I as he was to you) says that he wants more of King and Obama to overlap and I agree, I just don't want Obama to get shot. So not too much overlap, okay?

I originally wrote this for another feature and only now is it getting published. Originally, this was supposed to be published around February or March of last year, but it got canned because the old features editor already had someone doing CDs that week. Oh well. You can find Polar Bear Club here and Life Long Tragedy here. Life Long Tragedy has already broke up, but Polar Bear Club, it appears, has another disc in them, to be released this year, which excites me almost unreasonably. The title is a fantastic track from Let Me Run's record, Meet Me at the Bottom, which you can stream in its entirety here. Try to give all these awesome music its own space. All of it will grow on you, I hope.

There are two discs that I believe have not been sufficiently highlighted over the last year. The first is by Polar Bear Club and is called "Sometimes Things Just Disappear", and the second is by a group called Life Long Tragedy and is titled "Runaways". The two currently carry with them the weight of some fairly heavy RIYLs, so let's investigate.

Polar Bear Club's disc has the unenviable task of following their blindingly good and stupefyingly emotional "the Redder, the Better" EP, which every track captured, to a great extent, the evolution of modern emo without the philosophically intriguing but socially maddening dress up. Here is where tour hungry, sore throated, now venerated heroes Hot Water Music and Small Brown Bike have their musical progeny, and "Sometimes Things Just Disappear" answers that call. It's old fashioned emo, in the sense that it, rocks, without applying any of the violent, macho overtones that seem to plague the rash of groups having their way with the genre.

Yes, for the most part, it is a disc written about girls and relationships. "What good am I to anyone like this? It's been a hard couple months, I'll admit" vocalist Jimmy Stadt sings, and by the time he drops that line, he's already pleaded "Dr. Howe, please call me back" three times. One suspects the *cough* ladies have not been kind to the poor narrator, and by and large, they haven't. "This boy is spent, but forever unlucky" is the sticking point in "Bug Parade", and that's a song spent watching the lips of the girlfriend and her mother move, trying to discern what they're talking about. The most wrenching song is Heart Attack at Thirty, with it's opening line "eight years from now, I will go into cardiac arrest". It's a disc for the cold times that autumn and winter bring, so I heartily suggest you get cozy with it.

Life Long Tragedy's "Runaways" (the band has now broken up), carries with it the heavy, heavy tag of "the next American Nightmare", which in the hardcore punk scene, may as well be saying "the next Metallica". American Nightmare was a band known, and perhaps defined by Wes Eisold's romantically anti-social, jaded lyrics on hope, lust and love. (His fingerpints are all over Fall Out Boy's last three discs, even when he doesn't get a writing credit.) And on a couple songs, Sweet Innocence in particular, "tomorrow isn't promised, but it's sure as f*ck coming" and "true love was just a marketing ploy, so guys can hit their lines and girls can grab their boys" Life Long Tragedy channel this near-mythic influence (American Nightmare) with startling potency, but also 90's straight edge heroes Unbroken in Runaways' less frantic and pus trickling moments.

Track three Hey Death, though, stands head and shoulders above the rest of the disc. A slow, morose song, which builds and builds to a discharge of "Hey Death, can you stop this beating in my chest?", ending with Scott Phillips screaming for a minute of Death's time. Like the songs that spring from it, the production on "Runaways" feels weighty, oozing and festering. It's not a pretty disc, by any stretch of the lyrical or sonic imagination, the guitars are heavy and clear as mud, which describes the pacing and outlook of the disc fairly well. The bass is filthy. The vocals feel like Mr. Phillips slammed two shots of Liquid Plmbr before recording, and the end result sounds like the draining of an open wound. Not surprisingly, it only makes the songs more palatable to me. It's the grime that lends "Runaways" its remarkable authenticity, its character of being down but not quite out.

I hear all the time that certain artists lay it all out there, with nothing to hide. I recommend Polar Bear Club and Life Long Tragedy to you precisely because they actually lay themselves out there with uncommon effectiveness and poignancy. These discs won't be mentioned on Pitchfork any time soon, but that's fine, they're my secret from me to you. Start telling.

Demos: Painting By Numbers

This is a really early demo, the issues, I heard, was supposed to come out today but didn't because the editors wanted to have a week off when school started. Okay. So, here's something you'll see later on next week. The song is the first track off of Marathon's self-titled record. It would also, sadly, be their last. Listen to more Marathon here.


When ex-Governor Blagojevich was indicted, the response from my Illinois-native friends was swift, but this was telling: The one that seemed most prescient said "You know, I always thought the mayor would be indicted first." Knowledge is power, as we've learned in Saturday morning cartoons and any mafia movie ever, but that doesn't entirely describe Chicago. Yes, where's mine might be the mantra of City Hall, but the reason why the big politicians have stayed big in Chicago is not just because of the machine, but the most important detail is what they recuse themselves from.
It's incredibly bold for Burris to accept now-arrested governor's appointment, but to say that God spoke to the governor to appoint Burris goes beyond staggering self-importance and into messiah complex territory. Burris, as we all know, is a raging egomaniac, but he's also a pragmatic one, comparing Harry Reid and the Senate Democrats, whom he wishes to join, to famous Southern racists. Classy.
Not much remains to be said about the now-arrested governor (protesting too much, odd behavior patterns that make the viewer ask: cocaine?, bad haircut, etc), except that this, as everyone from Illinois knows, is the tip of the iceberg. A juicy little tidbit (I think I got this from the Daily Show) is that Representative Bobby Rush has backed Burris' appointment, saying that it was an imperative that a black man remain in the Senate. The statement was plenty distasteful and transparent, but made more so by the fact that Rush, when given the opportunity, backed the white incumbent that President-Elect Barack Obama unseated when he had the choice earlier this decade.
Speaking of which, the idea that Obama (or anyone from his campaign) is wrapped up with Blagojevich is laughable. Anyone politically cognizant in Illinois has known this guy was radioactive since 2006 and the idea that his phones were tapped should not surprise those same people.
The fact that he might actually be my state's next senator is concerning, but I have a lot of faith that the voters of Illinois, myself included, will kick his ass out the first chance we get. That is the genius and madness of the American political system. Problem is, Burris is more of the second and significantly less of the first.

Demos: Prick For President

Sadly, by now, the Republican National Convention has come and gone, proving my point about being cautiously optimistic about the vituperative nature of the campaign. The "liberals" being compared to the Viet Cong? Thanks, Mr. President. Oh well, at least someone in the RNC postponed the first day of the convention to keep the focus on Hurricane Gustav. Sarah's Palin's speech, though, had quite a bit of partisan rancor and even more lies. Way to go, Governor.

By now you've heard that Republican presidential candidate and long time U.S. Senator John McCain chose Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his Vice President. It's not exactly an intellectual masterstroke to say the decision was made to appeal to many different segments of the US population. I'm starting to feel that McCain's choice of 44 year old mother of five Governor Palin represents a political Rorsarch test, with some liberal Democrats saying it's a desperation play for some of the bitter ex-Hillary people in the voting booths, some conservative outlets saying it's a maverick picking another maverick, traditional outlets saying it's a play for the disenfranchised Romney or Huckabee voters who are threatening to "sit out" the election.

Thus, the questions: Who, exactly, does this attract, and with who in mind, was it made?

From the traditional standards of electoral scorekeeping, the pick doesn't make sense. Alaska doesn't have enough electoral votes worth mentioning, and neither does the northwest. I was unaware that social conservatives were ever not going to vote for McCain, but at least according to Politico, the traditional Republican voters became tremendously more excited and more likely to play ball with the former reformer. We'll see if that holds.

I'll hazard a guess that Governor Palin was chosen based on being an obscure politician with fairly impeccable conservative credentials, in addition to having significant, if small scale organizational and legislative experience. All that, in addition to being a woman.

Also (but not paradoxically), you probably can take Senator McCain at his word here when he says that one of the reasons he chose her was to shake things up in Washington. Her experience as Governor of Alaska is, at best, two years total, having defeated the Republican incumbent. She's been a dynamic individual in Alaskan politics, pushing through the Alaskan Gasline Inducement Act after a couple years of inaction, tapping a Canadian corporation to do so. Before 2004, Senator McCain used to be a maverick, so perhaps he sees a little bit of himself in Governor Palin, a woman who is very comfortable with her views (pro-gun, against abortion except only in the case of the death of the mother) and isn't afraid to accept the consequences and drawbacks of her position.

According to members of my family in Alaska, Governor Palin is a tenacious, skilled politician who listens, connects well and radiates warmth, so it will be interesting to see when she gets dispatched here (and also in Michigan and Ohio) how she fares amongst the populous.

I'm not particularly concerned about her age, any more than I'm concerned about Senator Obama's, though that question appears to appeal to a lot more people. This general election has been significantly less dirty than the past two and I'd like to see that continue. I've heard significant policy disagreements and not personal attacks. Even the slimy ex-Swift Boat people have only written a book about Obama, and it's not even a part of McCain's campaign.

I'm cautiously optimistic about the next couple months that they won't be filled with the same vituperative sloganeering that characterized the 2004 or 2000 elections, and with the choices that both Senators running for President have made, it looks to be an interesting race. By the time this column goes to print, the Republican National Convention will have already happened, and I look forward to the goings on in and around it.

Demos: No, ALL!

This is in response to a column that gave me the impression that the author said that political engagement didn't matter. I disagreed. Some important changes were made, but not to the original thesis. Perhaps the new version is a smidge faster, and maybe hit the proverbial notes more accurately. I don't think anything is lost in the translation, though. In fact, I like the printed version a little better.

I am not too proud to admit that part of this was inspired by Beth, with whom I disagree on a couple issues relating to Obama. Since much of the internet is about pointless feuds, I'd like to note that this doesn't mean I hate her, but simply disagree with her on a fairly important social issue that (hopefully) affects both of us.

Oh, and if you understand why, specifically, the non sequitur title is there, (and not simply as a reference to a praticular band) you win three hundred internet points.

My peers ask why vote and why bother with civic engagement, and it's a good question. Why bother with civic engagement at all when for the last couple decades, youth turnout has been at all time low (recently that has been changing) and voter apathy (why bother with presidents when the differences between candidates are shallow and they're all sponsored by special interests that profit on the status quo…) is fairly high?

I wish I had something better, something that sounded more academic or something that sounded more debonair, but here it is. Why should you bother? Because you've seen what happens when people didn't care. W. If you're enrolled here and fairly liberal, then you know what it's like during your formative years to be shut out of the political process, attacked and called a traitor to your country, all for voicing your opinion. To stave off the inevitable: I make no statements for when Clinton was in office, since I wasn't old enough to render a complex enough judgment for this column.

As for the idea of "keeping your political ideas to yourself", I'd like to respond with "Well, that actually ties into why bother with civic engagement." Let me speak, as I often do, about videogames. As I have previously mentioned, the "debate" on videogames is couched in a framework of "They're the worst things to happen to kids since rap music, don't you agree? You don't? Well, you're wrong, and destroying the innocence of American youth." Why is this? Because this side is the only one speaking up and voting for "the issue". And yes, it also has something to do with the fact that they donate lavishly to the reelection campaigns of Congresspeople. For the most part, there has not been until incredibly recently a coordinated attempt to form another perspective on videogames in the media. Opponents of videogames speak up, so they have the floor, and set the tone of the discussion. To appropriate a Modern Life is War lyric, if no one is speaking to you, speak up.

So, if you want to change the discussion (whether it's videogames or something else entirely), you're going to have to get your metaphorical hands dirty. You're going to have to speak in public about how you feel and you're going to have to take the plunge of expressing yourself about something publicly, or you can keep silently writhing and hope that magically, things will change.

I'm trying to say this without a bunch of rah-rah-rah garbage but, if you want change, you're going to have to raise your voice. I don't want this to end like a Disney teen drama, so I'll leave it like this: We have a mounting national debt (both foreign and domestic), a housing crisis that is squeezing people out of their homes, a war that will cost us over $2 trillion all told, and an international image in tatters.

You're still asking why you should care?

Lies we Tell to Children: America is a Model Democracy

Welcome to Super Tuesday, what was supposed the be the season-defining superbowl moment of American politics, the middle turning point in the ongoing slow-motion car crash that is Fuckup 2008.

Dennis Kucinich and John Edwards have dropped out, leaving Mike Gravel as the self-proclaimed only real progressive left in the race. Regardless of whether or not Obama plans on honoring any of his promises to make a change for the better, Hillary Clinton is a preprogrammed robotic timebomb serving a cabal of military industrialists oil czars and hedge fund managers, or Mike Gravel is actually still in the race in any real sense, tonight has decided nothing.

In fact, it is appearing more and more likely that the race is going to be won by the most terrifyingly antidemocratic feature of our democratic system: superdelegates.

Superdelegates, unlike lake sharks, are not part of the lies we tell to children. Also unlike like sharks, they are things that do exist and should not. However, they are exactly like lake sharks in their supernatural ability to glide silently over the morning dew. Don't go down to the lake until the sun has been up long enough to dry up all the grass, or an ex-president will leap from the brush to tear open your jugular and elect a delegate you never voted for. (Thanks, Jeremy Hoople's father. Second best lie told to a child ever. The first may end up as another post.)

As you have probably not been able to glean from that extended whimsical comparison, superdelegates are members of the Democratic National Convention who, by virtue of having held positions of power in the past, hold a position of power in the present: they can participate in the selection process of the Democratic Nominee, voting just as other delegates do, and, unlike other delegates, they are not required to vote according to the votes of any group of normal citizens. This is why, of the 2,025 delegates needed for the nomination, Hillary Clinton had over a hundred before the first state primary had been held.

As of the time I'm writing this, the New York Times is displaying the A.P. delegate count for Clinton and Obama at 626 to 531. Of those, 204 and 99 are superdelegates. And while I'm sure those numbers will have changed by the time I finish this post, the deciding factor in the race right now is the fact that more cronyistic holdovers from bygone eras are supporting Hillary than Obama. As the state-by-state, county-by-county battle for supremacy continues, it seems more and more likely that the swing factor in the race to 2,025 will be the more than five hundred superdelegates who have yet to decide which factory-assembled candidate best represents their personal agendas.

I apologize for the dryness of this post, and the overproliferation of numbers. I apologize if you heard this somewhere else first.

You should still be angry. Somewhere, someone is making all this effort, all this organizing and arguing and aggregate motion of the human element, meaningless. The party will pick who best represents the party's interests, not the people's.

This, as Mike Gravel would say, is politics as usual.

Not So Fast, Mr. Ellis.

Fuckup 2008, Mr. Ellis says.

He's entitled to his opinion, certainly. He makes a living off of his opinion and his rambling output, which is far greater and far more lucrative than mine. So his opinion is worth something.

Quite how much, only Mr. Ellis knows. But. I'm here to talk politics, (as per usual) and that brings in a whole other can of worms. Because, you see, for Mr. Gravel (or any other candidate who is failling by the wayside now) to be important, he needed people to pay attention to him early, and build a grassroots network. In other words, get the good word out.

This is where the American populus comes in. I was introduced to Mr. Gravel by Zach only a couple days ago. I hear after Iowa, he has since dropped out. Depending on who you ask, this is a failure or a success of the internet. On the one hand, I would not have heard of Mr. Gravel without Zach, but on the other one, the information comes too late to be of use.

If you want to make a difference in presidential elections, you have to get involved early. YOU have to go out, and tell your friends about this candidate, and get the word out. I am reminded of the savage quote from the West Wing, where someone (inevitably striding...) says "If you skip jury duty, you can't complain about the OJ verdict," which is a nice way of saying, this is a participatory democracy, if you don't participate, your perfect candidate does not have to appear.

Iowa, as we need to be reminded, is a strange place. If you want to meet a candidate and speak to him or her, while they are in Iowa, you can look up where they are going to an event near you, and you can ask them a question or two there. Hell, at least two candidates moved their families to Iowa 4 years ago. The time to know and get the word out about Mr. Gravel was about nineteen months ago, when there was time for his supporters to accumulate and coalesce.

But now, and this month is far, far too late. The Obama nation has swept up most of Iowa's Democrats, and the rest went to Hillary or Edwards. Don't get me wrong. I like Obama, and it is not just because his house is the physically closest to my parents'. It is because he promises change, and there's a praticular little thing about his past that I like. He graduated the first black editor in chief of the Harvard Law Review. This is prestigious, and it is hard to oversell it's importance.

He could have made five million dollars a year in New York City law firm doing nothing but shaking people's hands when he left Harvard (fight fiercely...). Read that sentence again. I'll wait.

Mr. Obama went to the South Side of Chicago to do political organizing instead. The only reason why he was a lecturer at the University of Chicago is because they're a group of people who are contrary, haughty and insufferably intelligent. Had he gone anywhere else in the city, he could have been a tenured faculty member before he stepped foot on campus, if not the chair of the department.

That's not to say he's clean, or he's perfect, or that he appeals to me completely. There is the money he took from large drug companies and HMO's to fund his campaign, his "present" votes on some major issues, and his vote yes on the Patriot Act.

But. He promises change, and right now, we need it. By we, I mean America, but then I think of America's effect on the rest of the world, and then I realize, the world, too, needs a change from Mr. Bush. So I can be more inclusive, and perhaps should be.

Oh, to hell with it. I support Obama. And by that, I don't mean a "I hate everyone else, and I hate him less." I mean, Edwards leaves a slime trail, Hillary Clinton smiles like she's trying to hide her fangs, and I'd rather vote for Obama than those two. I will affirmatively for someone, rather than against another candidate.

I don't care if I look stupid. If I show that I am invested in this, it's because I believe everything American above 3 should be. I care. I'll even trust Obama's gut, and I've got faith that he'll pick good people to surround himself with for the job.

I'll bring this back to Mr. Ellis. He calls it a fuck up, likely, because the American people will pick a candidate that moves toward the center, and because little progress would be made on how the United States extracts blood and oil from the rest of the world regardless of who is elected.

I don't know if Obama can or will want to bring Nike or Pepsi or Nestle to heel. But I believe that he's a candidate that will do what he thinks is best in stressful situations, has the mental capacity to interpret crisis-es with subtlety and accuracy. I believe he'll undo or at least try to repair the damage to America's international image and the Patriot Act.

I'll take it. I'll take it (as Refused put it) hook, line and sinker.

Waiting for Iowa

That's where we are, you and I.

Or so I imagine.

Elections are hard on me, you see. Because they're fate and destiny and triumph and triumphalism, defeat and the death of dreams. And they're supposed to be in our hands, and they really, truly aren't.

I remember the day after Kerry gave up, declaring his own defeat because he had to, because the Democrats are the party of politeness. And spinelessness, apparently. I was washing dishes, and I was incredibly depressed about the whole thing. A friend, trying to cheer me up, told me not to worry about it, that these things happen. I remember wishing I could grab him and shake him until he understoond that it was somehow my fault, personally, that the wrong man had won. That I was personally responsible for the fate of the world.

I still am. This is the place that I live, and as a citizen of the world I feel like I have a responsibility to make it a better place.

And there's really nothing I can do except talk about things, and try to convince people that can do things to do them. I have no power, only a little knowledge and a handful of words.

I spent a few days out of the world, which is to say out of contact with the internet and out of cell phone reception. When I got back, certain events had occured that I am still piecing together.

The world's a big place. Somewhere on the other side of it, people get shot in front of their adoring public and that's the way the political process goes. That doesn't happen often over here, anymore. Not since the last time.

And it's beginning to look like Iowa isn't going to decide anything, that this process is just going to drag on and on, and that whoever wins, it won't really matter. It's politics as usual, maintaining the status quo. The rich will get richer, and the poor will get poorer.

And I'm slowly going to get more and more and angry, and wish that Mike Gravel was in any way relevant.

These are the starting shots. This is where, to borrow a term from Warren Ellis, Fuckup 2008 truly begins.

Eleven Names isn't really a political blog, but then... Eleven Names isn't really much of anything, yet. Maybe we'll talk about this some more. I hope so.

In the meantime, keep on eye on the world outside your window. Look out for a chance to make it a better place. Someone has to. Might as well be us.