I came home from work last night, drew a bath, brewed some tea, and sat down to an evening of channel surfing between the final debate and Game 1 of the NLCS. Once it looked like both Senator Kerry and the Cardinals had things under control, I went online to check e-mail and lo-and-behold read about the sexual harrassment lawsuit against Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly.
It's wonderful reading in a beach-book way. Apparently the tough-talking master of the no-spin zone likes vibrators, forcing unreciprocated phone sexon female staffers, and bragging about his sexual peccadilloes. It also shows that O'Reilly, like all bullies, has no sense of humor and carries a grudge like an elephant (read the passage where he rants about Al Franken.) O'Reilly tried a preemptive strike by filing a countersuit against his accuser, now former "O'Reilly Factor" associate producer Andrea Mackris, alleging that her lawsuit was nothing more than a sixty million dollar extortion demand on both his radio and television programs. O'Reilly is also demanding "tapes" of the sessions. He should be careful for what he wishes. I remember a sitting President once demanding a blue dress with a semen stain be produced. That President wound up being impeached.
I'm looking forward to watching O'Reilly squirm.
The Three Faces of George W. Bush
Last night's debate was effectively a draw, with Bush finally bringing up numbers to defend his allegations that John Kerry is "the most liberal member of the Yooo-nited States Senate." All Kerry had to do last night was maintain his composure while needling the President on his four-year record. He was able to do that and still look "presidential."
'Course, considering who our President has been the past four years, the bar's been set pretty low.
Bush spent the three debates trying to deflect criticism of his record by basically ignoring it, attacking Kerry as a liberal, and using catch phrases like "wrong war, wrong place, wrong time" and- last night's theme- "a plan is not a litany of complaints."
More unsettling were the three different personas Bush exhibited during the debate series. There was the stammering, indecisive leader insisting that what America needed was "firm leadership" throughout the first debate. Then there was the folksy, testy Texan who spent most of the town hall debate screaming at the audience ("YOU'LL GET YOUR CANADIAN PRESCRIPTION DRUGS, JUST AS SOON AS WE KNOW THEY'RE SAFE!! NOW FUCK OFF!!") and pandering to their deepest fears. Last night we got the classic "smirking chimp" Bush, who apparently found humor in every question posed to him. At one point he was smirking so much I wondered if the the satellite feed was acting up.
Despite the improvement of Bush during the debates, Kerry swept the series. He took the focus away from the Swift Boat Veterans and flip flopping allegations and eventually settled upon the wisest course of action- firmly and consistently attacking the four-year record of a President whose definition of "compassionate conservatism" means to be conservative with compassion. Bush, normally a master debater, refused to defend his record. This both exposed and highlighted one of his greatest weaknesses: his inability to admit to admit to mistakes in judgment. Some people I talked to thought that Kerry should have gone for the jugular during the debates. But that would've been out of character for Kerry and played into the Bush camp's charges of flip-flopping. In the end, Kerry chose a debate style that in its subtlety was as tenacious as an attacking pit bull, made this race a dead heat with three weeks to spare, and emerged as a statesman.
The time to go for the jugular is now at hand.
Friday marked my one-year anniversary moving into this apartment. I was going to celebrate by skipping out on the rent, then my landlady called to tell me that she mistakenly sent my September rent check to the city with her property tax assessment.
The city didn't seem to mind the extra $750 because they cashed the check, so as a favor to my landlady I'm getting half my September rent back for paying her property tax. But I'm losing the narrative here. I've lived alone in this apartment for a full year. A year that feels only like a few months.
I wasn't certain I could do this when I moved in last October. The first week was a bit frustrating. My phone was hooked up to the wrong apartment. I had to take cold showers for a week while waiting for an appointment to hook up my gas meter. On the day of that appointment the guy who came in to install my gas meter wasn't going to light the pilot to my hot water heater because an overflow pipe was too small. I discovered that my modem was connecting me to the web at 115.2 Kbps, which meant that I didn't really need DSL. Somehow I found myself subscribed to both SBC Yahoo ISP and AOL simultaneously, when I haven't used AOL in years. I had to buy all new utensils and kitchen appliances. I had no television for two weeks, so I had to listen to the Cubs choke in the NLCS on the radio.
Eventually things began to settle down and I found myself acclimating to the apartment. Over the succeeding months I started putting up pictures, posters, and candle sconces. I had some friends over around the Christmas holidays. I still don't clean as often as I should, but the place is always clean for company.
The best compliment I received was when my old roommate came by with some other belongings about two weeks after I moved in. Our last month as roommates was tense. We had agreed earlier last summer that it was time for me to find my own place or else she and I were going to tear each others' heads off.
We were roomates for four years. If you're roommates with someone of the opposite sex for a long time eventually you morph into a married couple with separate beds. Friends begin to assume that in inviting an invitation for one means the two of you. Each becomes annoyed at the other's quirks and bad habits. The act of making yourself scarce so the other can have private time for personal relations becomes harder than to plan for the peace in Iraq.
My problem was making the move. We were both comfortable in that apartment with it's large west-facing bay window in the living room and spacious kitchen. But she had first claim to it, since the lease and all the utilities were in her name.
I wasn't even supposed to be her roommate. What had originally planned as a two week couch-surfing experience became a four-year living arrangement. We compromised on a lot and learned so much from each other. I don't think I could've moved out it if wasn't for her.
On the day she brought the rest of my leftovers to my new place I gave her a tour of the work in progress. We said nothing then just hugged, the tension of the previous three months melting away in a show of appreciation for the time we had, the place in our lives we were at at that moment, and the possibilities of the future.
If I close my eyes it really does seem like yesterday.
With apologies to The Onion:
Bush: "Kill the bastards!!"
Kerry: "I can kill the bastards better!"
Some of the deep thinking happening at work these days:
If a practicing Jew is bitten by and becomes a vampire, do crucifixes affect him? Or would be in the best interest of a vampire hunter to carry a star of David, as well?
What if the sired vampire were a practicing Muslim? Seeing as how Muslims consider Allah to be a moon god, that would mean that the moon is good to a vampires' inherent evil nature. So can a Muslim vampire only feed during waning moons and turn to dust if exposed to a full moon?
What if the vampire in question were a polytheist, like a Hindu or Buddhist? What religious icons would affect them? Do they feed based on the caste system?
Finally, what if the vampire in question were an atheist in life? I would think that they would be the most powerful vampires because they were non-believers and even if they were proven wrong they might be stubborn in their insistence that God and Satan don't exist and would kill and feed indiscriminately anyway.
I wonder if Jack Handy ever wondered about this?
John Kerry Should Play Dirty Pool Starting This Evening:
If John Kerry even wants to come within sniffing distance of the Presidency he needs to place the President's testicles in a kung-fu grip starting this evening with the debate. Sources within the Kerry camp say that he's viewing Bush as the most challenging debater in his professional career.
It's a wise train of thought: ten years ago experts thought Bush had no chance in his Texas gubernatorial debates against then-incumbent Ann Richards. Bush's folksy populism and monomaniacal sticking to message throughout the debate more that negated Richards' wit and ability to think on her feet.
Bush's main attribute as a debater is his ability to lower expectations. We know the basics- he was an average student at Yale and Harvard Business School; he has no intellectual curiosity whatsoever; he's dogmatic in his belief that his policies are the right policies for America. Those perceptions hide a shrewd mind and a restless perfectionist who will have practiced his debate style to a high gloss by the time they take the stage this evening. People expect Bush to be a stammering idiot. Hopefully Kerry is able to put Bush on the defensive at some point during the debate.
If he doesn't, the South will have indeed risen again.
But I'm Talking About- SHUT YOUR MOUTH:
This essay I found through Salon absolutely frightens me. It also hits close to home as a veteran of the first Gulf War. The author- a 20 year Army veteran- is now facing charges of "disloyalty to the armed forces during time of war" and a 20-year prison term for speaking out.
All commissioned and non-commissioned officers take the same oath to "protect, uphold, and defend the Constitution of the United States." I took that oath seriously when I was in uniform, to the point of speaking my mind whenever I didn't agree with an order. My first four years of service it was actually encouraged.
The men and women of the armed forces largely cede their rights under the Constitution in order to protect it. However, there is still some protection, and this is a free speech issue. And never let it be said that you cannot speak your mind. That is the first tenet of a democracy.
Tuesday I attended a wine and liquor show at Navy Pier, mainly to re-establish contact with liquor company marketing reps I had met over the past year, planting seeds for doing some partnerships at work next year. It was an such an expansive show that I could not adequately hit all the wine tables during the show's four-hour time frame. Still, after spending the first ninety minutes accomplishing my main objective, I tore into the wine tables with a vengeance.
The wine companies alone took up the entire grand ballroom, while the spirits companies had their own separate roomoutside the ballroom. There was a noticeable difference in atmosphere between the two rooms. The wine exhibition was more elegant and subdued. A jazz combo played safe selections in the background as vendors peppered customers with discussions of their respective wine's characteristics that fell somewhere between poetry and pretension:
"You'll notice that this wine is made from the Italian insolia grape, which is a clean tasting, well-rounded grape with a subtle finish like the end of a peaceful dream."
This went on at every table. Customers were handed a notebook containing the list of wine vendors, their selections, and a notes section to jot down a particular wine's favorable characteristics. I was only able to hit a fraction of the over one hundred tables present in the time I had, but I gave it the standard college try. Within minutes of finishing my business I had settled into a routine of wine inspection that followed the "lather, rinse, repeat" method- inspect color and legs, check nose, sample palate, spit and savor finish, repeat. By the time I left Navy Pier my mouth felt like I licked an acre of heavy shag carpet, but I felt like I had visited and been kicked out of Eden.
Contrast that to the spirits room, where the atmosphere was one of arrested development. House music blaring in the background, I felt like I was trapped in a neverland of hot waitresses and club drugs:
"If you mix a splash of ornage juice in this you won't even know you're drinking tequila!! Hee hee!"
The spirit distributors were forcing the mix of sex and liquor down our throats, emphasizing that if Absolut Raspberri was prominently displayed at a bar it would make you virile, popular, and rich. Jameson's and ginger ale was being toted about as an aphrodisiac, and the skirt on the trade show model carting around Bushmill's Irish Cream seemed to get shorter as the day progressed.
I made my way home around seven that night with some takeout from Gio's on 28th and Lowe. It was Chicken Marsala. This time I savored the wine.
