Keep those dollar donations coming! Tell your friends! Blog activity is directly proportional to the amount of money I get. Well, not really.

I'm not good at thinly veiled threats. Or threats in general.

In case you missed it...the news story of the year!

Oof. Thanksgiving. I'm stuffed. I had a good time with my future in-laws, though, which is a good thing, seeing as how Courtnie's dad threatened to kick me out of the house last year.

Just a word of warning. Man, everybody's here: Hello Kitty, Monsters Inc., Lego. For shame.

Isn't it sorta weird that the "play food" failed the "small ball test" for choking hazards? It's play food, so kids are going to eat it. Or at least try to eat it. Being a parent is tough--there is sooo much stuff to think about. It's scary, really.

Just massacred "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road." The hits keep on comin'. Next I think I'll do "Gold Soundz," then "Ship Song." Then I'm about exhausted as far as covers go. I can do a song from Hedwig and the Angry Inch and "Flying Pizza" by Swearing at Motorists and that's about it. I'm a pretty limited piano player.

I just ripped through a version of "Without You" on the piano, Bobby Conn/Harry Nilsson-style. Felt good. I still think Badfinger's original version might be the best...you know, besides mine.

Courtnie gets up at 6:30 every morning for student teaching which basically means that I get up at 6:30 every morning. I am a morning person, which absolutely sucks. I am a morning person who wishes he was a night person. For years I was in denial about the terrible truth of morning-person-ness. Now I've begrudgingly accepted it.

Oh, this is just too much. I hope Ben Affleck knows what he's getting himself into.

I knew there was a reason I really hated Creed! I mean something besides their creepy God complex and sub-Alice In Chains (and that's saying something!) crap-for-music. They drink Bud Light (and spell it "Lite"). Yuck.

Keep them dollars coming! I almost have enough to pay last month's power bill! Thank you very much.

Read this, too. I forgot about that gay Arabic translator thing. Probably because the press barely covered it, those crazy "liberals."

A fun Big Brother story for you. I think you have to register a la the New York Times to read it. Sorry. It's worth it...trust me.

Here's another one! Could there be a worse choice for Super Spy than Iran/Contra relic Admiral Poindexter? He's the one who told Ollie North to lie, right? This is what White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer (a real slime, in my opinion) had to say about the whole thing. An "outstanding American?"

I like islands AND hidden things, so naturally I liked this story.

In case you haven't noticed, I have a paper due today. When I procrastinate, weblog activity increases by 10,000%.

I thought Courtnie would be all down on this whole begging for money thing, but she was all "Tell those assholes to send money" and I was all, like, "Courtnie, that's mean!" and she goes "You fucking bitch! We need the money! Tell those lousy bastards to bring it on!" and I was saying "...but baby..." and she took out a butter knife and was, like, stabbing me and shit.

True story.

People keep sending me money. Thank you very much. All I ask for is one dollar...then tell all of your friends about my site, and they can come and send me a dollar, too. Then I will have two dollars....haha! Get it? Because you only have one friend...hahahaha! Phew.
Now that people are sending me money, I feel obligated to write lots of stuff. This is going to be difficult because I have to get rid of my cable modem (and cable!) to save money. My blogging will come in spurts as I'll be using the computers on campus. Sorry. Keep reading!

Work is becoming more and more of a pain in the ass as "corporate" tightens its grip on our everyday operations. Execs are so afraid of lawsuits, and I guess rightfully so, though I often wonder if media hype about a few worst case scenarios plus a few long-running urban legends create an image of a society that's more litigant than it actually is. Hmmm...let me rephrase that: I think that our society is quite litigant, BUT I'm not so sure that many of the crazy lawsuits out there are successful. We hear about them in the news---some guy sued somebody for some wacky thing---but we never hear the end result, which means the case was probably thrown out because it was, well, crazy.
I'm going on gut instinct here and a complete and total lack of facts, but a few lawyer friends (shudder) have told me how hard it is to win workman's comp and personal injury cases. Regardless, people in the rental business get very scared about lawsuits because it's our word against the customers' and the customer is always right, right? Hahaha...
In the teaching profession, people are absolutely petrified over the threat of lawsuits, especially administrators. I think that the lawsuit threat has been completely overstated. Everyone has anecdotal evidence about these supposed suits against teachers and stuff, but the truth is that administrators et al. are more scared of the threat of lawsuits than actual lawsuits themselves. Schools win most of the stupid lawsuits against them as far as I can tell. I need some facts and figures here. There are some fellow students of education who are afraid of trying anything in the classroom for fear of a lawsuit. Fucking cowards--it is not that bad out there.

My dog just escaped through some wormhole in my backyard fence, and I had to chase him down through kudzu and briars and vinyl siding (?). He was just playing, you know, smiling at me the whole time. If he wasn't so damned cute, I'd kill him.

I don't understand why I'm getting these weird spaces around the paypal button. Sorry.

You guys are actually sending me money?! And more than a dollar at a time. Listen: all I ask for is one dollar. I just want to get 10,000 people to give me a dollar...that's all. Maybe I should start some sort of internet chain mail campaign or something. I could be on Snopes or something! For now, you can donate money by clicking on the button below.

I just came back from the last Masters of the Hemisphere show ever. I expected it to be a drunken affair, but it was exceptionally energetic and tight. One of the best shows I've ever seen them play, to be sure, and one of the most fun shows I've been to in recent memory. They played 36 (37?) songs divided into three sets, including their stellar versions of "Secondhand News" and "Age of Consent." It was exciting but bittersweet. The guys looked kind of sad and lost at the end, and as I walked away, avoiding the strange fights breaking out all around me on Athens' sidewalks, I realized that the Masters were one of my favorite local bands, and I'm going to miss them a whole lot. Not to mention the fact that they're all stand-up guys who gave a lot of support to my band, Transmatique, allowing us to open for them more than once. I'm sad.

Does anybody out there really believe that the World Trade Center was attacked because Muslims hate freedom and liberty? That's what Bush and talk radio would have you believe. I think the issue is a little more complex that, don't you? There explanation is so facile it hurts.

Oh, yeah. Send me your money. Let's see if this works. I can feel my credibility completely disappearing. I don't care.

or by this method.

I ain't too proud to beg. It's that serious. I have $8.61 in my bank account to last me until next week. And then all my paycheck money is already reserved...for last month's bills!

A few things now that I'm done schilling (you think I'm joking, but I'm totally serious):

Read this! Interestingly enough, I heard a lot of Limbaugh's screed against Tom Daschle, and it made me quite angry. Sure, Daschle CAN be obstructionist! It's his fucking job to go against what the Republicans have to say, right? Apparently anybody who disagrees with the President's (or Rush's) stance on the War on Terror is unpatriotic. And it's not like Daschle even disagrees with the war itself, just how it's playing out. As the lovely and talented Mara G. pointed out in regards to the elections and Homeland Security...I'm paraphrasing here..."[the Dems, specifically Max Cleland] took one for the unions." The government unions, that is. Dems wanted to protect these peoples' jobs, for better or worse, and that's unpatriotic, apparently, because it wasn't the rubber stamp that Republicans required. Remember...Rush Limbaugh once accused the "liberal media" of covering the Daniel Pearl killing more than 9/11. I heard it...hahaha...you're kidding, El Rushbo? Right? What a cocksucker (and I mean this in no way to be an insult to actual cocksuckers out there).

Sorry for the long post, but read this, too. From Fox News, no less, but an article illustrating how Bush is as Big Government as liberals supposedly are--and fully willing to sacrifice civil rights for a tenuous security.

Even Neal Boortz is starting to turn on the Bushies. Conveniently AFTER the elections, I might add. He has lost almost all of the (misguided?) respect I once had for him.

I've decided that if 10,000 people sent me a dollar, I'd have, well, 10,000 dollars. I'm going to be like that girl who was all over TV a while ago getting people to help her pay off her credit card debt. Unlike her, I'm just trying to survive, going to graduate school, taking care of the bills and stuff while my fiancee is student teaching, being the "breadwinner" working 30-40 hrs. a week. Take pity on me. Send me your dollars! Spread the word! I'll promise to keep on blogging if you promise to keep sending me money. As a former semi-Marxist, I have no problem with taking other people's money, so bring it on!

Paypal ID: biggrayebay@hotmail.com (don't email me here)
last name: Jensen

Thank you for your support (in best Bartles and Jaymes voice--whatever happened to those guys?)

I have never been more broke in my life. If you want to Paypal me money you can: biggrayebay@hotmail.com...last name Jensen.

You think I'm joking...

I looked in the mirror today and realized: I have the body of William Shatner.

I observe high school classes every Tuesday and/or Thursday for school, and for some reason, I'm dreading it this morning. I don't want to listen to kids whine about their SUVs breaking down while other kids in the class have to work at night.

Oof! I just cleaned out the refrigerator and it was Nasty with a capital "N"! Courtnie has a leftover problem. There were half-eaten peaches, a half-eaten baked potato, half-eaten tuna salad, a half-eaten bagel...the list of half-eaten things goes on and on and on. I might be the messy one in this relationship, but when it comes to the refrigerator, Courtnie is the Nasty One. I hauled two gallons of slop to the compost pile.

You have no idea how evil year-old cottage cheese is.

Courtnie said something interesting about Benjamin Franklin last night: "He's ours." By ours, she means the United States of America's, and I got to thinking, she's right. While the Enlightenment was pretty much a European affair, we had Benjamin Franklin, our own Isaac Newton, Leonardo De Vinci, Hume, and Rousseau all rolled into one. He was maybe our first great thinker, at least in the European sense, and surely our first great scientist and inventor (not counting the indigenous people of this continent who hybridized plants and developed floating gardens and the like). He was adored by the British (for a while) and the French. He was an American taken seriously in Europe, and thusly he gave great credibility to the Colonial cause, and the subsequent United States. I would encourage everybody reading this to watch the second part of the documentary on PBS tonight (9 Eastern). Or read his autobiography. It's a good one.

You know, my pal Chris "Rippy" McElveen, is a big fan of my weblog (Lord knows why), so I just thought I'd give him a shout-out! I feel like a rap album's liner notes.

Rippy should do a 'blog 'cause he's funny.

Oh, and my friend Vaughn Sterling has started a fotolog. Whatever that is.

I haven't had much to say lately. Not sure why. I'm just exhausted, and I constantly feel on the verge of getting sick. I need to clean out the fridge (it stinks!) and clean up the house in general, but I lack motivation.

Watched a great documentary about Benjamin Franklin last night! That was one crazy motherfucker. By crazy, I mean brilliant, adaptable, innovative, and hilarious.

This is sorta weird, but I have a personal message to Lorrie, if she's reading this: I haven't been getting any emails or responses from you, so please email me at biggray@keg-party.com. That's my alternate email address. I haven't head anything in a while, so I think maybe something's up with hotmail.

That song by the New Radicals from a while back, "You Get What You Give," was a really catchy tune. I just heard it in a commercial.

This weekend was wet. And cold. And filled with stupid office politics at work. It's amazing how office politics manifest themselves in an office of five people as easily as they would in a business of 100. I love gossip, but the office politics at my job are really boring and stupid. "Did you hear that so and so forgot to lock up the trailers?" Snore...

Listen to old Garrison Keillor getting rowdy! From Salon:
(begin quote)
The hoots and cackles of Republicans reacting to my screed against Norman Coleman, the ex-radical, former Democratic, now compassionate conservative Senator-elect from Minnesota, was all to be expected, given the state of the Republican Party today. Its entire ideology, top to bottom, is We-are-not-Democrats, We-are-the-unClinton, and if it can elect an empty suit like Coleman, on a campaign as cheap and cynical and unpatriotic as what he waged right up to the moment Paul Wellstone's plane hit the ground, then Republicans are perfectly content. They are Republicans first and Americans second.

The old GOP of fiscal responsibility and principled conservatism and bedrock Main Street values is gone, my dear, and something cynical has taken its place. Thus the use of Iraq as an election ploy, openly, brazenly, from the president and Karl Rove all the way down to Norman Coleman, who came within an inch of accusing Wellstone of being an agent of al-Qaida. To do that one day and then, two days later, to feign grief and claim the dead Wellstone's mantle and carry on his "passion and commitment" is simply too much for a decent person to stomach. It goes beyond the ordinary roughhouse of politics. To accept it and grin and shake the son of a bitch's hand is to ignore what cannot be ignored if you want your grandchildren to grow up in a country like the one that nurtured and inspired you. I would rather go down to defeat with the Democrats I know than go oiling around with opportunists of Coleman's stripe, and you can take that to the bank.
(end quote)

I really need to become a Premium member of Salon, if for nothing else than letting me finish reading this tirade from the usually calmly polemical Keillor. Maybe I can use someone else's password...ahem...

Just for the record, some bands that I don't like very much:

Phantom Planet
Dashboard Confessional
The Standard
The Vines
Alkaline Trio
At The Drive-In (maybe #1 on my all-time overrated list)
Mars Volta (while I'm at it...)
A New Found Glory
The Dismemberment Plan (I want to like them soooo bad, but I just can't)
Jets to Brazil (well, the first record...I loved Jawbreaker quite a bit)
Burning Airlines
Death Cab For Cutie (okay, I like them okay, but not enough to own a record)
Queens of the Stone Age
Ryan Adams (well, I liked his first record and all of the Whiskeytown stuff)
Andrew WK (is the joke over?)
Bright Eyes
The Good Life
Cursive (are you detecting a trend here?)
Guided By Voices (well, their last three records is all I don't like)

Hmm...that's all I can do off the top of my head. There's more, though!

From my friend and bandmate Brandon Butler's blog:
(begin quote)
A Few Bands Many People Love But I Hate
Godspeed! You Black Emperor: Predictable, pretentious, boring. I have "Lift Yr Skinny..." and I haven't listened to it 5 times since I bought it.
Sigur Ros: OK, I don't hate them, but I'm very bored of them. The G!YBE descriptives often apply here.
The Beatles: Just kidding. I still don't own any of their records, but that's just my own ahistoricity more than any antipathy.
Clinic: Boring, boring, boring. If their drummer ever quits, they could replace him with a single drumloop. And the scrubs schtick is just stupid.
The Ramones: I appreciate the concept of the Ramones, but virtually any other band from that era is more fun to listen to than the guys that started it all.
That's about it. Mainly reading a review of the new Sigur Ros album that mentioned G!YBE prompted me to post this little list.
(end quote)

Well, I feel that I have to respond...first off, I haven't heard the new Sigur Ros, but I think that Sigur Ros' last record was absolutely gorgeous and a masterpiece of interesting production if nothing else. Secondly, it pisses me off when anybody calls a band (much less GYBE) pretentious because it seems to suggest that actually trying to do something different or achieve some sort of higher ideal of artistry or striving for something, you know, BIG is a bad thing. Listen, how many bands do what they do today...hmmm...Rachel's, maybe...the Dirty Three in a way...Village of Savoonga...not much else. Maybe you find their sound boring. I respect that. They can get repetitive and predictable (as do others on your list like the Ramones), but I highly doubt your problem is repetition or predictability in music. I mean, you're a Neil Young fan! Hahaha...
Anyway, I know you view music ahistorically which is fine, but you have to view the Ramones this way: no one else at that time sounded like them...maybe the MC5, New York Dolls or the Stooges--nah, too 60s, bluesy and sloppy, respectively. The Ramones distilled the punk rock formula; hell, they created it. The Sex Pistols were two bit fucking hacks compared to them. Would I rather listen to the Patti Smith or Television or Richard Hell? Yeah. But the Ramones wrote some great, great songs that feel, I don't know, pure. They feel essential and immediate. No other "punk" band has ever given me the feeling that the Ramones have. Well, maybe, Wire.
As for Clinic, I'd posit that you've never actually listened to Internal Wrangler because that album throws out more diversity of style on one record than most bands crank out over a career. Walking With Thee was tighter, and maybe because of that I never got into it as much. And what's wrong with drum loops?

I am so excited about Metroid Prime. But I'm broke.

Bob Dylan on the Beach Boys' Filmore Theatre gig opening for the Grateful Dead in 1971: "You know, they're fucking good, man."

I watched the movie The Candidate today, and I absolutely loved it. It's a really subtle satire that almost plays like a documentary, and to be honest, I'm very surprised that this movie doesn't come up more in discussions of the great movies of the '70's. Maybe because there were so many great movies in the '70's...I don't know. As much as I hate it when celebrities open their mouths when it comes to politics, I kinda wish Robert Redford would run for office. Or at least his Bill McKay character from the movie.

I also watched The Naked Kiss, which was over-the-top and cool in the usual Sam Fuller way, and Kiss Me Deadly, which I've seen before. I'll never get tired of that movie...I wish Robert Aldrich had gone on and made more of the Mike Hammer movies with Ralph Meeker. I've decided that the briefcase in Pulp Fiction must be a direct homage to the box in Kiss Me Deadly. It just seems to obvious. I like movies that seem fairly facile but throw in some twist involving supernatural stuff or something perverse a la Chinatown or Kiss Me Deadly.

Oh, man, I beat all of salon.com to the punch in my suggestion to get rid of Terry McAuliffe! I should be a pundit. I don't think it takes much to be a pundit, after hearing them all talk on election night. I didn't hear anything particularly inspiring from anyone. Those Crossfire guys are beyond annoying, except for maybe Paul Begala.

Geez...it hardly seems like the GOP has a mandate, but the media is taking that ball and running with it, effectively giving the GOP a mandate. And the press is liberal? Pshaw.

Phew! What a shitty night here in Georgia! Saxby Chambliss is a fraud, and no one seems to mind because he beat out "liberal" Max Cleland who didn't have the "courage" to defend America even though he lost three limbs in the Vietnam War and was an early sponsor of the Homeland Security bill. All Saxby Chambliss said was this: "Max Cleland had the gall to vote differently than what President Bush wanted." And he won. Shows you what people think about President Bush here in Georgia, I reckon.

I realize that my solutions to fixing the Democratic Party were redundant, but it was late, and I was coming up with them off the top of my head. I still stick by them. I would say that the Democrats should really turn up the heat on the economy. No holds barred. And what of all the scandals out there: Halliburton, Enron, etc.? Go after 'em. Or do they hit close to home? The party of the working man has very few working men in Congress. I think I read a statistic one time (and I might be confabulating here) that Democrats in Congress were richer than Republicans. I know that John Kerry is the heir to the Heinz family fortune (well, his wife is), and he is one of the non-Al Gore potential presidential picks for 2004.

Anyway, last night was a real disappointment, but I can't say that I expected any different, though the losses here in Georgia--Doug Haines (why?!), Max Cleland, Roy Barnes--were a shock.

To the Dems out there wondering what's going wrong: This is what happens when a party offers no real alternative to the opposition...the losers tonight could have voted with Wellstone against President Bush and his Iraq policy and might have come out better. They couldn't have ended up any worse, right? The Democrats caved on too many issues and when they did oppose Bush they looked whiny and obstructionist, not principled. The Democratic Party has some serious problems when it can't turn a dismal economy into an election-winning issue. Democrats out there who don't think something is wrong are fucking naive.

My suggestions:
1. Terry McAuliffe has to go. He's a Clinton-era relic who is still stuck on Election 2000.
2. No more Walter Mondales...this is the hope for Democrats?
3. Related to #2: younger, more vibrant candidates. The Democratic Party reeks of crony-ism; the Republicans' candidates look positively diverse these days! People are tired of Gephardt, Gore, and Kennedy.
4. Cede the soundbites to someone different: Russ Feingold, for example. Like I said, I think the Democrats' big hitters like Daschle need to take a media break for a while. There is a lot of hatred for these folks: just listen to talk radio.
5. You know what? All Clinton-era folks have to go: no more James Carville (God love him), no more Terry McAuliffe, no more Al Gore, no more Joe Lieberman. Do not allow these people to speak for the party anymore. The Democratic party needs to distance itself from that era to reel in skeptics. Hell, I'm a skeptic. I supported Bill Clinton twice and what did we get? Inaction in Rwanda and Yugoslavia (Bosnia was too little, too late, in my opinion), the Defense of Marriage Act, Welfare "Reform", Goals 2000, and scandal after scandal. I really wanted to like him, but it was just one depressing setback after another.

Basically, what I'm saying is that the Democratic Party needs new blood. Gore, Daschle, Gephardt, regardless of what they say are damaged goods. We need vision. We don't need consensus with an idiotic administration. We don't need any more erosion of civil rights. We don't need tunnel vision and groupthink-addled foreign policy. We don't need empty platitudes and mindless obstructionism. We need guts.

Right now, I think the Democratic Party is broken and heading towards irrelevancy.

In good news, in our Athens' local elections, Democrats and liberals are cleaning house. Local curmudgeon Hugh Logan was ousted! I love this town.

And Governor Roy Barnes is going to lose because of the Confederate Flag issue. Fucking amazing. Like I said before: Things are NOT getting better. The South is ten steps behind the rest of the country in just about every way. And it will stay there.

Wow! It looks like Max Cleland is going to lose to yes-man Saxby Chambliss. Fucking amazing.

Gotta admit...I'm really worried about these elections, and once again, the Democrats have no one to blame but themselves. They didn't get aggressive enough on the issues, and they are having real trouble getting their message (whatever it is...I'm not too clear on it) across. The economy issue wasn't working and they all mollycoddled the White House on Iraq, so they were dead in the water. Maybe they should have hammered the economy issue more, but it seemed like they almost wanted the economy to do poorly and they came off a little disingenuous: "We want what's best for the country...ooh! Bad economic news--hurray!"

I hope that Max Cleland can pull it out here in GA. I'm worried. And all of our local races seem lost, too.

Got back from Atlanta and then went there again! To go see the Flaming Lips! Who now have full-time live drumming! Oh, it was an amazing show, and the Cherry Valence was a pretty good opening act (two singing drummers), though recycled Led Zep riffs, no matter how skillfully played, begin to grate on you after 45 minutes or so. The Lips were playing without Beck tonight with a bunch of people in animal costumes on stage. I was supposed to be an animal, but when I got there the slots were already filled. Crushing disappointment. I love gadding about, and this seemed a perfect outlet for my gadding skills. Still, the Flaming Lips never cease to amaze and I loved the show, though it seemed a bit short.

Can't wait to see them again...I'll try to find last night's set list for you and post it. Don't miss them on this Beck tour if you can help it. They played a little bit of "Where It's At" and it sounded fantastic.

Fuck this...I'm going to Atlanta to get my suit.

Another good one from Dave Barry. Those students' comments are hilarious and kind of proved his point. And that quote from the guy from Jimmy Eat World! Was he trying to be funny? He ended up sounding pretty dumb...

Still waiting for customer service. Say it once and say it again. Bellsouth fucking sucks.

Still waiting on Bellsouth customer service...assholes.

Good stuff from Dave Barry as always. Check out the state slogan for Washington: "by and by." Ha! Like Dave Barry says, "prepare to be inspired." I really want to see the Rock Bottom Remainders in concert. Especially the Dave Barry, Amy Tan, Stephen King, Barbara Kingsolver, Ridley Pearson, Greil Marcus, Matt Groening lineup. I can't believe they actually tour.

Here's the script to Episode II with all the names changed to funny things like Stallone and Dr. Dickhouse to avoid copyright enfringement laws. It's kind of confusing.

Yep. Waiting on Bellsouth.

On a product endorsement note, I find Barilla's Green and Black Olive Spaghetti sauce quite delicious! Courtnie made some last night with Veggie Crumblers (coming around to those) and it was phenomenal. She messed with it somehow, adding stuff to it, but good God! it was the best spaghetti I've had in forever.

I still chuckle when I think about David Letterman's top ten list of most unpopular Halloween candies: "Good N' Sweaty!" "Poisenettes!" Hahahaha!

Oops. I linked to the Italian Barilla site up above. Here's the English one. When I was a kid I used to fall prey to the Prego and Ragu advertising's emphasis on spaghetti sauce thickness. No more! I find I like my sauces a little thinner and with less of a sweet and stewed taste.

What in God's name am I talking about? And why do I still capitalize "God" when I'm pretty much an atheist?

I have no comment. Really.

I just watched the Harry Potter movie for the first time, and I really enjoyed it, though I think that the kid who plays Harry Potter reacts more than he acts. Also, for all the cool stuff going on, there seemed to be very little zip to the story--some essential spark was missing. Still, as far as kids' movies go, it was no Pixar but it was really well-done.

I also watched the remake of Insomnia which was fantastic, though once again, Hollywood changed an ending. Not too much, really, but they Hollywood-ed it up about, oh, 10% or so. The ending wasn't bad, just different. It's not a very Hollywood movie, what with Al Pacino playing such a fallible (guilty?) lead character. I'm glad they preserved all of that from the original whilst making him a little more sympathetic, albeit not much more sympathetic. Stellan Skarsgaard made his Dormer seem almost sociopathic near the end. Anyway, both are excellent and I would recommend them to anyone. I think that Christopher Nolan might be the real thing.

I don't know why, but I can't stop thinking about Punch-Drunk Love.

And someone said something about Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve a few days ago to me. Grrrr....

Just when you thought it was safe to be a liberal in the South...

A guy comes up to me at work, asks me how much a piece of equipment is, and I tell him $150. He says, "Phew! That's high! For that price, I could hire a nigger to do it in 15 minutes."

Haha.

I defend the South all the time, saying things have gotten better, and Detroit and Indiana and whatever are just as bad, but the truth is I'm not so sure. Because this wasn't the only time I heard this today. I heard three similar comments TODAY. I heard a joke about killing (that's right, KILLING) Mexicans the other day. From a black guy. Everybody makes fun of Mexicans, even though they're (and not all of them are Mexican though they get lumped together) the only ones willing to work hard and do the shitty jobs no one else wants to do. No wonder they take all the jobs from these moaners and groaners! And that guy who told me the aforementioned nigger joke? He drove a fucking Mercedes or something. It wasn't Joe Redneck getting into his IROC wearing a Dale, Jr. shirt as the stereotype might have you believe. I get this from Saxby Chambliss-types all the time. And young kids, too.

Oh, and a guy bragged about being in the Klan to us. And talked about lynching. I was so angry I was shaking. But I kept my mouth shut.

I hear from apologist liberals all the time that things have gotten better. My friend David (who is one of the best people I know) gave up his Southern self-loathing years ago and I wish I could do the same but I can't. Because things aren't fucking better. Everybody acts like the Civil Rights Act solved everything, the slate's clean, isn't it great that black and white people work together (yeah, in fast food and construction). Maybe I'm painting too grim a picture, but I think that fellow liberals have given up. They honestly think that just talking about racism is going to solve it. Bullshit. We are dealing with entrenched, systematic (that's the key word), structural racism. We are dealing with redlining, steering, discriminatory hiring practices, profiling, etc. Just in the microcosm of my store and surrounding stores all of this exists. And I work in Oconee County, Athens' own White Flight refuge. I mean, even Athens has a White Flight area! And NOBODY talks about it. Nobody looks at the spatial mismatch of Atlanta and says "This is bullshit." But everybody knows what is going on. Things are not better because we have wall-to-wall traffic in Atlanta. That traffic is directly proportional to the sum total of racist crap in that city. And Sean Hannity and Neal Boortz are proud of their city. Fuck them. Fuck Atlanta. Fuck Oconee County. Fuck Alpharetta. Fuck Suwanee. Fuck Colorado. Fuck Utah. Fuck Grosse Pointe. Fuck southern private schools. Fuck Ole Miss. Fuck the rebel flag. My list of fuck you's could go on forever.

I vow not be an apologist anymore. I can't sit idly by and let this shit go on around me. I have to say something, even if it means losing my job. I have to do more than talk. I have to open people's eyes to what they seem to ignore. I am going to use my classroom as one big Bullshit Detector, like Hemingway talked about. I'm so fucking sick of it.

Interesting stuff about the supposed Al Gore/Willie Horton connection...if you don't read this site regularly, you are doing yourself a great disservice.

Forget the Drudge Report, this guy is a real media watchdog.

It seems as if my phone has been disconnected...but why? I paid the bill. Hmmmm....

Last night, Courtnie went as Frida Kahlo for Halloween. I went as Elton John. More people knew who I was, but that's understandable. I had a hard time acting like Elton John, though. I mean, he cusses a lot in interviews, he's British, he's flamboyant, but what are his normal conversation mannerisms? I talked about Taupin and bulimia and cocaine a lot. Stories like this:

"Me and fucking Taupin were doing lines off the board during the Brick Road sessions, and I'm coked out of my bloody mind, and I turn to Bernie and say...'what the fuck are these fucking lyrics about anyway?' and he looks at me all fucking sweet and shit, but I know what the fuck's going on in his shitty fucking head: he knows his lyrics are shit and I write these fucking brilliant fucking hooks and Taupin just comes and shits on it with his Daniel and fucking Honky Cat and shit. Changed my redneck ways? Sod off, Bernie, I don't even know what a redneck fucking is, you goddamned queen. And what in the bloody hell are the dogs of society? Why are they howling? Fucking Taupin one word name piece of shit."

This was the only speech I can really remember, but I think it had the desired effect. Only one person listening actually knew who Bernie Taupin was...