rocket to nowhere

If Sarah Palin has given us nothing else, she’s given us a great deal of really smart, really funny writing. To wit:

But watching Palin’s speech, I had no doubt that I was witnessing a historic, iconic performance. The candidate sauntered to the lectern with the assurance of a sleepwalker – and immediately launched into a symphony of snorting and sneering remarks, taking time out in between the superior invective to present herself as just a humble gal with a beefcake husband and a brood of healthy, combat-ready spawn who just happened to be the innocent targets of a communist and probably also homosexual media conspiracy. It was a virtuoso performance. She appeared to be completely without shame and utterly full of shit, awing a room full of hardened reporters with her sickly sweet line about the high-school-flame-turned-hubby who, “five children later” is “still my guy.” It was like watching Gidget address the Reichstag.

Please read the whole essay.
It’s later than you think, and we’re totally fucked no matter what happens.
(That being said, please vote Obama; I’d much rather be totally fucked and thinking about it coherently than, you know, how Russia and Canada are two countries that are foreign due to that they’re not, you know, in America.)

Now, let us discuss the Élites. There are two kinds of folks: Élites and Regulars. Why people love Sarah Palin is, she is a Regular. That is also why they love me. She did not go to some Élite Ivy League college, which I also did not. Her and me, actually, did not go to the very same Ivy League school. Although she is younger than me, so therefore she didn’t go there slightly earlier than I didn’t go there. But, had I been younger, we possibly could have not graduated in the exact same class. That would have been fun. Sarah Palin is hot. Hot for a politician. Or someone you just see in a store. But, happily, I did not go to college at all, having not finished high school, due to I killed a man. But had I gone to college, trust me, it would not have been some Ivy League Élite-breeding factory but, rather, a community college in danger of losing its accreditation, built right on a fault zone, riddled with asbestos, and also, the crack-addicted professors are all dyslexic.

thanks Jess!

because of perfectly balanced sentences like this one:

The wife of international banker Sir Evelyn de Rothschild endorsed McCain for president because she finds Barack Obama to be an elitist.

Take a picture of yourself right now.
Don’t change your clothes, don’t fix your hair…just take a picture.
Post that picture with NO editing.
Post these instructions with your picture.

I was simply following Jen Tynes’ blog’s instructions. I cannot be held responsible?

“Sarah Palin Naked”
by Michael Seitzman

She said “nucular.” Twice.

I realized three things tonight. For one, if you are a McCain/Palin/Bush voter, you and I do not have a difference of opinion. We have a difference in brain power. Two, she really is as ignorant as I feared. And, three, she really is kinda hot. Basically, I want to have sex with her on my Barack Obama sheets while my wife reads aloud from the Constitution. (My wife is cool with this if I promise to “first wipe off Palin’s tranny makeup.” I married well.)

Now, I want to be clear and speak directly to those of you who LOVED that Palin interview. You’re an idiot. I mean that. This is not one of those cases where we’re going to agree to disagree. This isn’t one of those situations where we debate it passionately and then walk away thinking that the other guy is wrong but argued well. I’m not going to think of you as a thoughtful but misguided person with different ideas who still really cares about the country and the world. No, sorry, not this time. This time, if you watched those interview excerpts and weren’t scared out of your freakin’ mind, then you’re mentally ill, mentally disabled, or mentally disturbed. What you are NOT is responsible, informed, curious, thoughtful, mature, educated, empathetic, or remotely serious. I mean it.

But I like to think that anyone can change.

Stop voting for people you want to have a beer with. Stop voting for folksy. Stop voting for people who remind you of your neighbor. Stop voting for the ideologically intransigent, the staggeringly ignorant, and the blazingly incompetent.

Vote for someone smarter than you. Vote for someone who inspires you. Vote for someone who has not only traveled the world but who has also shown a deep understanding and compassion for it. The stakes are real and they’re terrifyingly high. This election matters. It matters. It really matters. Let me say that one more time. This. Really. Matters.

This morning at 4:00 a.m., I was awakened by a noise. I got up, checked the house, found nothing, and went back to bed. As I was falling asleep again, I heard the rain and thought, “Oh, it’s raining.” I dozed a little and then heard a scratching and thought, “Oh, there’s some scratching outside.” I dozed a little more and heard a different noise, and thought, “Oh, there’s a bat in our room.”

I got up, and J asked, “What is that noise?” I said, “I’m not yet sure, I want to see it.” I got the flashlight, and shined it in the waste basket (which is lined with plastic and scratches nicely) and yes, yes, there was a bat in our room.

I covered the waste basket, took it outside, uncovered it, and let the bat loose. It flew away.

We went back into the bedroom, and J said, “Let’s make sure there aren’t more.” She’s very smart like that. So we turned on the lights and searched around and lo and behold! there was another bat clinging to the inside of the screen (between the screen and the window)!

We closed the window. And then watched the bat. For too long. It was four in the morning. But wow, they’re interesting creatures.

The bat was still there when I left the house today at noon.

You can see, quite clearly, the gap between the top of the screen and the wood of the window. This is where the bats crawled in. Needless to say, we have put in an order for better fitting screens with our landlady.

Adventure!

Waaay back in the year 2000, my good friend Ryan and I made a series of drawings all based around a maniacally grinning man (?) in a Charlie Brown Shirt and sporting puppets. Ryan was responsible for the drawing, and I was responsible for the words.

I stumbled across those drawings the other day when I was looking for something else, and they became the catalyst for a relatively major website update: I have added a new section called “other” to my website. That section contains not only all the drawings Ryan and I made, but also several videos I have made in the last ten years or so.

Please go there and then either leave a comment here or write me an email and let me know what you think (or if you find any bugs!).

As long as you’re going places, please also check out Ryan’s blog called “No Luck Boy,” which is just getting started, but definitely has the potential to be even more awesome than it already is!

Here is a reminder that the first installment of This Is Not a Reading will take place on Monday, September 15th. You should come. Here is something I worked up for the reading and then decided against using:

Using the words “Reading,” “Rainbow,” and “Lburton,” I made this chart:

book: R(18) E(5) A(1) D(4) I(9) N(14) G(7)
page: L(12) B(2) U(21) R(18) T(20) O(15) N(14)
line: R(18) A(1) I(9) N(14) B(2) O(15) W(23)

So, for instance, I went to the 23rd line of the 14th page of the 7th book whose author’s last name began with the letter G (that book being Ferdydurke by Witold Gombrowicz), and found “them with my whole body, but he sat down, so I too had to sit down.” I then, for the sake of meaning and ease, copied out the whole sentence connected to that line:

At the sight of this horribly banal and utterly commonplace Form I threw myself on my texts, covering them with my whole body, but he sat down, so I too had to sit down, and having sat down he proceeded to offer me his condolences on the death of my aunt, who died long ago and whom I had totally forgotten.

After I collected all seven lines/sentences, I deleted and rearranged and deleted some more, and came up with the following paragraph (but sadly no more, which is why I don’t think I’ll be reading this at the not-reading):

My grandfather waits, as the reader must have guessed, in the monastery library. Was there, or was there not, any possibility of breaking the muddy, ominous sort of peace? If there was, the question was how to go about meaning it. And now, as he looked up into his own, he thought for the thousandth time how his heart ached with love. But Mr. Krap tells me that the whole issue’s been reopened, and that its most universal effect is deception; but even its most particular effects have something of the same three local tycoons. At the sight of this horribly banal and utterly commonplace form I threw myself on my whole body. But he sat down, and having sat down he proceeded to offer me his condolences on the death of my grandfather who waits. And during this hiatus, the last of a muddy, ominous sort, I had better get round to describing him. I found no trace of Adso’s manuscript. It was obvious. The resistance of the committee to Mrs. Silver’s smiling face—how pretty she was, how sweet and gentle and full of kindness, and I just met the whole railroad issue, and Bernick’s in conference with the same character. So I too had to sit down, and having sat down long ago, I had totally forgotten.

Instead, I think I’ll be reading from a longer piece written with a smaller rainbow. You should show up and find out what happens!