Hump Day Happy Hour - Blondie

My parents (okay, my dad) had The Best of Blondie on vinyl when I was a kid, and it kicked some serious ass. Except for the skip in the middle of "Sunday Girl," but I digress. This is "Dreaming," off Blondie's 1979 album Eat To The Beat.

I'll have a cup of tea,

Regis

I Haven't Forgetten About You

... life just decided to hit the fan. In the past month, I've had two older relatives (a great-uncle and a great-great-aunt) pass away. I wasn't very close to either of them, but my main connection to both Uncle Tom and Aunt Birdeen is from particularly good parts of my childhood and losing that living link sucks.

I'm also getting divorced. This isn't the place to go into details, but suffice it to say it's a consensual agreement. It won't be finalized until next year (since it looks like I'll get screwed on taxes), and I don't know that next year can come fast enough at this point. Even in my current state of tentative relief, the situation still sucks.

Oh, and I've abandoned NaNoWriMo. I'm sure it would be great to get away into a world of anthropomorphic college versions of myself and various friends, but my motivation has been more or less nonexistent. I'm not throwing the idea away (if I don't work on it independently, I might use it next year), but now just isn't the time and that sucks.

But enough of all that, this isn't supposed to be a place of lamentations. It's time to focus on the good things in our lives, because even with all the shit in this clusterfuck of a world we live in, we all have a lot to be thankful for. Y'know, like January 20, 2009.

The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades,

Regis

We're Doomed

As previously mentioned, we're once again in the middle of National Novel Writing Month. Last year, I successfully wrote better than 50,000 words (the goal) of a novel in the month of November, even if I never actually finished the story. This year may be a different, uh, tale.

To say that I'm running behind is a pretty big understatement. I put up a couple of widgets up here to track my progress, and you can see that I'm doing my best impression of a Bush-style deficit. This is still doable, though, and I've finally got an idea that I feel I can run with (I had two false starts, but each was less than 1000 words). No major freak outs until the 24th, I promise.

Hooray for elections, Rock Springs, and economy size writer's block,

Regis

Hump Day Happy Hour - The Cardigans

I made it back from Rock Springs a better person than when I left, as I have discovered the deliciousness of Zotes Hot Wings flavor sunflower seeds. Thanks, Exxon next to the Center Street exit in Casper!

This week brings a clip from The Cardigans, probably best remembered for the song "Lovefool" from Romeo + Juliet, which pretty much every girl I was in junior high with at the time was borderline obsessed with. While I was tempted to put up Nina and company's video for "I Need Some Fine Wine and You, You Need To Be Nicer" (one of the previous decade's best song titles) or their almost painfully adorable cover of "Iron Man," I've opted to present "My Favorite Game" instead.



My heart is black and my body is blue,
Regis

The Fun Never Ends

I'm off for Rock Springs to do more concrete testing. On a scale of one to Shakira, my enthusiasm for this is about a Dick Cheney in a Speedo.

-Regis

(The Day After) Hump Day Happy Hour - The Darkness

The election has completely thrown my week off (not that last week was a whole lot better), so here's a double dose of rock to make it up to you.

Drugs are bad for a lot of reasons, number four being that they cause the premature destruction of The Darkness, a band that tapdanced on Spinal Tap's thin line between stupid and clever. "I Believe In A Thing Called Love" is a prime example of what cocaine and vodka have taken away from the world.


People's Exhibit B: "Growing On Me."


My heart's in overdrive and you're behind the steering wheel,
Regis

Accentuating the Positive

While I remember little things about the 1988 presidential election, the first one I paid some semblance of attention to was 2000. I was seventeen, and probably would have voted for Nader had I been about five months older (yeah, that'll show 'em!). That election was a mess and a half, but to me it was really just a big joke about how dumb the people of Florida were.

In 2004, I was probably the only person in my 8:00 MWF Structural Steel Design class that voted for John Kerry (maybe I was just the only one dumb enough to admit it). While it looked like Bush had narrowly won the state, it wasn't totally clear what the result from Ohio was going to be that Wednesday morning, and I was almost mocked by my classmates for suggesting that the votes just be counted, and that would be that.

Damn, but it feels good to have a presidential election with a clear winner right away - and it feels even better to have it be my guy. And even if my vote didn't help Obama in the electoral college, I can take a small bit of pride in having contributed to that crushing popular vote total.

Oh yeah, and only two and a half months until we can hear that sweetest of phrases, "former President George W. Bush."

Yes we can,
Regis

House Race Reaction

FUCK.

Almost There...

As you've probably read, or heard, or been told, there's an election tomorrow. Elections are great, but only if the electorate is informed.

I've tried to bring to light issues and ideas involved in the races for Wyoming's congressional seats. Since the races for both senate seats are, to put it bluntly, foregone conclusions (and that's a damn big shame), most of my focus has been on the race between Republican (and aspiring comedienne) Cynthia Lummis, Democrat Gary Trauner, and Libertarian W. David Herbert. It's pretty clear who I think the best candidate of the three is.

Gary Trauner is the candidate that will best represent the entire state - not just the narrow majority (or possibly even plurality) of votes that send the winner to Washington. A vote for Trauner is a vote for balance, for common sense, for what is right for Wyoming instead of what is right for a political party. He's run a largely positive campaign and has stood up for himself firmly. Our exceedingly popular Democratic governor endorsed him, and he even got an A- from the NRA (the only real difference between him and Lummis is her record of voting on gun-related issues; he hasn't been in a position to do so yet). He's far more a pragmatist than an ideologue - not your garden-variety "typical liberal" by any means.

Cynthia Lummis has given no indication she'll be anything other than a blindly loyal partisan rubber stamp at the beck and call of the congressional Republican leadership. She's run a negative campaign full of gross mischaracterizations and what can only be accurately called "shit she made up" ($2.6 trillion for illegal immigrants, much?) or else she's been, to put it charitably, intellectually lazy (labeling Trauner a "typical liberal Democrat" in a recent TV spot) suggests that she won't work with Democratic House leadership or a potential President Obama (y'know, they're all typical liberal Democrats), so it isn't a big logical step to figure she'll be an ineffective congresswoman at best. She's been endorsed by both Pat Boone and the NFIB, a group that considers unions "interference." It's also clear she out of touch with the average Wyomingite and wants the job for the wrong reasons, as she's contributed $100,000 to herself. Oh, and if she did show up at a candidates forum she didn't make much of an effort to stick around and meet with the voters in attendance. And to top it all off, she appeals to the worst of Wyoming's nature by pushing the notion that the "Wyoming Values" - which she still hasn't defined - she shares with the voters belong to her and her alone, and can never be shared by anyone born outside the four borders of the state (like Senators Enzi and Barrasso, I guess). She's the same kind of class act that Barbara Cubin has been for the last eighteen years, except she'll show up more than half the time.

For the last time, Wyoming: we're smarter than this. Let's get it right this year!

See you at the polls,

Regis

More On The Company They Keep

As I mentioned in the previous post, Dick Cheney stumped for fellow Republicans Cynthia Lummis, Mike Enzi, and John Barrasso in Laramie this Friday. Today's Casper Star-Tribune had more to report; beyond the picture where Cheney and Lummis have the same damn smile, one of the more telling parts was this:

Cheney also urged voters to select an all-Republican ticket because the small size of Wyoming's delegation makes it all the more important that its members be able to work together.

Ever the class act, Cheney is saying that Senators Enzi and Barrasso - who, barring an act of God, are going to retain their seats (much to my chagrin) - are, like himself, blind partisans that put the party line before the needs of the people they are supposed to represent. Because we all know that Democrats - especially Democrats from Wyoming - are utterly incapable of working with the Republicans that outnumber them. I mean, just look at Governor Freudenthal and the campaign that's been run by Lummis' opponent, Gary Trauner. Yep, nothing but utter left-wing partisan hackery there, folks.

So when you go to the polls on Tuesday (assuming you haven't already voted), remember to vote a straight Republican ticket because

• Our Republican delegation isn't professional enough to work with Democrats, even if they represent the exact same people,
• Blind party loyalty has worked so well for the Bush administration, so don't fix it if it ain't broke, and
• Cheney said so, which pretty much makes it law thanks to some Machiavellian trickery with signing statements and such.

Seriously, can we move past this type of division? Please? Even though I disagree with our senators on several fronts, I won't disparage their professionalism like Dick (as we locals call him) does. 

With friends like this, who needs enemies?

Regis

The Company They Keep: A Contrast

A while back, Governor Freudenthal endorsed Democrat Gary Trauner in the race for Wyoming's lone seat in the US House of Representatives. Well, Vice President Dick Cheney, former occupant of the aforementioned House seat, campaigned for Republican Cynthia Lummis (as well as Senators Enzi and Barrasso) in Laramie yesterday.

As the saying goes, you can tell a lot about someone by the company they keep.

I feel like I keep repeating myself on this basic point, but it really bears repeating. On one hand we have a guy that seeks consensus and reaches out to other people regardless of their political affiliation endorsing a candidate with a similar modus operandi. On the other we have a guy that doesn't even know enough about the Constitution to know what branch of government he's been in for the last eight years (it's the executive branch, in case you were curious), who has no problem with dirty politics, who chose to walk on the "dark side" and trample what this country is supposed to stand for in the process, and who is perfectly happy to consider a narrow majority equivalent to a landslide mandate endorsing a candidate content to take that same narrow majority and play the same dirty politics.

We've had enough of this, gang. We're smarter than this. So get to the polls and vote on Tuesday - this race is going down to the wire, and every single vote counts.

Let's do this,

Regis