So yesterday I was running on empty. Hence no posts. A good Dem debate, though.

Today I'm a little busy. But I did manage to find time to see the new, bad ass, Matrix Revolutions trailer. It's right here along with downloading options. Makes the one at the end of the second movie look like a joke. Go check it out. I'd upload it to the site but it's rather large.

Have fun!

So I make it out the door and start walking home. But I get halfway there and this prostitute pulls up in a car and asks if I want to go for a ride. I say no, that I'm too tired, but she talks for a minute and then says "hold on, I'm going to pull over and get out." So she does.

I keep walking, and she seems annoyed, so she calls after me. Oddly, (for 2 in the morning) there's some mother walking across the corner and she things the prostitute is yelling at her, so she starts to yell back. Pretty soon I've left both behind but I can hear their escalating shouts across the street corners getting louder and louder even as I walk away.

Who picks a fight with a prostitute? And who would tell one "you should be ashamed" as if the prostitute is going to say, "oh, what was I thinking?" I love this town.

The bat is almost at $1 million. If only I didn't need to sleep so badly...

A long day at work. I'm going to crash now...but unfortunately I have to walk all the way home. I love the Metro system, but there are some times I wish WMATA ran 24-7. Tonight is one of those nights.

Oh, before I forget. Head over to the Dean blog and cough up $5 so that we can hit a million before tomorrow's debate. Better yet, if you're reading this while I'm walking home, contribute now so that when I wake up I'll see a cool mil filling the first bat.

For those a little slow on the news cycle, Dean finally took the lead in a national poll (meaningless in terms of the primaries themselves but a good indicator of name recognition, etc.) which will come out tomorrow. He's beating Clark by 1 point in this one, which should stem some of the Clark buzz, which is good, but not great for the Dems as a whole.

I'm somewhat of a perfectionist, which only partially explains why I'm still working in my office this evening. Several people came up to me with only a few hours left in the day and gave me tasks that needed to be completed before tomorrow. So here I am, working. There are currently so many problems with the things I'm doing that it's driving me crazy.

I take a dinner break about half an hour ago, and sit down to watch the California debate. Big mistake. I feel like throwing up now. Put simply, not only is the debate format idiotic, (with candidates screaming at another about non-policy points) but the candidates themselves leave little to be desired. On the whole, Cruz Bustamante and McClintock came across as the only two people who had fairly legit policy positions. Arnold looked foolish: he came with a quiver full of sound-bites but almost nothing of substance to say. Arianna was much the same. The green party guy, Peter Camejo, sounded reasonable by comparison. In fact, he probably almost approached Cruz's level of competence. But all the candidates keep interjecting statements into the other comments, rendering the whole debate format useless. You might as well just have them fight to the death.

After half an hour I grew too frustrated to watch anymore. Now I'm back to the sisyphean task, only this time I'm properly motivated.

I threw some new titles up onto the website this afternoon, inspired by last night, when I sat at home watching a fine film about the wonders of the neutron bomb. I didn't really feel like doing much else. The new ones remind of the Washington Post Sunday Edition. Back in the day, during the salad days of the Style Invitational, they used to have "The Ear No One Reads" which was located (where ears are, naturally!) on the upper right hand front page of the Style section each Sunday. It always said something crazy. It reminded me of when I used to work on a newspaper in college and unintentional puns slipped through the censors and made it to the final edition. We'd always be a little sheepish, but most of the time they were just laugh-out-loud funny, so I didn't feel too bad. Hopefully these title will one day be looked back upon as lighter fare than the main courses that eventually replaced them.

This evening the sky has the sort of color, combined with the red, sunlit clouds, that reminds me of my namesake. I should really get down to one of the art galleries sometime now that the weather has started to approach a normal temperature and the tourist season is slowly dying down.

I'm leaving late...with the knowledge that the next three days will be fairly busy for me, seeing as how everyone in the office has assigned me some mundane task to complete. Oh, well. At least I have a great job most of the time.

At the risk of exposing more details, let's just say that my previous employer's workplace was full of crazy moments like people getting escorted out of the building by security due to a wicked pornography habit or a cubicle fight over a single woman. In all cases, each of the participants had been recently married, which I'm sure led to even more fun once said people returned to their happy homes. This revelation tops marital infidelity (whether by swimsuit model or office secretary), quite handily.

No porn, though. Okay, back to work.

Every so often, something happens to remind me that my life is very plush. Sometimes it's a little thing. Sometimes it's a big thing.

The news I received this morning was particularly apt at conveying this message. Most of the time I'm not squeamish about sharing lurid details of my life on this website. However, since in this instance said details involve another person, I'm not going to dish dirt here. If you know me, you should definitely speak to me. Everyone else can simply salivate and get used to disappointment.

I'll get back to the regular dirty laundry lists later.

Or, more precisely, why Jonathan Chait hates Bush. The article is right here. Unlocked for your pleasure: you don't need to be a TNR subscriber. Yay! Some choice words...but be sure to read the whole thing.

All this helps answer the oft-posed question of why liberals detest Bush more than Reagan. It's not just that Bush has been more ideologically radical; it's that Bush's success represents a breakdown of the political process. Reagan didn't pretend to be anything other than what he was; his election came at the crest of a twelve-year-long popular rebellion against liberalism. Bush, on the other hand, assumed office at a time when most Americans approved of Clinton's policies. He triumphed largely because a number of democratic safeguards failed. The media overwhelmingly bought into Bush's compassionate-conservative facade and downplayed his radical economic conservatism. On top of that, it took the monomania of a third-party spoiler candidate, plus an electoral college that gives disproportionate weight to GOP voters--the voting population of Gore's blue-state voters exceeded that of Bush's red-state voters--even to bring Bush close enough that faulty ballots in Florida could put him in office.

But Bush is never called to task for the radical disconnect between how he got into office and what he has done since arriving. Reporters don't ask if he has succeeded in "changing the tone." Even the fact that Bush lost the popular vote is hardly ever mentioned. Liberals hate Bush not because he has succeeded but because his success is deeply unfair and could even be described as cheating.

Strong words for troubling times.

With Clark's entry into the race, the question of Dean's "electability" has come to the forefront again. Clark supporters (and I know many) seem to feel that the General is the only person who can reliably beat George Bush. The ghosts of the past have spooked Dems into believing that a candidate's resume matters more than anything else. The best counter-example? Our current President. If the Dems were to run someone who skipped out of National Guard duty at a time when Vietnam was raging, that candidate would be crucified. If we were to run a candidate whose "business experience" involved wasting millions of other peopls's dollar, the candidate wouldn't make it past the primary. In short, if the GOP is willing to defeat a true prisoner-of-war hero like John McCain in favor for George Bush, only to see Bush elected over Gore, the question of electability is moot. The real question is how to rally your base, and Dr. Dean has the ability to do that in spades, plus energize new voters.

But just in case anyone forgot the timely cartoon from awhile back, here it is again, with Dr. Dean as Goofus!

My Saturday and Sunday were spend, in large part, cleaning up. The house was a mess, and it's now about 50% less messy. Several large bags of trash have been removed, although some serious cleaning is left to be done. I also managed to clean up the outside quite a bit, which took the better part of today. Why?

Well, I woke up and went downstairs this morning, eager to watch the Ravens play. But, of course, I don't have Sunday Ticket on DirecTV this year, the first time in three years that I don't have it. Very annoying. I go upstairs to see how much it costs and possibly order it online. Before I do so I check my e-mail and discover that the Dean campaign has thrown the bat back up. So I check both sites simultaneously...and discover that DirecTV's Sunday Ticket would cost 4 payments of over $50. By contrast, I could contribute $25 a month to the Dean campaign as a "monthly supporter". I decide to plunk down the $25 for the Dean campaign.

In the absence of Sunday Ticket, I didn't like either of the games that were on today, so I got outside and started to tackle the overgrown jungle that has taken over my yard. It felt great: the day was a perfect temperature with just enough sun to keep me warm and just enough of a breeze to keep me cool. I cranked up my sound system while working and by the time I turned in it appeared that a hurricane had actually come and done some positive damage to the yard. I realized halfway through that most of my friends don't even have a yard. Most have tiny apartments where sitting outside isn't even possible, but even when it is a rooftop has to suffice. Instead, things here are perfect. And the outside is finally starting to reflect that.

Saturday was more about cleaning up inside. After a lengthy ride during the incredibly sunny part of the day, I started to finally get most of the basement and first floor cleaned, along with my room. There's still some little stuff to do, but the presence of the Miami/BC football demanded my attention, and by the time it hit halftime I needed to go chill out with Leto for some much needed food and fun. All told, a very enjoyable day.

Better late than never, right?

First off, the Dean campaign just busted out the bat. $5 million dollars would be a huge sum. It would be a slap back at "the establishment" who seem to have coalesced against the Dean campaign. It's odd...mainly because Dean has run as an "outsider" for so long, despite being moderate, that only now with Clark's appearance is there a legitimate "insider" backed by the establishment. More oddly, Clark himself is actually more of an outsider than Dean. In a regular campaign, Clark would attract all the passionate people from the internet fringe, but by showing up late to the party, he's lost these people to Dean.

And those Dean supporters are truly something to watch. Each one contributes an average of $64. That's pittance in the world of campaign contributions. But the total effect is staggering: they raised over 100 grand overnight! In the middle of a Sunday morning, people were sitting at their computer looking at the bat increase it's total. I'm a little worried that $5 million is too ambitious, but the last two times I thought that the bat ended up going well over the mark. So I'm skeptical, but then again, I already poined up $25 a month. It was between that and getting Sunday ticket...I figure I can get outside and hang out with friends instead of sitting on the couch for 6 hours each Sunday afternoon. Which is what I'm about to do in a minute. The yard needs some serious work and I intend to knock out several varieties of plants.

I'll get back to Saturday night in a minute.

Friday night, I ventured out of the house, spontaneous cap in place. I called some people up to see what people were up to. Few, if any, responded. Now my normal plan of attack is just to go places, do some stuff, and eventually an opportunity will present itself. It always does. But as the minutes ticked by, I started to think that I was going to have a lousy Friday evening. The lack of old names in my cell was certainly hurting, but even independently of that, I just expect that things will resolve themselves, and it appeared that I was wrong.

I think about dropping off at Ruth's Chris's (?) steak house, because I've never been there before. But my attire is more appropriate to going out and partying than to attending a fancy restaurant. So I bail there. I head over to Bistro du Coin to grab a steak but just as I walk by a fire engine pulls up and firemen start preparing to run inside. The host was waving them in. A bad sign, I figure. My spirit somewhat damaged, I head over to Chipotle. The line is out the door. Another bad sign, but by this point I'm starving. So I get in line, wishing that things had turned out differently. The line is moving so slowly that it takes me 15 minutes just to move halfway through it.

Phone rings. It's Fincher and a friend. They're hungry for chili cheese fries, the kind that can be found at Ben's Chili Bowl. They want to know if I'm in. I say yes. Problem solved.

If I had gone to Ruth's Chris's or Bistro du Coin I would've spent way too much money to eat by myself. And if I had done that or if the line had been shorter at Chipotle, by the time Fincher called, I wouldn't have been able to consume and chili cheese fries, which would've been equally bad if not more annoying.

So things worked out perfectly spontaneously. As I mentioned above, they always do. You just have to let things take their course.