Between watching a tape of the first episode of 24 (looks like a good season...although I hope that there'll be less 'Kim and the Mountain Lion' episodes) and catching adult swim, I managed to see a few commercials in the middle of cleaning up the 'werkz.

And then, at one point, I saw an advertisement which featured a guy sitting on a car talking to another guy. One asks the other what he's eating, and the guy on the car responds that it's a healthy meal chock full of protein and nutrients and that it's helped him to lose weight. What, pray tell, is the guy eating?

KFC fried chicken.

No joke. I thought it might be a spoof of something, but it appeared to be 100% legit. Just read about it here. What crack are these ad agency guys smoking?

I know, I know, it's another fast food tale of terror, but this is really beyond the pale. What will they dream up next?

To be perfectly honest, I was all set to write a lengthy post about something-or-other and then I realized that my body was attempting to shut down. Normally, as long as my contacts are in I'm able to keep thinking that I should be awake. Take those thin slivers of plastic out and I immediately move into sleep mode. Only tonight, due to a variety of cleaning and working which I'd been putting off for several days since the party, I'm not able to keep going.

It was fun throwing away several bottles of champagne. There are few better feelings than when, in an act of desperation, one purchases a bottle of Veuve Clicquot, (thinking that one's friends will be cheapskates) only to discover later, that one's friends have purchased a bottle of Dom Pérignon and brought it to said party. Yet another reason why Helena rocks: she managed to make it several hundred miles to attend, yet still possessed a properly chilled bottle of Dom. I'm not sure how she pulled it off, but it was rewarding nonetheless.

Okay, time to crash.

Before I respond to Brad, let me just encourage everyone to watch the White House briefing coming on in 15 minutes on C-SPAN. It should be fun, especially after yesterday's lie from the Prez himself about the Mission Accomplished banner. Now:

1. A little reciprocity might be in order from Brad. If he's going to ask me to dish dirt, I expect a little mud to be slung in the other direction.
2. The first person...still good eyes, but no spark, and a bit of an age issue. Being a true Southern gentleman, I'd never ask, so I may just be speculating here.
3. The second person, well, I only met her last night, okay? I'm not going into those issues right away. Need to determine some key points first. Might be a deal breaker in there.

Oh, and for the record, given that I was attending a birthday party for a friend and the person in question drove us both to said event, I feel it would be somewhat inappropriate to hit on the person at the bash itself, when she would end up driving the birthday person and myself to our respective abodes at the end of the evening. Maybe I'm crazy here. But making your driver/drivee relationship awkward is something I'm sure Brad wouldn't want to do. Right? Maybe we should ask Helena...

So I'm at this birthday party for a friend of mine. A great time overall. Lots of interesting people, great conversations and tasty food. The only hangup? Well, the major obstacle to complete enjoyment was that I was seated next to someone who was:

1. more liberal than I am
2. more cosmopolitan than I am
3. had a cooler name than I have
4. was to die for

I'll talk to my friend tomorrow. But I'm in a mixed mood right now, simply because I know this person is single. So by the rules of the game I should try and ask her out shortly. But I already managed to discover two caveats that would lead to problems, the greater being a certain religious difference that might indicate larger issues. The smaller has something to do with past history. Both seem to be deal breakers, but I've overcome greater obstacles before.

The struggle may be over, but I'm still star-crossed.

My financial situation has dipped considerably, mostly due to the excesses of the last party. Normally, I'd have split things three ways or two ways. This was the first party I funded all by myself.

At least it was a great party. The occasion of watching hundreds of dollars of food and spirits reduced to nothing is always enjoyable for me. It's the aftermath, the annoying cleaning coupled with the knowledge that your bank account will take some time to fully recover, that is a rude awakening. I just have to crimp and save a bit for the next two weeks. Ideally, if I could make it to Thanksgiving without any big holes in my wallet I'd be set in time for the holiday gift-buying season.

So I refrained from any extravagant spending this evening. One day down. Twenty-five to go. Tomorrow I'm hitting a friend's b-day celebration at Local 16, which I'm sure won't help matters. Maybe I should just start counting after tomorrow night.

On an unrelated note, the office drama in my life seems to have grown considerably over the past month. I thought things were as crazy as they could get a few weeks back...but now I'm not so sure. Another person's wacky existence seems to have thrown another monkey wrench into the smooth operating machine that is my workplace. Much like issues with the fam, I'm keeping this story to close people, but if you run into me face-to-face occasionally, ask about it. It's an interesting tale.

After watching an old Kubrick movie and the Dem debate last night, I went through several hours of having "Singing In the Rain" running through my head this morning while a little of the old-ultraviolence tugged at my neurons. I transitioned this afternoon to some songs a friend burned for me. Nothing like moving from Ludwig Van to Camper Van in the course of a day, punctuated by a little Scheherazade this evening as I write these words down. I just looked at the title of the movement a second ago. It's called "Festival at Baghdad".

Everything makes sense. I think I'll change the title of this post to reflect that.

While I was celebrating this weekend, the situation in Iraq detiorated further. The administration's response?

This signals progress. Um, yeah, sure.

Just once, I'd like to see someone in the White House admit they made a mistake. It could be a small one, like say, "Dick Cheney accidentally switched to decaf this morning" as long as someone was named, and culpability was the goal. Until then, we're forced to listen to month after month of black-is-white, up-is-downism about the economy, Iraq and health care.

Well, the party was a much bigger success than I had originally anticipated. Even as late as an hour beforehand, I had contemplated the age old question "what if I threw a party and nobody came?" but dismissed it out of hand, based on previous affairs. I was wrong to doubt: it was bigger and louder than some previous gatheringa (I'm not convinced it was the all time highest number of people, but it got very crowded), resulting in the most consumption of any party to date. Consequently, today I'm tired, broke and tired. Did I mention tired?

The special award has to go to Helena and Brad, who showed up without my knowledge about an hour into the event. They just popped their heads around the corner and said hi as if they'd never left. I was very surprised: I had never even contemplated them making the hike down here. To all those hosers who missed the fun, let me just remind you that there are always special cameos, so missing an event like this one means you'll have to wait to catch Helena and Brad at another time.

Luckily, nothing caught on fire, there were no car accidents, and only a minimal amount of glasses and people were broken. There was a healthy amount of drama, which was good, and plenty of great stories shared, along with a high attendance rate, including Fincher's first time and some people who just rolled into town (that I didn't even know were moving here!) and stopped by to pay their respects. Sadly, the extra hour of sleep due to daylight savings time was somewhat wasted due to my ceding of my bed to Loaf, who partied and crashed like a rock star as usual. However, given that this event occurred well later than 'winning time', I was content to just snag a couple hours before waking up to open some presents.

Now it's late and I'm only about 50% done cleaning wise, although things already look much better than they did this morning, when the house appeared to be a disaster zone. Since it started raining a bit ago I've lost my further motivation to throw everything out on the street. I'll worry about it tomorrow. Along with any amusing anecdotes I'm too tired to trot out right now.

Yes, after a long hiatus, the dredwerkz cartoon of choice has returned: elftor.

Two new episodes are up (one on my birthday! yay!) including an amusing one involving the triumph of evil.

I just pushed the timewindow for the main page back to 10 days instead of 7, as it used to be set to. Why? Well, mainly because my tendency to load up articles on Monday and Friday led to huge chunks of information falling off the front page on those two days, a week later. This way more stuff stays up.

Why is that good? Well, a friend who shall remain nameless noted that they once decided to read all the articles on the site. I assume they merely read the front page, (because going through the archives would be a great deal of effort) which means that they could have only caught a quick snapshot.

Back to your regularly scheduled program.

Things fall apart Achebe-style, for the Bush administration. It's really quite impressive how many things are now going wrong. Imagine if the Romans had discovered, too late, that lead in the pipes might lead to crazy leaders. I hear fiddling in the background...and California is already burning.

If struggle is over, how come my sink wasn't fixed today when I arrived home? And why am I so cold all of a sudden? Go figure. Maybe a little Sun Tzu wisdom will clear things up.

Fincher is flawed solely by subtle maladies, the most odious being an apparent lack of sloth. Much as troubled relatives await the cyclical respite of pain from an ill family member, I've learned to appreciate the few moments that Fincher stops attempting to show up Sisyphus and is able to shoulder her boulder on a side avenue for a few minutes. Fortunately, this often occurs in close proximity to my workplace a couple times a week.

So we roll over to Chinatown (Gallery Place has moved from giant-hole-status to giant-concrete-block-status) and enter a silent shop filled with just a few peacoat-wearing hillies. They leave shortly thereafter and Fincher introduces me to one of the strangest beverages I've ever consumed. Ostensibly, it's a milk & tea mixture with some tapioca balls thrown in for fun. Add a giant straw large enough for a routine laproscopic operation (to suck those tasty tapioca balls up) and you've got a good picture of it.

Nicely, the beverage was surprisingly tasty. The warm version (we had both hot and cold...but no salty balls!) wasn't quite as good as the cool variety, but both were much tastier than your average run-of-the-mill tea beverage. It did take some getting used to, both the drink itself and the requisite double-entendres that floated through my head. But it was definitely worth it. The taste is somewhat hard to nail down, but the sensation of sucking up spongy balls which didn't really taste like anything was definitely unique. I'd recommend everyone try it once, although I myself could go for another (cold) one right now. According to Fincher, they weren't even all that good, which means that other places must make them better. Don't get me wrong...they're not to the level of an Eegee by any means, but they're still pretty good.

Even better, I got some decent stories from Fincher who seems to be some sort of magnet for odd people. I like to think that I end up in crazy situations, but most of the time it's of my own doing (walking around late at night leads to prostitution hilarity, see?) rather than the result of a slightly deranged person. Fincher, on the other hand, seems to run into person after person who appears to have been dropped into her life from some cosmic screenwriter's typewrite, John Candy style. Every single time I think she's hit a straight path filled with normal, ordinary, boring friends who don't rock the boat, some other idiot bounces along saying "Imperalism is Actually Good!" or "She Knows The Answer". It's enough to drive you bonkers...but at the same time, makes for a great back-and-forth. Just as I thought to myself that the conversation and concoction were the highlight of the rapidly diminishing timeframe, I popped open my fortune cookie to read the best fortune I've ever received:

Happier days are definitely ahead for you. Struggle has ended.

Damn. As I walked out a minute later, said goodbye to Fincher and moved back to the office under the clear blue skies, I realized that in fact, it was right. It's all downhill from here. I just have to stay on the right path. And I'm already on it, moving rapidly.

Here

Fight back right here. They never relent, so neither can we.

Oh, another example to clarify the last cartoon? How about this image?

Yeah, you see, the administration has figured out that if they have words behind the president's backdrop when he speaks, it creates reality itself. The perfect example of farce imitating life imitating art. It's a good thing he's not seven and a half feet tall or we'd be in real trouble. Oh, wait, maybe he already is.

Okay, so the "lying" the administration does may be a little complicated for Joe Blow in the street. Let me give you the perfect example right here.

The gig is simple: each week underreport the total number of jobless claims by a significant amount, say, 6,000. Then, the next week, sublty "adjust" the amount up 6,000 and (under)report the preliminary numbers as being a net "decrease" from the previous week, even if the number is higher than the prelim number from the week before, or if both real numbers (available a week later!) are increasing.

So by the administration's logic, each week we could have falling number of jobless claims, hence, the inevitable result. Despite emperical evidence suggesting the contrary. Black is white and up is down.

Read this. It's a perfect illustration of the divide between old Dems and new Dems, myself included. One of the better graphs:

The yuppies are culturally liberal and fiscally conservative. They deride President Bush's tax cuts as unaffordable but suspect we can't afford big new spending programs either. And, reflecting a middle-class, progressive tradition that dates back a century, they are skeptical of anything that smacks of machine politics. They like anti-politicians who tell hard truths.

It's this progressive, anti-machine politics, tempered by fiscal conservatism, that is at the heart of the new Dems. Practically libertarians in the bedroom, we still want tighter regularory control of capitalism in order to balance the budget, create jobs and grow the economy. Want proof? Well, just read Dr. Dean's latest piece in the Union Leader. We believe in fair markets to solve problems, but that the government can do better than the private sector sometimes.

Finally, and most importantly, we believe in empirical truth. Old Dems machine-style politics was based on power, not the people. Why? Because people were easily misled. Our current administration has taken advantage of America's trust: by subtly equating Iraq with 9/11, by naming projects that pollute the air "Clean Skies" and by promising "reform" which is no reform at all. Bringing back the truth to American politics will be tough, for trust, once lost, cannot be easily recovered. But when the American people are told the facts, they can decide for themselves what policies are good and what are not. They don't need help from "experts" as long as they are presented correct information rather than spin. That's why 43 keeps lying to the public: if he actually said "we embrace tax cuts for the rich" we'd boot him out of office. That's why they say "we're compassionate" all the time: to cover their tracks. Only by replacing 43 can we achieve truth at all levels of government.