Friday, March 07, 2008

Off to Vegas


I Heart NY - Vegas style
Originally uploaded by bekahpaige
Home of gambling, hookers, strippers, lapdancers, replicas, wedding chapels, Elvis look-a-likes and Michael Jackson.

All pretty cool. My vow though is to see the world through both eyes, not just the viewfinder of a camera. We'll see whether or not that happens.

A friend yesterday had a much better way to sully the McCain presidential bid. He refers to the ex-prisoner of war only as "Ex Prisoner John McCain"

His logic? That if you call him an "ex-prisoner" often enough people will start to wonder just what it was that he did wrong and whether we should elect an ex-con.

An elegant distortion of truth that involves no lies. Brilliant.

Thursday, March 06, 2008

Dirty Politics

I've decided that the US political system is only interesting when there are some dirty politics going on.

For example - during the last election the Democrats nominated a genuine war hero who'd also managed to speak out against pointless violence. This they thought would help them. John Kerry could be by both stronger and more manly than the war dodging army deserter Bush (remember that Bush has gone missing for months from his cushy, never go to war post, off whoring and drinking) but could also talk about ending war.

Good plan - until the Repubicans smeared Kerry with their Swiftboat campaign, painting him as a war cowerd who somehow weasled his medals out of the American army whilst singing "I hate America" and drowning babies born on the Fourth of July.

Kerry sank.

So it's time to throw some mud people. Time to put these candidates on the back foot and see how they respond. I have a few suggestions.

Bill Clinton DIDN'T have sexual relations with "that woman" - Hillary did. Hillary then 'harvested' Bills sperm and put it on Lewinsky's dress herself - in a bid to have him impeached and allow her to take over the Whitehouse in a coup de wronged wife. The truth was hidden from the world as Bill decided to take the fall rather than allow Hillary to take her communist agenda any further.

John McCain of course has a worse secret. he makes ice replicas of his genitals (using a mould he had made in Vietnam where he spent years setting up Nike sweatshops) and then feeds them to his dogs whilst 'pleasuring himself'

And of course Barack Hussein Obama - is a radical Muslim sent to destroy us all.

Get out of those without moving, candidates

Wednesday, March 05, 2008

What a day

So in a race tighter than Jordan's reconstructed vagina we saw Hillary fight back in Texas and Ohio - winning the states that she needed to stay in the race and bringing the delegate count almost back to level.

Most interesting was that (like Jordan) it was a last minute surge that put her over the top. In Ohio she beat out Obama in both people who had decided on their vote in the last 24 hrs and the last 3 days - showing that she has momentum.

She was hot with the grannies and with 'white folks'. Hot for people who see the economy or health as the most important issue and amongst registered Democrats.

Texas told the same story.

One other fact - women made up 59% of the Ohio vote (she grabbed 57% of their votes to Obamas 41%) and they mode up 57% of the Texan vote (where she carried them 55 to 44)

The Republicans had more men voting in both primaries.

More importantly Idol News. It seems that the lispy queen who appears to be auditioning for Project Runway rather than Idol isn't the only closet case they have. They also have a guy who until very recently was a stripper in a gay club. That doesn't make him a gay stripper of course but expect twisted hands and clanging rosaries from Paula.

Then there's the rock and roll nurse who sings like a tone deaf Bonnie Tyler and has a habit of wrapping her cars around trees. Seems that the second habit may be connected to her liking the odd drink whilst behind the wheel. Booo - bad Idol. Expect children in their millions to emulate her.

And expect Frenchie Davies - the woman kicked off an early season for having posed for 'racy internet shots' to turn up and go postal. She may have been a net ho - but she wasn't a drunk driving, crotch grinding, homo ho!

And on that message of hate I leave you

Tuesday, March 04, 2008

So here I am in Atlanta


visual thesaurus focus group
Originally uploaded by swissmiss
sitting in a dark back room, staring through one way glass with the strangely metallic taste of old M&Ms sticking to my teeth and my chest feeling more like breasts than pecs.

It's an odd feeling being here, made odder by the general sense of fatigue that the 8am flight (6.15am departure from home) seems to have engendered.

Reading Sharp Teeth at the moment, a lychonthropic pulp novel written in free verse by a guy that I work with and like a lot. It's great. The verse seems like a gimmick (this isn't poetry) at first, but then you realize just how spare the language is, how quickly the story moves and just how muscular everything seems.

Check it out - it's well worth an evening

Monday, March 03, 2008

Atlanta


Highway Insomnia
Originally uploaded by Nrbelex
So tomorrow I'm off to atlanta. Home of Coca Cola, the Falcons, the Braves, the Hawks, the Thrashers and of course Atlanta Dream - the women's NBA team down there.

Previous trips have seen me hurtling through the airport in a bid to make a connection between flights from mexico city and detroit. I never missed one but I've never been in Atlanta and not been in a hurry. Whereas I've never met anyone in Atlanta who is in a hurry. It's not just the accents that are thick with molasses, it's every aspect of the place. Atlanta moves as though a thick fog of humidity has engulfed the population, draining them of energy and making them fit only for a fitful siesta. Or at least the airport does, but I suspect that the melancholy malaise is universal. We shall see

Sunday, March 02, 2008

Crazy busy


mod5.JPG
Originally uploaded by stevenjude
Both Judith and I were up at 7am this Sunday - awakened by the plaintive cries of the cats but kept awake by the sheer volume of stuff that we have to get through this week.

She's knee deep in data, graphs, charts, a swirl of numbers and hypotheses. I'm groin deep in discussion guides, research specs, product definitions and art directional techniques.

It's 8.53 here and we have three computers open; all manner of e-mails to answer and text messages popping by the dozen. In many ways it's hell - but then I look around at the apartment, the well groomed animals, the ease with which we write cheques, our travel plans and the fact that neither of us pauses before throwing another thing into the basket or filling the car with gas and I have to say that things aren't so bad.

I'm also going to try my hand at a bit of script writing today. I have this theory that somewhere between the mundane ordinary and the trying too hard extraordinary lies happiness. I've been playing with the concept of Unordinary for a while now - and whilst it's not immediately relevant for the stuff I should be doing today it's always worth writing these half thoughts up a little and seeing what they turn into.

The pic, btw, is from yesterday's Eastern Market trip