Random thoughts:

8:10ish: Watching Bush listen to Kerry speak. Shrub is working very hard to keep from sticking his tongue out and therefore often looks like he's swallowing it. He alternates between picking up his crayon to draw some more, and appearing to hide his hands down his pants.

8:32: "I speak with other leaders frequently." And my daddy is richer than your daddy.

8:33: Kerry pronounces Kofi Annan "Coffee Annan." Shrub is very upset that Kerry is "not honoring the contributions of those brave soldiers" such as the troops from Poland. Yeah, Poland -- that hotbed of intense military intelligence.

8:35: Now Shrub is upset because not all the kids on the playground will play stickball with him. No matter what he says, he still looks perpetually stoned and about to giggle.

8:46: DH announces that he thinks Kerry is a phony. Kerry utters the phrase "more of the same." Sadly, this whole debate is more of the same. All they're talking about is whether or not we should be at war. Well, the decision was already made. Can we discuss any other issues at stake? Perhaps, though, nobody is going to vote based on (other) foreign policy, ecomonics, healthcare, education, social security, the environment, etc.

8:51: Bush is hunched over the podium, leaning on it, and occasionally rocking from side to side. I'm waiting for Laura to whisper from the wings "Georgie, do you need to go potty?"

8:53: The graphic over the candidates' heads looks like ribbons bouncing off of an American flag skateboard.

8:54: "We use diplomacy every chance we get," Shrub says. He also says he wants to "send a message that we mean what we say." He hopes they never misunderestimate him.

8:56: Kerry spears Shrub on what he says is a very "telling" statement, that "the enemy attacked us." Kerry points out that Hussein didn't attack us -- Osama Bin Laden did. I can hear Democrats in grubby living rooms across the city cheering from a distance.

Shrub responds "of course I know Bin Laden attacked us. I knew that." I laughed out loud -- he's suddenly morphed into the sleazy corporate lawyer being interviewed on an SNL 60 Minutes spoof. Remember that? Martin Short, chainsmoking and insisting that Morley Safer is wrong in alleging that the phony dribble glasses weren't toxic?

9:01: Shrub tried to spike a statement back to Kerry but it backfired, probably because he didn't understand it. He speaks of acting pre-emptively (?) in the interests of US safety. Didn't he just say he attacked because we were attacked first?

Big thanks to my friend Steven for posting this fun article on the flak over Bill O'Reilly's paranoid yammerings. Bill sez that people who watch Jon Stewart's "dopey" Daily Show are a bunch of "stoned slackers."

I know I'm the billionth person to blog this, but it's just so awesome. Okay, I need some Chee-tos.

The doesn't know me very well... this person sounds pretty nice, but I think I'm kind of a bitch.

Okay, check this  out. You've all heard or read by now about the guy who posed from a balcony of Buckingham Palace in a Batman suit, supposedly to draw attention to Fathers 4 Justice, a group whose interests are in expanding custody rights for dads.

Apparently, this bizarre protest came not too long after another divvied dad threw purple flour-filled condoms at Prime Minister Tony Blair, in pursuit of the same cause. I mean it, you can look it up.  (Key quote: "Baroness Golding said she had been concerned by the amount of time the men had spent going to the toilet and talking to each other.")

Could someone explain to me please how these frat house pranks prove that some divorced and separated dads are responsible parents who need better custody rights?

Isn't there a point where people grow up and stop acting like 12-year-olds?

I'm in a situation that really pisses me off, and part of what pisses me off is that it pisses me off, if you catch my drift. For some insane reason, I have not been really accepted into my daily situation. It bothered me enormously for my first four or five months here, and then I sort of let it go as I got better acclimated to my responsibilities.

Now I'm working pretty independently on a big project, and it's going pretty well. I've had a review that went better than I could have expected, so I know my superiors are cool with me. But yesterday, I discovered that I had, apparently deliberately, been excluded from an onsite social occasion thrown on behalf of someone I deal with every day. It was a surprise for her, so it's not like she excluded me, but the people who organized it did.

I was telling my folks about it, and my dad thought I should tell my manager. But I'm not the kind of person who wants to whine to the teacher that the other kids aren't playing fair at recess, ya know?

This is very weird to me. It's not like I've always been Little Miss Captain of the Cheerleaders, but I haven't had a problem making friends at work, school, or volunteer organizations in the past. And while I have many friendly relationships with people in other groups, I don't get to hang out with them all day.

What the fuck kind of lameass, junior-high victory is it for someone in their 30s to exclude another adult like this? And why the hell do I care?

I'll tell you why; I'm a girl. The men I know just don't behave this way, and don't give a shit if someone doesn't like them. I used to work with almost all men, and never had issues like this. Guys do their damned jobs, and if they don't like someone, it doesn't matter. They want to know if you can carry your load. If you can come in under budget and on time. If you can make your goals. And if you do those things, you're fine.

I hate to sound anti-feminist, but sometimes women really suck ass.

According to an article in today's Chicago Tribune, Senate "can'tdidate" Allan Keyes made yet another really stupid verbal blunder. As if people didn't find him irritating enough, this took place in his interview with a New York satellite radio station:

Keyes tells the radio host that "homosexuality is 'selfish hedonism.' In response, the show's host asked if Mary Cheney, Vice President Dick Cheney's daughter, was a 'selfish hedonist.' Keyes replied: 'Of course she is.'"

I'm sure you can imagine how many Illinois Republicans are rushing to disavow Keyes. The thing that annoys me, is that he has the nerve to call millions of people selfish hedonists, when he's only running for office so someone will pay off his campaign debts. And oh, by the way, he isn't moving to Illinois officially if he loses the campaign. Is that even legal?

What a tool.