It's just *mean*. Rudy keeps saying crap about Kerry, Stewart keeps mock-apologizing and then saying "Well, actually, Kerry didn't say that." and the like. Beautiful. I love tonight.

Bush just trotted out that line again. Of course, there are only 9.8 million people who are *eligible* to vote in Afghanistan, so 10 million registered voters is a sign of corruption, not democracy. Oy.

And now, when asked whether he thinks Kerry's election will make us more vulnerable to terrorism, he didn't answer, he just said he'll win anyway. Argh.

Kerry called Bush on his "colossal error of judgement" and ABC showed a quick shot of Bush looking at the camera. He looked so empty-minded that I had a hard time keeping from cracking up. Ooooh...nice one there on "outsourcing" the failed siege of Tora Bora.

Kerry's coming out badass so far. Tearing on mistakes, coherent, bringing the fire...I'm loving it. I wish I had something more coherent than that, but he seems to bring significantly more substance than Bush, and seems to have Bush on the run.

"al-Qaeda affiliates"? Are those like Fox affiliates? If so, that's pretty damned evil. Oh, and the Iraqis definitely want to be free - free of the US and free of Allawi.

Ok, that money/"tax gap" thing? Laaaame, Dear Leader.

Bush's strategy: "Stop dissenting, dammit!"

"The only thing that's consistent about my opponent's positions is that he's inconsistent." Hrruuurrr! Bush are funny!

Bush just said something about loving a war widow as hard as he can. Um, yeah. When he name-checked her, I flashed to the Mr. Show debate bit where one of the guys at a debate doesn't realize that you can bring a guest to a debate audience to use as an object of a story and so starts picking on a random fat guy. Don't ask me why, it just popped into my head.

Oh god, that was beautiful.

Yes, that's right - my first ever noticeable earthquake. Pretty insignificant so far, but I'm impressed. The building I'm in is on rollers, so the net result is basically a little shaking and the light fixtures swaying for a while - more later.

UPDATE - huh. That was a nontrivial shake, albeit a hundred and fifty miles away. It was a 6.0 quake down near Parkfield, CA. Here are a couple of maps, showing earthquakes in the area from the last week or so...the red ones are within the last hour, and the biggest of them is the initial one - the rest, clustered right around it, are aftershocks. I've included two maps, actually - one of all of the California/Nevada area, to give you a sense of where the earthquake was, and another focused on Southern California, which shows the aftershocks more clearly.

When someone tells you that football looks unbelievable in high-def, they aren't lying. I'm impressed. ESPN's got college football in widescreen, and it's pretty impressive. That said, I'd rather watch Discovery HD. Which is what I'm gonna go do now, in fact.

Yup - good decision. Wanna know why? Two words: baby penguins. I love my new TV.

I'm doing some temporary re-arranging of the furniture in my living room - new TV (30" widescreen I got for a great, great deal at Amazon) and had to move my massive reclining sofa out of the way, so that the delivery guys will be able to get the TV onto its stand. My sofa, as you might imagine, does not like moving, and I'm on hardwood floors, so pushing it around isn't a great idea in the first place - scrapes the finish and all. So I went out and bought a bunch of these little self-adhesive pads for putting on the bottoms of furniture, for just the reason that I need them. Well, I love these little things. I want to put them on everything I own on these things now. I can just slide furniture around! It's great!

Yes, I'm an easily entertained dork - why do you ask?

Just finished watching the first part of the pilot for "Lost", a new TV show from JJ Abrams, the guy behind "Alias". It rocked. I'm creeped out and adrenaline-rushy. Niiice.

So I'm walking through a Best Buy today, and I gradually recognize the song playing in the background: Cat Stevens, "Wild World". Which, of course, is pretty funny to hear today, all things considered:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former pop singer Cat Stevens, a Muslim, will be deported to Britain because his activities could be "linked to terrorism," a U.S. official said on Wednesday.

Britain complained about the decision and Arab-Americans and Muslims voiced outrage over the treatment of Stevens, known as Yusuf Islam since he shelved his singing and songwriting career and became a Muslim in the 1970s.

Homeland Security spokesman Brian Doyle said Islam was being put on the first available flight back to Britain. His Washington D.C.-bound plane was diverted on Tuesday to Bangor, Maine, after his name turned up on U.S. lists of suspected terrorists.

One last time - if there's anyone in the Bay Area interested in seeing the Pixies on Sunday, email me ASAP. I've got a spare ticket, but I'm trying really hard to find someone to take it.

I woke up late and missed the rain! That's right, it actually rained here for the first time since I moved here two months ago. Strangely, I've really missed rain, and when I saw that it was likely to rain today, I was excited. But no, I slept through it. No fair!

Ok, not actually too much fun. Just the right amount of fun. They had a thing on the BC'04 web page that allowed you to enter a slogan of your choosing and have it show up on a Bush-Cheney '04 poster, which you could then print out in massive quantities. This, as it turned out, was really, really stupid. Let me give you an idea of why it was really, really stupid:

There's tons more. You can see a memorial here. Why a memorial? Because eventually, the Bushies realized how very, very stupid this was. Twice, actually, since they discontinued it a few months ago, but then got sucker-punched when they decided to bring it back again a couple days ago. Doofuses. Anyway - enjoy the exploitation.

Today was the primary in Massachusetts. Since most of these districts are overwhelmingly Democrat, we can tell a lot from who wins the primaries. Well, take a look at the results. I could be off on this, but at first glance, I see 2 incumbents who voted for the anti-marriage amendment losing to pro-marriage challengers - Rep. Mark Howland and Rep. Vincent Ciampa - along with a good number of gay-friendly endorsed candidates in open primaries winning...not as many as I might like, but more than I expected, quite frankly. If three or four seats change to pro-marriage (and therefore anti-amendment), I think that, combined with a few votes by incumbents changing, will be enough to kill off the anti-marriage amendment next spring. Here's hoping...

I've got a spare ticket to the Pixies show on Sunday, Sept. 26th, in Berkeley, CA. I don't want to let this ticket go un-used. Anyone interested?

I've heard quite a bit about Alias season 3 - generally not very good. I'm halfway through it so far. Maybe it's not as great as the first half of season one, but that was some of the most brilliant TV drama ever done. How could we expect it to stand up to that level of genius? It's still great, I think. If nothing else, they've actually stepped it up a notch vis a vis guest stars - beyond the return of Quentin Tarentino, we've got Djimon Hounsou, Richard Roundtree (Shaft! I mean, c'mon! SHAFT!), Isabell Rossellini, Vivica A. Fox, David Carradine, and my favorite, David f'n Cronenberg as a druggie psychotropic genius. What's more, the guest stars - even Tarentino - fit in. They don't become a distraction. That, in and of itself, is a sign of good TV, I think. I dunno. I'm lovin' it, and I don't care what others say. So there!

I ask this because there's a Mexican-sounding horn band playing a birthday party (I know this because, well, they were playing "Happy Birthday" at one point) at a house across the street from me. I'm wondering whether it's a mariachi band or some other form of Mexican music. I'm feeling culturally stupid right now.

I went too long without actually saying anything here - the front page vanished! Time to tweak some backend stuff...

Everyone's picking on Arnold's speech these days - because he made up about half of it. Matt Yglesias goes after his claim of being a victim of Soviet oppression. Here's the quote:

When I was a boy, the Soviets occupied part of Austria. I saw their tanks in the streets. I saw communism with my own eyes. I remember the fear we had when we had to cross into the Soviet sector. Growing up, we were told, "Don't look the soldiers in the eye. Look straight ahead." It was a common belief that Soviet soldiers could take a man out of his own car and ship him off to the Soviet Union as slave labor.

My family didn't have a car -- but one day we were in my uncle's car. It was near dark as we came to a Soviet checkpoint. I was a little boy, I wasn't an action hero back then, and I remember how scared I was that the soldiers would pull my father or my uncle out of the car and I'd never see him again. My family and so many others lived in fear of the Soviet boot. Today, the world no longer fears the Soviet Union and it is because of the United States of America!

As a kid I saw the socialist country that Austria became after the Soviets left. I love Austria and I love the Austrian people -- but I always knew America was the place for me. In school, when the teacher would talk about America, I would daydream about coming here. I would sit for hours watching American movies transfixed by my heroes like John Wayne. Everything about America seemed so big to me so open, so possible.

Now, Matt went after the obvious: this section was designed to sucker uninformed gullible dolts into believing that Arnie lived in the Eastern Bloc. But, say the dumb righties, Austria *was* occupied by the Soviets! Yes, a quarter of Austria was occupied by the Soviets until 1955. This is true. Matt also slaps around the implication that Austrian socialism was a product of that brief Soviet occuapation, which is goofy on the face. Because, after all, there's a huge connection between West European-style democratic socialism and Marxism-Leninism. Oh, wait, no, there's not.

Well, I have a bit to contribute to this. Yes, Austria was partially Soviet-occupied. But no, Arnie wasn't from that area. He grew up in Graz. Graz, according to Encarta, "was included in the British Zone of Occupation of Austria". Now, I'll admit, Graz isn't *that* far from the border with the Soviet zone, but that's just silly. Plus, Arnie was *8* when the Soviets left. I guess his dad, Nazi that he was, must have taught him to be afraid of the Soviets good and young.