Tonight, my view of the Ocean from my office window is drawn from an angry pallette.
They look like War Clouds. [I can't find a decent online webcam, and now it's too dark to see
anyway, and there's no archive of today's sunset, and who is reading this at 5:43 on the
day before Tgiving??]. That's the first thing that comes to my mind, honestly, looking
at them. I hope that isn't an omen. Peace and give thanks for youse n' yerz. mikl.

From this picture I just had a sudden horrible flash of what Tom Ridge was like in highschool (college, whatever). Probably exactly the same as most of the current professional politicians--Young Republican, ROTC, afraid of women (which fits nicely with aspects of the right wing christian agenda), able to get drunk and lecture to everyone's annoyance and then hurl green vomit at a single beer. I knew a half dozen of those type guys. I guess there were young Democrats, too. I also knew a few of them. They were easier to get along with generally. But then they'd start drinking & womanizing [I'm serious!], and they were still politics nerds. They were high on their own speeches (to the SGA!?) and heavily concerned about the importance of their every move. These guys don't do acid well.

Maybe it's just cuz I'm reading Distraction right now that I'm on such tangents. Have you ever read Strawberry Statement? I loved it. It's all about the sit-ins at Columbia during the 60's. About the SDS and such. It's written by a guy in the midst of it, and it's a story that I totally relate to. He gets into it cuz it seems like a good cause, but he soon sees the 'leaders' of the side he's on (the student leftists) so into their own spiel and power-politics nerds, who ultimately lose the view of the people they are supposed to represent. Actually, I'm starting to be down on the whole theory of Representative Democracy after living in it for 30+ years, cuz no one has ever represented me well. Anyway, the guy in Strawberry Statement justs wants the girl. And he just wants to hang out with her and he gets really down on Jr. Commander The New Left guy and his cronies. I liked the hell out of that book. Anyone seen the movie? I haven't, but I have the soundtrack on cassette. Or, as I said before, Maybe it's just cuz I'm reading Distraction.

Anyway, let me be the first to say FUCK PUNK-ASS TOM RIDGE SECRETARY OF HOMELAND SECURITY!!!! There. I probably beat Boondocks by like 2 days.

The Republican controlled House refused to extend unemployment benefits before they recessed for the year. So about 1 million people by the beginning of 2003 will lose their benefits. That sucks.

Scott Beale of Laughing Squid took digital pix of the I Hate Cartoons show!

By the way, if you need web hosting the business side of Laughing Squid has really good deals and starving artist (and non-profit) discounts.

We had really one of the greatest all-time weekends. Friday & Saturday were a stunning start: throwing the IHateCarToons2 party on Friday
[which is covered in SFWeekly's Nightcrawler] and on Saturday attending an incredible party for the lovely Maid
Marian's 40th birthday. Sunday was diverse double-decked action: hosting a very enjoyable Punk Brunch in the Punk Morning (1pm-6pm) in preparation for mikl-em's Punk Frickin' Christmas the next FFF, and then going to the final dale of the Beyond The Pale festival at the DNA.

Nowadays I work at the University of California San Francisco in the Library. Specifically I am a document indexer for the Tobacco Control Digital Collections. What I do is review internal documents from the tobacco industry and assign metadata to them so that they can be searched in more diverse ways than simply by keyword. In other words, I log information such as Author, Title, People Mentioned, Companies Mentioned, and so forth. It's a good cause and of course I see some scandulous and fascinating documents flit across my computer screen. Another part of the library's tobacco-related holdings is the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library (LTDL). This is a massive collection of millions of documents which are available due to the settlement of that big lawsuit against the tobacco industry.
If you are interested in this subject this a powerful resource. But even if you don't particularly consider yourself a Tobacco Control Activist, you may be interested in browsing our "Popular Documents" page, which tends to feature a few particularly scandulous examples of the tobacco industry's internal dialogue. Like the proposal for Fat Boys brand cigarettes aimed at "the inner-city Black smoker", or "Plans for positive exposure in women's magazines"

on a lighter note:

ALL HAIL the feline zeppelin maritime animation society!!

Here's a story about a veteran from the last action we took against Iraq: John Muhammad. It's an interview with his ex-wife, whom he'd threatened to kill.

He told her that black soldiers had been discriminated against. One incident in particular left him seething. After he was accused of tossing an incendiary grenade into a tent, Muhammad was hog-tied, arms and legs cuffed behind his back, he told his wife. When a siren sounded to alert the troops to a possible gas attack, no one gave him a gas mask. By the time he learned it was a drill, he had been humiliated in a manner that he never forgot, she said.

Another article: an interview with the man who helped them buy the car in NJ. Far from an accomplice, he just thought he was helping a couple people who were down and out. Here's one more article about Muhammad's smuggling of Malvo out of Antigua.

On Veteran's Day I shudder at the rhetoric of our president (not elected by me), as he turns a blind voice to our past "mistakes" of the past when he threatens outlaw regimes that seek and possess the tools of mass murder. Who bully or ignore the voices of the international community? Who are the only ones to have actually used the ulitmate weapon of mass destruction and, while keeping their own, seek to thwart others from developing the same technology (and thus having a tiny fraction of the destructive force that our nation holds? not to mention our conventional weaponry)? Who have been cited by Amnesty International for actions which are contrary to their own Constitution? And while an American could never be guilty of a war crime by definition, it turns out that we can sue terrorists in civil court it turns out. Absurdity is alive and sick and well. Here's more from FindLaw on the ICC issue.

Look in the mirror W. It's your own fucking mirror, but the rest of this country (should) belong to all of us.

NOT IN OUR NAME is a new anti-war group, which I know little about, except that they got the name right. That's exactly how I feel. Except also powerless to stop it at this juncture. GWB and cronies have waged an effective domestic campaign, though a somewhat sloppy one in international quarters, but they've gotten enough sign-off from the UN and even a partisan group of millionaires (i.e. Congress) that they can now put the ask for forgiveness not permission doctrine in effect for any atrocities to follow.

I work for the state these days, so I have today off. And I give thanks and pay tribute to all the veterans, whether war time or not, for their sacrifice and strife. I don't necessarily feel so generous toward the men who have ordered them about.