The Information Superhighway...

doesn't have any on-ramps in South Texas. At least not around San Antonio. I apologize to those of you that actually log on to this site every once in a while to see if I have posted anything interesting.

I've been in the San Antonio area for the past few days and will be until Monday. Today is the first chance I've had to use the Internets and that involved driving 20 minutes to a Kinkos. No problems finding Denny's down here though.

I have learned to appreciate Borders, where at least you can listen to any CD they sell at one of their listening stations. I got to sample Brian Wilson's Smile as well as an album by the Walkmen and I was able to give another listen to Tift Merritt's Tambourine. I am staying on an Air Force Base where I hope to do some bowling in the next couple of days.

When I return to SF, I plan to do some writing about Texas, two-ton trucks, the Ten Commandments, our friends in France and the meaning of Patriotism.

Until then, hold tight.

The Bossman Laggeth

I know you're all getting antsy as I haven't posted in a few days. The thing is: I've had better things to do. So deal with it. Gosh it's fun to pretend like people actually care whether I post anything on this site!

Anyway, back to my personal illusion: I'm working on some very ambitious posts, including one on the state of the music industry and what we can learn from European and Asian industry models. Of course, I promised you weeks ago that I would be offering my ideas on what good came out of the election -- and I assure you, I'm still thinking on that one.

For now, I'd like to offer a couple of recommendations. I had the chance to catch Wilco last week at the Paramount Theatre in Oakland and it is definitely a sight to behold. Their new lineup manages to be both audacious and bodacious -- and they sound better than ever. The second is a documentary called Dig! about the Brian Jonestown Massacre, its brash yet immensely talented singer/songwriter/frontman Anton Newcombe and their relationship with indie success story the Dandy Warhols. It's fascinating -- and not just in a Behind the Music , downward spiral kind of way. Thanks to Carrie for hooking me up with a bootleg copy on good old VHS.

I haven't been watching much TV lately, so if anyone has episodes of The Wire, Curb Your Enthusiasm or the OC taped, hook me up. I'll bring the Peppermint Schnapps.

Like Rats From a Sinking Ship

The news today is that Colin Powell and three other Cabinet members have tendered their resignations. So far, that's 6 of 15 Cabinet members running for the exits. The list:

Colin Powell, Secretary of State -- relatively speaking, a real loss. Rumor has it that Condi Rice may assume his position, bringing her charm, patience and warm demeanor to what has become the toughest job on the planet.
Ideal replacement: Jimmy Carter (and you know he'd take it); Probable replacement: Condi Rice (and if she isn't interested, how about giving Henry Kissinger another shot?)

John Ashcroft, Attorney General -- You know that you're unpopular with liberals when the guy who set the interrogation guidelines at Abu Ghraib seems like he'd make a better Attorney General than you.
Ideal Replacement: NY, can we borrow Eliot Spitzer? Their replacement: Alberto Gonzales

Rod Paige, Secretary of Education -- Hmmm...interesting. So far, two of the three African-American members of the Cabinet want out. If only Paige would take 'No Child Left Behind' with him.
Ideal replacement: Noam Chomsky! Probable replacement: There is talk of exhuming General George S. Patton

Spencer Abraham, Secretary of Energy-- Let's see, he fought for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and was very chummy with Enron, having received contributions to his Senate campaign, thereby earning a place on Ken Lay's speed-dial. Made a call to Lay just days before the Enron scandal broke.
Ideal Replacement: National Forest Service's Woodsy Owl (Give a Hoot...); Probable Replacement: Ken Lay

Don Evans, Secretary of Commerce -- An old buddy of Bush's from their days in the oil business, Evans replaced overly opinionated former Secretary Paul O'Neill who disagreed with all those tax cuts. Evans didn't make the same mistake.
Ideal Replacement: Paging Ralph Nader...; Probable Replacement: It's neck and neck between Martha Stewart and Rip Van Winkle.

Ann Veneman, Secretary of Agriculture -- There goes one of the three women in the Bush Cabinet. She is also the first woman to hold this position. This will be no big loss as she is known as an enemy to organic and family farming and a friend of agribusiness, genetically-engineered food and the WTO.
Ideal Replacement: Shit, I Don't Know; Probable Replacement: the Jolly Green Giant

Sign the Petition to Investigate Voting Irregularities

Petition is here at MoveOn.org.

Bush's mandate?

Check out this hilarious comic.

Second World?...It could be worse.

If anyone understands how liberating it can be to work under lowered expectations, it's George W. Bush. As a lifelong C student, Bush has had a lot of time to kick back and snort coke, get wasted or whatever he wanted to do.

But what to do when one takes over the reins of the largest national economy in the world as well as the most powerful military? Simple.

I had some friends in college -- and I won't name any names -- who wanted an intramural sports championship t-shirt worse than just about anything. The problem was that they were average athletes at best and weren't willing to really bust their asses to earn their shirts. But they came up with an ingenious plan. Why not sandbag the first few games of the new intramural volleyball season so they would be placed in a lower skill level? Then they could turn it on and win the championship without a problem -- lowering the bar as it were.

That brings us back to our current situation. Who wants the tremendous burden of being a first-world country? Not Bush. Why not sandbag it a little and then, hey, no one will be disappointed in us when we are neck-deep in debt, have serious poverty and disease problems, can't stop attacking other countries, etc.

Rest assured, Bush and Co. are hard at work attaining this less taxing status.

When one first thinks of the second and third world, poverty and disease come to mind. Check and check! Everyone knows we've added millions of Americans to the ranks of the destitute, but we can't stop there! As long as stem-cell research and sex education continue to be an option in this country, we'll never be able to sell ourselves as second-world, or someday, God willing, third-world. Take heart though. Bush's buddies in Texas are working on getting any mention of contraception out of school textbooks, so pretty soon we'll have AIDS and VD rates as high as any African country!

What else is keeping us from attaining second-world status? State-run news network? Got that. Dubious electoral process? Check. Confusing of church and state? Check. Not doing too bad so far.

But look people. There's no safety net in the second and third world. So get used to the fact that Social Security, Medicare and health insurance are just going to have to be the sacrifices we make in order to finally be free of our irksome role as a 'beacon to the world'.

The sooner you deal with that, the sooner we can take the final important steps like completely privatizing water, power and all of our other basic survival needs, and dismantling Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac so that shelter only goes to those who really EARN it.

I can tell that there are some of you out there who aren't up with the program -- but everyone has to pitch in for us to reach our goal. So let's face it, somebody has to be the oppressed class deprived of basic rights...sorry gays and lesbians.

But just think what fun we'll have once we don't have to worry abut living up to the expectations of the rest of the first world!

Where Do We Go From...

I was just about to start a post titled 'Where Do We Go From Here?' when I swung by Salon and saw that they were thinking the same thing. I'm going to read it and see if I have anything else to add. But for now, let's see what the likes of Arianna Huffington and Jay McInerney have to say.

Salon Story

Stay tuned for word on protests in San Francisco, news on the upcoming release of Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic (preview here), and my take on what good came out of this election.

Rough Day for Progressives

Tuesday was a very bad day for progressives -- not just in San Francisco, or the United States, but throughout the world. Things couldn't have gone much worse for us. Obviously Bush's victory was the major blow. I'm not even ready to talk about that one yet.

On top of that, we watched as a man of questionable mental capacity retained his Senate seat in Kentucky. We watched as South Carolina voters elected a man, Jim DeMint, who wants to scuttle the IRS and institute a 23% sales tax. A man who believes that homosexuals should not be allowed to teach in our schools -- and when pressed on this view, said he would have said the same of single women who are pregnant and living with their boyfriends. We watched as Oklahoma voted in Tom Coburn, who once told a supporter that lesbianism is so rampant in Southeast Oklahoma schools that they only let one girl go to the bathroom at a time. This is the same man who supports the death penalty for those who perform abortions (which would be tricky since he used to perform abortions himself). Coburn came out against a TV airing of Schindler's List calling it 'an all-time low' for TV, citing its full frontal nudity, violence and profanity. Don't even get me started about Tom DeLay who was reupped despite being the subject of ethics investigations into charges of fraud and obstruction of justice. And up in Alaska, the voters were said to be outraged by the blatant nepotism perpetrated in 2002 when now Governor Frank Murkowski chose his own daughter, Lisa, to take over his newly vacant Senate seat. But yesterday, she too was allowed to stay in Washington.

It was almost too much to bear with Bush looking more and more likely to be reelected. And at the same time, 11 states (out of 11) voted to ban same-sex marriage, denying basic rights to millions of Americans. In California, we had the added pleasure of watching Arnold Schwartzenegger celebrate not only the Bush victory, but the failure of Proposition 66 that would have reformed the very troublesome three strikes law in California that has hundreds if not thousands of people in prison for decades for petty offenses. After Tuesday, we have limited a citizen's right to sue corporations in California, we have perpetuated the onslaught against our privacy by establishing a DNA database for criminals, and we have let large employers continue to withhold health insurance from their employees in the interest of profits. Even in San Francisco, we failed to pass affordable housing bonds, denied noncitizens the right to have a say in their children's education but did manage to once again up the benefits for families of police and firefighters killed in the line of duty.

Tom Daschle lost his reeelction bid, the first time this has happened to a minority leader in decades. Bottom-feederMel Martinez beat Betty Castor in Florida.

There were very few bright spots on Tuesday. I can count the victories on one hand. Democrat Ken Salazar beat the disgracefully underinformed Pete Coors for a Senate seat in Colorado. Russ Feingold (the only Senator to vote against the Patriot Act) retained his seat. Democrat rising star Barack Obama beat crackpot Alan Keyes handily as expected. But Republicans expanded their majority in both the House and Senate. It is likely with the Bush victory that they will tip the Supreme Court a little more to the right.

Yep, things went very, very badly. I don't feel the normal bitterness of the losing side. Instead I feel a sadness. Because yesterday we all lost.