I’ve been saying for a couple months that I give November’s election a 50-50 chance of actually happening [I wish I’d posted it on this site], and look: from Yahoo and from CNN. So if the Bushies can’t win it, they’re going to cancel it?
If this doesn’t have Karl Rove’s name written all over it, I don’t know what does.
The Dean volunteer experience is hitting a few snags. I submitted a volunteer form on the New Hampshire for Dean website, but haven’t heard back, and it’s been tough to get any straight answers from the campaign.
Below I’ve reproduced my first post to dean2004.blogspot.com, the unofficial Dean Nation blog. One of the main contributors to the blog is my old dorm-mate from college, Aziz, who asked if I would guest blog during my New Hampshire volunteer experience. With 3,000 page views a day, how could I say no?
I found out this week, as reported by Wired News and a San Antonio paper, that a key provision of the former Patriot II Act (which would have allowed lots of new violations of our freedom in the name of stopping terrorism) was passed as part of the funding bill for intelligence agencies (which is kept secret as a matter of course).
Long rant continues:
It occurred to me, after the recall election, that very few people have probably experienced the Buffoon Governor Trifecta(TM) that I have. 1986-1999: Tommy Thompson, Wisconsin. 1999-2002: Jesse Ventura, Minnesota. 2003-?: Arnold Schwarzenegger, California. The mind reels.
An excellent article: Behind Our Backs.
It strikes me that we need a “reputable” journalist or two to do for Bush what Woodward and Bernstein did for Nixon.
Happy tax day. I did mine a month ago.
This update is simply to note that I haven’t written any NaNoWriMo blog entries in a great while. Also, I haven’t worked on the novel since November. It’s stewing. Yeah, that’s it: it’s stewing in my subconscious.
New political developments threaten daily to make the novel obsolete, a problem I will have to tackle when I return to writing.
It also occurs to me that November is a terrible month in which to attempt to write an entire novel. The first and most obvious strike against November is that it only contains 30 days. Second, it contains Thanksgiving—many people travel for Thanksgiving. At the very least, they’re probably spending several hours on Thursday dealing with a large meal, family, friends, or even all three. Third, the beginning of November is almost always the craziest time of year for anyone who participates (beyond simply voting) in this country’s system of electing its representative officials. Even if that represents only a small percentage of the population, it’s still quite significant to them. In contrast, January beats November hands-down for all of the above reasons. It’s 31 days long—the maximum. It doesn’t typically feature an election. Best, it usually contains two holidays (New Year’s Day and Martin Luther King Day) that don’t feature quite as much travel as Thanksgiving. (This is not to minimize the importance of Martin Luther King Day, of course.)
[Note: a form of this blog entry originally appeared in my November 2002 NaNoWriMo blog, “Notes on the Text,” which chronicled my poor, solitary attempt to write a novel. I’ve now moved all of those entries into the “Imagine a Novel Weblog” category of this blog.]
Lots of good news today:
Not that Ventura being governor will matter much to me when I move out of Minnesota. At least my future former co-workers (?) won’t have to deal with such a hostile administration, assuming Pawlenty loses. [Update: Pawlenty won. Layoffs followed.] (And I hope not to be in a position again to be directly affected by Supreme Court decisions that protect canvassing.)
I won’t miss the way Minnesotans merge onto the freeway. Isn’t “acceleration ramp” another name for “on-ramp?” I don’t think they teach that here.
Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén
