Global Body To Ensure A Fair Vote, Kerry Victory
NEW YORK (Rhodes Media Services) -- Following a recent request by nine Congressional members asking the U.N. to deploy election observers for the upcoming 2004 Presidential election, the U.N. has sent a specialized group of election observers to oversee the event and ensure the American public gets it right this time.
Arriving at New York's LaGuardia airport today, the first batch of U.N. election observers, armed with the latest in top-of-the-line observing equipment and sporting extra-strong squinting muscles, looked poised and confident that they would succeed where the U.S. voters failed four years before.
Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas), who spearheaded the push for U.N. involvement, said she felt incredibly relieved that the U.S. election was being overseen by an unelected world body with a storied history of corruption and mishandling of world affairs.
"Four years ago this country experienced a fiasco of an election," said Johnson. "What better body to have observe this year's election than the U.N., which knows all about fiascos. They'll make sure Americans get it right this time. They'll make sure that Kerry wins. . . whoops, I mean, they'll make sure voting rights are secure."
Over the weekend, something happened to the transmission of my Cadillac that resulted in my transmission not transmitting that which it's supposed to transmit. In other words, the damn thing wouldn't shift into second gear, meaning that I had to drive home at 35 mph, thus pissing off a multitude of lead-footed motorists.
I like my Caddy. It's probably the smoothest riding vehicle I'll ever own in my life. But, the biggest drawback to owning a Caddy is that, should something break down, it will cost you a buttload of greenbacks to repair. And, of the litany of things that can go wrong with a Caddy, the transmission is probably #2 on the list of things you don't want to fail, with #1 being the engine.
Well, I dropped off my car for repairs on Tuesday, which meant that I had to rely on the repair shop's shuttle service to get me back home. One thing I've noticed about shuttle service drivers is that they tend to be a chatty bunch. You may not know anything about them upon meeting them, but you'll certainly know more than you ever wanted to know after ten minutes or so.
The shuttle service driver I ended up with was a portly gent with a pleasant demeanor, and a propensity for diarrhea of the mouth unmatched by any shuttle driver I've ever encountered. No topic was off limits for this guy.
We started off talking about the weather, which consisted of rain, and then we segued into current events, and then he talked for a time about his family. And, let me tell you, he was not against using a liberal number of expletives to spice up his narratives. It wasn't just raining, it was "a Goddamned fucking downpour." It wasn't just chilly for July, it was "nut-retreating cold outside." And so on. Suffice it to say, I generally liked the guy.
We eventually pulled up in front of my house, and the driver's face scrunched up in the international sign of recognition.
"Hey, I know that house!" he exclaimed.
"Oh yeah?" I said, somewhat surprised.
"Yeah, yeah! Nice couple lived there. They had a daughter. A beautiful thing. Beautiful. . . and easy."
Now, it was the way he said "easy" that threw me off a bit. I mean, he was a bit of an older guy, so he may have meant "easy" as in "easy to get along with," but there was enough hesitation and nostalgic earnest in his voice to indicate that the daughter in question was "easy" in a "buy me McDonald's and I'm yours" sort of way.
"Yup, she was just beautiful and easy," he reiterated. "She got involved with a guy for quite awhile, maybe a couple of years, I can't quite remember. Then it turned out he dicked dogs."
"Excuse me?"
I was taken aback just a little, because I was expecting him to say something along the lines of "he got her knocked up and left her" or something tragic like that, but I was in no way prepared for the story to take the jolting turn of "then it turned out he dicked dogs."
"I actually caught him doing it," he went on. "I drove up an alley one night, and there he was, pants around his ankles, just fucking the hell out of this poor dog. I called the cops straight away. They asked for his name, and when I told them they said 'he's at it again, eh.'"
Now, I have a fairly finely tuned bullshit detector. I can often tell when someone's lying to me or telling me a whopper of a tall tale but, for whatever reason, I couldn't shake the feeling that this guy was giving it to me straight and true. Maybe because it was just too crazy not to be true. I mean, really, who would make up a story about some guy who had a penchant for poodle pumping?
"He'd done it before?" I asked. "He was a repeat offender?"
"Oh, yeah. It was a big story. The daughter went into hiding after that because she was afraid people would think she was somehow involved. They put him away for four or five years if I remember right. Not long enough, if you ask me."
"And, if they'd asked the dog, I'm sure it would have asked for a life sentence," I joked.
We had a good laugh, and then I exited the vehicle and walked into my house.
A couple of hours later, as I sat there watching TV, I remembered that, in the early days of owning the house, I discovered some old dog tags, and a horrifying possibility entered my brain.
"What if. . . ? Nah. He couldn't have. But, what if? What if he screwed the family pooch, right there in front of what is now my entertainment center?"
Sometimes, I think, there is some information that better left unknown.
OH, AND BY THE WAY: James Lileks annihilated Michael Moore today.
When I started this blog, way back in the Dark Days of Blogger, when my officemate Jen told me about this blogging thing and offered to build me a site, I most definitely asked her to include a comment engine.
It was the narcissist in me. It was the raging egomaniac in me. In short, it was the human being in me. Mostly, I just wanted to know if people were reading and get an idea of what they thought. Basically, I didn't want to do all this navel-gazing literary tripe unless I knew people were reading it.
Now, I've come to value comment threads for entirely different reasons.
There's the community aspect of comments, to be sure. Most people who comment here are folks in the blog realm I've come to know and respect. Comments from those people are kind of like a postcard from a distant acquaintance: nice to get, and it lets you know they're still out there breathing.
The whole Plain Layne fiasco (oh, and Odin's living vicariously through his Layne creation over here, if you're interested) really laid out the community aspect of comments out perfectly. I felt kinda at home in Layne's comment box, like I could kick off my shoes, grab a beer out of the fridge, and yell at the dog for awhile. I got to know the commenters there fairly intimately and, quite frankly, the comment threads over there were 60 percent, if not more, of the entertainment value of that blog. Seriously, if you read about someone falling asleep with a butt plug up their ass, and you couldn't comment about it, wouldn't that just drive you nuts? So, I miss the Plain Layne comment box considerably, and it's kind of weird to see Layne's loyal readers floating around without being able to find a comfortable home quite like we had at Plain Layne.
Then there's the investigative and information-sharing aspect of comments, which could, given the right people on the right scent, put the CIA to shame. Watching the uber-thread unfold on Joshua Norton's blog that picked apart the fraud that was Plain Layne was one fascinating and amazing phenomenon to witness. It was obvious, watching that dissection take place, that comment threads can be an incredibly powerful and useful tool for any number of investigative exercises.
Then, today, at A Small Victory, I read this:
personally, I see in our comments casual evidence of what the polling firms have been saying for some time: that left and right are becoming increasingly entrenched, and by extension, less tolerant and civil in debating opposing viewpoints. This is complicated by another factor: I believe “regulars” come to feel nearly proprietary ownership for the commenting forum, and they’re increasingly less likely to tolerate “outsiders” over time … because of the community blogs can create some come to see it as their sandbox, rather than ours. And if you buy that blogs (especially those with high readership levels) are points of collection for opinion leaders … well, it may be we’re seeing a leading indicator of less civil debate in our classrooms, breakrooms, and political conventions.
That's spot-on true, I think, and it's a big reason why I've backed away from political commentary here. The lines have pretty much been drawn for months now, so I'm either preaching to the choir or raising hackles at the church across the street. So, really, what's the point? In that regard, comments have pretty much lost their usefulness and have devolved into pissing matches that just seem to get both sides all the more angry.
Which is another reason why I miss the Plain Layne comment box so much. At least there, people could disagree and still remain largely civil, and maybe even fire out a limerick on occasion. I wish the tone of political discourse on blogs could be like that exchanged on Plain Layne.
Really, I fucking mean it.
