I love Brad Neely. When I feel uncertain about my future as a capitalist, there's a song to cheer me up:

Creased comics.

This is my "good" presentation. I'm looking a little haggard here — this is after two more days of being on a boat in Stockholm, and two more nights out with the king of Denmark, then flying back to spend Friday/Saturday nights in Austin, Texas — but this is the best Video I've got of my "inspired by Lessig" deal.

Someday I'm going to get my own projector, a foot-pedal clicker, and a few weeks of time, and make some king-hell presentation-art. Lots of potential.

One of the things I did while on my world-tour last fall was give a talk about Drupal and academia in the belly of a ship in Stockholm. And the cameras we're rolling.

How Berkeley and Stanford University Use Drupal (Joshua Koenig) from NodeOne.se on Vimeo.

It's not my best presentation due to jetlag/sickness and a funky mic (I also never really had my breath working right, a big no-no from Theater World), but I did a decent job of regulating my pace and I think it's a more or less accurate talk.

Huge thanks to my hosts who cut together this video really well, and gave me some lovely liquor that I didn't quite get to drink. Looking forward to showing them a really good time when they come out to San Francisco in April!

Christmas party went off good. Gift exchange. Talent show. Funtime. My performance/pep-talk went over well; I'll post the text for the archive in a bit.

Number one quote of the night: "Motherfuckers try to front, but the Greatful Dead were hard as fuck."

In the meantime, here's something sure to make you smile:

LGD reminded me this morning of one of the top 10 rock performances of all time:

The White Wizard plays keyboard, sax, drums and then does crazy experimental sound shit. That's what I call talent.

And remembering this got me organized enough to resurrect one of the greatest web-properties of all time: VAGABENDER.COM RETURNS, BITCHES! I was specifically thinking of East Nashville, which is where Travis introduced us to that video, and the glory that was The Old Grey Whistle Test.

Pretty soon this will kind of be creepy, I'll bet. But for now, let's enjoy that #1 summer jam...

Hell of a catchy chorus.

This is what you call the closing argument. I expect the big 30-minute show on Wednesday to be a more intricate version of the same. By all indications, Barry is pulling away, which is just great to see. Hopefully w/all the early voting, the big GOTV push can take it to the next level and we'll get a serious mandate to do all these things.

The reality is that it's going to take several years to turn around the Bush momentum. Four years is enough to start to see a shift and hopefully earn another term to bring it on home. The big gamble is whether or not Obama will be able to govern, and whether or not the House and Senate will start to act w/purpose, and just how far out into the wilderness the ultra-political end of the GOP rump will end up. Hopefully the infighting there will hamper their ability to foul up an Obama administration (for reference see Clinton, Bill, years 1992 - 1994), and hopefully also the signs that Obama is a much more capable leader than the old Clenis will bear out.

Try and find video of Usain Bolt's 100m astonishing world-record run this summer from Beijing. I remember happening to catch it in the kitchen in Westhaven. It was spectacular.

But you can't find it online.

NBC owns it, and their stuff is only avaiable via their own (shitty) website and using a (shitty) proprietary Microsoft plugin-requiring format.

I was going to make a post using that video an analogizing w/the presidential race -- as the McCain tailspin tightens and the backstabbing begins -- but I can't. Because the Olympics are the intellectual property of NBC Sports, and they're a massive gang of wankers.

And speaking of a massive gang of wankers:

The little blond girl making monkey gestures at the beginning really gives me a twisty feeling in my stomach. Drawing out the toxins, this election is.

Joe the plumber is america's next top political football. I found this invocation to give me a little sense of trepidation, mainly for reasons Bowers outlines here. It seems to tap into the Reagan-era shit that's worked really well. I'm personally totally non-plussed, but it makes me nervous when people start attacking Obama for wanting to "spread the wealth around."

But it appears that maybe America is waking up to the fact that this has been happening, except the "spread" has a decidedly upward drift. As one pundit put it, "the rich have been strip-mining the middle class" for the past twenty five years.

And Joe? Well, who knows if it will matter in the non-reality-based community that is the world of Cable News, but it looks like an EPIC FAIL of a campaign strategy:

So Joe (whose name is Sam) the Plumber (who isn't a plumber) was used by McCain to attack Obama's tax proposal, though Joe/Sam actually pays less tax under Obama (if he actually got around to paying his taxes.)

Brought to you by the same people who think character attacks are more important than issues.

That's compounded by the fact that the ad McCain released (from professionals) prominently features the word "Everbody?" in one of its fear-factor jump-cuts.

This explains a lot. Lolcats are running the McCain campaign.

Another one, from everyone's favorite comic denizen of Rudy's:

Kudos to Katie. I think the "Strong on Women" tagline is fucking genius. It's both mocking of conventional campaign discourse, and also clearly communicative of the creepy, overbearing, paternalistic attitude that typifies the Right's position on all these issues.