According to CNN's exit poll, Dean beat Kerry in only a couple Demographic categories:

• 18-29 year olds
• The Very Liberal
• Minority Women
• People who use the internet often

That's my group! I think a coalition of young people, progressives, and minority women with a net-savvy edge would govern this country pretty well, and present a pretty good alternative to Bush.

But I want serious progress, so take it with a grain of salt; call it spin if you must, but that picture of John Kerry giving the thumbs up in front of a crowd of dour-faced old white men gave me the creeps. I want youth, I want women, I want color, and I want technology. And I want it now! ;)

So now we find out if Dean's really low on cash, and see what he can do with his speech tonight. It's not over yet, but we're up against the acid test. We'll see what we can do at seven places at once in a week.

And I can't fucking believe I just used a smiley-face in a blog. Time for whiskey.

When one hits the bottle, the bottle hits back. This is a fact, and people tend to either enjoy it or slink away. Last night I did my best Hank Williams impersonation, inhaling half a bottle of bourbon -- left overs from caucus watching -- in about two hours; fell blind asleep on Luke's couch at 11pm after getting sick twice. Chasing the blackness again. Reminds me of college, the time when I was working on my show, drinking from a flask and taking generic caffeine pills.

Today was more relaxing. I stuck around Berkeley and played video games for about 7 hours. Reminds me of high school, the time when I was innocent.

Things are moving and changing a lot it seems. I'm missing something, but I don't know what it is. I haven't spoken to my man Mark in nigh on a month. I haven't really been able to let my hair down since the end of August. I miss making art and thinking philosophically and being more lustful for life.

Sometimes I think I'm trying to cram too much in too early. Hunter S. Thompson didn't become Hunter S. Thompson until he was in his late twenties. Sometimes I think I've not gone fast enough. It's hard to gague speed these days. Velocity is a principle life theme of mine, but somewhere in my maturation over the past few months I seem to have lost touch with that. More honest physical exercise is probably needed. More riding up and down hills.

I don't want to beat this to death, but I think the media establishment jumped the shark, and that this kind of thing -- the spin becoming detatched completely from reality -- is dangerous. It's not just bad for my candidate, it's dangerous for the country, for all of us.

Here's some video from the crowd's perspective.

It's rally, and a high-energy one. The fact that so many establishment interests want to choke off this kind of excitement about participation in the political process confirms in my mind the importance of not allowing this to happen. Howard Dean started something, and this week it came close to being crushed because the mass media was able to sew the seeds of doubt. "Maybe this guy really is too much..."

There are two ways to look at what happened. One is that there's a strong anti-Dean bias in newsrooms around the country. I tend to think that to be a bit conspiratorial, so I look at the the other way. Matt Drudge was able to do his thing, providing an irresistable pellet of a story that caught on like wildfire among a press corps who were predisposed to playing up supposed gaffes from Dean.

The problem is, this is far more chilling than any conspiracy theory. This would suggest that the press corps is fantastically lazy -- in that they were willing to repeat a 15-second soundbyte without getting the context for themselves -- and/or willing to blow with the wind no matter what the facts are. What I don't understand is why no one from the press, and I mean no one, not even on NPR or PBS, stood up and said this was bullshit, that the conventional widsom being peddled was wholly unsupported by the facts. This kind if thing is suppsed to matter if you call yourself a journalist.

My guess is that most players in the newsmedia game are in one way or another intoxicated with the power they weild. We report, you decide. As A-stock said in the post below, perception has a way of becoming reality, and if you've come up in the world of big media, you've been the sole source for most people's ability to perceve events they don't see first hand. You've been a master of the universe.

That era is drawing to a close. No matter what the outcome of this election, the newsmedia establishment took another step towards oblivion this week. I would expect this spin from people like Drudge, Limbaugh, Rove and Dean's rivals for the nomination; but to see it repeated thoughtlessly and without a care for the reality of the situation in every single media outlet in thr country was truly chilling.

Meanwhile, you might want to read Bush's remarks to the press pool. This is not a joke. We're not scaremongering, this is really happening.

An actual dream I had last night.

In Iraq, the secret plan for cultural domination is to have some massive military operation to freak people out sexually. There's a big building in this town in Iraq. Solders, like me, who are willing to go the extra mile for our country are brought in to fight on the front lines. Apparently, randy Iraqis are also being recruited to help loosen up square American troopers. Someone's got a plan for a revolution.

I arrive and climb up many flights of stairs. There are screening stations, control desks (everything is taped and monitored) and couches all along one side of the building. The other side has been divided into small rooms. My control desk operator (the peson who checks me in and out, and watches what goes on in the room) is Molly's fasionist friend Caramia. I'd heard before that I would be working with her -- we have some kind of prior relationship -- and there's a little joking flirtation about what someone might mistake "working together" to mean in this context.

So the place is pretty busy. There are uptight girls coming out of the room kind of freaked out. Stereotypical schoolgirl porno dialogue. "His *thing* was all hard, and then it squirted..." And there are some tall, lanky, confidant-looking arab women; sophisticated types; walking out of rooms with an air of satisfaction, soon to be followed by nervously grinning GIs from the Bible Belt.

The dream shifts before I see any action. A marketplace in the same town. Someone asking for directions to a steakhouse. Some guy telling me about back in the '80s when there was a budding surfing industry in Iraq. The scenery looks like the Playa, feels like a very run-down version of Miami.

Would that this were true. We can all dream, can't we?