In the midst of all the hubbub, I missed out on the fact that I've been at this for more than two years now. The site started back in November of 2001. Anyone up for some Outlandish Classic?

...apparently I am. May of 2002 sure was an interesting month. Or what about back in september 2002, when I was freaking out about a lot of things.

To read through the archives is a strange experience being where I am now. Strange indeed.

I know this bores the hell our of some of you, and I promise to talk about my nonexistant sex life as soon as I think of anything interesting to say, but I came up with a decent distilation of the "Dean Thing" while posting on the ol' Kos during my lunch break today.

There are a lot of people who are political vetrans, but still don't "get" why Dean is the frontrunner. Many of these people live in a world of fear, visions of McGovern dancing in their heads. I try and turn them on to the best of my ability. Here's what popped out today. Consider it a counterpart to my ideas about the candidate himself.

1. The Dean campaign is being run around traditional media. They still pay for ads, but the focus of the campaign is on driving one-to-one interactions. This happens online and offline and includes blogs, letter-writing, door-knocking and a host of other activities. No other campaign has as many volunteer hours to spend or is spending them as effectively.

2. The Dean campaign is being run as a decentralized network and not as a top-down organization. The dominant message from the campaign is "just do it." There is a hierarchy (multiple hierarchies in fact) but that is not the organizational trope that dominates. Without getting into the math of things, networked organizational models allow vastly greater scalability for participation than hierarchies. Greater participation, which equates to better fundraising and most importantly higher voter turnout, is the single most critical factor in outsing Bush from office and maintaining that momentum to get the US and the world back on track. If we get 60% voter turnout, we win.

3. Howard Dean as a candidate represents a novel phenomena in that he seems to be less spin-centric than any mainstram candidate in recent memory. The era of heavy spin began in 1992 with Clinton's campaign and has reached an apotheosis -- almost unadulterated doublespeak -- now with Bush in office. A break from this tradition represents a chance to not only bring the national dialogue closer in line with reality, it also represents the best chance to break through the near-50% approval barrier. You cannot always fight fire with fire, and you can never fight it with fire alone.

4. As a fundraising apparatus, Dean's campaign represents the best chance for fiscal parity with Bush. With point #1 in mind, money still matters hugely in any poltical campaign. No other campaign has as deep a resource pool to draw on or is as thrifty.

5. By capitalizing on a latent capacity among the body politic for social connections (do you have 150 friends? I don't, and I'm pretty connected), the Dean campaign drives itself with a process which is strengthening communities all across the country. This seems critical if we're to beat Bush and maintain the momentum afterwards to freshen up Congress and generally revitalize this American life. If we play by the standard campaign tactics, I believe we're more likely to loose, and even if we win it will be more difficult to maintain energy after the election.

Two good things came my way so far today. First I got word that Dean For Jobs is up for testing. This is a deanspace offshoot that's aimed at getting all the Dean fans out there personally engaged in getting the economy back into high gear. You sign up to teach or learn, or possibly even to employ.

Secondly, I saw this. Nothing like a shot at ol' Ann Coulter to brighten your morning.

Just back from the Dean Grassroots Summit here in SF. Good times and good vibes. It's a big tent. I got a few nods for being involved with Deanspace (though I think the real credit belongs to on Neil Drumm, who I'm going to send a fruitcake to for the holidays, and then some) and met with some new allies. I also got to meet in person some people I've only seen online (Steve, Christian, good to meet ya). It was too bad there weren't (girls) more people my age there, but I suppose that's a matter of marketing more than anything else. At least, I hope it is. Don't know what I'll do if it turns out all my peers are apathetic layabouts.

Also, check out DeanPix, which is being run by Christopher Dye, the guy who set up the housecall flash ad on such short notice when I was in Burlington those months ago. He's created a flash information kiosk, which is a pretty innovative use of the tool.

And Deanspace is going 1.0! I have to fix up some database things to go in there so that 1.0.1 is nicer.

A while back in Brooklyn I audio-recorded some of my performance text on a layabout morning. Recently I was talking with some of the heads at MfA, a little bull session about the Movement and my predilictions for poetry. It reminded me of some of the stuff I've done on stage, so I tried to modify things on the fly to specify the trip for them.

It got me thinking, and I had this song stuck in my head, so Friday night on my way home from work I stuck the song and the audio together and found the match to be tight. It needs some work, but maybe you'll dig it. Here's an Mp3 version of ...and I'm not Fucking Around with musical backup from Radar (which I picked up off a random comp CD from 2001).

This is the text that got me labelled "the Tony Robbins of Burning Man." I want to stick it into a subversive flash animation; kind of a blueprint for a revolution. Let me know if it hits.

Just in case you didn't make the connection; try contrasting the statue that went down in London today with another statue that went down a while ago.

The point isn't that Bush is worse than Saddam. He's not. More dangerous to world peace, probably, but Saddam was a very very very very very very very bad man. That being said, the point is that the Bush modus opperandi is falshood, deciet and deception. They made that statue going down in Iraq look like some kind of popular mass rally. They're also pretending an actual popular mass rally didn't happen. From the NYT:

Asked about the protests during the visit, Mrs. Bush said she hadn't really seen any. "We've seen plenty of American flags, we've seen plenty of people who were waving to us," she said. "Many, many more people in fact than we've seen protestors."

And this, of course, has been pretty much ignored or buried by the national press in the US because they've already bought their tickets and now seem unable to jump off the ride. So it goes.

To the commentor who asked what Dean's position on the recent ruling in MA to allow homosexual partners to marry, here's the word from the horse's mouth.

"There will be those who try to use the decision today to divide Americans. Instead, this decision should be viewed as an opportunity to affirm what binds us together -- a fundamental belief in the equality of human beings, regardless of race, gender or sexual orientation."

Right now it looks like a done deal. Full civil rights in Mass! Unless someone comes up with something that might derail this process, it's unlikely that many politicians will sing its prases too loudly, as Gay Marriage (as opposed to Civil Unions) is statistically unpopular in the US.

Moving and shaking, swimming with the sharks, running with the devil; it's been a fun couple of days. I got to have a great dinner and conversation tuesday night with Jonas Luster, Phil Wolff and Rick Klau, the instigator of the whole thing. Talk was mainly of politics (Phil likes Kerry, Jonas Clark, Rick and I are Deanies), and the impact of socially aware design on technology and media; good talk; heady but respectful too.

The thing that struck me most about the politics part was how concialatory everything was. No barbs, just honest discussion. I sense a chance for Dean to start to pull away. I don't want to jinx anything, but people are starting to realize he's probably the guy, and they're thinking it might not be all that bad to get behind him and push. It might even be fun. We are, after all, on the same team, along with most of humanity.

And in answer to a question I got via email from Cian, asking, "What about John Edwards for president, Bitch." I have to say it just doesn't look like his year. He's obviously got something going for him, but I think he's too nice, too pretty, too slick and charming for these times. He doesn't seem well-suited to governing in an era of crisis and strife. I think that's why he hasn't gotten any lasting traction in the media or in many polls. Assuming the world doesn't go to hell in a handbasket, he could be the guy to go with in 2012. Maybe a Veep possibility in the interum?

Speaking of hell in a handbasket, tonight I saw the San Francisco of Uncovered: the whole truth about the Iraq war, an effective piece of documentary filmmaking. It sure made me mad all over again. Then I shot over to the starlight lounge and looked out at the city while the last bits of a Gavin Newsom fundraiser finished; SF mayoral politics: hard to figure. The traditional discourses of right and left simply do not apply here. The thing about looking out at the city from so high, you aren't so assaulted by the logos that dominate the view at street level. It's a beautiful and classy thing, the kind of thing you have to pay to have access to.

But apparently you don't have to pay too much. As we were checking out to go find food, the public was lining up to get in to the lounge at $3 a pop; not for the fundraiser, just regular wednesday night action. It was a pretty blue-collar looking crowd. and good for them for throwing back a cocktail, taking in the view, and standing on the ground of the beautiful people.

FYI: our Dear Leader is visiting the UK for the next few days. They're spending about $20million on police, shutting down the underground and having rolling cellphone blackouts in the name of protecting the Prez from "terrorists." Some theorize that it also might be to dampen demonstrations. Y'all know that Bush doesn't read the news, has never come face to face with his detrators, and in all likelyhood has no idea that he is loathed by roughly half the world's english speaking population.

This website is keeping track of everything that goes on during his British Vacation.

Lots of sunday thoughts about life and everything. We rented a car to (work) drive to Santa Cruz, road trip with Dan and Brian, winding around hwy 17 -- steep, curvy, traffic -- then sitting around the show, cold little antichamber where the tables and concessions were; muffled music from inside, people milling. Some interest in our stuff, a little conversation with the guys, a couple, more than a couple, really pretty women, alluring in spite of their Dennis Kucinich leanings. Nothing doing though: no tao of Steve or even goofball bumbling introduction energy. I'm blocked up lately, flow impeded. The gut-eating stress is off, but even in absence of external pressures, my juice remains well and truly stoppered.

Not that there's no internal pressure -- no doubt about that, there's mojo built up a-plenty -- but it currently has no means of articulation, no focus, no room to maneuver, no way of becoming active. My chi, my desire, my heart, spirit and to some degree even my mind are all clown car cramped at the moment. Maybe it's an ego problem; not enough, too much, I don't really know. All's I'm saying is that there's a point at which bound energy is either liberated or begins the entropic dissipation the laws of thermodynamics demand. The sooner this not gets undone, the sooner we can get back to the dance.

The phenomena cuts across all aspects of the life. Work, friends, art, politics, sex -- you name it -- and what's more it can go on forever if I let it; that would be a bum trip for sure.

Long time ago, Mark told me that 2003 was going to be the Year of Getting Shit Done. He's been odly prophetic in some ways, but it's been a sad kind of journey. People are splitting up, the world is splitting up it seems, and instead of making me angry it's starting to just make me sad. I've been wondering when we will have a chance to get back to the fine art of living rather that sweating the future in such an enormous way. I look forward to that day, but I want it to be because we did something rather than because we turned our backs on the situation.