My comrade and colleague Farsheed has posted another of his amazing picsound creations. I just love these things. Basically, he makes some music, then does a little animation or image to go with it. It's bonafide internet art. Awesome.

This shit itches.

I'm cutting it off tonight.

Ted Haggard, leader of the biggest Evangelical Church in America, and a regular chit-chatter with President Boosh (good background from Harpers magazine), apparently likes to get high on meth and down with male prostitutes:

The accusations were made by Mike Jones, 49, of Denver, who said he decided to go public because of the political fight over the amendments.

"I just want people to step back and take a look and say, 'Look, we're all sinners, we all have faults, but if two people want to get married, just let them, and let them have a happy life,"' said Jones, who added that he isn't working for any political group.

Jones, who said he is gay, said he was also upset when he discovered Haggard and the New Life Church had publicly opposed same-sex marriage.

"It made me angry that here's someone preaching about gay marriage and going behind the scenes having gay sex," he said.

Jones claimed Haggard paid him to have sex nearly every month over three years. He said he advertised himself as an escort on the Internet and was contacted by a man who called himself Art, who snorted methamphetamine before their sexual encounters to heighten his experience.

This is going to be a hard thing for a lot of people to deal with, and it's too bad this guy's life is probably ruined now, that his family's going to be all weirded out. Still, I find it hard not to appreciate the irony, especially considering I think what Haggard was doing with his life previously was destructive to society.

Someday, when we as human beings cease to be sheep and blind-believers in significant number, this sort of thing is going to stop being so surprising. Those who thunder hardest against what they consider sin and vice are usually battling some internal discrepancy in themselves.

The Polling Place Photo Project (PPPP). Cool. This is the sort of low-cost activity that can roll up to being meaningful over time. I'll be snapping some shots of the Westhaven Volunteer Fire Station next tues.

Thanks to Juls and Mystery Pollster, here's a fascinating graph charting party-affiliation with age. I'm a bit suspicious as to how they're calculating for the 33%+ of people who don't self-identify with any party, but the overall visualization of the waves is awesome.

Quick takeaways:

• The velvet revolution is at hand. In the coming decade a strongly GOP-leaning wave is going to expire as the most progressive generation in history comes on-line.
• The GOP is good at politics. They've managed to build power without real majorities among the public. This is done through slick communications, driving up apathy among the general public while stoking their base, and by marginalizing Democrats among the power-elite so that there appear to be no clear alternatives.

But basically this means that the people want a progressive future and as long as we stay on target we'll win over time. My generation knows that politics matters and knows that the 24/7 cable newsmedia is not really a good source of information. I like our chances. Health care here we come.

I was against the war as far back as Fall of 2002, when it was clear that the Bush administration wanted it. I always thought it was a foolish exercise in hubris and greed. But my and millions of others protests were dismissed as "a focus group," and it went down anyway. And so here we are.

We've got to end the occupation. It's not working. It's not going to work. In fact, it's making the situation worse.

Ending the occupation doesn't mean trying to dodge any national responsibility. It doesn't mean isolationism. It doesn't mean "cut and run." It means making the only moral choice we've got left, and taking to first step towards bringing down the curtain on this misbegotten American Empire.

We have two options: we can end the occupation in a process we have some control over and attempt to foster a more effective (read: international) means for helping the New Iraq find a balance, or we can wait until we can simply no longer afford to maintain the empire, let the permanent bases we're building be overrun, lose many more lives, kill many more people, and have nothing to show for it but more blood in the sand, more debts and more enemies.

Go vote next week. It won't solve everything, but it will help.

That's me; dirty hippy with a Moustache for a Majority. Man.

Well, I lost a post I wrote about Lost somewhere in the last couple of days. Bummer.

Anyway, I caught up on the first three episodes, and I like it so far. It's unrealistic, but that's sort of the point; the show is interesting to me because it's about allegory and psychology and mystery. There's danger in that kind of narrative unraveling as things get "explained," but so far so good (e.g. w/the bear cages).

Also, loved the (highly unrealistic) shout out to the HC in Locke's dope-plantation flashback. Also also liking the new strong female leads among the others (including Trixie from Deadwood!).

Yeah, my other post was a little more substantive. What are ya gonna do?

I've got to catch up; there's a lot to blog about:

• A week of Chapter Three
• A week until the election and what that's all about
• From inside the mind: dusting off old philosophies, and also paralyzed by babes (discussions of a pattern)
• House news: gimpy Sixto, new loft bed, Zya returns
• Older stuff: Robin's band's show, Frank and Laura's wedding, etc etc etc

Anyway, I'll probably never write it all, but I'll try. Lately I've been reading this Kesey book, Demon Box, which is interesting. It's stuff he wrote all after the Electric Kool-Aid heyday, from when he was on his family's farm in Pleasant Hill, Oregon. It's resonating with my home-building/nesting vibe. Still trying to find my groove out here, but getting closer all the time I think.

Click and see. The fact that this sort of thing is not allowed makes no sense to me. I mean, the ads for Fahrenheit 9/11 were much more disparaging to Boosh.

Can't wait for the networks to stop mattering.