Comic posted Wednesday, Nov 3, 2004

PPosted: 9:10 am, Wednesday, November 3, 2004

Seems like once a week, I'm good for an absolute suck-ass newspost, and that yesterday was that once a week. Sorry about that. I'll try and make amends, although I've been awfully busy this week and haven't really been able to cruise the web that much.

2.0 knits, although a bit more successfully than Jen does. And Crownover wants to knit. I, for my part, flip through 2.0's copy of Stitch n' Bitch and leave it open to the page with the crocheted bikini. So far, the hint has not been taken. According to Amazon, there's a sequel coming out. Which, honest to God, made me remember that I saw that Howard Zinn just published Voices of a People's History to the United States, more a companion than a sequel, I guess, but definitely a follow-up to his People's History of the United States. Seriously, the knitting book made me think of this. I saw this book on Friday at the B&N I was killing time at, but it was shrink-wrapped, so I couldn't figure out if it was an entirely different book or just a more heavily annotated People's History. I guess it's divided into the same sections as a People's History, but consists mostly of first-hand sources and brief introductions to those first-hand sources by Zinn. Might be worth checking out, but I want to get the Zinn Reader first, since I didn't feel cheated by the excerpted sources in the People's History at all. Holy shit, according to that wikipedia link I gave you, Matt Damon grew up next door to Zinn. Wow. Anyway, briefly, the People's History is the history of the United States as told and interpreted by those not in power (ie, by everyone who is not a rich white man). Zinn (a white man, although not rich) uses documents, scraps, interviews, anything he can from various dissenting voices throughout history - Native Americans, missionaries opposed to the wholesale slaughter of the peoples Columbus discovered when he was over here, unionists - to construct a history of this great union that shows exactly how fucked up this country is.

Which is a pretty damn good segue into a discussion of the election. Except that I'd rather pound my balls flat with a hammer than discuss the election. I am still clinging to some sort of hope that massive vote fraud invalidates some of the results, or that Kerry magically makes up the difference in Ohio, or something, anything, to keep that vile evil asshole out of office for the next four years. The New York Post, unlike virtually every other major paper that I've looked at, has gone ahead and declared Fuckhole the winner. Shocking, I know.

So, looks like you all may need to change your bookmarks to fivebuckstofriday.co.au or .co.uk or something in the not-to-distant future.

From that clusterfuck to my new activity to pass the time, Christmas shopping. In case you don't know me personally, or have somehow escaped exposure to this facet of my personality, I am a Christmas idiot. It's only November 3rd and I'm already making notes and brainstorming pretty constantly and have now mentioned two days in a row my Christmas shopping. Since I obviously can't get into what it is I'm buying, I can go only so far as to say that eBay is the single greatest place ever to get Christmas gifts. I did virtually all of my shopping off of eBay two years ago, and everyone - even Carrie and Andrea, who got a broken Atari - seemed pleased with the results. There is no going wrong on eBay. It is much like zombo.com that way. You can do anything on zombo.com. (sound, but SFW)

I actually spoke a second too soon - in addition to Christmas shopping, I'm currently occupied coming up with the menu for not one but two Thanksgiving dinners. One for some friends, one for my family and also 2.0's parents. Yeah, because I'm crazy, we're having Thanksgiving at our place. More on this in the coming weeks, but my usually set-in-stone Thanksgiving-ish menu is facing some interesting questions this year, since the November Gourmet just came yesterday. There's a recipe for roast turkey with pomegranate gravy. That's awfully damned fancy. I just don't know that I'm that fancy of a guy yet. I think I'm not. But I can't be sure.

And, for a totally random finale: Mikey and Fair JJ dressed Ben as a giraffe for Halloween. But, had they seen this costume, I have no doubt the giraffe get-up would've been mothballed for a year. And, yes, I know, I've long voiced that I hate baby photos on the web. Ben is an exception, because he went for my beer at the Michigan game. That's a good kid, right there.

bullfrog