Manly Suicide

this is a bit disgusting (as are many of the offerings from Maddox), but if you have a disturbed sense of humor like I do, then definitely proceed

The Latest From the Campaign Trail
Crucial Pittsburgh neighborhood trending away from Kerry

While doing a lit drop this morning in East Allegheny on the north side of town, I saw an unmistakable sign that the neighborhood was moving away from Kerry and towards the undeniably powerful glow of the Beer campaign.

I was sitting on a bench in a quiet part of the neighborhood, waiting for the rest of the crew to get back to the car when a little kid walked by drinking a Coors Light. This kid was certainly no more than 10 or 11 years old. It was noon on a school day. And the kid didn't even seem to be worried that he was walking past an adult.

What the eff is going on in East Allegheny that made this seem normal for this kid??? Did Pete Coors himself fly in and sabotage the place??? I almost considered engaging the kid to see if he was going to vote Kerry... hell, if he's old enough to drink, he's definitely old enough to vote. I couldn't speak, though, because I was still frozen with shock until he had made it halfway down the block.

[And to update my last post -- perhaps I spoke to soon? The latest Zogby poll has the state as a dead heat after recently showing a four point Kerry lead here]

Perverse thoughts...

...about the election.

After seeing a couple state polls this week showing Kerry's lead in Pennsylvania increasing to close to the point of statistical significance for the first time in a while, I've strangely found myself both happy and disappointed.

Its of course a nice feeling to think about the strong possibility of those 21 EVs in Kerry's column. And it reflects well on all the campaign work done to date. Yet it also makes election day less exciting around here. After committing to be a DNC legal team poll monitor for 13 hours on election day and after attending two trainings specifically for election day and also completing the DNC's little online thing, I think part of me was actually secretly rooting for Pennsylvania to remain a toss-up right until November 2.

Its still not "safe" of course, so nobody's celebrating or dropping their guard yet. But after months of seeing our state in the same light as Ohio and Florida, it could be a bizarre let down for everyone in the state who will be working election day. I guess there will be one last round of polling numbers out before Tuesday, but for now, PA might not be where the "action" is.

Shattered glass and laundry

Two leftover thoughts from this past weekend

First of all, real glass breaking is the most awesome sound on Earth. Not beer bottles breaking. Actual window glass. Such as somebody getting drunk at a team barbecue and tossing a frisbee right through a neighbor's garage window. This is what Run's captain pulled off at our end-of-season backyard party. It was sweet. I guess I've got a good dose of Beavis & Butthead in me considering how much enjoyment I got out of this.

Second thought: I am a lazy mo-fo. I've come to realize that I have a system for doubling the length of time between changing the sheets on my bed. Instead of sleeping in the middle or favoring one side, I alternate sides. Is this weird?

Plus, I'm still not exactly sure how I even know when one side is dirty
enough to warrant the switch. Do I subconsciously track how many days its been? Do I look for discoloration of the sheets? Does general stinkiness have a role? There seems to be no hard and fast rule I follow. Except for the general "clean-house" rule for visits from Mary.

Third thought, despite previously advertising that only two thoughts would be included in this post: this is even better than the sound of broken glass. (courtesy of Boing Boing)

Pat Robertson to God:
"NOOOOOO!! I meant the OTHER old guy on the Supreme Court!"

Whooops.

In a startling development, Pat Robertson's brilliant ploy to appeal to his old pal upstairs to strike down liberal or liberal-leaning Supreme Court justices may be backfiring.

WHY, OH WHY, WON'T THE NETWORK EXECS LISTEN TO ME???

I just saw a commercial for an upcoming CBS mini-series called "Category 6: Day of Destruction." From what I could gather, the basic story here involves an impossibly big hurricane striking Chicago. The must (not) see event stars titans of film Brian Dennehy and Randy Quaid.

I thought I made it clear this spring that I will not stand for ridiculous, scientifically impossible disaster crap. As a result of this total failure on the part of CBS to heed my warning, I am now pulling all of my advertising from their network. We'll see how those fat-cats like it when they don't have that hefty zero million dollar Stein advertising account bankrolling their sensationalist garbage.

So this is an official boycott of CBS. Except for Sunday afternoons between 1PM and 7PM.

ENDORESEMENT TIME

I endorse the NY Times endorsement of the Kerry/Edwards ticket from earlier this week. It is a strong summary of why I'd like to move to Canada next month if faced with four more years of Bush/Cheney.

I also found an ad taken out by 50 priests in the Pittsburgh Catholic (America's oldest Catholic newspaper) to be pretty interesting. It sounds like a veiled or muffled endorsement of Kerry despite claims of neutrality. The ad discussed the pitfalls of single-issue voting with regard to abortion. It included the following noteworthy thought:

"A candidate for office must understand that the Church stands against any policy or course of action which diminishes life, dignity or the rights of the human person: abortion, capital punishment, war, scandalous poverty, denial of health care, mistreatment of immigrants and racism to name but a few. All are essential issues to a 'pro-life' voter"

[I wanted to post the actual ad, but as I'm not an avid reader of the Pittsburgh Catholic and their website does not include print-version advertisements, I was unable to find it and thus could only post the link to the news story]

One of my classes has turned into Oprah
(without the new car giveaways)

I'm taking a Child Law course this semester. The class has been great for most of the way. But during the past couple weeks, the syllabus moved into sections dealing with battered women and domestic violence. The readings for these sections are light on case law and heavier on scientific studies, modern literature, and sociology. There's nothing wrong with that per se, but...

A couple of the men in the class have failed to show up recently. This is noteworthy because in the class of about 20 or 25 people, we only have about seven guys to start with. In such a situation, I suddenly feel the need to perform an extra level of mental self-censorship before opening my mouth for fear of being eaten alive should I say anything remotely unfriendly to females. Like accidentally using the unspeakably evil pronoun "he" instead of the grammatically correct "he or she."

Furthermore, a few of the ladies in the class have recently begun to reveal some serious personal information in our class discussions. Things such as how they had a kid that misbehaved in a particular way. Or specific details about their former boyfriend beating the crap out of them. You know... subjects that I can easily relate to and offer exquisite insight on, based on my own personal experience.

Okay - I hope people don't get the wrong idea and think I'm being dick about women. And I don't deny that the subject matter is enormously important. I just wanted to report that we've had a couple classes recently where I felt like the lonely dude that got dragged into an Oprah studio audience and had to squirm through an all-out woman bonding session.

big Kerry rally today at CMU... Franco Harris and Ted Danson (a CMU alum) to speak... Jon Bon Jovi and some members of Rusted Root to perform... 10k plus expected to attend assuming weather stays dry. thanks to the 8 to 10 point swing in PA over the past month, this could be Kerry's last stop in southwest PA

I'm working the rally from 1:30 to 7:30, directing 15 or 20 volunteers to handle security/ticket checking. i've really be getting myself pulled deeper and deeper into this stuff. hopefully i won't fail ALL of my classes this fall

VINNY UPDATE

Steelers fans expected nothing less. In the world of football gaffes, Vinny Testaverde painted a Picasso of a fuckup last night. A beautiful going away gift to the Steelers in what was most likely the final chapter of "Vinny and the Steelers."


Doing what he does best: Losing to the Steelers in spectacular fashion

This one was especially sweet because, for 58 minutes, Vinny actually played a very strong game. The Steelers harassed him with constant blitzing and sacked him five times, but Vinny had not broken down or turned the ball over. Dallas was leading and had the ball at midfield with two minutes remaining. The Steelers were out of timeouts, so the Cowboys only needed to convert on a third down play and then they could run the clock out. Steelers fans everywhere were counting on Vinny. And in this final tension-packed moment, Vinny came through for Pittsburgh.

In the face of the Steelers' pass rush, Vinny decided the best course of action would be to whack the football against his own offensive lineman's helmet, causing the ball to squirt out of his hand. Exactly the kind of clutch play Steelers fans have come to expect from Vinny over the past 15 years. Kimo von Oelhoffen recovered the fumble for the Steelers and "ran" (defensive ends can never be described as truly running) it back to the Dallas 20. A few plays later, Jerome Bettis scored the game winning touchdown for the Steelers. Awesome.

Someone else became a U.S. citizen on October 14!

Mary's sister Jennifer Payne (who is known professionally as Dr. Payne) had her first child last night. Conrad Michael Payne was born shortly after 11pm weighing about 7 1/2 pounds.

This means that I'm now an almost-Uncle Sam. Quick, someone buy me one of those top hats!

Amid all the important issues of the day, I'd like to thank CNN.com, that great bastion of hard-nosed, serious journalism, for providing us with this important top-level headline news event:

Jim Carrey becomes U.S. citizen

There's really no reason now to read about the Commerce Department's announcement of a near-record U.S. trade deficit or the U.N. World Food Program's announcement that it has been forced to cut back on aid to Sudan because of the ongoing violence. With Jim Carrey settled in as an American citizen, trade deficits and hunger will obviously begin shrinking immediately. That's just the nature of economics and warfare. This concept is referred to in the academic world as the "Carrey Principle."

Final Debate - with a twist

Yesterday afternoon, while working at the Western PA Kerry campaign HQ, someone asked me to join a Town Hall-style audience for KDKA radio's pre and post Presidential debate coverage. Basically, there were about 20 Democrats, 20 Republicans, a liberal moderator, a conservative moderator, and an ample supply of beer... the thing was held in a hall owned by the Pittsburgh Brewing Company. Basically, a lot of fun for any political junkie.

Now to interrupt this interesting story, here are my brief [okay, sort of brief] thoughts about the debate itself: I was pretty happy with Kerry's performance. Three spots where I thought he did particularly awesome were the questions dealing with minimum wage, affirmative action, and the assault weapons ban. He tore into those topics and was obviously speaking from the heart just as much from his canned talking points.

Again, like the second debate, I thought Bush just seemed weak even if he did not totally drop the ball. He had some nice comebacks (such as his great rebuke of Kerry's blatant McCain name dropping) and some lovable moments, but he never escaped from the overall appearance of domestic affairs being Kerry's home turf. And as I raised on the air, I am not sure what I thought of the portion of his closing speech in which he attempted to co-opt Reagan's "Morning in America" via the discussion of his Texas painting representing "Sunrise in America." The obvious unoriginality of course pissed me off. But it is a nice message no matter how you look at it, so why not use it, right?

Anyway, back to the Town Hall Scene. The post-debate discussion was actually kind of wild. I guess it shouldn't be a shocker when you stick 20 or so intensely interested folks from each camp in a room for three hours with beer. At one point, speakers on the air were being interrupted by the crowd and later, a few folks in the crowd got into a heated enough shouting match that a couple of the KDKA people had to stand between them and gently calm down the situation.

My favorite part of the night was getting in the first jab at Fred Honsberger, the Bush-backing radio personality, immediately following the debate. Just before opening up the mic to the audience, he launched into a diatribe about CBS's Bob Schieffer being a part of the biased liberal media. He pointed to "softball" questions directed to Kerry and specifically raised the affirmative action and minimum wage questions. So instead of bringing up the point I had planned to open with, I walked right up and called that jerk out, asking something like "So if those were softball questions, what does that say about a President who punts on both and literally cannot find anything to say about either 'softball' topic?"

A TRIBUTE TO VINNY
      The Greatest Steeler (to never wear the black and gold)

Back in August, when we heard the Dallas Cowboys suddenly cut starting quarterback Quincy Carter, the unthinkable became reality. As a result of this move, the Pittsburgh Steelers will get one final 60 minute window of opportunity this Sunday to make Vinny Testaverde's life a living hell before the man retires from football. For the non-Stiller fans out there, the basic story here is one of never-ending pain and humiliation at the hands of the Steelers for an otherwise above average quarterback. There have been so many great (disastrous) games over the last 18 years. I think this may turn out to be quite a long post!


Vinny in a familiar position - floored by the Steelers' D

First, if you consider Penn State to be a Pittsburgh-related team, we can start by looking at the last game of Vinny's 1986 Heisman-winning senior season at Miami. A matchup with Penn State for the national championship. This was the age when Jimmy Johnson and his Miami Hurricanes were at their most notorious. That team climbing off the airplane for the Fiesta Bowl wearing army fatigues is an image I will never forget. Talk about swagger. In the game, Vinny's heavily favored Miami team was trailing by four late, thanks in no small part to four interceptions thrown by Vinny. Still, Miami got the ball and drove down to the Penn State goalline in the waning seconds. It seemed like they were going to pull it off. Then from the six, Vinny T. throws his fifth INT of the game and Penn State wins the national championship. Great stuff.

His first taste of losing to the Steelers came in 1989 as a member of the terrible Tampa Bay Buccaneers. A few years later, he was traded to Cleveland and the fun truly began. For example, there was the game from 1994 where his leading receiver was Steelers safety Darren Perry who had three "receptions." That was, of course, the glorious season where Cleveland went 12-3 against the rest of the NFL, but 0-3 against Pittsburgh. And in 1995, Vinny managed to stink up the joint while losing the final Pittsburgh/Cleveland game before the original Browns team moved to Baltimore.


One of my favorite days as a Steelers fan

Then there was the brilliant 1997 campaign. Joe, Art, Greg Galanter, and I sat right behind the Steelers bench at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore as we watched Vinny help the Ravens piss away a 21-0 lead with four turnovers en route to a 42-34 loss on their home field. That early season collapse destroyed the Ravens. A month or two later, Vinny turned the ball over four times before getting benched in the first half of a 37-0 loss in Pittsburgh. Eight turnovers in less than two games for our man Vinny.

Moving to New York the following year did not help poor Mr. T. In both 2000 and 2001, the Jets lost to the Steelers to give Vinny an overall record of like 2-12 against the Steelers. In the 2001 game he was completely worthless. In the 2000 game from which the first picture in this post came, Jason Gildon put a hit on Vinny on the first play from scrimmage. The hit actually wasn't all that hard. But suddenly, Vinny's on the ground crying about something and he leaves the game after playing all of 10 seconds. I remember first thinking "Jason Gildon may have cost us the game with that play," but then I forgave Gildon and decided Vinny was probably just faking an injury because he was sick of getting mauled by the Steelers.

Vinny of course had numerous other moments of fabulous incompetence against the Steelers. These are just some of my favorites. I think we should all be thankful for coach Bill Parcels' surprise pre-season personnel move which has provided us with one final installment of "Vinny and the Steelers" this Sunday in Dallas. Let's just hope the Steelers' pass rush is smart enough not to knock him out of the game. That man is our best chance at winning!

Adware and Asshole

A couple things I noticed today:

- FTC Sues Spyware Suspects

I'm surprised it took this long for someone to take some real action to tackle this nonsense. I was actually crying about this six months ago. Lydia Parnes, acting director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection put it best today when she said "The defendants were selling software to fix the problem they just caused. I've decided this is my definition of online chutzpah."

- I think this guy is my pick for Douche Bag of the Month

Over the past couple years, I had occasionally caught Mark Hyman's 60 second commentaries ("The Point with Mark Hyman") on WPGH Fox 53 Pittsburgh. He is hard core conservative, but I always assumed he was just some local yokel spouting off. Then tonight I saw him on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer squirming to defend the recent decision by Sinclair to force its stations to air the anti-Kerry documentary. It turns out Hyman is actually the Vice President for Corporate Relations for Sinclair. I can't even put my finger on exactly why, but knowing that he is a nationally relevant figure rather than a Pittsburgher makes me despise him a whole lot more.

MR. STEIN GOES TO WASHINGTON

Just got off a ridiculous elevator ride here at school. I now know what my first order of business will be when I get elected to Congress. I will be proposing the following piece of legislation:

__ U.S.C. Sec. ____

The Federal Elevator Usage Act of 2021*

Sec. 1 - Felony Elevator Riding
(a) Use of an elevator to travel up only one floor in a building shall be considered a felony. Such criminal acts shall be punishable by incarceration for up to two (2) years and/or fines of up to $100,000
(b) Use of an elevator to travel down only one floor in a building shall be considered a felony. Such criminal acts shall be punishable by incarceration for up to ten (10) years and/or fines of up to $500,000.
(c) In establishing prison sentences, judges may consider aggravating factors such as the amount of lawful elevator riders inconvenienced by the commission of the felony.

Sec. 2 - Misdemeanor Elevator Riding
Use of an elevator to travel down two floors in a building shall be considered a misdemeanor violation. Such criminal acts shall be punishable by fines of up to $2,000.

Sec. 3 - Exceptions
(a) Sections 1 and 2 of this criminal statute shall not apply to persons with physical disabilities or persons carrying significant weight.
(b) De minimus transportation, such as carrying a lunch or a backpack, does not qualify a person for the significant weight exception.

* This Act may also be referred to as the "Take the Fucking Stairs Act"

Only 26 days until the election, but more importantly...

Its been 24 days since we were introduced to the Supreme Blackbelt Spazmaster of Martial Arts (and here). That brief video clip might still be the best damn thing available online. Even after viewing it approximately 3,000 times, I'm still laughing.

some thoughts on the VP debate

I was actually not so thrilled with Edwards' performance. When they got to "half-time," I found myself thinking that its a good thing there's only one of these VP debates. I did not pay as much attention to the second half domestic stuff, so I hope Edwards fared better there.

For starters, Cheney actually addressed many of the questions directed at him last night instead of following his boss's example of flat out ignoring the moderator. And right from the beginning, I was disappointed with the way Edwards often interrupted Cheney and the moderator. He just didn't seem quite as calm and cool as the media and his own past performances had led everyone to expect. I guess the VP debates may be more about energizing and reassuring the core voters than scoring style points for the undecided voters, but his style still did not sit well with me.

On the other hand, I don't think Cheney was as sharp as some will give him credit for. Early on, Edwards was asked whether Saddam would still be in power if John Kerry had been president during the last four years. Edwards of course evaded the question because the truth (a yes response) was obviously unacceptable. He instead started talking about Afghanistan and Osama bin Laden and never answered the moderator's yes-or-no question. Cheney's response could have been a simple five second "So your answer to the moderator's question seems to be 'Yes, Saddam would still be in power,'" but he instead played defense in his response and never delivered the killer soundbite. That was a gift from the moderator which Cheney chose not to accept.

In terms of Edwards' preparedness, I noticed one subtle, but telling moment in the foreign policy portion of the debate where Edwards basically punted on a question. When faced with the question about how the Kerry/Edwards White House would handle the Israeli/ Palestinian situation differently than the current administration, Edwards chose to reflect on his personal travels to Jerusalem in 2001 rather than to say anything coherent about the current situation in Israel. I think it was pretty obvious that Edwards had not been adequately prepped for questions outside the scope of Iraq, weapons of mass destruction, and terrorism. He offered no true personal insight or feelings about the issue (other than his bland and obvious "Israel has a right to defend itself" statement). I was shocked when Cheney failed to pounce on this and call him out for ignoring the question and having nothing to say about the situation. This was another opportunity missed by Cheney for a slam dunk response.

I was also disappointed that Edwards failed when given two opportunities to explain the GOP's disingenuous attacks on his Senate record and that of his running mate. This has been a recurring problem for the Kerry/Edwards ticket. In the first dirty attack, the Republicans throw out the charge that Kerry and Edwards have missed tons of votes in the Senate which somehow shows they have shirked their duties to their states. I still have yet to hear a strong comeback from the Kerry campaign on this attack. Why is it they cannot simply retort "What would you prefer we do? Stay in Washington 24/7, not campaign for the election, and give you another four years without a fight?" Its bullshit. The Executive Branch can do much of its work by laptop and teleconference from wherever the hell it wants yet legislators actually have to be present in the Capitol Building to vote. By pointing to poor attendance records, the administration is actually making an outrageous argument that given the scope and length of modern day Presidential campaigns, Congressmen should not run for President.

The second senate record issue is the specific attack regarding the $87 billion military spending bill. This also came up last night in the debate. While Edwards did manage to point out his vote against the spending bill was in part based on the no-bid Halliburton contract included in the spending (something the campaign has not responded with enough), he still failed to explain the process to the uninitiated. What he needed to explain was that those opposed to the $87 billion spending bill would still have funded the troops with alternate legislation for $X billion which simply did not include provisions W, Y, and Z. Instead, the Bush campaign has successfully portrayed this senate vote as a vote by Kerry/Edwards to literally withhold equipment from our troops.

Anyway, someone please tell me I'm wrong. Or that Edwards kicked Cheney's ass in the second half.

TAILGATING (go Pens!)

Next weekend was supposed to be the start of the NHL season. I say we don't let this little labor dispute get in the way of our fun.

My idea: Why not go to the home opener on Saturday, October 16 regardless of the lack of an actual game? If the weather is nice, I think it would be a perfect opportunity to barbecue, drink some beer, and watch some hockey. Good hockey, that is. Like DVDs of 80s or early 90s games on my laptop in the parking lot. I guess the main question to be asked is whether or not we would get hassled by cops around Mellon Arena.

However, there is also a secondary question raised here: when [if] hockey returns, does hanging out in the parking lot with cheap beer, food, and videos of good hockey sound better than going inside, paying $6 a beer, and watching the current brand of NHL hockey?

vocabulary and such

Apparently, "hoohle" is some sort of naughty word. I know this because in my most recent attempt to visit and use Google's search engine, I wound up mistyping and visiting www.hoohle.com. Don't worry, there is no blatant porn there. At least not on the front page which was all that I visited.

Anyway, I'm not exactly sure how one is supposed to use the word "hoohle," but I kind of like the way it sounds. Maybe I can transplant it outside of the sexual usage. Perhaps the next time I need to take a dump, I'll politely stand up and say "Excuse me, I need to go drop a hoohle."

This guy must have REALLY popped the question

Last night, while at dinner with my family, we heard a wild, extended (at least 20 seconds) ear-drum-piercing scream from the downstairs dining room of the restaurant. Quite simply, it sounded like some woman was being raped or repeatedly stabbed.

The entire restaurant went silent as strangers exchanged concerned looks. I got out my cell phone and was about to get up to go see what was happening, thinking I might have to call 911. Then a waitress ran up the stairs out of breath. She reported that "so-and-so just proposed to so-and-so!"

Okay, congratulations lady. We're all happy for you. But get a hold of yourself. You scared the shit out of all 50 people in the restaurant!