Suasoria

R.I.P. Dolemite. I had the pleasure of working with Rudy Ray Moore once in the 1990s. On stage he was raucous and raunchy, but off stage, he was sweet and humble, and a true gentleman. Ironically, this being an election year, his 1972 comedy album "Dolemite for President" will soon be released for the first time ever on CD. Buy it. If it offends thee, I think Rudy would be delighted.

R.I.P. Mr. Blackwell. He was catty but clever, and also a true gentleman. Not many men can insult women for a living and not come off as absolute pigs. I think I'm glad I never met him. I have a thing for animal prints, so I can only imagine what he'd say: "Suasoria? More like Zoo-asoria."

• I am addicted to shopping online...at Goodwill. The enterprising folks at Goodwill Industries have created eBay-style auctions, with all sales supporting job training and education programs. If you think people sell odd things on eBay, get a load of what they don’t sell and instead give to charity. I’m already a fiend for thrift stores, and while I haven't bid on anything, really, it’s only a matter of time.




• Right now, I should be writing an article about blogs. Instead I'm writing an actual blog entry. That's meta.




• I never leave the house without a black Sharpie. Never. (Wait, does that make me a real tagger?)




• I don’t have a passport. I know, right? Me! But since I’m all about service/seva, here is a handy guide from PC Magazine on how to take your own government-approved passport photo with a digital camera.




• Last December I bought a really fancy all-in-one printer, scanner, copier and fax machine and hooked it up to our wireless network. Despite what a technoweenie I am, I can’t for the life of me get the fax function to work. This is really embarrassing, not because faxing is so 1992, but because in my line of work I really do need a fax machine at home. I'm annoyingly hamstrung by being faxless, and this expensive printer is only fulfilling 75 percent of its intended purpose.




• I have a favorite toe. I’m not telling you which, though. That’s too personal.

Economists tell us that competition, product diversity, and consumer choice is an engine of capitalism.

Other than a blip on the radar represented by plug-in electric cars, the fossil fuel-powered internal combustion engine has been the only choice in the marketplace for generations. But as new battery, hybrid gas/electric, plug-in hybrid, biodiesel, natural gas, hydrogen fuel cell, ethanol, and even solar engines become more and more plausible, environmentalists, manufacturers and governments seem to be joining distinct, mutually exclusive camps.

The federal government has thrown subsidies behind hydrogen fuel cells, while critics say this technology is decades from being practical and affordable, and would require massive infrastructure upgrades. Plug-in electric car advocates believe that their choice is the only realistic alternative, but opponents claim that relying on the existing power grid is fatally short sighted. Ethanol from agriculture exacts a minimal toll on the environment, but growing fuel is more profitable than growing food, and some predict a bleak day will come when we’re forced to choose. And the arguments only spin further into disarray from there.

What all these voices seem to forget is that there’s almost four million miles of road out there, and there’s more than one way to San José.

There’s no reason all these seemingly competing technologies can’t coexist peacefully. While the legislatures and the auto executives and the chat rooms fight it out, consumers will ultimately make their own decisions.

Despite the fact that the gasoline engine has been the standard for ages, there is no actual need to implement a new universal standard. The fallacy of the alternative-fuel vehicle is that there will only be one winner, and we’ll all line up behind it. Yet in other industries, seemingly competing products can and do thrive. Businesses may choose between DVD, hard disk, computer tape, or a combination of approaches to secure their data files. Homeowners can install hardwood, carpet or tile to cover floors. Chips, pretzels, popcorn, and cheese poofs satisfy the munchies equally well.

Yet corporations and governments actively discourage competition. PR wars and political campaigns are waged to squash opposing views. One technology is subsidized by tax dollars while another is denounced. Big businesses dangle promises and unveil concepts that they have no interest in delivering just to placate the nagging masses. It’s hard to believe, but this behavior is what passes for social responsibility.

Meanwhile, at a grassroots level, independent engineers as well as auto shop mechanics have been successfully developing alternatives to the alternatives. Auto shops have tricked out the popular Toyota Prius gas-electric hybrid, loaded it with extra batteries, and converted its already impressive 55 miles per gallon (based on the average of city and highway specs) into an engine that can achieve an astounding 200 miles per gallon.

Battery power continues to evolve, making even high speeds possible. Tesla Motors equips its Tesla Roadster with lithium ion batteries and a proprietary mechanical design that allows the sports car to go from zero to 60 in four seconds. This car performs better than a Lamborghini on an engine its makers say delivers the power to juice 2000 incandescent light bulbs.

But if you don’t have tens or hundreds of thousands to spend on a new car, there’s biodiesel, based on vegetable oil from crops such as soybeans. If you have a car with a diesel engine, or a few hundred for an old one, you can use biodiesel today with no changes and reduce your car’s carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide emissions to practically zero. In the race to produce biodiesel, varying blends are now on the market, from the 5 percent bio/95 percent diesel "B5" pumped throughout Europe, to the 20 percent bio/80 percent diesel known as B20, to the mystery blend of Willie Nelson’s own "BioWillie."

There are varying degrees of market potential in the present-day alternatives, but while the debate continues, we cannot lose sight of the fact that consumers are best served by multiple technologies. We are entitled to hydrogen filling stations and solar-powered electric charging stations and similar networks of biodiesel and ethanol delivery systems along the same road to oil independence.

What is important, however, is that the all-gasoline engine goes the way of the dinosaurs that currently power it.

In response to recent hoohas and ados, here's where I stand with all that.

I'll support the troops when:

1. They refuse to kill.

2. They are educated, and know the truth before they sign up to fight a war.

3. They act like honorable warriors by showing love and compassion for humanity (see number 1, "They refuse to kill").

It has come to my attention that I’ve been quoted in The Big Wedding: 9/11, the Whistle Blowers, and the Cover-up (Vox Pop, 2005), a new book written by indie punk publisher Sander Hicks.

Unbeknownst to me, apparently I am the leading voice in Los Angeles of the 9/11 Truth Movement, the community of Americans seeking full public disclosure about the events of September 11, 2001.

I was shocked because I bought the book through Amazon like everyone else. Imagine my surprise when I saw my name on page 102. (Had I known, I would have asked for a comp.)

Speaking of shocking, this week CNN Headline News has given significant air time to the Charlie Sheen radio interview in which he outs himself as 9/11 skeptic.

What’s shocking is not that revelation about Sheen, but that Showbiz Tonight host A.J. Hammer did not bend over backwards to ridicule Sheen. In fact, Hammer, heretofore known to me only as a himbo, took great care to treat the subject with the dignity and gravity it deserved.

Shocking.

"Why have so many of the major media outlets not talked about these alternative theories that exist behind 9/11?" asked Hammer, evidently mystified yet strangely emboldened by the enormous buzz the Sheen story has netted for the show.

In follow-up coverage over the next few days, Hammer pressed actor Seth Green and novelist Erica Jong, making the talk show rounds to promote projects, for their opinions on the Sheen story.

"I think he’s a brave man to even question this aloud in an environment where anyone [who] questions the government is a traitor," said Jong. "So Charlie Sheen has done his homework, and he’s asking questions. He’s speaking truth to power, which is a brave thing to do.”

I repeat: shocking.

The book The Big Wedding: 9/11, the Whistle Blowers, and the Cover-up asks some of the same questions, while ignoring questions that are outright lame. And this marks Big Wedding as different from other 9/11 books in that Hicks does a terrific job of separating the work of dilettantes who surf the Internet and call themselves researchers from those who are putting feet to the ground in the style of true investigative journalism.

Hicks himself is neither dilettante nor journalist, but rather a chief advocate for the movement, giving him better access to sources as well as a higher level of control over the narrative.

Hicks is also the New York state Green Party candidate for U.S. Senate, and is making 9/11 a central theme of his campaign in a state where 66 percent have demanded, but not yet received, an independent investigation of 9/11 from Democratic Attorney General Eliot Spitzer – who is running against Hicks for the same seat.

Hicks, on the other hand, promises the people of New York "the first serious and thorough investigation into 9/11."

He contacted me while doing research for a feature article for a local weekly, and he used some of the same information in the book. Hicks was interested in how the progressive left has, or has not, reckoned with the dot-connecting of the 9/11 Truth Movement.

My experiences at the time, which I told Hicks, was that even when you can crack someone's skull with data, liberals and progressives tend to gaze off into space and say quietly, "Yes, but regardless...millions of lives have been lost and the whole world is forever changed."

(Even though it's less than three thousand, not millions, and four-fifths of the world probably could not give a shit.)

In fact, only gun-toting libertarians seem to have any capacity for anger anymore. As for those calling loudest for uncovering the truth about 9/11, people are most comfortable calling them conspiracy theorists.

Lorie Van Auken and fellow 9/11 widows/widowers who make up the Family Steering Committee worked for more than a year lobbying an unresponsive Washington crowd to investigate the events that led up to 9/11. As Van Auken tells New York Magazine, she eventually came to realize that the conspiracy theorists were the only ones on her side.

"They cared more than those supposedly doing the investigating,” she said. “If you ask me, they’re just Americans, looking for the truth, which is supposed to be our right."

Sadly, Van Auken’s questions remain unanswered. Perhaps the next senator from the great state of New York can help her.

You’ll have to indulge me as I give a shout-out to a completely homegrown art form coming out of the suburban San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles. Represent, folks.

The technique combines computer technology and visual arts in a way I’ve never seen before, and packages it as a graphic novel. For lack of a better term I’m calling it comicage. That’s “comic” plus “collage,” and has that French thang about it that makes it automatically that much more kultchured.

The creators of Sgt. West prefer "fine art and narrative graphic novel." But that’s a mouthful.

The noir-ish art for Sgt. West consists of digitally manipulated photographs of live models and, well, as you’ll see, dolls. West himself, an LAPD officer who is at best a sociopathic vigilante, is “played by” a G.I. Joelike action figure in full police gear. The debut episode, “New Pimp in Town,” also stars what looks like a Filipino Ken doll along with a supporting cast of appropriately creepy humans.

The visual production is seamless - if anything it's overly seamless, since you almost don't notice that's a toy police car in the coffee shop parking lot. More impressive is that the story and dialogue are a quality match for the art, considering the graphic novel format usually emphasizes the images, and what passes for plot is generally whatever may be necessary to explain the images.

Photos for the comic were taken in and around the San Fernando Valley, whose former claim to fame as the birthplace of 'Valley Girl' may now be supplanted by its being the porn production capital of the world. (A porn-themed issue would be a natural for Sgt. West.)

Note that Sgt. West’s people, as they call themselves, are looking for models for upcoming episodes, and don’t miss the page with West himself wearing his own t-shirt. (How’d they do that?!?)

And check it out now, while it's pure, because this being L.A., it's only a matter of time before some oily entertainment exec tries to flip this into a low-budget TV series that's been sanitized to appeal to the sensibilities of teenagers in the flyover states.

Does life begins at conception, at birth, somewhere in between? When does a cell become a fetus and a fetus become a child?

For me, it becomes a human child as soon as it starts to annoy me. Usually that's at birth, but in extreme cases, I've met pregnant women whose babies already annoy me.

Watch this space for continuing analysis of the abortion discussion, which is guaranteed to escalate as California prepares to vote on parental notification laws addressing minors seeking abortions, and the next SCOTUS nomination unfolds.

It was supposed to be just a faux news diatribe, but it was the outing of the political strategy that defines our times: "We are divided between those who think with their heads and those who know with their heart."

A year after the presidential election, well-meaning liberals still want to know what went wrong, what’s the matter with Kansas, who moved their political cheese.

How did the right wing get ordinary working people to vote in their own economic and social disinterest? How did they woo the Christians to their side of the values debate when The Sermon on the Mount clearly shows that Jesus was a radical leftist? How did they convince the flyover states that only their candidate would protect them from being killed by Arab terrorists, when no jihadist would ever put the financial and cultural center of Racine, Wisconsin on their list of targets?

Here’s how. The smartest thing the right wing ever did was demonize smartness. Somehow they convinced people that intelligence is blue-state elitism.

Teaching the electorate that facts don’t matter goes beyond simple religion or rejecting global climate change as an unproven theory (like evolution). It is more troubling than the simple circumstance that homophobia or bigotry got more people on their side to the polls to vote against the spate of freedom-to-marry initiatives.

By skewering academia and science and devaluing education, they were able to make a cerebral doctor look like a monkey, and an articulate, diplomatic attorney look like a flaky French pastry. "Activist judges" who properly uphold laws that are contrary to the right’s concept of morality, and "trial lawyers" who take the side of social justice over corporate profit have felt the burn. "Hollywood liberals" who should be standing around looking pretty while singing "God Bless America" instead of writing books or making documentaries felt it.

They taught us folksiness and feeling is better than intellect, and gave us an illiterate business failure as a president. They taught us ass-kicking brawn is better than brains, and gave us an unintelligible bodybuilding thug as a governor.

No longer is experience and talent a prerequisite to having incredible power. We need nothing that passes for information about a person before electing or appointing them to a position of staggering importance. All it takes is to "know their heart.”

Luckily they have a concerted disinformation effort to back them up on the part of the corporate media. Dialogue now has to be "fair and balanced," because there are no facts anymore, no evidence, no knowledge - just perspectives. Truth is now just one side's opinion, and that opinion has to be "balanced" with equal time by another side's opinion, which is mindboggling lies. When Bill Moyers tries to bring facts, knowledge, and truth to the public he's branded as a leftist and rattled off the air because the truth does not resemble the right-wing agenda closely enough.

And college campuses, where smart people go to meet other smart people with whom to have sex, have seen an insurgency of far-right groups claiming to be engaged in promoting academic freedom. It seems that extra indoctrination is needed wherever critical thinking might be taking place.

As a side benefit, Republican pundits gleefully dismiss front-page scandals as inside-the-beltway political scuffles that no one outside of Washington should care about. Such intricate topics, like using lies and forgeries as evidence to start a war, are too complicated for the rest of us to understand, so we need not worry our pretty little heads about it.

It is to the social order's great advantage that the abjectly poor remain uneducated. Devaluing education certainly removes the stigma of being uneducated, and allows there to be no shame in remaining so, for many overbred generations to come. Stupid people are easily motivated by fear. They are willing to work menial jobs for little compensation. They don’t demand public services. They are happy consumers.

An old friend who grew up to be a teacher laments, “What's the point of telling our kids that they should study hard when we have a president who can't put two words together, yet he's got the most powerful job on earth?” For the first time, the uneducated can see something they relate to in the president. We know they relate to him, because they admit they will vote based on the person with whom they'd rather share beers. It enforces the notion that as stupid as they are, they too may someday be rich and powerful like the president. And they don't even have to speak correctly or learn where all those little Slavic countries are!

The tragicomic aspect of this strategy is that all bets are off when you pull the rug out from under education and knowledge. I know what we have bears only a symbolic relationship to democracy, but nothing progresses once you stamp out intelligence. The informed consent that must be manufactured for a democracy to thrive can’t work without the “informed” part.

Isn't this bigger than Jesus and bigger than simple bigotry or xenophobia?

Real estate and home improvement is virtually driving the economy, particularly here in California. Everyone knows people who are doing something important to their house - and it's all they can ever talk about.

Because everyone who walks into my house starts asking me a bazillion questions about what they should do to their house, here are the decorating tips that I swear by. Some are especially suited for smaller homes, and some are just plain anal retentive.

1. Paint ceilings bright flat white
No exceptions for a small room. In a very large room, if you must, you may paint the ceiling a color that is 90 percent white and 10 percent of the wall color. If you have coved ceilings, lucky dog, and have always wondered where to stop, bring the ceiling color down onto the walls about ten inches (your lines must be very straight).

2. Paint trim bright shiny white
No exceptions for a home that is not Spanish/Mission/Craftsman. Homes in these styles should have dark stained woodwork and doors. And there's no exception to that, either.

3. Use big colors on the walls
Most people run away from dark colors, particularly people who live in small houses. On the contrary, dark colors in a small room make the walls recede and seem farther away, thus the room feels larger. (This is not the case for ceilings, for some reason.) Because a dark color will absorb artificial and natural light, to temper the effect, paint two adjoining walls in every room the big, saturated color and the other two in a light to medium neutral such as khaki. If your ceiling and all your mouldings are all bright white, the architectural features and details will jump right up and smack you. In a good way. Speaking of architecture, dining rooms in particular seem to invite wainscoting, and whether or not you have a chair rail - a horizontal moulding all the way around the room at exactly the height where a chair back would bruise the wall - consider painting the bottom part of the wall shiny white, just like the trim, and the top part a very dark, rich, formal color. With this look, I'd use the same color on all four walls, since the white will do the trick of keeping the room lightened up.

4. Paint adjoining rooms in colors that work together
When you move on to paint the next room, make sure that these colors work with the last room so that as you move through the house your senses aren't rattled by the transitions like they are when you abruptly switch radio or television stations. When in doubt, consider dark yellowy gold or chocolate brown. Both work with nearly everything. Small rooms with doors that close, like bathrooms and laundry rooms, can generally stand on their own and are easy to repaint, so these are the places to use punk rock green, windex blue, orange julius, or grandma lipstick pink (trade marks or trade names hereby acknowledged). Speaking of rooms where moisture is a factor, including kitchens, you will need a formula that holds up to steam and scrubbing, but avoid the glossy paint everyone will try to force you into. Instead look around for a flat or eggshell-finish enamel that will still take some wiping.

5. Do it the hard way
Despite what you've heard about the rebirth of shag since 9/11, hard flooring is simply the best choice. Pet owners and allergy sufferers should never have any carpet that can't be picked up and shaken. I know most stick with the flooring they're given by their home's previous owners, but if you can spare the expense, you will never regret ripping out wall-to-wall carpet. But don't be tempted to replace it with just anything that's affordable. Natural materials like wood and stone look great as they age, while manufactured materials like ceramic tile and fake wood composites will just look like crap. If you have a Mediterranean home, you can also get away with terra cotta tile, and think about rustic brick floors for the kitchen and family room of a ranch-style, though in both cases you create a cleaning challenge due to surfaces that aren't uniformly even. And nothing screams Frankenhouse add-on quite like new floors that are different than the originals, so make the effort to either find a proper match or replace it all. If you're a whiner who has to step onto a carpet with your bare feet when you get out of bed, get a throw rug.

6. Don't mix your metals
Wood furniture needn't match each other, but metal does. Mother was right when she said never wear gold and silver jewelry together. Faucets and door knobs and andirons and lighting fixtures and hinges should be all the same family within the same room. These elements combine function and decoration, and you want them to harmonize and tell a story about the personality and character of the home. You have about four choices: all gold/brass, all silver/pewter, all brown/bronze, or all black/iron. Older homes tend to have brass or even bronze, while chrome and nickel are more common in newer homes. Refreshing the hardware in a room or an entire house is surprisingly simple and may even be affordable, and makes a dramatic difference. Even you can probably do it.

7. Choose fabrics wisely
Whatever textiles you choose, make sure they complement pet vomit. At the first sign of nausea, cats instinctively run to the most expensive rug in the house.

8. Increase the function of large rooms
I made this sad mistake once, and shan't do it again. Don't get a coffee table so massive you can't move it when you need the extra floorspace to tango, limbo, yoga, judo, or unfurl sleeping bags for six first-graders. Aside from the upholstered ottomans that are popular these days, you can use a trunk with handles, two small square tables instead of one rectangular one, the bench only of an old picnic table, or something in bamboo or rattan that you can pick up easily.

9. Keep America Beautiful
What goes on in nature needs to stay in nature. Frankly, plants are dirtier and messier than people or pets, and they belong outside except for very gorgeous, very temporary (trashable) "displays" like Christmas trees and Easter lilies. With potted indoor plants, you are literally bringing dirt into the house. Even cut flowers create litter, staining everything pollen-yellow and dropping crunchy dried petals everywhere. Plants and flowers do not add life to a room, they add work.

10. Mopping, dusting and vaccuuming are for losers
This final tip isn't as much about decorating as it is about presentation in general. A house will look 95 percent cleaner 95 percent of the time doing only five percent of the housework regularly. Even better news, that five percent need only be done routinely in the handful of rooms that actually get used. Here's the five percent that matters:

• Dump clutter into a box and kick it into the closet or the garage.
• Sweep all hard flooring.
• Wipe the bathroom mirrors, faucet, counter, and toilet seat (in that order) with a Windexed paper towel.
• Empty the trash.

Once or twice a year, if the mood strikes you, you can do the rest. And don't let anyone who doesn't truly love and respect you see your kitchen or the inside of your shower.

Dear Applicant,

To tell you the truth, I'm not at all enthused by your resume, and I won't be calling you to set up an interview. However, lucky for you, I'm having a slow day, so I'm going to tell you why. Don't be ashamed, though. I've seen thousands of resumes, and they're all just as bad as yours. Some are even worse, in fact.

You probably were taught by a well-meaning college advisor that a resume is about your achievements, your experience, and your skills. I hate to burst your bubble, but it isn't. It's about me.

In a tight job market, your resume is about my company and my needs as a hiring manager. I have a problem that I'm trying to solve, a void I have to fill, a team I'm trying to create. If I've placed an ad and have 300 responses to go through, it's safe to assume your resume will get less than one minute of my time, so make sure it's really easy for me to decide whether you have the potential to solve my problem.

The lowest rung on a career ladder is generally a glorified administrative assistant. Sure, we call it "account coordinator" or "marketing specialist" or "associate producer," but they're really just clerical jobs. But judging by your resume, you have no clerical experience and have never had a clerical job in your life. The minute you moved out of the fraternity house, apparently, you jumped right into an executive position at the bed and bath store. And in that teeny company where you interned your senior year, you had a real opportunity to shine. Why, you practically ran the place. Imagine, hiring your own replacement intern at the end of five weeks! How did you handle the pressure?

What you should be doing is assuring me you have experience in gruntwork too. Reports, research, phones, email, simple databases - these are keywords I'm looking for in a resume.

And about those higher-level tasks: you say that you've got "experience in all aspects" of the business. This may come as a shock, but you are perhaps decades away from being able to make that claim. The fact that you think you know all there is to know just proves that you don't.

Being a lifeguard or camp counselor every year as a teenager means zilch to me, except that your indulgent parents never made you get a real job, and you've never had to spend a summer vacation wearing a tie or pantyhose every day. It's great that you know CPR, but so far OSHA hasn't made that a requirement in an office of this size.

I know that all retail clerks and baristas have impeccable managerial and people skills. You don't even have to mention them. These jobs are so incredibly fulfilling, apparently, that I wonder why people ever leave them.

In general I find your resume to be full of unfortunate synonymy. What's that expression, "a ten-dollar word?" You're broke and unemployed, so save the ten dollars. Don't say "maximize" if you can say "grow." Don't say "compose" if you can say "write." Unless you're Danny Elfman.

For example, you "executed press releases." In an average month, 30 to 40 press releases pass through my desk, yet I have no idea how to "execute" a press release. I confess that ever since I read your resume, I've been wondering how to chop their little heads off. I think I'd enjoy it. But since I don't know what you're talking about, I doubt you know what you're talking about.

Finally, how "detail-oriented" can you be if there's a typo in your address?

Regards,
Hiring manager

On a suggestion making the email rounds, but for which credit is not claimed by any group, Inauguration Day, January 20, 2005, has been deemed "Not One Damn Dime Day" to protest the war in Iraq.

The email says that this boycott of all consumer goods is to tell political and religious leaders that it is their moral responsibility to stop the war, and remind them that they should be in our pockets, not the pockets of corporate America.

While I don't disagree with the sentiment, does anyone believe notshopping is a legitimate form of protest? This is not targeted economic boycotts of certain brands, which are remarkably effective - this is an across-the-board notshopping spree. Does this happen in other countries, or just ours, where aquisitiveness is the rule instead of the exception?

The day after Thanksgiving has long been a notshopping day to protest consumerism, and I've honored this action for years now. (Truth be told, there's no way I'd go out in that madness; the political statement is just a fringe benefit.) Every now and then there's a gas-out to hit the oil companies and a smoke-out to hit the tobacco companies. In the 70s we gave our appliances the afternoon off and in Los Angeles, where water is always in short supply, there's an unwritten law that true Angelenos don't do laundry on Sundays.

A few months ago there was a call to boycott Disney - or maybe it was McDonald's - and a friend said "wait, aren't we already - aren’t we always - supposed to be boycotting them?"

The truth is that every day is an opportunity to make consumer choices that have global and political oomph. Every day you do not buy meat is a victory for the environment and a way to thumb your nose at agribusiness. Every time you eschew the chain coffee house or the big-box hardware store or buy organic local fruit instead of Vons' regular, it's a consumer choice. I haven't bought a Proctor & Gamble product in so long I’ve forgotten what they make. Ditto fast food, health charities that experiment on animals, and Ford. I switched to recycled toilet paper last year, and now not only is my conscience clean, so's my booty.

Of course I am not condemning the organizers and publicists of another notshopping day, but I would hope that most progressives are already, always conscious consumers.

For millions of people in this country who live in poverty, these choices aren’t necessarily motivated by politics, but by a constant self-examination based on the question “what can I go without today?"

We all should live like that, every day. What can you go without today? Probably a lot. What can we make ourselves instead of buying pre-made? More than we think, and we can have a blast doing it. What can we do at home to entertain the family that doesn't involve mall parking, $40 in tickets and $15 for carbonated corn syrup and a tub of salted hydrogenated oil? What can you give to someone you love that doesn’t have a barcode printed on it or a gift receipt in the box?

Sacrificing some comfort and convenience isn't at all alien to most of us who are un- or underemployed, or who must live within our means, yet it has become unthinkable to the middle- and upper-classes, whose automobiles, bodies and TV screens are all increasing at the same rate.

I often get accused of seeing inherent nobility in poverty, and it’s true that I see no shame in it, whereas I see plenty of shame in wealth. The rich, with the help of television, have taught the rest of us how to crave material goods and how to pretend we feel better about ourselves through acquiring. Perhaps the poor should insist that the rich learn from our example how to go without.

Whether it's for ending war, saving the earth, economic justice, preserving your personal values in the face of a morally bankrupt society, or just keeping yourself sane in a complex world, we must begin to reject consumerism and aquisitiveness. There's a lot we can go without, on Inauguration Day and every day.

Recently I was asked to provide public relations counsel for an international television network that is attempting to position itself in the U.S. as the voice of the Middle East and Northern Africa vis-à-vis U.S. policy and the upcoming presidential election.

Aside from giving them some strategies for their launch, as objectively as I could, I warned them that there is a dramatic difference between the U.S. media and what they may be accustomed to in their region. I further warned them that Americans believe international news displays an uncomfortable bias, whereas we are entirely comfortable with our domestic news bias. I mentioned that we tend to look at news as entertainment, or a pastime, so TV stations put pretty faces and animated graphics and pop music in their news broadcasts and promote style over substance. As nicely as I could, I said that Americans seem to like watching people insulting each other, and we don't want to see caskets or real blood.

The sole exception worth noting is that Americans who watch U.S. Spanish-language channels are better informed about the Middle East and the Iraq war than those who watch English-language news. Smoke on your pipe and put that in, America.

The contact for the network said he was grateful for my perceptiveness and asked me a completely unexpected question: what do Americans, like me, who understand these things, actually do to change it?

It was a good question. I thought about it a great deal, and I came to the conclusion that unfortunately, there is really no such thing as a "media activist." Currently the media is a beast that is too big for the little person to fight.

The surface-scratching documentary “Outfoxed" tends to miss the root issues at play in media control, providing little new information. "Orwell Rolls in his Grave" shows promise in its hype of providing more depth than the small segment of Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 911" that touches what he portrays as journalists cheerleading for the latest war.

Buried at the end of the “making of” DVD featurette, “Outfoxed” filmmaker Robert Greenwald tells viewers who have hung in there long enough to catch it that he hopes for a country where a family from Nebraska will vacation in Washington D.C., see all the landmarks and memorials and tourist attractions…and lobby the Federal Communications Commission. This is a nice ideal of Americana, but bloody unlikely, and not particularly powerful or meaningful.

On the film's official web site, clicking on "take action" encourages visitors to sign an online petition, order “non-destructive static cling stickers” that imitate the verbage of a product warning label and place them, non-destructive guerrila-style, on televisions, and then mobilize others to, well, sign a petition and order more stickers, I reckon.

Equally unlikely to happen are Free Press’ nonpartisan suggestions to demand that the FCC schedule a hearing in your area and pose their 10 Questions for Every Candidate and Elected Official the next time you’re having lunch or drinks with your congressperson.

Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting goes a little further with their suggestions, here, but they do not challenge the structure of the corporate media. Their main objective is to monitor the media for evidence of bias. And the ever reliable Santa Cruz Independent Media Center has some especially understandable do's and don’ts as well as explaining who the FCC is and what they are charged with actually doing.

Even though one little person probably can’t do squat, an organization of mobilized little people can have some success with economic boycotts that target advertisers; however, it’s almost always right-wing Christian fundamentalists who are successful in this tactic. The left? Well, what can we say. We don’t wake up as early in the morning as those people do.

I think Noam Chomsky was right when he said there is an elite 20 percent of the American population that is aware, active and understand how things are run. The other 80 percent are known as the ‘bewildered herd’ who do what they're told, watch what they're told, believe what they're told, fear what they're told, and buy what they're told. He and others say this 80 percent are the targets of the American media. The rest of us are useless to them.

Chomsky also teaches that the role and importance of the media is dramatically different in a democracy. Leaders need the media to make public opinion conform to their policy. This happens so grandly and yet so unnoticeably that those 80 percent lack the ability to separate fact from opinion, truth from drama, and real blood from
fake blood.

If rooting for Ed Bradley is wrong, I don't wanna be right.

I'll never be able to pass a homeless crazy person on the street without thinking of him.

A friend confessed he literally cannot sleep at night from worrying about the way the country is heading when he considers the prospect of a presidential race between a Bush/Cheney ticket and a Kerry/McCain ticket.

With two conservative parties to choose from, and no third parties with any bandwidth to speak of, the rest of us are in quite a pickle.

A vote for Nader is a vote for Bush. A vote for Kerry is a vote for, well, Kerry.

If you favor peace, you’re in trouble. Kerry plans to increase our military presence in the Global War on Terror by 40,000 more troops.

His entire foreign policy seems like it was lifted directly out of the GOP playbook and is based on something called “enlightened self-interest.” He fully supported the assassination of the leader of Hamas and will do nothing to question our unyielding support of possibly the world's most egregious terrorist state, Israel.

Domestically, he thinks that cutting corporate taxes will spur job growth. And as for the last remaining reason for a thinking person to vote Democrat over Republican, the right to choose, Kerry says that he "would be open" to appointing judges who do not support Roe v. Wade.

So, what are we supposed to do now?

I'm such a dittohead I'm liable to vote for whoever Kucinich tells me to vote for, as my last gesture of supporting him politically. Mr. S. and I gave him money, attended his events, wore his t-shirts, and put his signs on the house.

I'm also liable to sit on my ass on Election Day as a protest, like the writer of this piece "Why I Will Not Vote in 2004." I have a few disagreements with the author, namely that casting a symbolic protest vote may still have merit, but there is much here that she puts into perspective, and it's not a perspective that is heard often: it's your civic duty not to vote. Or maybe not voting needs to assume a new symbolism also.

I remember hearing a similar opinion from one of Michael Moore's films, ”The Big One.” His travels take him to a diner in a rural area hit hard by unemployment and plant closures, and he interviews a local woman about the choice between Dole and Clinton. Her advice was "Don't vote. Don't give them the satisfaction."

Or I’m liable to go third or fourth party. Just a few weeks ago I was not inclined to pay much attention to Nader's candidacy. As a Green in 2000 he had a forum and a platform and a constituency (plus I am a big fan of Winona LaDuke, who now endorses Kucinich). As an independent in 2004 Nader will be an unknown commodity, answering to no one and representing no one.

However, the more I listen to Democrats who call him a megalomaniac and a spoiler and a bad seed and a suicide bomber, the more inclined I am to vote for him. (That is, if we have an election, and if it's even a pretense of fair. I don't put it past BushCo to stage a terrorist attack, then announce that elections are preempted so that everyone can go to the mall instead.)

I like Nader a lot, I do. I like that he delivers a consistent anti-war message, is socially progressive and pro-worker in all his economic agendas. Unfortunately, I am liking him a lot less enthusiastically this year than in 2000, and I was so incredibly jazzed by Kucinich that voting for Nader would be like having a Coors Light when you were jonesing for Guinness.

Voting Nader or going Green just because it twists a knife into the democratic underbelly isn't really attractive to me as a human being who tries to operate in this world from a place of compassion and understanding. On the other hand, staying home because I want neither Bush nor Kerry to lead the country is just what Democrats want: for the rest of us to Just. Shut. Up.

As I say, and repeatedly, Labor, Poors, Gays, Greens, Pinks, Blacks, Browns, Single Mothers, Welfare Mothers, and anyone else who isn't a straight white male, after all, exists only to help Democrats win primaries. After that's over we should Just. Shut. Up.

One lesson from 2000 that refuses to be learned, it seems, is that Democrats who ignore their liberal base are destined to lose. I know that making this generalization evades many critical issues such as the scrubbing of voter rolls in Florida, the recount and Supreme Court shenanigans, but is quite simplistically the key in both of these elections. It is absolutely ridiculous that Kerry would rather court middle-of-the-road, centrist, undecided, moderate, morons who aren't sure if Bush is doing a good job or not, as opposed to those of us who are one hundred percent committed to getting that inarticulate schmuck out of office.

Or are we?

You have to admit the guy is pure comedy. Watching him smirk and twist and flail like a windsock at the beach is just so much fun. He's like Schwarzenegger on 'roids. Wait. Schwarzenegger IS on 'roids. Make that Schwarzenegger minus the 'roids. (Though Ahnold has a viable excuse for mangling the English language.)

Nope, nothing feeds one’s intellectual snobbery quite like knowing you are at least 60 IQ points smarter than your President. And he's so damn transparent there's really no surprises: you can be sure he's gonna screw you while sticking money in the pockets of his rich friends. Kerry will do the same, yet lie to you about it and tell you he really likes you, making you feel somewhat dirty and abused in the morning. Wouldn't you rather see honesty in the White House? That special breed of Bush/Cheney honesty that leaves you with no pretense about what they're up to?

Plus, you get the Bushtwins. Twins!

So I’m liable to vote for Bush after all. Better the devil you know, as they say. Damn the torpedos; full speed ahead. Let's hasten this ‘end of the world as we know it’ thing because truly, we're not having any fun here these days, and I think Mother Nature would prefer to be rid of the scourge that is us anyway.

It's the best environmental reasoning I can come up with: kill off humanity, make the planet uninhabitable, let her go into about a million-year long cleanse, and start all over again with the one-celled organisms and univalves.

Maybe now you can sleep at night.

I’m Suasoria, and I approved this announcement.

My teabag had an inspirational message for me today. The little paper flap said, "You are a living existence of light; you need not seek anything." This coincides neatly with some stuff I’d already been thinking about: stuff.

I hurt my back in a freak gardening accident this weekend, so for the last three days I’ve been on the couch watching home improvement television. One show I never knew existed is "Clean Sweep," where a couple opens up their most embarrassingly cluttered rooms to an obnoxious bimbo host, a professional organizer, a decorator, and of course the viewers at home.

While the homeowners sort their worldly crap into trash, keep and garage sale piles, the pros redo the interior to achieve a more efficient, streamlined and attractive environment. Watching hunky carpenters build shelves can certainly keep me entertained for an hour, however, the real appeal of the show is seeing the drama unfold between a human being and his or her stuff.

Most of us in North America since the last half of the twentieth century have too much stuff. Part of it is technological modernity, such as computer equipment that gets its own bedroom, and of course we buy too much new stuff, but the rest of our stuff is just our emotional, psychological, pathological stuff. It’s all that stuff with sentimental value or personal and symbolic meaning of some kind.

One woman was convinced to part with her wedding dress after a big fat teary struggle. You might call that cruel, but as the organizer pointed out, she hadn’t shown the dress much respect: it had been wadded up in a pile on the floor of her filthy closet for nine years.

In another episode, a couple with grandchildren who visit occasionally had to sort through literally a truckload of toys. Grandma didn’t want to get rid of any of it, and whined about what a short attention span the kids have and how challenging it is to keep them entertained. Gee, I wonder how that happened. The organizer gave the usual lecture about donating toys to children less fortunate and mentioned that if you give a child three toys, they’ll play with three toys; give them three hundred toys, they’ll play with three hundred.

What I wanted to hear, but didn’t, is that the grandchildren need time with their grandparents more than two roomfuls of toys. And that Grandma is a horrible person for teaching the children that stuff will make them happy. But I guess that’s a different channel.

I’m not equipped to comment on the expanding universe of stuff for children, except to say that in looking at some of the gadgetry that is foisted on new parents as ‘must haves,’ I doubt your kids will end up in therapy if you didn’t use an electric warmer for their diaper wipes. You can make your own Freudian joke here.

Craving consumer goods like the newest fastest fashions or electronics is different than craving the clutter. Consumerism is emotional, psychological, pathological in another way, and it usually means we have some inadequacy or self-esteem problem that we think can be satisfied by acquisition of something that we perceive as desirable to others so we become more acceptable to them. For that, you may want that therapy for yourself.

No, we have too much purely emotional, psychological, pathological stuff. Baby gear from your children’s or your own childhood. Gifts people gave you at memorable occasions. Things you purchased for a hobby that is no longer interesting. Broken pieces of something that was once expensive. Books you don’t like that were given to you by someone you do. Ticket stubs. Our first, worn-out something that’s been replaced by a version of it that we actually use. Stuff that belonged to someone who is now dead. Greeting cards. Prizes you won for doing nothing other than guessing the number of candies in a jar. Plus the jar. Minus the candy.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen it, but there’s a scene in the brilliant Harold and Maude where Harold gives Maude a thoughtful souvenir at the end of a great date. She admires it and then pitches it exuberantly to the bottom of the ocean, much to his shock, saying that now she’ll always know where it is. (Maude was eccentric. Don’t throw your stuff into the ocean. I think there’s a hefty fine for that.)

When you look at the stuff that means something to your life, ask what it says about your life. What are you clinging to? What do you seek from it? How else could you satisfy that need? Or eliminate the need in the first place?

How does it fit into the life you might want to live instead of the one you have now? And is hanging onto it somehow preventing you from that other life?

Speaking of wedding dresses, two years ago when Mr. S and I were intent on sticking to a tight budget while we planned our wedding, my friend Monique generously offered me her wedding dress. When I said I was afraid something might happen to it, she said she didn’t care and that she never needed to look at it again. It was just a thing that no longer had any use or meaning to her. It was just a dress. It was not a marriage.

Monique and her husband Ken are still happily married after many years, and have a new baby girl. Until recently, they had a ping pong table in their formal dining room instead of a formal dining room table. It was so ‘Ken and Mo’ to have a ping pong table in the dining room – fun, unexpected, and more than a bit off-center. I suppose they finally caved into societal pressure to furnish their house as befits people with a mortgage and a dog and a daughter. It’s kind of a shame, because they probably had competitive ping pong matches a lot more often than most people have formal dinners.

They do not, however, have an electric baby wipe warmer.

Many of you who are conservatives read this space only because Kerry makes us both ill, just in dramatically different ways. (I get that queasy feeling in my gut and you people get a splitting headache.)

Those of you who are also allergic to Kerry will be quite surprised to find out that “Air America,” the “long-awaited, much-ballyhooed” “liberal” talk radio “network,” makes me pretty ill too. (I can’t use many of these terms with a straight face, so I’m overdosing on scare quotes.)

Michael Moore, your favorite filmmaker and mine, also agrees with us, and had this to say in Dude, Where’s My Country:

“The proposed ‘Liberal Radio Network?’ What a stupid waste of time. Radio? Are you serious? What century are you in? Gee, why stop there—let’s set up a Liberal Pony Express How about a Liberal Morse Code? Get into the 21st century Get a TV network. Get an Internet network.”

I admit I have a gift for figuring out exactly how a name will be bastardized, and would have told these people if I could that “Airhead America” or “Hot Air America” is exactly how they will be positioned in the rest of the mainstream media. (Yes, “rest of.”) And as for why this venture is doomed to fail, below are a few reasons other than the obvious one, which is that the golden age of radio was the 1930s-40s.

1. The Golden Age of Radio was the 1930s-40s.

Okay, it really bears repeating. Also known as “television without pictures,” radio places somewhere below daily newspapers but above People Magazine on the list of where Americans prefer to get their news. In nearly every marketing study, radio is named about the sixth most credible and popular media source of nine choices. And as much as liberals will hate to admit it, radio is far more popular among older, affluent and educated consumers; less affluent and educated audiences, as well as young people, simply watch more TV (not that there’s anything wrong with that).

“In its heyday, the '30s and '40s, AM radio was as popular as TV is today,” says Los Angeles Radio Magazine. (A magazine about radio. I’m sure a democrat came up with that one, too.) They report that some local stations are today finding an appreciative audience for Jack Benny, Burns & Allen and other radio greats. This is encouraging, because for liberals to make that hay via radio, it’ll take a massive PR campaign for radio in general to capture the younger, less educated and poorer audience they need to reach.

2. No one will write them checks.

Truth is, democrats receive oodles of cash from Big Tobacco, Big Pharma, and other Big Corporate contributors, just like republicans do. It runs about 25% to democrats and 75% to republicans. These are also the entities who are buying ads. And if you bite the hand that signs checks, there will be no more checks. According to this report, the network, which officially launches in less than 48 hours, has yet to sign an advertiser.

If they aren’t able to go after Big Corporate, there’s far less value to their message. Frankly, this applies to both a television network as well as a radio network, so don’t be looking here for any simple answers.

3. Divest from Hollywood.

Though there are as many high-profile conservative celebrities, if not more, it’s liberals that are synonymous with Hollywood politics. The right-wing TV and radio shouting heads love to point out that “Hollywood values” are out of touch with our mainstream, hamburger-eating, mother-respecting American values. It’s expecting too much in the near term to get the Dittoheads to actually listen to what Tim, Janeane and Chuck D have to say, so why not quietly uninvite them to the party? Give a forum to those with more credentials to be speaking about their issues. Like Dr. Neal Barnard, the health and consumer advocate who founded the Physicians’ Committee for Responsible Medicine, who will be the first to tell you that Agribusiness does not want you to eat healthy and that the U.S. Military should stop performing experiments on cats.

4. Stop doing what you’ve been doing.

I love Al Franken as much as the next liberal, despite his cheerleading for corporate radio behemoth Clear Channel, which he has apologized for, and his flag-waving pro-war routine after 9/11, which he has not. But like Kerry, comedian Al Franken seems to be the best the democrats can do. And that’s just not good enough.

We need progressive voices that will reach out to the people the democrats - what passes for a liberal party in this country - have abandoned: the unemployed, the underemployed, blacks, browns, and poor whites, chicks, homos, kids trying to go to college, sick people trying to go to a doctor, people against guns, people against the death penalty, people against making war, people against trickle-down economics, people who want better jobs and schools and transportation and housing and services.

If the voices can speak to those people, I guarantee the voices will be heard. Even if they can only be heard on AM radio right after Fibber McGee and Molly.

Here's a toy that's oh so much healthier for children than a glance of a black woman's breast or NPR letting a naughty word slip.

What a fucking country. Oops, now I've said it.

According to Snopes.com, JC Penney has pulled the toy, so don't complain to them.

Yesterday, voters in Spain - including millions who had never before voted - made the connection between making war in a sovereign nation and increased acts of terrorism. I had a conversation with some people here from a couple of other countries on Saturday and it's unbelieveable how conscious they are compared to the ignorance of most Americans.

I think Bill Maher said it best: "They hate us because we don't know why they hate us." It's just amazing that most Americans think the whole world is wrong and we are right. Okay technically, it's us, the Marshall Islands and Israel.

One man here from Argentina commented that the U.S. flag the world over is now (again? he was young) a "hate flag." An immigrant from Morocco who is a musician and tours a great deal said he is having more and more trouble travelling with his American passport even though he's not white and speaks heavily accented English - in fact he primarily speaks Arabic and French, but he's an American now, so he feels the disdain.

In Spain they took to the streets demanding that their government tell them the truth. They wanted an investigation, and wanted it now. These were not acts of home-grown domestic Basque extremists. (Damn you fascists! We will have paella our way or no way!) In our country three years later, we have only a half-hearted commission - and that's after many attempts by the highest levels of government to block any investigation whatsoever. Imagine people marching in the streets of New York chanting "what do we want? another ad-hoc committee stuffed with political appointees. When do we want it? In about three years!"

Today's L.A. Times page one story on the elections in Spain quoted a CNN analyst with a Spanish surname, presumably to imply he focuses on the region or has some special insider ethnic knowledge. This analyst said it was shocking that Spain would even have these scheduled elections after a terrorist act, and that it was as if the U.S. held an election three days after a 9/11, in a time when the country was so reverently and passionately doing nothing.

I'll pause and let you weigh the irony of that statement.

It's a good thing George W. Bush doesn't read the paper, and is proud of it, may I add, because I wouldn't want him getting any ideas in that airy little head of his.

Foreigners know what our right-wing government is about, and they know that we would stoop to no low to preserve our superpower. They know that we are capable of more evil than the devil himself.

Who we, white man? Well, I have nothing to do with this evil, and most people I know are actively trying to avoid, expose and prevent evil. But I believe that once upon a time there was some sympathy in other countries for us poor, stupid Americans, who mean well and are generally nice people, but have no idea what our government is doing. Evidently that goodwill for the people of the United States, who charm other nations' peoples with our ridiculously bad culture and our childlike egotism, has dissipated to the point where an Arabic-speaking Mediterranean guy with a fancy African guitar can't get on a plane in Paris without being hassled...because he's an American, just like you and me.

An editor for a technology magazine recently confessed to me that whenever he thinks about backing up his computer, he thinks of Sara Jessica Parker's character on 'Sex and the City,' who apparently had some computer troubles in an episode and exclaimed, "Back up? No one said anything to me about backing up!"

(In case you're keeping score, this is another reason for me to detest that show, and if it wasn't off the air, I'd write a letter to the producers on why backup is not a subject to treat so lightly. For some reason I could never understand why I should care about four rich, white, whiny, shopaholics, one of whom is an insult to women in PR.)

And because I'm a big proponent of backup, people feel free to cry on my shoulder whenever they've lost data. This is a little like telling a cop you just ran a red light a few blocks away and hit a pedestrian, but since you've been drinking, you don't remember exactly where this happened.

I'm truly not sure what you expect me to do or say about you blowing it, so here I present to you some advice on backing up. In the future, when you want to cry to me, re-read this instead.

Top 10 Backup Tips

1. Don't rely on drag and drop
You will inevitably forget or miss something you'll need later.

2. Watch out for sneaky files
On a similar note, most of us don't know where all our critical files are kept. Back up the entire hard drive so that you don't neglect files such as device drivers, operating system/preference files and application settings, which can cause mayhem if they are lost. What would you do without your Double Dragon high scores?

3. Use backup software
Most of you are simply not sophisticated enough to design and implement your own you-proof backup strategy. Buy a halfway decent backup software and learn how to use it. The one I shill for is here. It is considered the best by the trade, but maybe just those in the trade that speak to me. Who knows?

4. Back up everything you own
Even if you have multiple servers, 40-70% of irreplaceable data lives on
desktops and notebooks, so back up every device you own. If you use a handheld or tablet, sync it up and then back it up. You can probably even back up your TiVo, if you were so inclined.

5. Back up often
Daily is best. Any less often and Murphy's Law dictates that disaster will strike when your most recent backup is days old or worse. My backup software includes an automatic scheduler, meaning I don't have to think about it. It works without me being there to screw it up.

6. Negotiate between speed and accuracy
The fastest strategy is to start with a first-time full backup; thereafter, do "incremental backups," which capture only new or changed files. Though quick, this results in restores that are complicated at best and flawed at worst, because it will bring back files you have subsequently deleted, renamed, or moved. Other options are a weekly full backup followed by daily incrementals, a full daily backup but of only selected parts of your system. My backup software has a cataloguing feature that will automatically create and compare logs of current and previously backed-up files, including where they live on the drive, for easier, faster, and accurate restores. No negotiation required.

7. Test your backup
Make sure your backup software has full read-back verification, and practice restoring, particularly if you choose speed over accuracy. Rehearsals will make a recovery smoother, especially if you are operating in panic mode.

8. Use compression
Make sure your backup software compresses data before transmitting, particularly if you choose accuracy over speed. This will save time and money by squeezing up to twice as much data onto your backup media.

9. Make several copies
To increase the degree of data protection, make three different sets of your data and keep one set in a secure offsite location. Even an old copy is better than no copy at all. Rule of thumb: whenever you visit your mom, give her a new backup and have her keep it in your old room. If she nags you about not seeing her often enough, it means your backup is not up-to-date.

10. Don't procrastinate
Most backup fanatics are people who once lost data. Develop a backup plan now, before you need it, especially if you run a business. Statistics show that most small businesses do not recover from a catastrophe that involves data loss on a large scale, so do it now.

And then call your mom. She'd love to hear from you.

In the brilliant “comic” strip Get Your War On by David Rees, one of his characters asks “If you could say one thing to God right now, what would it be?”

“I think I would say, ‘Thank you, God, for your healing gift of religion…I’d also say, ‘Monotheistic religion has always brought out the best in us humans; thank you so much for the idea of a vengeful supernatural entity who rewards people in the afterlife! That shit makes a lot of sense!’”

That ‘healing gift of religion’ is being used in U.S. politics, which admittedly resembles a cancer at times. The right tends to ascribe to an erroneous notion that when it comes to doing the right thing, which we’ll call morality, one must be religious, and when they say religious, they mean Christian (unless you’re Joe Lieberman, in which case you’re excused).

Jim Wallis is the head of Sojourners, a Christian ministry that aims to ‘integrate spiritual renewal and social justice.’ I’ve already noted that one of the problems with the Republican party today is that it kowtows to the religious right, and in some states, is downright run by it. Reverend Wallis is doing his part to tell people that the right wing doesn’t own morality.

“What about the biblical imperatives for social justice, the God who lifts up the poor, the Jesus who said, 'blessed are the peacemakers?'" Wallis laments.

Wallis is not free of bias, and though the organization is interfaith, it is still rooted in faith – and spirituality and religious faith are not synonymous.

Last Friday, a friend’s neighbor died unexpectedly, leaving behind ten tame, hand-raised pet rats. As a favor to my friend, who was justifiably concerned that these animals might meet a sad end, I used some of my contacts who are left-wing political activists to try to find these animals new homes. Now, rats aren’t my cup of tea as pets go, but I donate to animal welfare and rescue organizations, I avoid eating animals, I try not to buy products that I know were tested on animals, and I tend not to wear animal skins (except for really, really cute shoes, and even then, only if they’re on sale). I don't even kill bugs, because I personally do not want to be responsible for ending another creature's life, not even a snail or a tomato hornworm who may be infringing on my ability to maximize the enjoyment of my garden.

No Western religion that I’ve ever been exposed to encourages vegetarianism or organic pest control, though certainly many Hindus and Buddhists adhere to non-animal diets as part of their religious practice, and Hare Krishnas are quite groovy when it comes to compassionate lifestyles. But my relationship with other creatures is part of my spiritual orientation, not a political or societal one, and it is based on what I consider to me my place in the hierarchy of the sacred and the profane. Life is sacred. A rat or cat or dog or a spider being put to death because no one cares for it is an injustice and an offense to the inherent worth of a sentient being. This is a moral issue to me.

Of course, little did I know that my doing a favor for a friend would turn me into some kind of reverse Pied Piper, a liberator of rodents and a citywide symbol of compassion and justice. We received so many offers of help, from near and far, that we could not handle them all and I had to go back to the people who were nice enough to circulate my call for help and ask them to stop, immediately, because I was bombarded.

Without intending any disrespect to animal activists, I marveled at the efficiency and mobilization of these humans, and wondered if this compassion and respect for life - this urgent sense of morality - could be bottled and slipped into the drinks of others. Could a spiritual army, composed of the Reverend Jim and his Christian Left, the New Age movement, Native Americans, adherents of Eastern religions and schools of thought, and those of us who are irreligious but deeply philosophical, be marshaled to, I don’t know, get mentally ill inmates released from death row? Rescue children from an unfeeling foster care system? Prevent the extinction of entire species thanks to bad environmental behavior? Preserve funding for the arts to save artists from starving? End the exploitation of third and fourth world laborers by corporations who make no allowances for the health and safety of their workers?

How about elect a vegan president?

How about end war and stuff?

In an earlier entry, I made the point that there is a fine line between opposing gay marriage and being a homophobe, and that concerned voters should ask candidates who are for civil unions but against marriage whether they support or oppose the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996.

I tell you, Chris Matthews is reading my mind.

If you missed General Wesley Clark on MSNBC's Hardball, here is a portion of the transcript:

MATTHEWS: Let me ask you about, since we’ve brought up marriage here, on gay marriage, I asked you a couple of weeks ago about this, it’s a domestic issue. You want to talk domestic issues?
CLARK: You’re going to go back to gay marriage again?
MATTHEWS: I just want to ask you if you believe that gay people should be out, able to have marriages or something else?
CLARK: I think they should have exactly the same rights that every other American has.
MATTHEWS: Should they get a marriage license? Should they get a marriage license?

(More hemming and hawing on Clark's part, and much berating on Matthew's part)

CLARK: I want to get more questions in here. Now on gay marriage, I think that gays and lesbian couples need exactly the same rights as every other American, right of joint domicile, survivorship, inheritance, putting people on the same insurance policies. But the word marriage...
MATTHEWS: Separate but equal?
CLARK: ... the word marriage, that’s up to the church, the synagogue, the mosque, and it’s up to the state legislatures. So I’m in favor of civil unions, but ...
MATTHEWS: How about civil marriage?
CLARK: Civil unions is the term, and then it’s up to the states or the churches to whether they label that a marriage. I think the issue is equal rights.

(More hemming and hawing on Clark's part, and much berating on Matthew's part)

MATTHEWS: Would you have signed the Defense of Marriage Act?
CLARK: I’m not familiar with all the detail of that act.
MATTHEWS: It says that states with reject marriage licenses for gay couples.
CLARK: I don’t believe that’s the right way to proceed right now. I think we’ve got a new set of issue. I think we need to take a look at it after the last Supreme Court ruling and after this decision in Massachusetts.

The rest of the transcript is here.

Complete coverage, Hardball-style, of the 2004 election is all here.

So Chris, if you're reading this, love you too.

The political landscape is changing, and nowhere is this more evident than the Republican Party. While it's clear that the Democratic Party has shifted massively to the right, abandoning its base of liberals and progressives, rarely is it noted that the same thing has befallen the GOP.

Neo-cons now occupy the White House. Their strings are being pulled on alternating days by Big Corporate and the born-again Christian right, while traditional conservatives are being left in the dust.

Don't misunderstand; I know the left is also getting the shaft, but the left is always getting the shaft, and we're used to it, so we don't really need to whine publicly about it. It's the true ideological conservatives, and their more extremist relatives the Libertarians, who are suffering here, because they've been abandoned by the ruling party that used to feed them and clothe them and tuck them in at night.

Traditional conservative journalist and amateur linguist Bill Safire wrote passionately against the FCC's relaxing of media ownership rules that takes the traditional conservative value of competition out of the news and entertainment business.

"Putting those outlets in fewer and bigger hands profits the few at the cost of the many. The concentration of power – political, corporate, media, cultural – should be anathema to conservatives. The diffusion of power through local control, thereby encouraging individual participation, is the essence of federalism and the greatest expression of democracy."

Former traditional conservative Arianna Huffington probably set the trend of abandoning the GOP. The next headliner was Vermont Senator Jim Jeffords. More recently, Teresa Heinz Kerry, the ketchup heiress wife of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, changed her party affiliation to Democratic.

Tra-cons and Libertarians can be a philosophically groovy bunch. They reason instead of making knee-jerk decisions. Their religious belief, if they have one, has little bearing on their political and civic lives. They are very, very thoughtful. Many of those thought patterns are not shared by me, but I respect some of their highly idealistic notions. (Libertarians: can't live with 'em, can't run them over with your car because you reject the government's paternalistic demand for you to "Stop.")

These people are the Anne Franks of American politics, believing that all humans are basically good and will behave accordingly if society would only get out of their way. Small government, low taxes, limited foreign intervention, and a firm belief in the freedoms of individuals and businesses all are outcroppings of their Annefrankism. (The pubescent diarist Anne Frank was taken prisoner by an anti-Semitic government and lived the rest of her short life in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where she died needlessly of typhoid fever. Frank said "in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart." Her and JJ Rousseau both, I suppose.)

Think-tankers point to the Patriot Act, the misadventures in Iraq, faith-based blather and borrow-from-the-grandkids fiscal management as evidence that the neo-con agenda excludes its traditional roots. I imagine it's been difficult for thoughtful, iconic tra-cons to sit silently by as their party gets hijacked by the likes of Ashcroft, Ann Coulter, the religious nuts and the corporate criminals, who are the ideological opposites of Annefrankism.

Republicans have seemingly always treated Libertarians like Democrats treat Labor, Gays, Greens, Pinks, Blacks, Browns, Single Mothers, Welfare Mothers, Room Mothers, and anyone else who isn't a straight white male. That treatment is "well, where else are you going to go?"

Today, tra-cons and Libertarians are seeing their values somewhat represented in an unlikely place: Howard Dean. His perfect score from the NRA, his opposition to the war in Iraq, his refusal to force himself into people's bedrooms, and his history of balanced budgets have won him some support from the runaway right.

So next time you hear someone Bush-bashing, pick them up by the scruff of their neck and scrutinize their privates – they may be one of his own.

In an earlier entry, I wrote, "You can win a democratic primary on the votes of labor and minorities, but you can't win the election without pandering to the white working- and middle-class, the Great American Middle." (I always use the word "minority" somewhat tonguely-in-cheek, because in Los Angeles, the minority is a majority and the majority is moving to Santa Clarita. Buh-bye.)

Anyhoo, on the list of minorities that Democrats must pander to are gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender people. Well, the first two at a minimum. Thus we have Moseley-Braun, Sharpton, and surprisingly, the observant Catholic Kucinich standing up and saying they support gay marriage, Edwards with no position on record, and Lieberman, Clark, Kerry, Gephardt and Dean coming down firmly on the side of not offending anyone by supporting something by the name of "civil unions."

Years before I made an honest man out of Mr. S., we became legal domestic partners so I could add him to my health insurance plan. We went to a mailbox rental and key making place, left our names and thumbprints, and received legal partnership rights. It was a beautiful moment. The clerk asked if we wanted him to hum a special song.

My friends Tom and Gabe did the same thing shortly thereafter (except they threw a party and we didn't). Later, when Tom was dying, Gabe had the power to make medical decisions for him. So I'd like for someone to tell me the real difference between a domestic partnership and a civil union, reassure me that it's not just a semantic compromise offered by people who want to keep marriage holy and straight, and explain why endorsing civil unions while vocally opposing marriage is considered a gay-friendly position.

Unfortunately I think that minorities, in this case gays, are so accustomed to getting the fuzzy end of the lollipop that they are willing to take even a minor victory like civil unions. The incomplete societal advantages civil unions afford are, I suppose, better than nothing.

The only state where civil unions are perhaps not so ill-defined and nebulous is Vermont. According to the Vermont Civil Union FAQs, "Parties to a civil union will have all the same benefits, protections and responsibilities under Vermont law as are granted to spouses in a marriage, and will be responsible for the support of one another to the same degree and in the same manner as prescribed under law for married persons." This extends to survivorship, medical care, state and local taxes, adoption, and a whole bunch of other things I can only guess are general Vermont quirkiness, like homesteading and fishing licenses.

This means Vermont is a good place to live if you're gay, and considering most gay couples I know make way more money than we do, this is good for Vermont's economy too. Plus, you know, there's the fishing.

What Vermont does not do is force the federal government or other state governments to recognize your union. You do not receive federal tax benefits, and if you move from Vermont to Pennsylvania for some stupid reason, you're back to living in sin.

The Full Faith and Credit Clause of the U.S. Constitution demands that states recognize the "acts, records and proceedings" of all other states. However, the unconstitutional yet unchallenged Defense of Marriage Act of 1996 says that states can choose not to recognize the acts, records and proceedings of another state.

Secondly, it defines marriage as a "legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife." Get it? In case you don't, it also defines a spouse as a "person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife." Get it now? Then there's the Federal Constitutional Marriage Amendment, proposed this past May, that seeks to define a marriage once and for all as occurring between a man and a woman. As if the Defense of Marriage Act wasn't, y'know, clear.

The candidates who support civil unions while opposing same-sex marriage need to be forthcoming on what it is they would do if given the chance. Will they uphold the Full Faith and Credit Clause, or will they fight any gay-friendly constitutional lawyers who challenge the Defense of Marriage Act? And how do they feel about the Federal Constitutional Marriage Amendment?

As much as I think most of the Democrats are attempting to play both sides against the middle – pander to the gays while not alienating the straights – opposing gay marriage leads to some unfortunate ambiguities. It behooves any gay voter to figure out these issues and choose their candidate wisely, because there is much more than a semantic distinction between opposing gay marriage and being a homophobe.

I hear the new governor of Colliefornia will be inaugurated on Monday. To honor this historic event, I‘m taking a look backwards at the recall election this past October. If you don’t live here, I’ll sum up the story quickly: a right-wing car-alarm impresario and elected official from the white-bread community of San Diego decided he wanted to be governor. He spent more than a million dollars of his own considerable wealth to pay signature-gatherers to initiate a recall of a popularly elected, but not particularly popular, centrist governor.

Then an aging republican action movie star went on a late night talk show and decided to run for governor, much to the car alarm impresario’s chagrin. Despite having Nazi ties and a nasty tendency to assault women, the movie star was unbeatable. Other republicans who got burned by the movie star included the kindly, much-loved former mayor of Los Angeles; the fascist billionaire the unpopular governor narrowly beat in the recent legal election; and a highly principled, honest, qualified, but frightening neo-con state senator. Also running was a progressive economic genius, an eloquent but smug author/pundit; and a plate of spaghetti without sauce that most people called "Cruz Bustamante."

Ya with me? Good.

Throughout this bizarre campaign, recall opponents started every argument with the phrase "Whether you support Governor Davis or not." It’s true that Davis was all over the map politically. He took corporate money yet signed pay increases for unions. He loved law-and-order yet opened a loophole allowing undocumenteds to get state ID cards and driver licenses. He appointed Dolores Huerta, a labor leader who was Cesar Chavez’ right hand, to the board of Regents, the group overseeing the state’s pricey, exclusive, non-affirmative action observing university system. When you scratch the nauseating, charmless, politically expedient surface, Gray Davis is probably a guy you’d really like to have over for dinner and conversation.

Support for Davis was never the rallying cry for those against the recall, and that may have been a key mistake. However, as Bill Maher said in his brilliant op-ed piece, and on his HBO program the same week, liking Davis is like saying your favorite food is straw. Vast stores of affection for Governor Yawn would have been incredibly hard to mobilize, as opposed to affection for Dianne Feinstein (though I frankly can't explain people's high regard for her). Would the Democrats have lost the gig if Feinstein had run? We'll never know, but she is 70 years old and I can understand her not wanting this thankless job when she should be bouncing her grandbabies on her knee instead.

What's become evident to me is that most people vote based on their self-interest. When I was a kiddo, I thought it was your 'civic duty' to vote, and you voted based on what you thought was best for the majority of your fellow humans. Now you vote based on who you believe is going to save you $200 a year on taxes or allow you to legally cut costly employee health insurance benefits in your small business.

We live in the wealthiest state in the wealthiest country in the world, so pardon me if I don't hire violinists just because some cranky upper middle-class people don't want to pay a few hundred more dollars for their car taxes. Their car taxes, for f-ck's sake. You want to save money on your car taxes? Get rid of the car and try using public transportation, like a whole lot of other working people have to do.

(But not in Los Angeles, because there’s a transit strike. City mechanics, the people who are responsible for the safety of half a million bus and train rider’s safety every day, aren’t getting a fair deal. My grandmother rides the buses, okay? Pay them what they want and shut up, because I don’t want to have to sue you when the brakes on the Metro Rapíd lock up and she goes sailing through the windshield.)

California is rich, but also has an incredible gulf between rich and poor. People still live in shantytowns and garages and tenements just a few miles from multi million-dollar homes. People wait on people who pay them pittances. These people become more spoiled and insufferable daily, because they have grown defensive about their entitlement to own more of the world: to drive a bigger, thirstier SUV, eat a bigger, lower-carb piece of meat, and buy themselves a bigger, more highly defined television. In Los Angeles, the top 20 percent earn an average of 25 times more than the bottom 20 percent, as urban historian Mike Davis points out in an article published in the UK (where you can still read the truth printed in English from time to time). One third of residents lack health insurance. Clearly, something needs to be done here. And done quickly.

I hope Dean is right that this recall election was a sign of anti-incumbency fever, and he may very well be when you consider Nevada may recall their Republican governor. I'm excited about that one; I hear that Xena, Warrior Princess is going to run against Buffy, the Vampire Slayer.

I love those great little teeny self-help books and magazine articles promising to improve your complicated life in 100 easy steps (90, if you're a man and have had the same haircut for the last 15 years). While it is true that many minor lifestyle changes can help you save money, improve your diet and health, and be more environmentally responsible, these types of lesson plans are always fraught with peril because they try to give you quick fixes to complex, alogarithmic hassles.

For example, Move Into a Smaller Home (tip #31) is a great idea. Most rich people take up way more space than they need, and whether you clean it yourself or hire someone, a big house is wasteful of resources and too much work. But after I followed the lesson to Buy Everything in Bulk (#45) I realized that my Smaller Home (#31) no longer had room for the twelve-pack of paper towels and 30-pound bag of rice.

I also found that after you Clean Out Your Closets Once and for All (#12), it's hard to Maintain a Shelf of Nondescript Unwanted Gift Items (#50). Having policed up the house of all the knickknacks we've received over the years and created a pile that would fulfill all my regifting needs for the next decade, stowing this junk in the linen closet made me want to clean it out all over again.

It isn't just household idiosyncrasies that now plague my simplified life. Having decided to Keep the Friendships that are Worth Keeping - Not the Ones that Aren't (#62) and in that spirit, Plan a Girl's Weekend (#68), I found that my Friends Worth Keeping (#62) were a little miffed that during our Girl's Weekend (#68) I was busy following the tip to Keep Sundays Just for You (#60). Boy, were they surprised that I spent half of our 48-hour retreat in the bathtub with the door locked and cucumber slices over my eyes, which I desperately needed since I've begun to Get Up an Hour Earlier (#79).

That early-morning Hour (#79) is really peaceful, and I found that with seven fewer hours spent in bed I really began to appreciate the advice to Go to Bed by Nine One Day a Week (#84). So it's really only a net sleep loss of about four hours, hours I put to good use when I Make Dinner for the Whole Week in One Afternoon (#40). This is a terrific idea, because I never have to worry anymore about what to make for dinner on the way home from work. The only challenge so far is that I run out of most of our groceries now that I've limited myself to Only Buy Goods One Day a Week (#44). It's really hard to buy all our groceries on Saturday - because after all, Sunday is Just For Me (#60) - and then try to come up with a week's worth of dinner when all that's left in the house is the green parts of some radishes, a half a bag of tortilla chips, and oh, yes, about 27 pounds of rice that I bought in Bulk (#45).

The concept of limiting the shopping is to save gas, money, and time, plus cut back on the consumerism of that must-have-now mentality. I can truly appreciate this, and I think if most of us stopped to consider the difference between things we want and things we need, we'd spend a lot less money and learn to Be Thankful for What You Have (#89). A good example is that once we followed the advice to Handle Your Own Home Repairs (#35), we found that when the toilet clogged on a Tuesday and we couldn't go out and buy a plunger until Saturday because we Only Buy Goods One Day a Week (#44), we were truly Thankful (#89) that we had that key to our neighbor's house.

Gratitude isn't always effective, though. To tell the truth, being Thankful (#89) for what I had made me a little misty for the ten years of birthday cards sent to me by the Friends Worth Keeping (#62) that I threw out when I cleaned out the Closets (#12). But ever since I took the advice to Throw Out Your Day Planner (#73), I've forgotten all the birthdays of my Friends Worth Keeping (#62) anyway, so I don't expect I'll be getting any cards in return.

I have been working on a project that is fairly routine - an awards submission for a client, a software company. We love awards. All of America loves awards. America even loves nominees.

I was browsing some of the entries from the competition to see how mine compared, because for this particular award the public is invited to comment on the submissions. These awards claim to seek "unsung heroes and rising stars...senior executives, in-the-trenches team leaders, engineers, and other high-impact players from all kinds of backgrounds." Yeah, it's marketingese. But it's still an award, even if just an award for the best marketingese.

I came upon one entry from a business owner that gushed about how her idealistic desire to save trees led her to start her tech company - some sort of online file sharing, paperless office jazz, the likes of which we've been hearing about for years but have yet to see the fruits of. This person's altruism informs her work. She is passionate about her company. She believes in what she does.

Big whoop. So do dozens of people I know. So do most of my clients. (A good thing, because if they were in it for the money, they'd be miserably disappointed). They are passionate about their companies. They believe in what they do. They are in it for the right reasons.

But people went nuts with bravos for this particular entry, as if idealism is something that people should get awards for. Well, I suppose it is a rarity. I guess the idea that it's such a rarity is what irks me. So this one's for you, corporate idealist woman. Collect your awards and your bravos. My entry is still better than yours.

Because many of the items in What a Dump! Part 1 were web-related, I thought that you might enjoy another collection from my hard drive: bookmarks.

You may want to know as much about the world as I do, so here are some of the reference links I've seen fit to keep handy:
Dictionary.com
No explanation necessary.

Nonverbal Communication Dictionary
An index of body language and gestures, in case you can't decide whether the job interviewer liked you or really, really liked you.

Herbal Medicine Reference
Herbs and herbal treatments.

Acronym Finder
Very handy! 219,000+ acronyms and abbreviations.

India Essence
Gifts and herbs and junk from India.

FOLDOC
The Free On-Line Dictionary of Computing. The original. The classic. The one that started it all. The one that’s been around since "online" was a hyphenate. And still, the best.

All Music Guide
Good searchable database of artists, albums and songs. In case you’ve forgotten the name of the other guy in Wham, and it’s driving you crazy.

Rhyming dictionary
Kind of fun. For a few minutes.

Cocktail & drink recipes
Gazillions of drinks, from an A1 (gin, Grand Marnier, lemon juice and grenadine syrup) to a Zoom (brandy, honey and cream).

Online Conversion Site
This site helps you convert just about anything to anything else. Basic metric to U.S., Roman numerals to real numbers, megabytes to kilobytes, fractions of a circle to degrees (or minutes or seconds or radians or gradients), picas to inches, your age to seconds. The only useful thing I ever learned in math class was "is over of equals percent over a hundred." This site does that, too.

Online Dictionaries, Glossaries and Encyclopedias
As it says, many links to other references. Because no amount of knowledge is ever enough.

ROTTEN TOMATOES: Movie Reviews & Previews
A relatively good movie database, with reviews.

How to Say ‘Thank You’ in Every Language on Earth
Let it load - it’s a monster of a site. And it’s not only thankfulness, but also common greetings and phrases, ‘I love yous,’ and other niceties to help you make friends wherever you go.

Plumb Design Visual Thesaurus
Wendy sent me this originally. I haven’t spent much time delving into it, but being the language and science geek that I am, plus having scored very highly in the area of spatial relationships on aptitude tests, I find this to be a marvel. Think of it as a huge map of the language. It has some flaws (you’d think ‘cat-o-nine-tails’ would lead you to whip, but it doesn’t) but is an amazing example of why the Internet just works.

Berg Software Design: Handy URLs
As the name implies, a compendium of links to other sites containing information from the sublime (such as how Global Positioning Systems work) to the ridiculous (such as how to build a potato battery).

Dining Santa Barbara
I find restaurant listing sites to be universally awful, and so few of them are even free. Because this is a collection of customer reviews, it's actually helpful.

Web Clip Art
Haven't needed this for a while, but it beats searching for hours.

How to Get on the Oprah Winfrey show
I admit to being a communications and media professional, but why does everyone ask me if I can get them or their client or friend or neighbor or pet on Oprah? This site is a PR agency’s hysterical explanation of Why You’re Not Gonna Get on Oprah. It includes a great story about a Colombian boy whose father sold him and his brothers and sisters into slavery. He immigrated to the U.S., taught himself English, reunited his siblings, put himself through college, and now teaches disadvantaged children in New York. If your story isn’t better than his, you ain’t Oprah material.

Today on the campaign trail, John Kerry canned his campaign manager Jim Jordan, seemingly in acknowledgement that his campaign has been faltering. What's not clear is whether this is Kerry's own fault or the fault of the deposed Jim Jordan.

According to this Boston Globe report, some insiders say Kerry does not take advice well and pits people who fulfill the same roles against each other, particularly in the case of his DC staff versus his Boston staff. Other observers seem to feel that it's Jordan who has erred because the campaign has not gone on the offensive nearly enough (though in my opinion their campaign has always been highly antagonistic toward other candidates, at least in the print media).

However, you gotta feel for Kerry. He probably entered the race thinking he could win liberals for some reason, and now Dean's got people believing he's the most liberal. They both count as their main constituency wealthy, educated white Northeasterners. They both come from money and from Yale. They both read the Preppy Handbook.

On the other hand, Kerry probably also thought he could stand on his army background, only to have Clark enter the race with exponentially more military experience. Clark, far better than Kerry, disproves the notion that Democrats are weak on foreign policy and national security. Though Kerry probably never fooled himself into thinking he could be the heartland hero, a routine Gephardt has down pat, it no doubt irks him to see Gep get working-class labor when their voting records on collective bargaining, a living wage, and other organized labor touchstones are virtually identical.

As voters gravitate towards other candidates who represent whatever political perspective they most value, a utility player like Kerry ends up on the bench. What he needs to do is grab hold of a leadership role of his own, a square on the game board where none can legitimately challenge him. And that's going to take some inventiveness and spin, since there seems to be nothing he has going for him that is unique.

If I were his strategist, I would tell him that his unique quality, starting today, is the high road.

The best way for him to fight back is to stop fighting. Since Dean owns the "Mr. Pugnacious" title, Kerry needs to do a one-eighty and take the title of Mr. Gentleman. It doesn't strain credulity; his eloquent, statesmanlike public performances already put him second only to longshot Carol Moseley-Braun, who has the edge over Kerry because of her gracious and polite respect for her opponents. Let the good Doctor Dean work himself into an embarrassingly inarticulate lather over something he said or didn't say, depending on what day of the week it is. Kerry doesn't need to bait Dean; Joe, John, Dennis, Al and Dick can all be trusted to do exactly that. Let Gephardt and Edwards fight over folksy farmers and factory workers. Let Clark play Risk by himself in the corner.

Moreover, if I was his speechwriter, his closing statement at the next televised debate would be this:

"Friends, we focus a great deal on the differences between the nine of us here. And we all have our unique strengths and experiences. But I'd like to make a promise today, to you and to my fellow Democrats, that no one else on this stage is prepared to make: if I am elected in November of 2004, each person up here tonight will have a job in the new administration. (Pause for audience murmur.) Yes, even Governor Dean. (Pause for laughter.) When you vote for John Kerry, you will get the unique strengths and experiences of not just myself, but Al, Dennis, Carol, Dick, John, Joe, Wes, (sigh)…and you, Howard. You will have all of us, working for you for change, in a united Democratic party. Together we are unstoppable. Together we will beat George Bush. (Repeat for emphasis with fist shake.) Together, we will beat George Bush. Thank you."

It needs some work, but I think you smell what I'm cooking.

Getting habituated to this self-publishing thing required me to make myself a few cheat notes, so I used the computer program "Stickies" (circa 1994) on my older, workhorse 'classic' Mac G4. Despite the advances in high-tech memography, Stickies is still a really handy thing. It's been a while since I've used Stickies, it seems, and I rediscovered several notes to myself that I probably should delete. But not before I dump them here for posterity.

Here are the things in my brain that once warranted saving on a Stickie:

1. us military and cia interventions since world war 2 - blum
(The full name of this book by William Blum is "Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II." Izaak Sawyer recommended it to me a long time ago. I still don't own it, because it's expensive, but by now I've read enough excerpts to recommend it to others as well.)

2. U.S. Trademark Search: www.uspto.gov
(The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office site is useful in case you come up with a brilliant name for your new invention, and want to be depressed that someone already thought of it decades ago. Since clients used to ask for help naming their new products, I used this more frequently than you'd think.)

3. PR AGENCY needs front office help. Excellent verbal skills, reliable, sense of humor. $7-9 an hour. Email info@xxx or fax xxx.
(This is copy for a 'help wanted' ad we ran five years ago. Yes, we're still looking. No, the pay range hasn't gone up.)

4. I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed.
(From Lloyd Dobler's immortal speech about his future career prospects in 'Say Anything.' But you already knew that.)

5. Scanned sigs:Have person sign on white paper with a black Sharpie. They should sign as large as they feel comfortable and natural. Scan the image into PhotoShop at 300 dpi in B&W photo mode (NOT line drawing mode). Adjust contrast and brightness to get pure white background and good bold signature. Reduce size to about 1.5 inches in width (this will look about the right size on letters.) Save as TIF
(I've never, ever tried this myself, but as a techie Martha Stewart might say, it seemed like a good thing.)

6. The program is called EmailMerge, and (according to the About box) is from Sig Software.
(This refers to a simple mail merge program that integrated our database with our email software, a tip from a PR guy who swore by it. I recommended it to my coworkers over and over again, and no one listened. Our ability to contact the outside world diminished, and after more than two years of suggesting we buy the merge program people in my office finally listened to me. And it changed the way we do our jobs. And I suppose I've kept this information on a Stickie all this time as a constant reminder of how unappreciated and undervalued I am.)

7. I would urge you to study the collected works of Kezia Jauron in the archives of this group. She is my hero for being able to rip the figurative heart from the chest of her victim and show it to them before they wither in embarrassment and collapse (while chuckles erupt all over North America).
(This is one of the nicest things anyone's ever said to me. It's from Bob. Bob and I belong to an online networking group of Generation XYZ PR professionals. I think he said this because someone insulted someone else, and did it so poorly that Bob recommended they learn how to insult people from me. Bob, who I should say is Canadian, also said once "Y'know, there are times when it's just Kezia who keeps me from losing all hope for the Unblighted State of Amurrica" because it seems we have some of the same political views. In addition to a fan of progressive politics, Bob's a highly skilled PR practitioner, does radio commentaries on marketing and media, and has a little shop-talk blog of his own he calls Flacklife.

8. Cut pumpkin in half, scoop out seeds, etc., and bake on a cookie sheet (cut side down) at 350 for one hour or until soft. Set aside to cool. Peel off skin and mash the "meat" in a food processor. Mix about 2 cups of pumpkin, 2 eggs, 1 1/2 cups evaporated milk, 3/4 cup brown sugar, 1 tsp. cinnamon, 1/2 tsp. each ginger, nutmeg and ground cloves. Adjust sweetness. You can also use sweetened condensed milk with less sugar or a combination of condensed and evaporated. You can use a combination of brown and white sugar. (I use about 1/2 cup brown and several tablespoons of white). You can add a bit of vanilla. You can add a bit of salt. Pour into a pie crust and bake for one hour at 350. Watch out for spills when you put it in the oven. Might make more than one pie depending on volume.
(Because so many people ask me for my "real pumpkin pumpkin pie," I have to keep this somewhat handy.)

9. Rewriting Texas Texts: Texas conservatives are aiming to revise their state's schoolbooks -- and teach a lesson to publishers nationwide. http://www.motherjones.com/magazine/JA02/texas_texts.html
(A quick note on a subject I wanted to write about, which was Republican efforts to remove references to global warming and greenhouse gases in school science books. Well, just read the article.)

10. http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/03.27.97/lolita-9713.html
(A little critique of Nabokov's "Lolita," plus some related links I never got around to looking at.)

11. I'll support our troops when:
1.They refuse to kill
2.They are educated with the truth before they sign on to fight a war
3. They act like honorable warriors by showing love and compassion for all of humanity (same as #1 above)
(I didn't write this, but I kinda wish I had, and it's good to have nearby. It isn't stored on a Stickie, though; this gem is from my email app's "drafts" folder, which is where a lot of the things I want to refer to later live these days. However, I was uncomfortable that the Stickie list consisted of a neat and orderly 10 items, so I wanted to odd it up a little.)