They'll like us when we win

Well, I just finished watching George W.'s speech and that's pretty much the message I got from it.

Admittidly, I didn't see the whole thing, but it was an hour long and he's really hard to listen to for any length of time, so cut me some slack. (hey George, I've got one word for you, cadence) For those of you who missed the speech, allow me to sum it up for you:

America = Strong
The World = Dangerous
John Kerry = Flip-flopper
America will bring democracy to the world, whether they want it or not.

Everybody got that? Good. I know it's a lot of points to cover when you only have an hour, but somehow he managed.

Seriously though, I got very enraged when he began talking about 9/11 towards the end. I know that the election is about terrorism, but if anyone thinks that the person sitting in the Oval Office made a lick of difference about how the people of New York acted and responded that day, then they have lost my respect. To have him stand up there and basically take credit for acts of valor he had no part in and to praise Americans for their bravery to score political points sickens me.

Yes, something terrible happened, I remember. And despite your claim, I don't feel any safer than I did on 9/10. In fact, I feel less safe knowing there's someone at the helm willing to go to war on the flimsiest of excuses.

Oh, and by the way Republicans, just because some of us are against the War in Iraq doesn't mean we don't support the troops that are fighting it! An amazing number of Americans are smart enough to make that distinction.

Ok, I could go on and on, but I'm just getting myself all worked up again, so I'll cut it out.

Greetings from Montenegro, a land without shower curtains.

Hey folks,

1)Still here, on the east coast of the Adriatic, having just the swellest of times.

2)Don't really have the time for a full post, but you understand.

3)Will be able to do the old face-to-face howdoyoudo when I step lightly on the New Jersey sod from September 13-22, which is like tomorrow or some shit.

4)To keep you entertained until then, you could do worse than reading tiny's account of dj-ing to retired feminists:

"That'd be like not having Off The Wall at the cocaine-fashion warehouse party."

5)Keep the posts coming, as they are a source of joy to those of us in far-off lands, perhaps needing a bit of home cooking.

6) 22-0 and 3 1/2. Word.

The Dirt in Your Fries

My Friday night was ruined by the RNC. But the enduring irony* -- one that squares easily with my feelings about protests and demonstrations -- is that it might have been ruined, in equal parts, by protestors on wheels (the Critical Mass mass-bike protest) and the Republican Party and the police and media presence it entails.

*Irony because it would seem that any inconveniences could be blamed on the convention itself, when in fact, it is the response to the convention that was equally, if not more, disrupting-- even better, because I am more ideologically aligned with the response than the convention itself. This is irony, then, in the traditional sense, not the modern, broader definition that accommodates coincidental or abnormal instances.

"Usage Note: The words ironic, irony, and ironically are sometimes used of events and circumstances that might better be described as simply “coincidental” or “improbable,” in that they suggest no particular lessons about human vanity or folly. Thus 78 percent of the Usage Panel rejects the use of ironically in the sentence In 1969 Susie moved from Ithaca to California where she met her husband-to-be, who, ironically, also came from upstate New York. Some Panelists noted that this particular usage might be acceptable if Susie had in fact moved to California in order to find a husband, in which case the story could be taken as exemplifying the folly of supposing that we can know what fate has in store for us. By contrast, 73 percent accepted the sentence Ironically, even as the government was fulminating against American policy, American jeans and videocassettes were the hottest items in the stalls of the market, where the incongruity can be seen as an example of human inconsistency."

The point is, most of us are quick to deride Alanis Morissette for misuing the word irony, but in fact, many people continue to use it for coincidental situations. Coincidences don't drive irony because coincidences are random. Irony is tension between two things between which there is some sort of relationship, usually an inverted one, but still, a linkage.

Anyway, back to the story. Earlier in the evening, we were puzzled by multiple helicopters patrolling the East Village, hovering low enough that their grating martial sound was disconcerting in itself, the question of why they were there unanswerable at that point because it was two days before the start of the convention, because the East Village didn't seem like an area that merited high security surveillance. We ignored it. It was when we were on St. Marks Place in an Afghani restaurant when, out the window, we saw about 50 police officers in full riot gear charging down the street (if only I had had a camera...) After we left the restaurant it was chaos everywhere, police and barricades on every corner, helicopters put-put-putting over out heads, that we concluded that a good time could not be had that night. And we turned in.

Both parties who made Friday night really really creepy are guilty of lazy metonymy: thinking that demonstrators are a representative of NY, the Democratic party, liberalism, etc., but also that police offers are a part of a larger "them" and thus, it's ok to throw rocks at them. In this way, I think I agree with old-fashioned idea that you skip the grafitti, the protesting, the protest songs: if you give a shit at al, you work hard, you work you ass off at getting into positions of power, and make change where it counts -- instead of throwing rocks at a cop's head.