Vote Bush! (Courtesy of the poor man.)

I’m going to get political for a while in this ‘blog, because it’s something that’s on my mind a lot.

Here’s something that’s in my face right now: The Bush campaign’s ads. They’re issuing press releases for their ads, which are designed to generate controversy before they’re even shown.

For instance, the last set of ads contained images of rescue workers carrying a flag-draped coffin out of the WTC ground zero. This set off a storm of agitation. The minds of millions of people became concerned with the minutiae of whether or not that was appropriate, and all before the ads were even shown. The other issues raised by the ad were left undiscussed in any critical way.

Now, we hear about the next set of ads, one of which has an olive-skinned generically-Arab man turning slowly around to threaten us with terrorism. There is no way this ad is not intended to be controversial. It’s completely designed to set you off being pissed at Bush, if you have a proclivity to such things. The scary part, however, is that in the ensuing fracas of public debate, the stated message of the ad goes unchallenged. It says that Kerry is soft on terrorism, which is ridiculous. But that doesn’t matter, because there are people ignorant and gullible enough to believe it. To them, the ad is enough. They won’t be set straight, because the sophisticates will be too busy arguing about the ad’s inherent racism.

So far the Bush campaign is very, very, VERY sophisticated. Multilayered and brilliant. Bush is perfectly cast in this media spectacle. He’s Chauncy Gardener. Except of course he’s not really; that’s all play-acting.

This is funnier every time I watch it.

Ya know, there are some pieces of software that are works of art. Acquisition is one of them.

An example of why this is true: The 106.x version adds song previews in the download status pane. Meaning, there’s a little tiny play button next to the bar graph that shows you how much of the song is downloaded. Already, we’re pushing for software-as-art status with this, since you can preview the song and find out if it’s the one you’re looking for.

But, if you’re like me, you’re listening to something else while you’re downloading your purely archival copy of some other song, so you might think there’d be a time when you’d accidentally end up with two songs playing. Right? Wrong. Acquisition pauses the song you’re listening to in iTunes while it plays the preview. Stop the preview and your other music starts back up again. So yes, it’s a work of art.

It’s always nice to be pleasantly surprised when software you’re using does something unexpected. Plus, you’ve got to love marketing that says this: “The network, Gnutella, is the new Kazaa.”

Via sejanus:

A link to a photo essay by a woman who likes to ride her motorcycle through the Chernobyl ‘dead zone’.

Yesterday I drove the big loop to Leavenworth, then Cle Ellum, and then back to Seattle.

It was the first clear day in quite a while, and maybe the last. Before going, I took the car to the oil change place, and in addition to changing the oil, they replaced the PCV valve (they said it was the wrong kind; I’d had it replaced recently at another Jiffy Lube, so they did it for free), and they also replaced the radiator cap.

Now, the whole time I’ve had this car, the temperature gauge has always hovered around the middle of its sweep, which seemed reasonable. There’s no nominal marking on the gague, just a ‘this is too hot!’ and a ‘this is too cold!’ But simply replacing the radiator cap changed all that…

Cranking over Stevens Pass, the gauge was at its happy middle, but coasting down the other side, engine at near-idle, the needle buried itself in the end marked ‘C’ for cold, something it’s never done while I was driving it. I thought.. What the hell did they do to my car? Did they break the temperature sensor?

No, they FIXED it. Good $10 spent right there. I have to wonder what other $10 fixes there are.

Anyway.

I stopped at a rest area on highway 2 and sat at a picnic table. There was something ridiculous like 10 inches of snow dumped on the pass a few nights ago, but lots of it is melted away. All the rivers were running milky. So I sat there at that picnic table and listened to the wind for a little while.

It was like coming up for air. Like I’d been underwater and about to drown and I didn’t even know it.

And here I am back at my computer, doing computer-y things, holding myself underwater again.

This is a screenshot from Microsoft’s website:

I’ll mail my own personal in-the-box copy of the Mac version of the Star Wars: Dark Forces computer game to the first commentor that can tell me why that screen shot is funny.

Update: Deeva gets it. That’s a PowerBook 3400. So not only is it a Mac, it’s from a time before Windows 98.

I’m going to tell you the darndest story. It ties in with today’s musique du jour: ‘Armageddon Days Are Here (Again),’ by The The.

‘Armageddon..’ was released on The The’s 1989 album ‘Mind Bomb.’ The importance of this album in my personal story, particularly around the first half of the ’90s, is hard to overestimate. It’s been out of my life for a while, because I lent the CD to someone about five years ago and they never returned it, before evaporating from my life. So there’s been a dry spell where this music wasn’t easily accessible. Searching for something else on gnutella brought it back into my field of view, and now within earshot.

Be that as it may, here’s the story.

It’s 1992, and I’m driving around in the middle of the night. I have ‘Mind Bomb’ in the tape deck. It’s summer in Houston. I have the sunroof open and the windows down. I’m cruising around, singing along with Matt Johnson, such that people in nearby cars are watching me at stoplights. I’m gesticulating wildly; I might as well be the Solid Gold dancers in my little red sports car. I’m beyond caring what they think. I’m filled with the mixture of groove-out bliss and sociopolitical righteousness contained in this album. It flows through me as I flow through the streets of the south side of Houston. I’m crankin’ through the Montrose, down through the museum district, past the medical center.

Remember. It’s 1992. In 1992, the Republican National Convention was held in Houston, at the Astrodome. At that convention, Pat Buchanan delivered a speech where he likened the presidential election to an all-out culture war between Us and Them. At the time I was driving around, this convention hadn’t happened yet, but it had been in the news that the security measures at the ‘dome had been stepped up. A literal ring of police cars had been parked around it. There were two sets of barbed-wire fences across the parking lot, with a 30-foot ‘kill zone’ in between. No shit: Someone in authority was quoted as calling it a ‘kill zone’ in the paper. It’s nice to know that Republicans feel safe in Houston.

So I’m heading down that major thoroughfare, and ‘Armageddon Days Are Here (Again)’ is playing, booming out of my car. I’m oblivious to where I’m headed; I’m just driving south until I get to interstate 610 so I can head north again. But I’m headed for the Astrodome at 3 AM.

So I’m sitting at a stoplight. I realize I’m at the ‘dome. Hey! Check it out! Decked out with red and blue banners… And I’m singing along with the song, belting it out, practically screaming: “If the real Jesus Christ were to stand up today/He’d be gunned down cold by the CIA…” And I look to my right, and there’s a very large, very black Suburban with very tinted windows that has pulled up next to me. The driver’s window is down, however, and there’s a very stern, very somber, very pale face staring at me, unblinking. He leans forward a tiny bit out of the gloom of his truck, just enough so that the streetlight catches his face. He does this just for me. Just so I can see how badass the alpha-male expression on his face really is.

I wish I could say I stared back. I wish I could say I offered him a sip of my Coke. I wish I could say I asked him if he had a good recipe for C4. But I shrank. He sped off through the red light. No singing allowed.

Freecycle is a set of mailing lists (organized by geography) for posting free stuff messages. Got stuff you don’t need? Just give it away.

And, of course, there’s this.