...as the Beatles would say. I'm going to try to stay offline as much as possible this week, but before I go, I'd like to say: to all of you who've bought a book of mine this year, thanks for making my holiday especially bright. And to all of you who got something I wrote as a gift, I really, truly hope it pleased you! Thanks again to everybody--happy holidays!

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...the Village Voice is continuing its series on "Generation Debt," detailing the financial pickle that more and more Americans under 35 are facing. School loans, easy credit, lack of benefits, unpaid internships to start your career...What a mess. The latest entries discuss the specific pressures on men; pressures on women (which includes this cheery thought: "motherhood is the single best predictor of poverty in women"), and how it looks to the older generation.



In happier news, Michael Moore's making a new movie (about the pharmaceutical industry)!



Now, back to making these jazz mix CDs for my brother-in-law...

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According to this article, the director for the upcoming His Dark Materials movie is trying to remove the anti-religious material in the trilogy.



Are you KIDDING me?



According to the director's agent, "You have to recognise that it is a challenge in the climate of Bush's America." Yes, and that's precisely why Pullman's books have been a huge worldwide hit; a lot of people are very skeptical of what's been happening in the name of religion, and Pullman's books are a expertly written great story that doesn't pander to conventional Christianity. If they want another "Holes"--if all New Line thought it was buying was another YA book-to-movie franchise--well, then, that's exactly what they'll get. On the other hand, the fundamentalists attacked Harry Potter, and that series has done pretty well. Perhaps you've heard of it.



Bush's America doesn't only mean that there are a lot of evangelicals around. It means that everybody else is being welded together by what THEY believe, too. And they will support things that they like, just as fiercely as the evangelicals do. If Harry Potter doesn't ring a bell, perhaps New Line has heard of a little movie called "Fahrenheit 9/11"?



Anyway, it's not like they have a choice, not really. If anybody at New Line thinks for ONE SECOND that they can win over hard-line American evangelicals they are mistaken. Do you think somebody who thinks Lutherans are going to Hell is going to watch the Pullman movies? People that threatened by swipes at organized religion (not God, but God's self-appointed representatives on Earth) are morons, and no worthwhile artistic expression ever begins with, "Okay, first, let's make sure the morons like it."



I'm not simply plucking "moron" out of the air, I've considered it. My dictionary defines it as a "person with an intelligence quotient between 50 and 70." (Average is 100.) In other words, adults with severely impaired critical and intellectual faculties--which is what you'd have to have to not recognize that organized religion has been a very mixed bag. It has done many good things, but also been one of the most destructive forces in human history. This is an historical fact. I wish it weren't so, it gives me no pleasure to say so, but the fact that George Bush is President of the US doesn't change that reality. Organized religion allows us to re-make God in our own flawed image, and so we all--ESPECIALLY those of us involved in organized religions which, full-disclosure, I am not--must be very skeptical of groups of people claiming the authority of the Creator.



Getting back to Pullman: what we "have to recognise" is "that it is a challenge" to do worthwhile art of any sort "in the climate of Bush's America", as it is becoming increasingly anti-intellectual, anti-experimentation, anti-questioning, anti-creative thought. While this sucks for individual artists, it's an opportunity for the Pullman movies to be not just filmic translations of great fantasy, but a powerful statement that desperately needs to be heard. I give Pullman an immense amount of credit for writing the books he has, and specifically for the tough-minded, rationalist, pro-individual, pro-human aspects of that world. I cannot believe that he would then allow those aspects to be tampered with without a fight. If it was important enough to say to readers, it's even more important to show to viewers, being as there are more of the latter. I suspect that there's a fight going on behind-the-scenes, with a lot of anguish and yelling and examining of contracts. I hope to gosh there is, otherwise this is starting to smell like a Lord Valumart production, and Pullman's books--and fans--deserve better.

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...is here. It's a bit jargon-y, but still worth it. And the comments beneath it are particularly good and insightful.



I myself have no clear idea what's next for publishing, but I can't help but think that the current system--dominated by expensive middlemen and reliant on the blockbuster model--can't continue indefinitely. There are limits to consolidation. I don't think e-books will ever be able to overcome the totemistic attraction of bound material, at least in the next couple of decades--until pedagogy shifts decisively into other technologies. If I had to put money down on something, I think that insta-book kiosks printing books with a photocopy-like technology and drawing on a massive internal library, will be the next winner. It simply makes too much sense to cut the costs of hauling all that paper around. But I predict the industry will make a big mistake with this, by not passing the full savings on to the consumer; they will try to keep the majority of that for themselves, instead of using the savings to fix the pricing problem.



Anyway, it's interesting. The first thing I'd tell a young writer to do is get a blog, and attach it to a website holding bigger projects. The first stage of one's career used to be about attracting the attention of someone in the book industry (and all that entailed, like moving to NYC, toiling at magazines and/or freelancing, getting invited to the right parties). Now, it's about attracting and keeping a demonstrable audience, then selling that to a publisher. The change is good for humorous writing, I think--humorists are not generally great networkers, but humorous writing does attract audiences. It's exciting times!

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...has more on Gary Webb. You ought to check it out regardless; I've always found it the cream of the literary blogs--not as encyclopedic as Maud or Bookslut, but with something as solipsistic as the world of publishing, more isn't always better.

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...Red State Son. Thoughtful, funny, frequently updated, you're going to like it.



And the fact that he mentions Jon and I has nothing to do with it. (Gosh, I can't believe you would think I would be so craven. Without being paid.)

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The New York Times discusses a new book by historian and sex researcher C.A. Tripp which lays out the oft-murmured theory that Abraham Lincoln was homosexual. (Or, as Michael O'Donoghue put it, "...was a HOMO!")



I don't know how convincing Tripp's arguments are, but the article does trot out several other historians to refute them. (Of course, these historians have just as powerful careerist/monetary urges for Tripp to be wrong, as Tripp has to be right.) Uncovering the sexuality of an historical figure is, of course, an exercise in pure speculation--what is more interesting is that we're asking the question at all.



Like the one about Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, the question of Lincoln's sexuality is an attempt to push a current hot button, to change what we think of him now. Both sides are convinced of this, the one side wanting to "keep" Lincoln, the other wanting to "claim" Lincoln.



Fact is, historical figures belong to all of us. Claiming one, especially to prove the wisdom of a current policy or belief, is a rhetorical tactic--even if the speaker really, truly believes it. I don't care who he had sex with, how often and why--Abraham Lincoln belongs to all of us. So does Hitler, though we're less willing to claim him. That is the truest lesson of history.



I'm not saying historians shouldn't debate whether Lincoln was homosexual or not, but there is nothing more tied to a specific time and place than sexual customs, and applying our current definition to their remote time almost inevitably produces a false result. There's no harm in it, but it's nothing but comfort.



What all this really illuminates is our country's continuing fascination with such stuff, which I consider to be immature to the point of pathology. Whether Lincoln was gay, bi, or transgendered can't be proven, nor would it illuminate the man so very much, at least not in the way we want it to. Perhaps--and this is a longshot--if our greatest President were conclusively found to have been gay, American politics would get an infintesimal nudge away from gay-baiting. But I doubt it--queer-fear works for the right-wing, as it did for the Nazis. (Paging Ernst Rohm...Herr Rohm, you have a telephone call...)



BTW, Jon over at A Tiny Revolution informed me that Gary Webb's nears and dears are convinced there was no foul play involved. That's a small mercy. Jon says he's writing a post about the real tragedy of the event, which I will leave for you to discover.

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All is well...or well-ish. Xmas is coming and we are awash in soy nog, farting as we sew little holiday-themed outfits for the cats. (They particularly hate the elf hats.)



To be filed under the heading, "Mike's Raging Paranoia": here's a nice appreciation of Gary Webb, the reporter who broke the whole CIA-Contra-crack connection story (via This Modern World.



Webb was found dead Monday. Of--and this made the hairs on the back of my neck stick up--a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Of course, suicide's logical after you've been hounded out of your career, but anybody who's read all the CIA dirt that came to light in the 70s--Philip Agee and John Marks and the Church Committee--well, it makes you wonder. Victim of wetwork or not, Webb will be missed. I'm beginning to believe in reincarnation, simply out of love for the underdog!



Philip Agee, in case you've never heard of him, is an interesting character. He was a CIA officer in Latin America from 1957-69, then resigned to publish an expose of the organization called "Inside the Company." Predictably the Agency started giving him trouble--"Blond Ghost" Ted Shackley among them--and he was driven from pillar to post for most of the 70s and 80s. Agee now runs a travel agency in Cuba.



The whole thing reminds me of something I think a lot these days: knowing things is not for the faint of heart. I used to wonder how, with all the libraries, so many Americans manage to keep so few facts in their heads. I'm beginning to think that many people in this country stay dumb on purpose, either through purposely not learning, or filling up on fantasy. They realize that having facts in your head often leads to uncomfortable juxtapositions. They're not wrong; sometimes I have to retreat into a world of my own creation. But I guess I can't stop myself. I am a fact-addict.



By the way, I noted with some pleasure last night that the Bill Hicks concert film I was watching ("One Night Stand," part of a new DVD collection of his live act) took place less than a mile from my house! There was another fact-addict. I remember the first time I heard his usual show-ending remark, the one about "if we took all the money we spent on armaments, we could feed and clothe every person on Earth many times over, and explore Space in peace and brotherhood." I've had that thought, and I'm sure you have, too, but I'm glad Hicks said it. Perhaps by repeating it we can make it a reality. On the one hand there is paranoia and wetwork and the evil that humans do; on the other, there is peace and plenty. The choice is real; don't ever let somebody tell you it's not. A better way to live DOES exist--and we CAN find it!

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Jon Schwarz is said to tear The New Yorker a new one in this post. But constructively, always constructively, and with great love.



Matt Taibbi's column in the New York Press this week pinpoints EXACTLY what's wrong with the Democratic Party (via This Modern World, which also has a nice post here).

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...in today's column about the need for an Apollo Program-type initiative to find an alternative to oil. He writes, "If President Bush made energy independence his moon shot, he would dry up revenue for terrorism; force Iran, Russia, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia to take the path of reform - which they will never do with $45-a-barrel oil - strengthen the dollar; and improve his own standing in Europe, by doing something huge to reduce global warming. He would also create a magnet to inspire young people to contribute to the war on terrorism and America's future by becoming scientists, engineers and mathematicians. "This is not just a win-win," said the Johns Hopkins foreign policy expert Michael Mandelbaum. "This is a win-win-win-win-win."



Exactly. This is so obvious that the thought is actually starting to hurt my brain. Given Bush's undying fealty to

1) the oil industry, and

2) anti-science religious nuts

Friedman's idea is the longest of long-shots. But--GODDAMN it!--maybe saying it over and over is a tiny way to make it happen. Thoughts do create new realities; in fact, they are the only way new realities happen.



Speaking of, if you're the type of person who can stare at your own hand and freak yourself out (without the aid of any chemicals whatsoever), you should definitely see "What the Bleep Do We Know?" Great movie.



It's a paradox of our time--perhaps THE paradox of our time--that as we accrue more scientific knowledge that any other civilization in the history of the planet, more and more people are turning away from Science. As I said to my Dad once, "Knowing things in not for the faint of heart." Will we have the courage to keep seeking knowledge, or will we retreat, and in so doing create a world much worse than we can imagine?

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I went to college at Yale and, let's be honest, have never really gotten over it. With Bush '68 flinging mayhem from the White House like some kind of fundamentalist toddler, and so many of the biggest pustules of neo-conservatism having a New Haven stop in their careers, it's damn hard to be proud of Yale these days. Scratch anything particularly horrible, and you tend to find Yalies--too often providing the rationale for why it may SEEM despicable and greedy and short-sighted and utterly immoral, but it's really okay.



But THIS I am deeply proud of. It was performed at this year's Harvard/Yale football game. Forget US News rankings; the measure of any college is the quality of its pranks.



Does Harvard suck? Probably no more than any other fantastically wealthy and complacent institution. But it's excellent that some Yalies care enough to pose the question. We'll see if they move on to the bigger issues. If Harvard sucks, then...? Pretty soon, you're living in a commune in Costa Rica, happily hand-weaving hats out of sisal and selling them to tourists, and not even reading the Class Notes section of the Alumni Magazine.



Actually, that sounds pretty good.

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Some readers might remember a post I made a while back after watching "The Weather Underground," a documentary on the radical group of the late 60s-early 70s. Yesterday, an anonymous reader sent this comment:



"If you weren't there you couldn't possibly understand. How bad were the Weathermen as compared to a coke snorting, draft dodging coward of a right wing president who in abject terror of attack had the superpatriot, anti-american, government snooping act made into law? Power to the people!"



Er, right on, anonymous. But what does our current Nincompoop-In-Chief have to do with the Weather Underground? Here's an answer: both W. and the WU were self-indulgent privileged clods unable to think of politics as anything but a stage for their narcissism. We all go through phases where we're self-absorbed and obnoxious, but only Baby Boomers demand that the whole world get dragged along for the ride. Don't blame Bush for The Patriot Act, man, he's just doing his own thing.



Remember last summer before the conventions when people on the left were terrified by the possibility of "another '68"? That is, images of street fighting suggesting that the country was falling apart--and needed a strong authoritarian at the top? You could make a case that it's been the bogus-but-carefully-stoked FEAR of hippie revolution which has guided the country steadily to the right over the last 36 years. The WU can't be blamed for that, but note nobody was fearing "another Martin Luther King." My problem with the WU isn't their desire for change, their utopianism, or even their anger; it's their use of violence, which belies at best a youthful impatience and at worst makes them no better than their adversaries. Using violence to stop violence is, to use a Sixties phrase, "like fucking for virginity."

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Hello again! Hope everybody had a nice Thanksgiving.



Through friend Dennis Perrin's brand-spankin'-new blog, I discovered a very interesting interview with writer/avatar of Hip Terry Southern.



Southern is probably best known for his work with Stanley Kubrick on "Dr. Strangelove," but he did a lot more than that--Easy Rider, the mega-selling dirty book "Candy," some excellent journalism and short stories, as well as a few baroque satirical novels that can feel a bit dated. Time is the scourge of the social satirist, and the pace of damage increases with the accuracy of the work in describing its original moment--as mores change, the work suffers. Still--Southern's well worth reading, especially if you dig the smart edgy side of the Sixties as much as I do.

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For $9.99, computer users can now download a video game based on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. However, the game’s makers warn, no matter what they score, nobody will believe it.

Or, “The best players will compete for a prize of $100,000 and a chance to be shot on live television.”



This week, real estate mogul Donald Trump’s casino empire filed for bankruptcy. It was the shortest such filing in history: “I’m fired.”



Twelve months after Janet Jackson scandalized the world during the Super Bowl halftime show, the NFL announced that this year’s show would star venerable icon Paul McCartney. It could've been a lot worse--they could've gotten Yoko Ono.



Monday, Israeli leaders said that they will do their utmost to allow Palestinian elections to take place. Then, after a brief pause, they shouted the Hebrew word for “Psych!”



Thanks to increasing levels of estrogen from birth control pills, fish with both male and female sex tissue have been discovered near wastewater treatment plants in Colorado. “I really think it’s a win/win situation,” a scientist said. “We get to have sex with each other, and the fish can have sex with themselves.”



A Great White Shark in California has set the new world’s record for time spent in captivity, seventeen days and counting. The Monterey Bay Aquarium celebrated the occasion by blasting the theme from Jaws until the neighbors complained.

Or, “…by dumping blood in the tank and standing around chanting ‘Fren-zy,’ ‘fren-zy’!”



For the second time in nine months, Britney Spears has gotten married. The ceremony, which took place in Los Angeles on Saturday evening, was over soon enough for Britney to hit the bars.

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To mark the 41st anniversary of his assassination, I thought I'd pass along a quote from JFK. It struck me when I read it, how similar the battle lines were, then and now.



"If by a ‘Liberal’ they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people—their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties—someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a ‘Liberal,’ then I’m proud to say I’m a ‘Liberal.’”



Quick! Get it on a T-shirt here.

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Kate's learning how to write jokes like the ones on SNL's "Weekend Update," and as a good husband (who used to write that kind of material), I agreed to comb the news and write what are called "set-ups," the news bits that set up the punchline. Rather predictably, the old compulsion returned. I read 'em to Jon, and he said they were blog-worthy. Hope you enjoy them!



Sunday, on “Meet the Press,” Arizona Senator John McCain said that while he was not currently considering a run for President in 2008, he refused to rule it out. Moments after McCain’s comments, the American people was heard to scream, “Oh Christ, it’s happening AGAIN…”



Sunday, it was announced that Iraq’s elections will be held on January 30. Or maybe even sooner, if President Bush can find the Post-It he wrote the winner's name on.



The head of Miami-Dade schools has asked police there to stop using tasers on elementary school children. We agree--kids today grow up too fast as it is.



This week, the world’s oldest man, Fred Hale, Sr., died less than two weeks short of his 114th birthday. I guess he was sick of hearing that song.



In an interview with “60 Minutes” last Sunday, actor Jim Carrey said that he is now “drug-free.” But who are you going to believe, him or your grandmother?



Last Sunday, NASA launched an unmanned space observatory that would scan the universe for evidence of violent explosions that herald the birth of black holes. Here’s a tip: follow the car alarms.

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This morning, I had a great thought: What if there was such a thing as an unarmy, formed and maintained by societies to do the exact opposite of making war--a vast unarmy outfitted with lavishness and care, that did its work with the same kind of ever-vaulting precision and dedication that armies do theirs? Think of it: massive groups of people in the fullness of their vigor, sent off to foreign countries to do good deeds and help other people out.



Back at home, there'd be whole regions whose economies depended on the Compassion Industrial Complex, the influence and scope of which was growing all the time. 'I don't know what we'd do without the free-glasses-for-poor-people factory.' The CEOs of the do-goodingest companies would receive rock-star treatment in the business press, and their shareholders would be endlessly enriched. Innovation would be constant, and while sometimes expensive, always worth it. "We help the Unarmy help you."



There'd be families with generations of members, all serving proudly; soldiers coming home, decorated for acts of brave and conspicuous kindness overseas. 'I'm in the 101st Airborne Coat Delivery--'the Smilin' Kid,' that's our symbol. It's on all our copters. Don't believe the movies, it's nothing like that...Being in an unwar--you can't describe it. My sis drives an unarmored personnel carrier--it's fulla therapists and socialworkers."



There would be highly trained and exotically equipped strike forces, dropped in by paraglider perhaps, to provide marriage counseling or shovel walks for the elderly. 'How'd you do that so fast?' 'Well, ma'am, it's this shovel. It can achieve Mach 4.3. Took a billion dollars to develop, but I think you'll agree, it was worth it." Frogmen in rubber boats would tirelessly sweep the oceans free of choking trash, camoflauged so as not to alarm the fish.



Kids would play anti-army, sneaking up on each other for triumphant small gestures of support. Every night on television the news would be full of acts of kindness, and documentaries would analyze history's good deeds, down to the last detail, paying special attention to the individuals whose genius for unwarfare made it all happen. "My favorite part was when Gandhi kissed that wounded soldier." Movies would whip audiences up into a patriotic fervor, causing those on their way home to buy blankets and mail them to cold climates, or just paint the houses of strangers. "There's a unwar on, you know. We all have to do our part."



Expensive and complicated machines on the cutting edge of science would be designed and tested in secret labs out in the desert, their ability to bring happiness analyzed and improved to its farthest degree. The technological might of entire nations would be focused on staying ahead of its fellows, in terms of how much compassion could be brought to bear at a moment's notice. "Today we announce the deployment of a new defense shield, more technologically advanced than any system prior...Thanks to the dedication and brilliance of our scientists, and the profound riches of our nation, a ring of satellites now hangs in low orbit, scanning day and night for people going through painful breakups. Once identified, their information is fed into our central computer, where a new match will be made within seven one thousandths of a second. Ladies and gentlemen, romantic suffering has plagued humanity for thousands of years, but today it is a thing of the past."



Plans would be hatched in secret for massive, coordinated do-gooding. Occasionally, either through espionage or carelessness, one of these plans would become known; the target would immediately launch a pre-emptive strike of affection. Soon, the entire world would be engulfed in anti-war, in a new type of kindness and mutual support Humanity has never known before. Mutually assured affection--a world perpetually on the brink of catastrophic paradise--wouldn't that be great?

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As usual Bobharris.com is on the case.



And for those of you interested in a cri de coeur regarding nice liberals, the wait is over.

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...Parker in that, if it's apt and slightly ascerbic, it's attributed to him. Bearing that in mind, I make no claims as to the provenance of this amusing quote, sent to me by friend Garry Goodrow:



"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner souls of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."



--H.L. Mencken (1880 -- 1956)

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...courtesy of this link, provided courtesy of friend Dennis Perrin (who, you should already know, wrote a great biography of the NatLamp and SNL writer called "Mr. Mike"). In this brief interview taped shortly before his death, MO'D pontificates on the environmental pickle we've gotten ourselves into...Not uplifting, but probably right...

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This Modern World has a good post about the Red State Vs. Blue State paradigm. Tom, like myself, apparently grew up in Red States and now lives and works in a Blue one (New Haven, if memory serves, and God love him for it). His post--an answer to all the Red State liberals that write him in anger whenever he (in their opinion) denies their existence--is sensible and well-reasoned. Nobody can deny that there are two worldviews clashing in the U.S.



BUT...



There's a lot more than those two. Distilling all the attitudes that Americans have into a binary system--the media calls it Red Vs. Blue, but I'd agree with others that it's closer to Rural Vs. Urban--allows, perhaps even forces, voters into bogus choices like "Do I want the coutnry to be stand proud or do I want a job?" It plays into the idea of a larger cultural war that the Republicans have been pushing since Reagan. (Since, in other words, they jettisoned fiscal responsibility and needed another issue to crusade on.) Red Vs. Blue is a GOP strategy, it's not reality. There are plenty of homophobes in Blue states; and plenty of rural voters who DON'T hate gays; Red Vs. Blue denies the existence of both, to nobody's advantage but the GOP. It's undemocratic, and bogus, too.



WE have the dominant values; the narrow, hateful evangelicals are a minority--always have been, always will be--just like people who are anti-abortion, pro-assault rifle, et cetera, et cetera. It's only through conflating all these issues into a larger cultural war, and forcing a binary choice, can the GOP win. This strategy allows Americans who don't agree with the whole Blue slate pick an single, emotion-based issue and vote solely on that. It's the Red Vs. Blue paradigm that allowed enough people to say, "Well, I need a job and I'm against the war, but I'm anti-abortion, so I'm for Bush." Or, "I need health insurance and think that it's wrong to give rich people tax breaks at my expense, but I'm against gay marriage, so..." It's only within this binary system that the GOP's insistence on party conformity trumps the Dems' respect for diversity. It makes voting solely about who you are, not what the country needs, or what the candidate's gonna do.



Here's what I'm saying: Yes, there are differences between urban and rural culture, and the attitudes of the people who live in those places are expressed in voting patterns. But think about the various maps you've seen since the election: there are voting patterns based on IQ, but the media isn't trumpeting "Dumb Vs. Smart." There are voting patterns based on revenue, but you don't hear people talking about "Freeloaders Vs. Prosperous." Can you imagine Thomas Friedman writing about how the Dems need to "reach out to dumb people who can't hold down a job"?



By accepting the Red Vs. Blue paradigm, the dominant culture--the group that makes the money as well as the art and scientific discoveries and is that portion of America integrating into the rest of the world--grants the other side equal footing, when no measure I've seen suggests that this is appropriate. We have more money. We have more talent. We have more people. We even (and I'm guessing here, for obvious reasons) probably have less crime, fewer divorces, lower teen pregnancy.



There is no measure by which the so-called Red States deserve their outsized influence over our political system; but the GOP has found ways, legal and otherwise, to game the system. There will always be an urban/rural divide, but we in the dominant group--the group that clearly represents the future--should not acquiesce to a paradigm that pretends that we're equal, much less in the minority. 'Cause the fact is, most people want what we want--peace, prosperity, religious tolerance, a decent environment. But as long as we get stuck in the bogus rhetoric of the culture war ("Country music is more patriotic than Hip-Hop!") we're playing on the GOP's home turf. Nobody wants your squirrel rifle, Cletus, and nobody wants to make your daughter get an abortion, and nobody wants to move the Pentagon to France. It's all bogus--but long as we consent to their paradigm, we'll never be able to put forth our reality, which I'm convinced is much closer to the truth about America and Americans.



It doesn't help that so many of us--Tom and me, for example--found Red State culture toxic enough to decamp for the Blue. I despise hick-dom in all its forms, but that's a prejudice of mine; sure, it's based on plenty of unpleasant characters from my youth in Missouri, but chewin' tabaccy does not a bigot make--bigotry does. The more we can make this about values--real values--and not about cultural signifiers and media shorthand, the more I'm convinced that the actual majority opinions will reassume governance.

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...has a lovely blog going. This, from her most recent post, were she disses Strawberry Shortcake: "Hydrocephalic imps who smell like bad room freshener were not, in my personal universe, conducive to what the early development experts call 'imaginative play.'" Check Harriet out here.

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In this week's New Yorker, Anthony Lane misses the mark on "The Incredibles," only lukewarm about a movie that was thoroughly well-made, scrupulous about its comic logic, consistently inventive, and utterly enjoyable. Is it that he doesn't like computer animation, that it's not the "superheroes-trapped-in-reality" movie he would've made, or simply that he doesn't have a very whimsical mind? As usual, the critics at The New Yorker seem more interested in showing their fluency with language, rather than shedding much light on a subject. I find that EVERY time they critique something I myself know about, they're reliably superficial and show-offy; needlessly prim and conventional; occasionally they're even wrong.



I won't go so far as to say that in this case--Lane did seem to like the movie--but there's a kind of weariness in his review that puzzled me; as if animation itself was boring, or old hat, or too easy. Whatever didn't connect, you can tell Lane's at sea, because there's nothing about the look of the movie--mid-century America, muscley and triumphal, mirroring the characters. Nor is the movie's secret weapon, the hilarious Coco Chanel-esque supersuit designer, worthy of a mention. Yet Lane takes the time to call out Brad Bird's homage to "The Apartment"--besides burnishing Lane's film-history cred, what does this tell me about the movie? Nothin'--and yes, I've seen "The Apartment," and like it, and like Billy Wilder. That's like dragging "City Lights" into your review of any movie with factory workers in it--not incorrect, but needlessly film-geeky and indulgent. Calling all editors!



When Lane writes, "Only the baddie, the excitingly named Syndrome, disappoints; he’s nothing but a megalomaniac, when what we need here is minimanias—the fuzz and snag of ordinary feelings," one has to put the magazine down for fear of throwing it and injuring a cat. Syndrome's motivation isn't megalomania, it's revenge against a father-figure, payback for a youthful slight regardless of the costs to bystanders. Well, Mr. Lane, if it's good enough to motivate George W. Bush, it's good enough for "The Incredibles." Half as much wordplay and wit, please, and twice as much respect for a comedy which truly succeeds, and will wear well--probably, when all is said and done, better than "The Apartment," whose sexual milieu (the driver of its plot) was out-of-date less than ten years after its release...



Meanwhile, back in depressing reality, Bob Harris has posted the best bit of election-fraud bloggery I've read so far (my own thoughts eminently included). Here's a snip, helpful for those of you trying to interpret the whirring of your own Spidey-sense, or explain it to disdainful relatives at Thanksgiving:

"What jumped out," Bob writes, "at a lot of people on the night of the election was how the 'errors' in the exit polls consistently occured in the same direction.



The thing about genuine errors, extremes, and anomalies in results... is that they're random.



The chance that a flipped coin will land 'heads' four times in a row is only 1 in 16 -- but you're just as likely to see it land 'tails' four times in a row.  And if it's an honest coin, flipped fairly, over time, you will.  Very basic math will tell you exactly how likely a given outcome is.



But even without the math, we have a sense of this in our daily lives.  If you were betting another guy a dollar a flip, and the coin came up tails ten times in a row (about a 1 in 1000 chance) common sense would tell you the coin was weighted. 



And if somebody told you it wasn't -- that it was just an error or pure random chance, never mind, keep emptying your wallet -- you'd start to wonder about their motives.



Common sense.  Not a conspiracy theory.  Just what you're seeing, right in front of you."



Right on, Bob!



And by the way, Barry Trotter and the Dead Horse is chunking along in the UK; US readers should order it via Amazon.co.uk (I've put a link on the bar to the left). Did I mention that baby needs a new pair of shoes?

Read this article…

Friend Col writes in the comments,

"Hey, it's Colleen. (didn't wanna go through the hassle of registering so 'scuse the anonymous post, or rather, ill-labeled post). Love ya, kid, but am glad you're setting the torch down on the conspiracy tip. And choosing to focus on election reform is clearly an intelligent middleground issue on which practical results can be registered."



Hi Col! Nice to hear from you! True enough, but I don't think my stance has shifted--I still think they stole it, because that's more logical to me than any of the half-baked, super-soft reasons I've heard for Kerry's sudden hemorrhaging of support. All the pundits' palaver boils down to the old Red vs. Blue paradigm that I think is fundamentally flawed; it's incredibly self-serving to elites on both the left and right for the election to turn on the supposed hatred of evangelicals (one alien, stereotyped group) for gays (another). That doesn't sound like reality to me, it sounds like kabuki--a simple story for people to watch while the real action goes on somewhere else.



But once one hollers "they stole it!" there's no place to go but election reform. It's like saying "maybe we shouldn't have open motorcades" after the President gets his head blown off. It's not the presence of conspiracy that bothers me--it's a constant in human affairs, like eczema or slush--but how disdain is used to prevent us from taking steps against it. The more unacceptable "conspiracy theory" becomes to the guardians of our society, the bigger a role I suspect it plays. Because a rigged game strikes at the very heart of those guardians' fitness to be elite. Why is Tom Wicker STILL insisting in the accuracy of the Warren Report? Is it because he really believes it, or because missing the scoop of the century suggests all sorts of uncomfortable questions about his biases, competence, and that of the New York Times? Maybe he's right, and maybe Bush won fairly, too--but I'd rather err on the side of paranoia and protection.



Politics IS conspiracy--people working together to achieve a result--the only question is how to restrain inappropriate conspiracy. And if you want to restrain it, you have to start by acknowledging that it exists. It's not loony to think that Bush and Co. stole it; if they didn't, it's because they couldn't, not because they didn't try or want to. I am perfectly content for people to think I'm a paranoid fool, in the hopes that my attitude makes it infintesimally more difficult for inappropriate conspiracies to thrive unchallenged. I really do believe in democracy, because my experience is that the average American is smart, not dumb. And reelecting Bush was simply dumb. There's got to be more to the story than what the NYT is willing to admit.

Read this article…

As part of my ongoing efforts in the field of procrastination, this morning I wrote a little something for a kids' magazine. I don't know if it will ever see the light of day, but it amused me, so I thought I'd share it. It's a rough draft, so lay off.



"Five Sure Fire Self-Esteem Boosters



Sometimes, all the motivational posters in the world can’t make you feel good about yourself. You don’t want to “hang in there.” Nothing, in fact, would make you happier than to see that cute little kitten lose its grip and fall into the bucket of frothing acid or chamber of whirling knives or whatever it is that lurks below it. This is entirely natural; everyone feels this way sometimes.



Yet the fact remains that one must get out of bed, eat, wash occasionally, and do all the other things that, taken together, make up a full-but-tedious life. Below are several sure-fire methods to help you keep going when true self-esteem is rarer than a double cheeseburger at fat camp.



1) Forget about cracks like the one I just wrote about fat camp. I wasn’t talking about you, and the joke wasn’t very funny anyway. Keep in mind that people who write humorous articles often have problems of their own. Big problems.

2) Give yourself credit for everything. Especially things you can do without trying, like blinking or breathing. “My heart beat 112,000 times yesterday and I didn’t even break a sweat! Go, me!”

3) Harness the power of ignorance. Denial is perhaps the greatest gift human beings have, and there’s usually no reason whatsoever to pay attention to something you’d rather ignore. People don’t like to admit this, but denial’s the only thing that keeps any of us going. If, for example, you realized all the ways you could die at this very moment, your head would explode. (Which renders the question quite academic.) In general, whatever it is, it’s probably best not to think about it.

4) Hang around with the biggest losers you can scrounge up. Not only will you look great by comparison, you’ll feel better, too. As the poet wrote, “I cried because I had no shoes/until I met a man who had no feet/Boy am I glad/I’m not that dude.” If you can’t find an actual footless person, substitute someone with extremely unsightly toenail fungus.

5) Think of all the problems you would have if you were incredibly famous, brilliant, attractive, and/or wealthy. Paparazzi are more annoying than you think.



Don't be fooled by people who say that the only way to truly feel good about yourself is through hard work and accomplishment--if your self-esteem isn't based on anything real, nothing real can make you lose it!"

Read this article…

Forget values and security moms--turns out the election boiled down to raw, pulsing stupidity. I can see it now, right there on the Op-Ed page of the NYT: "Riding the Short Bus to the White House."



"We will remain the minority party unless we get much, much stupider," said new DLC Chairman P. Brain McPoopy-Pants. "Ow! I just hit my head again."

Read this article…

Trolling the blogosphere poking about this election fraud issue, I'm struck by a yawning--and mostly false--division. On the one side, there are the people screaming "Kerry won!" On the other, there are the people saying, "Take off the tinfoil hat and help figure out how to win in 2006."



Here's a well-reasoned and thoughtful example of the former, courtesy of Bob Harris, and here's the same as regarding the latter, from This Modern World (via Atrios). On the one hand, I doubt we'll ever get a gun that smokes profusely enough to convince one GOP partisan. (As the PIPA survey showed, rational discourse doesn't cut much ice with them. We'd need a note from God.) On the other hand, if the GOP has really rigged it in the necessary states, all the strategizing in the world won't unseat them in 2006 or '08.



Truth is, it's not an either/or choice. In fact, I'd argue that election reform--making our elections the most transparent, squeaky-cleanest in the world--should be THE unifying issue for the Democrats. The goal is something the Deaniacs and the DLC could agree on, and it's appeal extends throughout the fractious spectrum of the Left; the smaller the constituency, the more they have to gain by fair, free elections. As far as the opposition is concerned, every piece of evidence, no matter how tiny, weakens Bush II's legitimacy. Reforming our election process makes the Democrats the party of rigor, responsibility, and reform (and fits in with their rationality fetish, too)! No politician or news outlet in their right mind could oppose it, if it were Democratic-encouraged but truly non-partisan. And best of all, it finally breaks the country out of this bogus Red/Blue b.s. that's done nothing but isolate and alienate one citizen from another.



Let's emphasize the best of our traditions, democracy and fair play, not the worst, regional and racial discord. Dem-led election reform would do both, whether you believe we wuz robbed or not. It's a forward-thinking issue, not treading the Grapes of Sourness (as many would have you believe).

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...or a role-playing version of Barry Trotter, at least. Check it out at Hogwarts By Night.



Kate and I saw two movies yesterday; there's a big multiplex near our house and once there, we like to double up--I may start agitating for a triple sometime. First we saw "The Incredibles" which was very, very enjoyable. First half struck me as kinda slow, but the second half was great. And as usual, the story and design was excellent. Unfortunately, the preview of Pixar's next feature, "Cars," made Kate and I both want to throw up repeatedly, with increasing power. The popularity of NASCAR is inexplicable enough--pro wrestling with pollution--but to have next year's Pixar movie hijacked by it adds one-time insult to ongoing injury. NASCAR's not my tribe.



We also saw "Shaun of the Dead," which was a very funny, very English send-up of zombie movies (I was half-tempted to write "zombie culture," but then I've already talked about NASCAR).



Those of you who are still concerned about the possible theft of Tuesday's election are encouraged to go to Blackboxvoting.org. I'm planning to make a donation, as a first step towards a cleaner 2006 and 2008. Also, there's a fascinating ongoing discussion about these issues on Democratic Underground. Something I didn't say last week was this: if you can convince a Democrat that something is the will of the American people, he/she will conform to that reality. This is a nice thing about Democrats, but it's not what we need right now. This country NEEDS Democrats and liberals and progressives (because they're three different groups, as Friend Anonymous' comment made abundantly clear) to come together and dispute the vision of reality that the GOP is pumping out so relentlessly. And as many, many people have said, we can't depend on the so-called liberal media to help us do this. They're already congealed into "sigh--the country is being run by the mob instead of smart people like you and I, reader". Not only is that incorrect, it does nothing but harden this bogus Red/Blue divide. People should be judged by what they do--vote for Bush--not for their cultural signifiers. When we speak against the war, or against Enron, or against privitizing Social Security, we're fighting for everybody, not just people in New York, Illinois and California. In other words, it's not just NASCAR or nothing: how about hybrid-powered NASCAR?

Read this article…

[A reader of this blog was moved to take issue with my theory that the GOP stole the election. His/her comment is in the comments section under that post, but I thought my response to her/him might be of sufficient interest generally to merit front-pageness.]



I'd like to institute a rule on this blog: if you make a comment about something serious--something substantive--please sign your name to it. I have to sign my name to my opinions, and it's not fair to make me respond to a voice in the ether.



"This stole-the-election crap"

What makes it crap? They had the means, motive, and opportunity. This game isn't being played for chocolate kisses--you don't think there's enough money at stake for the right people to make sure the right result was returned? Friend, people get KILLED for whatever happens to be in the cash register--rigging an election to stay in power is nothing, especially if you've done what the Bush crew has done. They were fighting to stay out of jail; the sanctity of Democracy means less than nothing when those are the stakes.



It amazes me how some people can't acknowledge this kind of truth--it's like they're waiting for a memo that says, "You're right. We stole it." History is rife with rigged elections, and the more powerful a country, the more likely its processes will be subverted. Was Ohio stolen? Perhaps, perhaps not, but it's goddamn JOB #1 to look. I agree we shouldn't get obsessed about it, but it happened frigging TUESDAY. They're still counting votes! It's absolutely essential that we attack this issue, and attack it now--because it's not partisan crap. In a democracy, the integrity of the voting process is the bedrock on which everything else is built.



More from your mail:

"Look: if you're an undecided voter, you are presented with, yes, a heinous administration, but what is your alternative? A cold, shamefacedly opportunistic Northeastern liberal who voted in favor of the war and then against its funding?"



Arguing the merits of John Kerry IS truly useless, because there's no way to prove it one way or the other, and he's never running for President again. I think it's logical to assume that his waffling on the war deterred undecideds. But listen, any undecided who's against the war--as it seems you are--should've logically voted for Kerry--as you say you did. With all this evidence that Bush is bad for the country, why must it come down to Kerry's personality? I prefer to give my fellow voters more credit. If you don't, fair enough, but it's not really an arguable issue.



"[Kerry] was frankly not a candidate who could inspire passion or a belief in idealism and change. The popular vote proves this."



The popular vote that showed him getting more votes than any Democratic candidate in history, you mean? I'm not saying he's not flawed in precisely the way you say he is, but Christ, we're talking about a bona-fide war hero who's spent a life in public service running against an unquestionably irresponsible and overmatched President. Anybody who was undecided as of Nov. 2 is pro-Bush whether they admit it or not--they forgave him 2000, and the scandals, and 9/11, and Tora Bora, and Iraq, and Haliburton, and the economy, and and...At a certain point it becomes incumbent on the voter to recognize reality, whether or not John Kerry has a great personality or a lousy one.



You make some good points about how Kerry was complicit in his own defeat(?)--which are all completely besides the point. The integrity of the voting process is the first step, and that first step wasn't taken, by Kerry, Dean, or anybody else. Jesus Christ (D-Galilee) himself couldn't take the South if the GOP was counting the votes. That's a fact, friend Anonymous, and to think that the US is somehow above election-stealing (or that it happens here, sure, but not so much that we should pay attention to it) is at best naive and at worst delusional.

Until somebody explains to me how vast numbers of Americans were convinced to vote against their obvious self-interest, I think vote-stealing is the most likely explanation. You may disagree, but attributing it to something as fundamentally undefinable as Kerry's personality--or even his murky position on Iraq--is truly a fool's game. You can look for the perfect candidate all you want, but until the voting problem is fixed, it won't matter.

Read this article…

For several days now, I have been bedeviled by several things. First, the sickening reversal of the early exit polls that had Kerry in the lead. Second, the Democrats' ridiculous self-laceration over not being able to gaybash as well as Karl Rove can. (Remember, he's had years of practice.) And third, the spurious notion that Bush's slim victory is somehow a "mandate."



The whole thing doesn't smell right--the swing in the exit polls; the complete failure of all the conventional wisdom (that heavy turnout helps the Dems, that incumbents suffer when an electorate is largely undecided going into the booth); Bush's weak performance in the debates; the relentless downer of the war; the crappy economy...There's simply no way that Bush could've won--unless a vast chunk of the population is irrational, wild-eyed zealots that can't be reasoned with.



As unlikely as that is, the media has seized on it as the magic formula; people in the Red states are apparently insane. Suddenly, the fear of losing your job and/or getting your ass shot off in Iraq is completely overwhelmed by a fear of gay marriage. Would you act this way? Can homophobia alone swing an election? I'd say that's very unlikely. I've lived in Greenwich Village and I've lived in Jefferson City, Missouri and in my experience, people just aren't that different.



So I think that the GOP stole it again, and I've been waiting for somebody smarter than me to address this. Greg Palast, the journalist who wrote "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy," is, and has. His verdict? The GOP stole it, again.



Here's a snip from an article called Kerry won. Here's the facts: "[GOP challenges at Ohio polls] apparently resulted in voters getting these funky "provisional" ballots—a kind of voting placebo—which may or may not be counted. Blackwell estimates there were 175,000; Democrats say 250,000. Pick your number. But as challenges were aimed at minorities, no one doubts these are, again, overwhelmingly Democratic. Count them up, add in the spoiled punch cards (easy to tally with the human eye in a recount), and the totals begin to match the exit polls; and, golly, you've got yourself a new president. Remember, Bush won by 136,483 votes in Ohio."



WTF? Reading this, it actually seems LIKELY that Kerry took Ohio--and thus the Presidency! Front-page news, right? But don't expect to find this in The New York Times. The people who run that consider themselves to be very worldly and smart, and the last thing that institution would admit is that they got hoodwinked AGAIN. Protecting our democracy is not as important as minimizing their embarrassment (see: Miller, Judith).



The notion of a GOP ass-whipping of the Democrats is the coastal elite's backhanded compliment to itself. Recognizing that a combination of spoiled ballots in minority areas, vote suppression, and unverifiable touch-screen voting--problems predicted well before the election and entirely preventable, had the GOP-controlled electioneers been held to reasonable standards of impartiality--cost the Democrats the White House is a no-win situation for the mainstream media. It angers the guy in the White House, whom they need access to--whether he's legitimate or not. It weakens the system that they are so heavily invested in. It opens them up to criticism as conspiracy theorists and liberal symps. And it makes them liable to be called unpatriotic--even in the name of something as nonpartisan as fair and free elections.







Put it this way: it's a lot easier for the self-appointed guardians of this country to put forward the bogus idea that people who (this is important) don't read The New York Times are a bunch of gay-hating troglodytes than to deal with the possibility that the US is in the hands of a bunch of amoral shysters. The more intolerant and irrational the Red states are, the more the Blue ones can pat themselves on the back. With power comes responsibility, and being the minority party gives you still a great deal of the spoils with almost none of the blame.



Of course, what things like this come down to is the world you want to live in--what strikes you as more likely, based on your experience. To me, it's much more likely that the GOP stole it (remember, they've done it before) than that millions of people suddenly hate gay marriage enough to vote counter to their clear self-interest. I can't prove I'm right--the Times and the Dems could, but they won't. But blaming Kerry's apparent defeat on the masses (who don't read the Times, so the Times isn't responsible to/for them) is much too convenient for me to swallow.



Face it, dear reader: you're extra depressed about Kerry because IT DOESN'T MAKE SENSE. Kerry's loss is like a mysterious death, and like a mysterious death, it raises questions. A lot of people will say "What's the use of finding out what happened? It won't bring him back." I don't happen to be one of those people who value peace more than truth. Are you?

Read this article…

...the next movie from Bill Murray and Wes Anderson, Salon has a great article exploding this "reach out to the heartland" crap. My favorite line so far: "To me, the heartland of this country is anywhere that people work their asses off to make their lives better for their families."

Read this article…

You know what made me link? When my friend wrote, "I need to know that the next presidential candidate I vote for will not listen to reason, will not even CONSIDER conceding the election until, at a minimum, he makes his mom cry on national television." Sing out, sister!



Read the rest here.

Read this article…

"Kerry just conceded. I expected better from him. This whole election stinks.



Be optimistic, Dad--I know it's hard, it's hard for me, too. Their arguments change, but in the end, the GOP wants to stop the world from changing, and if there's one thing we know, it's that the world will change. Our country is getting more diverse, not less; more urban, not less; more global, not less. The GOP can rig elections and slice and dice the electorate all they want, but these are forces they can't control. This is why they're cozy with the end-of-the-worlders--they realize that their time is nearly over.



Bush may well be what he thinks he is--an instrument of God--but not in the way he believes. Wisdom--or if you like, God's grace--does not come without pain. We had to have a Civil War to have freedom; we had to have WWI to get votes for women; we had to have a Great Depression to get Social Security; we had to have WWII to have a UN. There is no Martin Luther King without Jim Crow. History shows this: our loving, accepting God is bigger than Bush's hating and punishing God.



We will win, because it's not about winning. It's about being our best selves, and our actions during this election were in harmony with that. The others will come around--the world is working on them, too. Our job is to be firm, clear, and above all, still here to show a more hopeful alternative. Sooner or later, it will fall to people like us to point the way up and out, and when it does, we need to be ready."

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Any election is an inherently depressing process, because it shows precisely what percentage of your fellow citizens are morons. More on that later.



As usual, Bush wants to declare victory before the job's done--and as usual, the mass media is all too eager to help. Votes are still being counted. Nobody's won, nobody's lost. This may take a while--eleven days at least, for the Ohio provisional ballots--and we just have to be patient.



About Bush's apparent victory in the popular vote: everybody has been squawking about touch-screen voting and voter suppression for years, precisely because they would give us a false result in the popular vote! ONE-THIRD of the country was using touch-screen voting. Stories of voter suppression have been coming out for weeks. Ohio's now filled with stray boxes of paper ballots and GOP operatives. I don't care what the numbers say; if sufficient care wasn't taken to ensure that they would be fair and accurate, you shouldn't give them any authority. If somebody's cheating you, only a fool helps them do it!



Nicholas Kristof unwittingly puts his finger on it with his column in the Times today talking about how the Democrats need to reattract the heartland. No, people in the heartland need to stop living in the fantasy they've been indulging in since Ronald Reagan. No part of the US has gotten cheated worse over the last 25 years than the heartland. If somebody's cheating you, only a fool helps them do it!



In the article, Kristof quotes Oregon's Democratic governor, Ted Kulongoski: "[The Republicans have] created ... these social issues [read: guns, Gays, god] to get the public to stop looking at what's happening to them economically. What we once thought - that people would vote in their economic self-interest - is not true, and we Democrats haven't figured out how to deal with that."



Well, shit on fire, as they say in the heartland. If voters aren't acting in their own self-interest--economic or otherwise--the problem goes much deeper than the Democrats or the results of this election. Voting one's self-interest is the basic motivation for a democratic system. If the game has become who can fool the countryfolk better--who can play to their worst impulses, and we all know what they are--then the problem is with the citizens, not with the Democratic party. Kristof's column is more liberal Eastern Establishment inside baseball--how liberals love analysis! Would Kristof write, "What the Social Democrats need to do is stop being such elitists and start hating Jews better than the Nazis!" I say unto thee again, if somebody's cheating you, only a fool helps them do it!



Continuing with my Thirties theme, reelecting Bush in 2004 would be like reelecting Hoover in 1932. The war couldn't be going any more poorly. The economy is terrible. The country is divided and angry. That's on the one side. On the other: He talks about God a lot. No liberal I know--and certainly no Democrat--is disdainful of religion. What they're disdainful of is using it. That's not disrespectful, that's MORE respectful. The question raised by Kristof's column isn't "what does the Eastern liberal establishment need to do to convince people to vote their own self-interest?" but "how much pain and suffering does this country need to undergo before certain segments return to reality?" If the heartland wants to vote GOP because they think it believes in God, then maybe the heartland needs a draft to wake it up. Turning it into an economic wasteland hasn't been enough.



Irritation aside, I'm confident that there's a lot of story to be written yet, and Kerry may still pull it off. But if there's going to be four more years of Bush, this country will suffer greatly. Our job may be to be ready to pick up the pieces when it finally cries "Enough!" But I'd sooner lose every election than try to out-hate the GOP. If that's what winning means, winning isn't worth a damn.

Read this article…

I have never been so psyched to vote. After voting for Kerry ten times each--an old Chicago tradition--we high-fived and went out for lunch. There's nothing like four years of corrupt blood-drenched right-wing insanity to make it clear what a gift voting is.



Early returns are looking good for Kerry. If you haven't gone out to vote for him, do so now. I'll be here when you get back.

Read this article…

If so, ah well.



In an effort to make sure my US readers have enough energy to go to the polls and vote the bums out tomorrow, I supply below a lovely recipe for Beef Stew. Kate and I just bought a WONDERFUL new electric skillet which is about a foot-and-a-half wide and five inches deep. So, dinner at Mike and Kate's house!



OLD TYME BEEF STEW

2 lbs of beef chuck, cut into 1 1/2 in cubes (stew meat)

1 tsp Worcestershire

1 clove garlic

1 medium onion, sliced

1 or 2 bay leafs

1 tablespoon salt

1 tsp sugar

1/2 tsp of pepper

1/2 tsp of paprika

dash of ground allspice or cloves

6 carrots, pared and quartered

4 red potatoes, pared and quartered

1 pound of small white onions



In a dutch oven, brown meat in 2 tablespoons of olive/vegetable oil. Add two cups of hot water and the next nine ingredients (Worcest, garlic, onion, bayleafs, salt, sugar, pepper, paprika, allspice/cloves). Cover, simmer for an hour and a half, stirring occasionally to keep from sticking.

After, remove bay leafs and garlic; add vegetables. Cover and cook 30-45 minutes or until vegetables are tender. (If you're smart, you'll let it cook long enough to carmelize everything. Yum!)

Read this article…

This--"Beware of Bush" is great. After watching it, I think that all anti-Bush ads should be sung in Spanish, with a Latin beat.

Read this article…

Wife Kate found this collection of notes in her desk this morning--it's the background of the character she plays in "Danse Macabre," an improvised 1930s-style monster movie currently playing at Second City's Skybox.



"AGATHA BRACHNYA

Extraction: Russo-Ukrainian border (little-known Srebnian people)

History: Came to work with producer Conrad Brunst as young immigrant maid. Now in mid-60s...After a young actress had to drop out of a production owing to an hysterical pregnancy, Agatha stepped in to assume her part--Crette the parlor maid. Ever since, no actress has successfully been cast for any parlor-maid or housekeeper-like role with Conrad Brunst production. They have all fallen mysteriously ill before filming began.

Filmography:

Shrew in the Twilight--Bette

Craven Dreams--Frette

Nocturne of the Damned--Lette

Rash of Torment--Nette

Sphinxster--Smette."



So, as we can see clearly, I am not even the funniest person in this apartment. Some days I even come behind one of the cats.

Read this article…

Trotter fan extraordinaire Sophie sent this to me recently, and I thought I'd pass it along. It is perhaps the most creative incitement to spamming I've received.



"Dear Friend,



A month ago, to this very day, I had a dream. A wonderful dream, full of revelations. Unfortunately, as is often the case with such dreams, I could barely remember it when I woke up. However, the most important revelation stayed with me, and it was a very important revelation indeed. Heck, it wasn’t just important, it was groundbreaking. It was humungously amazing. You see, I had the privilege of being revealed the Ultimate Answer. Yes, you got it- the answer to Life... the Universe... and Everything.



So what is this answer? First, you have to ask yourself, “Am I worthy of such an honour? Am I willing to spread the word? Do I have access to unlimited supplies of cornflakes?



If the answer to any of the above was ‘yes’, then you are ready to share the secret of the Ultimate Answer. The answer to The Ultimate Question is...



Hedgehogs.



Yes, friend, that’s right, hedgehogs. But don’t go putting that as all the answers on your next test yet! I did that, and did I get full marks? Did I heck! I jumped the gun. The thing is, you have to give the hedgehogs in question brain food, so they can answer your question for you. And, as everyone knows, there’s no better brain food for a hedgehog than cornflakes. So before my next big test, I spent a while going round my neighbourhood, sprinkling cornflakes anywhere it looked like those darn hedgehogs might be hiding. Sure, I got a lot of funny looks. But who cares? The very next day, I got a full 94% on my English exam! (I guess I must have missed a coupla hedgehogs there)



So, do what I did. Don’t spend the night before your  exams, GCSEs, whatever revising! Spend that night prowling the streets with a mega bag of cornflakes, keeping a sharp lookout for any spiky critters, and your efforts will be rewarded.



 WARNING! This won’t work if you don’t forward this email to everyone you know! You have to spread the word! I sent this to my brother. He did the cornflake routine but didn’t bother to forward it to any of his friends. The next day, he took his Maths exam... and failed. Not only did he fail, but all of the words he typed magically transmogrified into drawings of aliens having a shoot-up.  My friend Sally-Sue did the same thing. She fed her test to the teacher’s dog by accident and as a punishment for being so careless now has to spend all of her spare time sifting through the dog’s droppings to find semi-digested pieces of her test. So SEND THIS ON! Email it to everyone in your address book. The more people you send it to, the happier those hedgehogs will be! And if you just totally ignore this, well, you don’t want to know what’ll happen to you! Suffice to say, no-one could go within a 25-mile radius of my disbelieving friend Mary-Lou-Beth without fainting from the stench for almost five months after the ‘Cesspit Incident’. Send this email on, and everyone will benefit. Don’t send it, and I can’t be responsible for what happens."

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As someone who spent many, many happy 36-hour periods in Northampton, Massachusetts during my college years (I had friends at Smith College, and fled from my New Haven pressure-cooker as often as possible), I enjoyed this article in the NY Times on what to do/see/eat in Northampton. Maybe Kate and I should go back there sometime for a visit; I don't think I did anything that would get me automatically thrown in jail. (But I better check out back issues of the Smith student newspaper on microfilm, just to be sure.)

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Jon Schwarz' blog, Tinyrevolution.com, reports a mysterious upsurge in popularity in Northern Iraq for former Kansas Sen. Ed Pugh.



Can anyone weld together all the bloody remnants of that country, wracked by war and centuries of ethnic and religious strife? ED PUGH CAN! The "Draft Ed Pugh" movement starts HERE.

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As some of you know, I grew up in St. Louis and am a fan of the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team--the team which just lost, in convincing, nay humiliating, fashion to the Boston Red Sox in the World Series. Something that is noticably absent in all the coverage of the Red Sox' victory is the deal I made with the Universe, as the Series began. "Universe," I said, "I will accept a Cards' defeat only on this condition: that George Bush loses the Presidential election." The Universe was silent, as usual (it thinks it's too good for us) but I consider the Red Sox' victory formal--and I'd like to add right here in public, legally binding--acceptance of my deal.



So: expect Kerry in a landslide, and you're welcome!

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My dad--who is, by the way, the Republican Party's worst nightmare, a solid Democrat in a high tax bracket--sent me an email this morning. In it was the following, John Cleese on the Bush Administration:



"How many Bush administration officials does it take to change a light bulb?



None. There's nothing wrong with that light bulb. There is no need to change

anything. We made the right decision and nothing has happened to change our

minds. People who criticize this light bulb now, just because it doesn't

work anymore, supported us when we first screwed it in, and when these

flip-floppers insist on saying that it is burned out, they are merely giving

aid and encouragement to the Forces of Darkness."



(If you haven't checked out John Cleese's website, TheJohnCleese.com , do so right away. I think I just registered as a member there, in the promise of future members-only goodies. I think I registered, but I'm not sure.



Back on the political front, here's Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing 2004--definitely worth a read. Nice to see that HST can still bring it.

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Yesterday, the New York Times Book Review ran an appreciation of playwright George S. Kaufman by Woody Allen. The occasion was the Library of America's new collection of Kaufman. I love Woody, like Kaufman, and adore anything put out by the Library of America--I smell an Xmas present! For the cheery cherry on top, the indefatigable Ed Page has posted a slight but amusing humor piece by Kaufman on his blog.

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Last night, my favorite baseball team, the St. Louis Cardinals, just won the National League pennant. Now, on to the World Series!

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That's what this article says, and it's pretty persuasive. There's no massive national infrastructure to build, just an acceleration of trends already afoot: the popularity of hybrid vehicles, and the growing efficiencies of wind farms.



If the Red Sox can beat the Yanks four straight, anyone can do anything, don't you think? Now, if my Cards can just get into the Series...My enthusiasm alone could power a city.

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There's a Barry fan from the Netherlands whose mom is very sick with cancer. I'm keeping her in my thoughts; perhaps you could, too, if it's not too much to ask. Thanks.

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...started reading this nicely done comedy blog. Todd Jackson found my earlier screed about editors and humor stimulating, so he had a few thoughts...Then I had a few thoughts...I 'spect the thinking will continue. Check it out here.



By the way, the blog's title comes from a famous EB White quote about the impossibility of analyzing humor. The quote's horseshit--anybody who's ever had to think of something funny when they didn't much feel like it has analyzed humor successfully--but it comforts civilians and others who require humor to be ineffable to allow themselves to laugh. "The thing that makes soemthing funny is that it's CRAZY!!!!" (Multiple exclamation points used to denote insipidness.)

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So I spent the first half of the weekend cobbling together a comprehensive 1967-era version of Brian Wilson's "Smile," based on the 2004 version. That was fun. (I couldn't've done it, not in a million years, without the reference disc I got from Project Smile last year. They're a Yahoo Group of fellow Brian Wilson fans--not sure if they're defunct or not, but they collected all the best-quality tracks from a million different sources and I got the disc.) Now that I've listened to "Smile" a bazillion times, I'm getting back into "Pet Sounds." If you haven't heard it, run out and buy it immediately, and know that I envy you.



Amazing. Just amazing. Makes me want to stop writing and learn every instrument in the world, just so I can make more of this good stuff!

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If the media coverage of this Presidential election has pissed you off as much as it's pissed me off, you'll love Matt Taibbi's search for the worst campaign journalist.

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Usually I can take or leave Jon Stewart. His manner's a little too cute for my taste. But after his appearance on Crossfire yesterday where he tore Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala new ones, I think he's friggin' tops. Do yourself a favor and read the transcript.



Memo to all media types: Notice how Michael Moore and Jon Stewart are getting rich by utterly speaking their minds. Stop filtering everything through the corporate mind, and you just might get rich, too!

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Todd Jackson writes to ask:

"Lots of people on TV gang up together to write funny stuff for their shows, often with mixed results. But often with great results (see Simpsons, Mr. Show, etc.) I always got the impression that writing funny by committee was the way to go... but obviously print resists this. Is this by nature of the medium or is it possible for a group mind to work well in print?"



Yes, Todd, it is possible for people to team-write print comedy successfully--see the National Lampoon High School Yearbook, or The Onion, or even this recent Daily Show book. What keeps this from happening more frequently is that the amounts of money at issue with any print project--both what publishers are willing to spend, and what they expect to make--are too small to support a team of writers. TV is big, big money. Print just ain't, anymore. Also, remember with a TV show, the well to fill is HUGE--with a show like SNL, the amount of comedy that has to be produced every week is too big, even for an obsessive joke-machine freak like myself.



In print, there is a type of texture that you can't get without team writing; compare the Barry Trotter books with Bored of the Rings. But there's a personal feeling, a unity, with a single author that team writing doesn't produce. I've enjoyed running a team (at the Yale Record) and would like to do it again in the future, but the economics of print have meant that I've had to write singly so far. And I must admit that I enjoy the auteurist aspect of it, where I can take more risks and go odder places than if I was part of a team. Team writing tends toward blandness, and devolution into a house style is always a danger. I'd argue that The Onion has fallen into that trap; in the beginning the writers had a lot of shared experience which gave them an unusual unity of viewpoint.



If you like The Simpsons, you really ought to check out National Lampoon magazine from 1970-75, and perhaps the Harvard Lampoon Big Book of College Life (co-edited by George Meyer). Both of those are excellent examples of team written comedy at a high level.

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"Everything he said," writes William Saletan, "and the facility with which he said it, conveyed a man ready to assume the presidency in wartime." Slowly, slowly, the mainstream media is waking up to reality. Read the rest of the article here.



The rats are leaving the ship, and twitchy, smiley Bush is desperate. If he can't win--and lock up all the internal documents of his Administration--indictments will stream out of the Justice Department; it will make Watergate look like a lovers' quarrel. This election is life-or-death for W, Condi, Rummy, and all the other bad people in high places, hiding behind cute nicknames. So expect the worst from them in the next few weeks.

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Anybody else notice that whenever the debate turned to the subject of jobs, President Bush began talking about No Child Left Behind? I love schoolchildren as much as anyone, but being homeless because your parents can't get a job tends to depress your test scores.



Kerry looked poised, his answers were clear and thorough--clearly a man qualified to be President. Bush seemed programmed, coached and intellectually slow--clearly the figurehead for an unelected group of toads lurking behind the scenes. And what was the deal with that twisted half-smirk he was wearing? Is that the Ambien, or did he catch it from Cheney?



Another strong win for John Kerry--and I'm not the only one who thinks so.

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...have participated in a My Lai-style massacre of Iraqis.



Whether this particular account proves verifiable or not, how much more evidence do we need that we're wearing the black hats...again?



Elect. Kerry. Now. I want someone in the White House who understands what happens to soldiers and civilians during wartime. Kerry's been shouting about this stuff since 1971, and suffered politically for it. Nobody--not Nader, and especially not Bush--can address this issue like Kerry can. Iraq's a mess and won't be solved for years (if not decades) but as we grope towards a new future for that country, I want a President who will do something about this.

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Friend Mollie Wilson has an interesting essay in the Village Voice Literary Supplement, equating our dear President with Peter Pan.

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After Kate and I watched a PBS documentary featuring each of the candidates' life stories, I'm more convinced than ever that John Kerry is the only appropriate choice for President in November. He's simply a much more thoughtful and substantial person than George Bush. This election is so clear, that it's really a referendum on the intelligence and responsibility of the American people. Which do you want, a real President, or a football coach?



These days especially, with his Bristling Yokel routine, George Bush reminds me more and more of a football coach cornered by a reporter at halftime during a loss.



"Coach, Michelle Tafoya, CBS Sports. I'm sure that wasn't the kind of first half that you were hoping for--you've dug yourself a 56-point hole. What adjustments are you planning on making in the second half to get back in the game?"



"Well, Michelle, we're just gonna keep doing the same thing. As much as some people might want to, now's not the time to question all the things that have worked for us in the past..."



"Actually, Coach, it hasn't. You've lost the last four games."



"Everybody goes through ups-and-downs. That's what this game is about."



"But Coach, there aren't any ups--"



"We just have to execute better. And when I say execute, I mean 'kill.'"

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...the just-released reimagination of the Brian Wilson/Beach Boys album begun, but never completed, in 1966. It's very cool, and I highly recommend it to anybody who enjoys tuneful 60s pop. What a wonderful end to the formerly tragic story of Smile.



Those of you unaware of the history: I found a web site that gives a fairly concise description of Smile's journey from Brian Wilson's head to your CD player. Also, here's Rolling Stone's five-star review of the album. Check it out!

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1968! You tell me we've moved one inch since then:



"The [next] priority for change - the first element of a new politics for the United States - is in our policy toward the world. Too much and for too long, we have acted as if our great military might and wealth could bring about an American solution to every world problem..."



Note that this is the FIRST element; without changing that attitude, none of the rest of the changes can be made. Until we learn to look at the world in a different way, we'll remain trapped in war after war, conflicts that not only kill our citizens and drain our treasury, but isolate us and necessarily contain the seeds of the next war. The best outcome is a temporary, expensive victory (see the first Gulf War), but that's unlikely the longer we go down this road, getting sysmatically weaker, more despised by others, and more cynical ourselves.



Remember to vote. You, too, Wesian--I figure if dead people are allowed to vote here in Illinois, Malaysians should be okay, too :-).

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...on PBS, and I'm a little raw, since that story always upsets me a great deal. But I thought since I had a blog I'd write to you how the show made me feel. I was born in 1969, almost one year exactly after Robert Kennedy was shot dead while campaigning for President, and I know that most of the people who read this are even younger than I am. Some friends who read the blog regularly, have taken the opportunity to tease me about my obsession with the Kennedys and their assassinations in particular. Maybe I'm speaking to those people, or maybe I'm speaking to all of you for whom the politics of the 1960s (or even of the US) are as locked inside history as the invention of the telephone or the birth of Jesus Christ.



In my country, we're suffering from the politics of a broken heart. Our country's heart was broken in the nineteen-sixties, as one inspiring leader after another was shot down, in public. A terrible message was sent--doesn't matter who sent it, really--just that it was received. Don't care about your leaders, don't become passionate about them--if you do, they'll be removed. Whatever momentum they created will be lost. You will have to begin again, a little older, a lot sadder, with a blacker, bleaker view of the world than before. More and more during the last four decades, under the spur of that denied pain, we have been lashing out to share our misery all around the world. Our hearts are armored, and inside the armor is fear, and anger, and sadness.



Remember--or take the time to learn--what's happened in the US since 1968: the sleaze of Nixon and his Iago, Kissinger; the bumbling blandness of Ford, an unelected President; then Carter, a well-meaning liberal totally overmatched and ineffective enough to be safe; then Reagan, and the mass delusion of a return to a pre-heartbreak past that never truly existed; then Bush, a shadowy CEO with no morality save winning and a heart two sizes too small; then Clinton, a Kennedy manque with an obvious flaw which his enemies knew in advance and used like a whip and a leash; and finally Bush, who needs no more castigation than what the newspapers he doesn't read provide fresh every day. Are these the leaders of any great country, much less a democracy? Do we not seem as though we are afraid, as a people, to truly invest our hearts and minds fully in the political alternatives that face us? It doesn't make sense until you use the template of a broken heart.



We're pretending like it doesn't matter--that we've seen it all. Then, we're choosing people beneath us, in the hopes that they will not hurt us too badly if they leave. The country has gone to shit in the meantime--we needn't argue about this, and both parties compulsive pandering to our national "greatness" only makes it clearer. Politics has been turned into a sport, with no more immediate impact than the Harvard-Yale game--though the evidence mounts that this is not so, we are all too willing to believe it, and the parties are all too willing to encourage us to do so. As long as the money flows, they're all too willing to have the minutiae of manuevering stand in for policies; to have weary cynicism play the part of actual choice. To choose is to declare allegiance. To declare allegiance is to believe. And to believe is the one thing we don't do, mustn't do.



And yet believing is so sweet. I would argue it's so fundamentally connected to the democratic process that we can't let it go. So our political world is full of ghosts, of lost loves. We escape into Sixties hagiography, remembering the good times in an obscuring golden haze. Or--and I am guiltier of this than most--replay the events of the assassinations, examining them for that one detail that solves the mystery and, perhaps, reverses the evil spell. Or we dredge up the dirt and expose the flaws, in an effort to convince ourselves that the Kennedys--or MLK--or Malcolm X--weren't really so much to lose. Or we pin our hopes on a proxy (Teddy, Gary Hart, Dan Quayle, Bill Clinton, John Kerry, John Edwards), replaying the same story with a girl that looks slightly similar, in the hopes that this time, the story will end differently.



When all the remedies prove fruitless, as they do in failed relationships, we swing into bitter impotence. We try to lessen the robbery by devaluing what was stolen. The talking heads are experts at this, explaining that Vietnam would've happened the same way had the assassinations never happened; that the civil rights movement would've petered out into identity politics as it did; that the fundamental inequalities that we all suffer under in this country would remain unaddressed and unimproved; that we would still export the worst of our country into an increasingly resentful world. It's cold comfort--which is to say, no comfort at all--and it's wrong.



Well, folks, I'm here to say that I'm tired of it. I'm going to do the only thing a person can do to mend a broken heart--give up the past, while at the same time focusing even more clearly on what was valuable it. What was appealing about the Kennedys, or Martin Luther King, or Malcolm X, or Medgar Evers, or Fred Hampton, wasn't their style, or the flotsam that can be arranged into nostalgia. It was that they believed in our country's capacity to change itself for the better. They knew that it wouldn't be easy, and knew, too, that any attempt to change necessarily creates an oppositional force determined to prevent change.



In every situation, with every leader, in every time and place, it is that small bit of belief generated by willing hearts, that tips the balance in favor of progress. It is not always there--in the Clinton years, for example--but we all know inside that if we do not begin to generate this bit of belief, this flame, once again, our country will continue to deteriorate, and in its deterioration be even more selfish and stupid and venal, and continue to lash out. As with a broken heart, the good that can be outweighs the good that was lost. I say all this in the hopes that somebody out there understands what I'm talking about.

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For the first time, Thursday's debate revealed the extent of Bush's weakness. (This shouldn't be surprising; it's easy to forget in the wake of 9/11, but the man wasn't popular enough to win straight up in 2000.) Since the towers fell, pumping up Bush has been considered a handy substitute for authentic patriotism. But he's never been assured of winning reelection, because he's simply not that good at convincing people who don't already agree with him that he's right. His only defense has been "don't change horses in midstream"; last night, it was clear that this horse is drowning!



In the words of that great political thinker Michael Douglas, "The Presidency is the greatest home-field advantage in the world." That didn't help Bush Thursday. Incumbency didn't help him; being a wartime President didn't help him; having a taller podium didn't help him; talking about foreign policy didn't help him. With all these advantages, a reasonable candidate would've steamrolled John Kerry. Not only did Bush not win, he actually LOST. This is the biggest debate debacle since Reagan took Carter out behind the woodshed in 1980. Anybody who tells you different is sweating and spinning.



Don't get distracted by the horserace that the media will use to keep selling ads and making money. President Bush's performance Thursday showed more than ever why he needs to go. This is not a partisan issue, or even a question of style--the debate demonstrated that Mr. Kerry is simply more qualified for the job, and more worthy of our trust.



This morning, The New York Times says that Bush is attacking John Kerry on Iraq; he can attack all his likes, but the truth is, there's only one person responsible for the continuing bloodshed over there, and it isn't John Kerry. Could Kerry still lose? Sure--but only if we let him, by not showing up to vote.

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Spider-Man reviews crayons. I quit halfway through, but funny for a while. Whaddaya expect from the internet--and it's free, too.

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This, from an email to a friend of mine in the publishing business:



"Here's my general feeling on editing and humorous prose: when in doubt, don't. Robert Gottlieb, the editor of Catch-22, rejected A Confederacy of Dunces; many times since, even after Dunces had won the Pulitzer Prize, Gottlieb has reiterated that he'd reject it again. That's insane--and that's Robert Gottlieb, probably the greatest editor of his generation, with the kind of credentials editing humorous novels that no other editor can match. Experience has taught me that the best way to learn how to edit humor is to write an incredible mass of it yourself. That's the only way to develop enough sensitivity to the proper things. Thurber's fights with Gus Lobrano were legendary. Perelman fought, too. Benchley's stuff was, I suspect, uneditable--it's too light. Editors are constantly trying to give humor more weight--turn it into a form of journalism or essay or in general make it like some other type of writing that they can understand better, but this is a real mistake, because the first thing to die is the writer's voice, which is the single biggest factor in whether a piece is funny or not. I'm an obsessive about this, and I couldn't tell a Henry Alford piece from a Bruce McCall piece from a Hart Seeley piece, just by reading it. This isn't their fault--their pieces have to go through the editorial sausage grinder--but it has, and probably will, keep them from ever being considered great humorists. Out of the people working now, I'd trust Dan Menaker at Random the most, because he spent so many years editing casuals at The New Yorker, but I'd also be wary of him with something like the college book, precisely because it's as different in audience and intent from a NYer casual as chocolate cake is from cherry pie.



When it comes to humor, most editors must be viewed as simply particularly close readers--a humorist can't let the editor get too empowered with a funny manuscript, as much as that editor is used to being empowered, because humor is in some sense the imprint of the writer's ego hidden by craft. The better hidden it is, the funnier the book is, but the better hidden it is, the greater the chances that an editor--regardless of background or skill--won't really understand how it works or doesn't work. Often times, the humorist doesn't really understand him/herself. Humor is some weird mix of the personality of the writer, and a painfully learned ability to predict the psychology of an absolute stranger--the reader. It's a bizarre and difficult transaction.



If a pre-publication reader sees a structural or logical flaw, I want to know. If there's confusion, I want to hear about it. Heck, I even want to hear which jokes they liked--all feedback is useful when's in the proper context. But (the inevitable but), one of the hardest things about doing what I do is that nobody else I know of is really trying it--there are loads of fundamentally serious novels with flashes of comedy, but very few fundamentally comic novels with flashes of seriousness. I suspect that's because if you have the chops to be funny, why not make a boatload of money writing things that are a lot less time-consuming and financially risky than a novel? I'd write sitcoms too, if I could--but I can't, so I write prose instead. That's apparently pretty unique, and while it does give me a lot of room to manuever, it also makes it less likely I'll find editors who can really help. Any novel that's the least bit pointed or ironic is christened "a satirical romp" or "a comic tour-de-force," but when you put them up against The Daily Show, which makes you laugh more? And that's the test of a humorous piece of writing--does it make you laugh?



I've had decades of practice reading, writing and editing humor, and know exactly what I'm trying to do (whether it's possible to do, or whether I am talented enough to pull it off, are separate questions). No editor has put in that time; you can't become a snake-charmer by working as a lion-tamer. Overinvolved editors do as much damage to a humorous project as help it. The Barry books have gotten better as books as I've written more of them (whether they've gotten funnier is up to each individual reader), but that's been me practicing structure and learning how to balance plot, character, and jokes. My editor suggests, but mostly he tells me where he laughed, where he was confused, where the story dragged--he lets me drive, and that's worked well.



Everybody's got a sense of humor, so everybody has an opinion on a funny piece of writing. With humor, there are no preexisting boundaries to the editorial process, and that's a real danger--not for the editor, but for me. If I was writing books about the care and feeding of butterflies, there would be a point at which both the author and the editor could agree, "Well, x is simple scientific fact, so that's staying in." There is no fact in humor, so I have to be very protective of my material, no matter how much goodwill is behind an editorial suggestion.



If you have critique, finish the book first, and send it to me. I'd love to see it and will be grateful for any improvements that I can make as a result. But don't be surprised if there's much more going on with any one decision (or even joke!) than you suspect--the whole trick with humor is to make every decision feel effortless, but it's not, and once you dig down into the mechanism, you always find that it's like the back of a watch. With something as fundamentally ineffable as humor, one tinkers at one's own risk--and I include myself in that."

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