Another Benefit Of Moving

First, the bad news: just found a jury duty notice in the mailbox.

Now the good news: it's from the state of Connecticut, and I'm in Virginia now. Bwa ha ha.

Go Shag A Goat

My latest piece in the Guardian isn't something I pitched, but a piece my editor asked from me. It is, I confess, on a topic about which I don't have particularly strong opinions, one way or the other. But it did give me the opportunity to tell the joke about the outraged goat-shagger in a professional journalism context. (Of course, I actually used a word other than "shag"; that was the editor's choice.)

Get Thee Behind Me, Sisyphus

Ever have one of those annoying Sisyphus dreams where you keep trying and keep failing to complete some absurdly simple task? I recently one such experience in real life, and the short version is: I'm typing this on a borrowed computer while my old one's being updated; 'twas too slow and clunky to accomplish even the simplest task. That's why it took me longer than usual to write this piece for today's Daily Dot: An Ex-Stripper's Open Letter to Michael Brutsch. (Side note: my career would doubtless be more illustrious, if I'd quit being so continually surprised by the notion "Gee, when I write about sex it -- I dunno -- seems to go over better than do my earnest libertarian political treatises emphasizing the primacy of the individual vis a vis the state." Hmm. Am I detecting a pattern here?)

In other news: the presidential election is over although Fox News doesn't quite seem to realize it, the TSA is as bad as ever, and I'm still basking in the irony that for the first time in my life I have money and time enough to consider a vacation someplace off the North American continent, yet I still can't go anywhere because my country's actual national security policy states "Can't see London, can't see France, unless TSA roots inside your underpants." And I'm just not willing to allow that, and I allude to my reason why in my opinion piece for the Dot.

GOP Strategy: 2016

Great is my schadenfreudy enjoyment over the Republican meltdown: Bill O'Reilly mourning the death of "traditional America," Rush Limbaugh whining that he and others of his ilk are "outnumbered" -- and so I dare to hope that by 2016, pretty please, the GOP will finally wake up (I say "wake up" because it sounds more polite than "pull its head out of its collective rectum"), abandon its culture war and anti-science idiocy, and make themselves an actual alternative to what the Democratic Party has to offer.

I know a couple of Romney voters who are gnashing their teeth today. What I don't know is, why? What do they fear Obama will do that Romney wouldn't? What good things do they think Romney would have done which Obama definitely won't? Both men suck balls on non-sexual civil liberties matters; only difference was, Romney's balls were also in the pocket of the party with a punitive attitude toward non-procreative sex. But neither Romney nor Obama ever said a word about civil liberties during the campaign. Both support the TSA, NDAA, drone wars, surveillance society, routine strip-searching of people arrested for the most minor of infractions, corporate bailouts, forcing people to become customers of private insurance companies with cushy political connections .... only difference is, Obama's plan doesn't also call for stamping out the nascent gay-wedding industry and increasing the number of poor rape-babies born to mothers who never wanted them and can't afford them.

Short version: if the Republican Party ever wants to win the White House again, it needs to accept that women, non-whites, gay folks, secular folks and people who believe in science are voters to be courted, not threats to campaign against. And for Zod's sake, shut the hell up about rape and why women who get pregnant that way must be forced to bear the babies else they're evil amoral sluts.

An Open Letter To Republicans

Dear GOP,

You could've won this presidential election easily, had you focused on small government, personal liberty and fiscal responsibility rather than embrace crypto-racists, science deniers and anti-sex bigots. Learn from this, damn you.

Sincerely,

A 2008 Obama voter who chose Gary Johnson this time

It's Almost Over

Tomorrow is the first presidential election where I know for a fact the guy I choose won't win, because I'm voting for third-partier Gary Johnson rather than Robama or Obamney. Though if someone held a gun to my head and forced me to choose between the Republican or the Democrat, I'd probably vote for the Democrat and then bathe in a giant vat of Lysol in the vain hope of ever, ever feeling clean again. Neither candidate gives a damn about civil liberties issues: both support the TSA, the NDAA, warrantless surveillance, the drone wars and doubtless other monstrosities which haven't even come to light yet.

But at least Obama isn't in thrall to the modern Republican Party, which has long since abandoned all pretense of caring about small government or fiscal responsibility in lieu of doing its damnedest to stamp out non-procreative sexual activity while explaining why rape isn't as bad as people say and hardly ever leads to pregnancy and women impregnated by their rapists should consider such babies a consolation prize from God anyway.

It's like the difference in chimps vs. humans: their DNA is 99 percent identical and that one percent difference is a doozy, but when you get right down to it they're both just damn dirty stinking apes. Which is why I'm voting for Johnson rather than Kodos, this year (mixed political metaphor alert).

So: in the unlikely event that Romney wins the election because he wins Virginia's electoral votes because he beat Obama by one vote in this state, I'll probably feel bad. But I doubt that will happen. My prediction for tomorrow: Obama will win, but with less electoral votes than in 2008. Some states that went for Obama in '08 might go for Romney this time, but no states that chose McCain in '08 will vote Obama in '12.