>> Ashley returned from her Thanksgiving in Florida bearing an object.

It has brought doom and ruination to our household.

I'll never leave the couch again.

(Oh, and to follow up -- yeah, I am sick, but it's not all that bad this time. W00t.)

>> My throat is scratchy. Oh my God, if I'm getting sick again, I'm going to punch something to death.

And it's wrong that, in order to combat this possible infection, I poured myself a bowl of Froot Loops because they have more Vitamin C than any other food in my apartment, right? That says something bad about my nutritional habits, right?

>> Update on the R.E.M. "remasters" -- they're just being issued with bonus DVDs, featuring the album in DVD audio and unreleased video & documentary footage. Never mind, then; that's not worth shelling out for in my book...

And happy Thanksgiving, mah fellow Americans! I gotta book it over to my sister's place and start stuffing my face (my parents came up here and are staying with her).

>> Of course I was there, and of course it was shit-hot. My U2log "special report" from the show will be going up soon, hopefully.

Other bloggers in attendance: Lia, Matthew, Josh. Watch those spaces to see if they post anything, and if you were there, drop a link to your write-up in the comments...

UPDATE: Here's my U2log post, with some lovely photography by another of our reporters.

>> The final crucial update about tomorrow's U2 show in NYC.

>> Longtime readers know that I have always been embroiled in a passionate love affair with novelty sodas. The shining star in my personal firmament was the now-departed, sorely-missed Pepsi Blue, which has since entirely disappeared from the public consciousness (with the exception of its being used as an in-joke on Metafilter). So you can imagine my delight to learn of the existence of Pepsi Holiday Spice. I love novelty sodas, and I love spices (My God, do I love spices -- you should come look in our kitchen cabinet, it's like East 6th Street exploded and died in there).

I'm slugging down a bottle right now, and I must sadly inform you that It Is Not Very Good. It's basically just bland, sawdusty Pepsi with a bad aftertaste. The fact that it is more than slightly red is a little bit awesome, but the fact that it doesn't taste very Christmasy -- it's kind of like the taste of Big Red cinnamon gum after a good three minutes of chewing -- is intensely disappointing. I just made spice cake the other day, and while it didn't turn out quite the way I'd hoped it would, it was still tastier, and more festive, than this.

Sigh. Back to the novelty-cola drawing board, I guess... I'm looking forward to next year's Sprite Remix. I even thought about it in the shower today. I'm hoping they skip right through fruit flavors and taxi directly to chocolate. Or maybe poultry. Chili, perhaps? Come on, people! Think different!

UPDATE: Oh, woof. I just had my first Pepsi Holiday Spice belch (an important part of the tasting process for any novelty soda; it's like sniffing the wine before you quaff it) and it tasted like blood, decay, chemicals and death. I really don't know about this one, no sir I do not...

And since "Pepsi Blue" has since become a by-word for dishonestly shilling for some corporate product on your weblog, let me take this opportunity to state that I do not have, and never have had, any links whatsoever to PepsiCo or its subsidiaries or whatever the hoozy. I just unashamedly, unapologetically really loved Pepsi Blue, even though it was clearly carcinogenic, designed for ingestion only by robots, and possibly Satanic in nature.

>> Calling all NYC-area U2 fans: There's something you need to know about.

UPDATE: There's more you should know about.

>> Wow, Oliver Willis' Brand Democrat is pretty great. Can we get some of these onto billboards, please? Soon?

>> Oh my God, I just played Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas for the first time. And I have two words for you:

Jetpack cheat.

IT IS TEH h0TNESS.

>> 
And yea, the message of Band Aid 20 was heard around the world.

And that message was: Fuck Madagascar.

(P.S. Band Aid 20 is really, really painful to listen to. But you can buy it by clicking on that image. Alternatively, you could just donate to Oxfam and not have to listen to Justin Hawkins and Dizzee Rascal trade lines about helping the helpless. Your call.)

>> Shockingly, Depeche Mode are going to start work on another album in December. I was definitely getting pretty convinced that Gahan & Gore hated each other at this point... well, here's hoping it all works out for the best. I loved Exciter a whole lot (though I haven't listened to it recently), and they're working with one of my favorite producers (Ben Hillier, who worked on Elbow's Cast Of Thousands and Blur's Think Tank, which were both in my top five of albums from last year), so that certainly gets me hopeful. Dave Gahan's solo album, on the other hand, does not (my review of it is in the CDs section).

Another random note: We started a new feature at U2log today, entitled Transit, wherein the U2log editors pimp our favorite media products to our (now startlingly large) audience. Keep an eye on it, I'll probably be posting there a lot, although the essentiality of my output there to your day-to-day life is largely to be determined. ;-D

>> OMG, Richard X worked on M.I.A.'s album? I nearly came when I read that. I really, really can't wait to hear that album... Via Clap Clap.

>> I just finished Nick Cave's And The Ass Saw The Angel (Verdict: sporadically compelling, occasionally infuriating, largely overdone), and near the end, there's a word that I really wanted to know the exact definition of: "chaogenous." I searched both Dictionary.com and M-W.com, to no avail, and a Google search turns up nothing but spam pages full of ridiculous words. Anybody know the precise definition of this? I can infer a general sense from context and root, but still. Help a brother out.

>> Thanks to the tireless efforts of Caroline and Christopher, we've got a brand new design at U2log, and it looks hot. Check it out, why don't'cha.

Oh: and we now know the tour will start on March 1st, 2005, somewhere in Florida. You've been warned.

>> As most Americans and indeed, most of you, have already discovered, The Incredibles is really, really, really fucking good. I actually wasn't prepared for just how gorgeous it would be; the action sequences were just astonishingly well-done and the animation! My God, the animation! The set designs were just breathtakingly great, I actually gasped a little at how good the water looked in one scene... I really think we're in danger of taking for granted just how great computer animation is getting, and I don't mean that simply in an "imitating life" way; I mean it's become an incredibly versatile visual tool and in the right hands (clearly, Pixar's), it makes astonishingly beautiful things that we shouldn't just think "Oh yeah, they do that with computers" about. And on a story level, it was pretty satisfying too; the required hokey bits were more than tolerable, the pacing was kind of unconventional and great, and you've gotta love the "If you can excel, do" theme. I really want a sequel, and I really want it soon.

That said, Marvel have got to be sweating Fantastic Four now, because this was a far, far better Fantastic Four movie than the one they've got in the works will be (and yeah, the Incredibles as a unit are awfully similar to the FF... I guess it didn't seem appealling to take on Disney on the fields of legal battle, is it?).

Oh, and we have a couch now! My sister and I spent all day moving furniture from her apartment to mine (God, New York can be a pain in the ass sometimes), but now we have a lovely place to sit in front of the TV that isn't the floor. Hurrah.

>> Holy shit, all the Warner Bros. R.E.M. albums -- from Green in 1988 to Reveal in 2002, plus In Time, are going to be reissued as double-disc Rhino sets. That's... sort of excellent, and also sort of confusing. For one thing, don't ask me what the supplementary material on the second discs will be; R.E.M. really don't release b-sides very often, their singles are always just padded with live tracks. I guess those'll all be collected into one place. And they will be remastered, which is also sort of pointless, since only Green is old enough to have been recorded in such a way that remastering would substantially improve its sound. I'd love for the I.R.S. albums to be remastered... anyway. This is something to keep an eye on. At the least it would give me an excuse to buy new copies of some of my scratched R.E.M. albums...

>> New progressive political blog from at least one writer whose past blog exploits I've greatly enjoyed -- Blue State Red State. (And yes, that was purposefully cryptic.)

>> If anybody's looking for tickets to the Interpol show tonight at Hammerstein Ballroom, my friend Cat's got a pair to get rid of and she's selling them for exactly what she paid, no more no less (she believes in good karma through non-scalping). If you're interested, drop me a line and I'll put you in touch with her. Special preference given to anybody who can meet her downtown (Soho) to get the tickets so she doesn't have to schlep up to 34th Street.

Update: Ya snooze, ya lose. Sold as of 5:30 PM.

>> Hey, I didn't realize it until I saw the sidebar blurb at @U2 -- today is the seventh anniversary of my first U2 concert, Popmart in Tampa, FL. Awww. Guess that means I should listen to the new album again to celebrate. (And Jesus, seven years? I'm so old!)

>> I did some tinkering around with my RSS feeds today -- I jumped on the Feedburner bandwagon, for one thing, so if you're viewing this site with an RSS reader I suggest you subscribe to the new feed address:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/DoYouFeelLoved

That'll give you Flickr photos, the reader comments alongside the entries, etc. If you'd prefer a simpler XML feed without Flickr photos and comments, you can get that at

http://www.doyoufeelloved.com/blog/postsonly.xml

Thanks to this site for the with-comments RSS template. I also made sure that the snazzy new Firefox 1.0 browser automatically detects the feed; click that little orange button at the bottom-right of the browser window to subscribe in Firefox's own RSS-feed manager. And if you're not using Firefox for all your browsing needs, you're insane (especially if you're on a Windows computer... good God, y'all!)

And yes, all of this does run counter to my previously-stated declaration of dislike for RSS feeds. I'm experimenting with them for the next 30 days (until I have to cough up money for NetNewsWire) -- I'll let you know how it turns out.

>> Oh, you have to be kidding me -- the editor-in-chief of the American Enterprise Institute's magazine is co-writing a Marvel comic book that is, essentially, a propaganda piece about how the war in Iraq is magnificent and is The True Path To Liberty for all those poor helpless Arabs. Jesus fuck. Any desire I had to work for Marvel just evaporated...

>> I just applied for a job with, frankly, my dream employer.

Cue my never hearing back from them in five... four... three... two... one...

>> It's been a good couple of days for two of my favorite bands. First off, I recommend you read Matthew's post about Thursday's R.E.M. show at Madison Square Garden, since he did an excellent job writing it up and I'm too preoccupied to do my own version right this second. We met up and hung out for a couple of hours before the show, and he's a lovely lovely chap. And if you'd like a second opinion on the show, here's Kevin's also-excellent writeup.

In other news, the new U2 album has leaked. Of course I've got it. And I'm glad to report that it is brilliant. I'm finishing up my second full listen as I write this post, so let's go track-by-track...

01. "Vertigo" - You've probably heard this by now, and formed your opinion -- it's either dumb, fun, and infectious, or grating and simplistic. Either way, I hope you weren't expecting the rest of the album to sound anything like it, because it sure doesn't.

02. "Miracle Drug" - The only song I'm having trouble getting into. I lay the blame for that squarely at the foot of Bono's worst couplet ever, "Freedom has a scent / like the top of a newborn baby's head." Woof. Otherwise, it sounds a bit like "Walk On." I tend to tune out immediately after that line, and when I wake up again near the end of the song, it sounds kind of pretty and interesting, so maybe I'll be able to hook into it eventually.

03. "Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own" - When I initially heard that they planned a ballad for the second single, I was worried, since I never really fell in love with "Stuck In A Moment..." and I feared more of the same. We've known about the existence of this song for a long time; it was written about Bono's father and has also been known as "Tough," but we didn't know what it sounded like. Well it turned out, it sounds amazing. Fantastically amazing. So far it's running away with "best on the album" status, and frankly, I'd call it a "With Or Without You" - level classic. If it's not a massive hit, then there's no justice in the world. It made my spine twitch with chills this afternoon, and it's made at least one U2log editor cry. I'd clicked "Five stars" in iTunes before it was even over.

04. "Love And Peace Or Else" - A lot of noise has been made about how this would be a very Achtung Baby-esque album, but that really hasn't panned out. This is the only track you could hang that label on, and only because it's the darkest-sounding and most sonically experimental; it has a Led Zeppelin blues-swagger thing going on, with an interesting, heavily processed intro. A good follow-up to "Sometimes..." but not a classic in its own right.

05. "City Of Blinding Lights" - The entire Unforgettable Fire compressed into six minutes, with a simple, straightforward, ecstatic chorus that makes most other choruses sound pointless by comparison. I'm putting money on this being the main-set closer on the tour next year, possibly leading straight out of "Where The Streets Have No Name," and it'll stand up nicely next to that one.

06. "All Because Of You" - Straightforward guitar romp (mainly acoustic, but still very propulsive). Another "like it or don't" song, very silly lyrics. "Vertigo" without the punk textures. It's likeable, but not loveable.

07. "A Man And A Woman" - Bono was describing this in interviews as "soul," which should make you wince, but by God, I think he was actually right. As Caroline has pointed out, this sounds nothing like a "U2 song," but it's really great. It's breezy, lyrically strong, and really just surprisingly excellent all around. It'd definitely be my pick for the third single.

08. "Crumbs From Your Table" - I'll steal Caroline's description of this one as "the new Walk On, but more complex." It's also a bit less treacly and bombastic, which is welcome; on the whole it's the second least-noticeable track on the album for me after "Miracle Drug" but it's by no means bad.

09. "One Step Closer" - Another song about his father's death, that lingers much more on the idea of death than anything else. When I read the lyrics, I thought this one was going to turn into something really special, sparse and spooky, but it's a little bit of a let-down from my imagination. (Of course I blame the band for not meeting my crazy fantasies.) I was hoping for something more in the vein of "Wake Up Dead Man," but it doesn't have the same desperate power...

10. "Original Of The Species" - A pretty damn good pop song, and I don't know what to say about it beyond that. Good good good, and might grow to be a favorite in time.

11. "Yahweh" - They break with the tradition of the down-tempo album closer to deliver one last anthem; it's solid but doesn't quite have the tremendous "oomph" I was hoping for, though it does have a few great lines.

On first listen, I'm much more satisfied with this than I remember being with All That You Can't Leave Behind; it's not a thousand miles away from that album in terms of sound, but it's a lot less smarmy, and while the conscious songcraft is still there, it's less overt and flashy this time out. I've been telling everybody that it sounds like ten "Electrical Storm"s with "Love And Peace Or Else" in the middle, and I'm still standing by that.

Overall I'm willing to give this an 8.5, or even a 9, out of 10; we'll see how it develops over the course of the next few days. But now I think I'm going to go listen to "Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own" again...

>> I actually find all of the "God, can't we just secede?" post-election rhetoric to be obnoxious and self-defeating. But Moby's version is actually pretty funny:

Dear Canada,
Now, more than ever, your neighbor to the south (aka the blue states) needs you. Most of us living in the northern and western parts of the United States don't feel very connected to the rest of the U.S., so can we bring our states and become part of Canada?
We have a lot of money and some interesting cities and we promise not to be too much trouble.
The benefits to you:
a- In one fell swoop you can have southern California and New York City! Surfing in Canada! Suddenly the U.N. is on Canadian soil! Broadway is suddenly in Canada! You could then say that Canada is the birthplace of jazz and hip-hop!
b- Money. Cold hard cash. The red states in the U.S. might have the voting power, but guess who has the money? Yup, your friendly neighborhood blue states. So when/if you accept our offer you will instantly become the richest country in the world! That sounds pretty good, right?
c- Karma. Accepting this offer will give you more good karma than you'd know what to do with (because you would instantly make 120 million people VERY happy).
So you get warm beaches, tons of cash, and good karma. Who can say no to that?
Please let us know if you accept the offer. Given our enthusiasm to join Canada it's safe to say that the details of the offer could probably be worked out in an afternoon.
Thank you very much,
Moby

P.S.- Just to put your minds at ease, we do know that we can't bring our assault weapons with us.

(I corrected all of his capitalization and punctuation, because it was driving me crazy.)

>> First thing, it's killing me to know that this election is apparently over and my vote -- an absentee ballot in Florida -- hasn't even been counted yet. That hurts.

Second, it couldn't be more obvious that this election represents a tremendous rightward shift in American politics. And this is from a country that is already seen by the majority of the world as profoundly right-wing. This election was won, in very large part, on gay-bashing. Don't believe me? Eleven amendments to state constitutions, banning gay marriage (and in some cases, civil unions as well), were passed. Marilyn Musgrave, sponsor of the Federal Marriage Amendment, was re-elected to the House in Colorado. In Kentucky, Jim Bunning's campaign accused his opponent, Daniel Mongiardo, of being "limp-wristed," a "switch hitter," and "not a man" (Mongiardo, of course, is straight), and he won handily. And in Florida, the winner of the Senate seat was Mel Martinez, a man who accused his primary opponent of pandering to "homosexual extremists" because he supported hate-crime legislation. And even more than abortion, I think (which has always been on the table), anti-gay sentiment is the wedge issue that brought Karl Rove's four million evangelical voters to the polls.

With a Kerry Supreme Court, we could be reasonably certain that those state amendments would, someday -- not even necessarily during Kerry's tenure, but sometime in the future -- be overturned. Now I am positive that they will not. Possibly ever. We now officially have an America where gay men and women are second-class citizens who lack the rights and privileges of others.

Stand up proud, Republican Party. You just brought back the grand American tradition of segregation. I hope it feels great.

And one third note -- it's time for a new Democratic party. Daschle is gone. Terry McAuliffe couldn't have proven more impotent. I want a completely new party, and I want it now. A lot of people have said that the Democrats' failure lies in failing to convince people to vote on bread-and-butter economic issues. Fuck bread-and-butter issues. This election was won and lost on social issues, and the Democrats have to reclaim them and they have to reclaim them now. And by that I don't mean they have to co-opt the Republicans' rhetoric of hate. They have to do something much, much harder: marginalize it. The Democratic party's failure lies in failing to convince the nation as a whole -- not just the urban, educated coasts -- that division, discrimination, and legal restriction is not the answer to our social problems -- indeed, that most of our "social problems" are not problems at all. I want to see charismatic, deeply faithful Christian Democrats in the Midwest making the case that you don't have to read the Bible one way; that there is a Christianity of peace, love, and guidance, and a Christianity of Crusades, Inquisitions, and crucifixions. Look to the War on (Islamic) Terror, the Patriot Act, and The Passion Of The Christ, and I think you can tap which one of those strains our national Christian zeitgeist is following. That has to change and it has to change now, or we're going to become one of the countless fallen theocracies of history, a victim of its own bitter self-mutilation.

It couldn't be clearer the way this country came into being, ladies and gentlemen. We are not a theocracy. The Founding Fathers did everything in their power to prevent a theocracy. We were to be a nation where every religious faith respected every other one; where every political organization had a place at the table and a commitment to putting America on the right track. Over time, we've expanded that commitment to include the idea that every individual citizen, regardless of any distinguishing component of their selves -- race, class, gender -- is equally invested in this country, and is to be equally empowered by it. It couldn't be clearer that we are rolling those ideas back, and we will not stop rolling them back until the Democrats can stand, powerfully, in the way.

What I've outlined for the Democrats to do is insanely difficult. But it has to be done, and it has to be done soon. I want the new generation of Democratic leadership to stand up now, because we cannot wait for them very long. So sure: Howard Dean for DNC chair. Hillary Clinton or Dick Durbin for Senate Minority Leader (I know Hillary is "controversial," and I don't care -- I want a fighter in that Senate, and I want them to hail from a safe seat). Get me my fighters, and let me start fighting for them, because my future couldn't be more clearly on the line.

As an afterthought -- some election reform would be nice, too. I don't mean eradicating the Electoral College, because frankly that's kind of a terrible idea. But I'd love to see a few more legal requirements placed on our nation's voting machines -- paper trails, for example. I'd love to see some standardization of procedures for the counting and reporting of non-Election Day ballots. And really, I don't think that's too much to ask of the most technologically advanced democracy in the world, do you?

EDIT: I initially attributed the gay-baiting campaign run against Daniel Mongiardo in Kentucky to the Coburn/Carson race in Oklahoma, another race I'd been watching and wound up conflating in the post-election haze. It's now corrected. Mind you, Tom Coburn has said that "the gay agenda" is "the greatest threat to our freedom that we face today." He has also called for the death penalty for abortion doctors, despite having performed abortions in his own medical career. He, like Bunning, is a class act all around.

>> If you weren't watching CNN early this morning, you were missing something impressive -- they've just reported that Iowa's official count won't come until later in the day Wednesday, and that Ohio's provisional ballots won't be counted for at least eleven days.

I may wake up tomorrow and this will have blown over (and I think I am going to bed soon). But I might also wake up to an election in absolute flux.

This is the most powerful nation in the world. Yikes.

>> So. It's after midnight. It's Election Day 2004. Let's get this thing done.

First off, I'll go ahead and make my crazy prediction. It's not uninformed -- remember, I've got a lot of time on my hands, and I've been spending just about all of it reading up on this election. But it's also not definitive, and at the end of the day 75% of my call is just gut feeling, which has failed many a man before. But I'll make my call anyway, since there's no real repercussions and I might turn out looking like an idiot savant. I am Some Guy With A Website! Hear me roar!

Obviously, I want Kerry to win. But frankly, I think he's going to. And I think he's going to win it clean. There may be legal challenges, and there will be a lot of noise made by both sides about disenfranchisement, intimidation, and fraud. But in the end, it's not going to matter. We're going to see turnout that's closer to sixty percent than it is to fifty. And I think Kerry's going to wind up with about 50% of the popular vote -- probably not a whole lot more than that; 51% would be a very pleasant surprise -- but some decimal of 50% is what I'm pointing at. And as for the electoral college, it could still go either way, but I think he'll get at least 295. He's going to win Ohio, and Florida, and he'll keep Michigan and Pennsylvania which, frankly, were never really in play as far as I could see. He may lose Iowa, and he may lose Hawaii -- I've kept them out of that 295 number -- but he might win them too, and that would put him over 300. It may wind up much closer than that. Hell, we may end up waiting for Hawaii's polls to close before we can call either of them with 270 votes (Please, please, I hope not). But, barring a catastrophic machine failure in Florida (which isn't tremendously unlikely, sadly), I honestly think we're going to get a clean election where the victor is clear from the votes cast and counted on the night.

I've already cast my ballot by absentee; some of you may have done the same. But for those of you haven't, good luck at the polls tomorrow. (I'm not even going to pretend that any of my readers aren't voting.) Make sure you know your precinct location -- go to MyPollingPlace.com if you're not 100% certain. Bring an ID with you, and your iPod or a very good book -- the lines are probably going to be pretty long, as just about everyone is convinced that turnout will be startlingly high this election, and a lot of states are getting used to new equipment. (If you're in Ohio or Pennsylvania, bring your raincoat; the Weather Channel says it's going to be a wet day.) And if for any reason you're told that you're not on your precinct's rolls, get a provisional ballot! It may not end up getting counted, but it's more likely than if you didn't vote at all, now isn't it? And if you're voting on a new electronic machine, be very careful, and check your final ballot very carefully before you submit it; both machine error and human error (on a system you've never used before) are distressingly likely, and reports are already surfacing from early-voting about the frequency of both. Make absolutely sure that your vote is recorded the way you want it to be. And if you're at the polls and waiting in line before they close, then you will be allowed to vote. But please, don't show up right down to the wire. Get there early. Don't let any of the stories you'll hear about problems and complications and partisan maneuvering keep you away from the polls. The laws are there to protect your vote, and they will.

If you're a regular reader, you know exactly where I stand on this election. George Bush has made a shambles of everything that makes this country beautiful. He squandered and demolished the greatest outpouring of good will our country has ever experienced by lying his way into a costly and deadly war in Iraq that has created more terrorists than it has eliminated, and left us less safe than before we began it. He's made "civil rights" a dirty word, through his stewardship of the highly invasive PATRIOT Act and his profound disrespect for the rights of women and gay Americans. He's declared open warfare on democratic dissent, brushing aside the input of responsible Democrats and moderate Republicans alike in the name of advancing an agenda far more conservative than the American people -- and indeed, the American Constitution -- could ever permit. And three years after the deadliest attack ever committed on American soil, its plotter and perpetrator is still free. It is unconscionable that the strongest nation in the world should allow Osama bin Laden to continue walking this Earth as a free man. And somehow, our leader has allowed exactly that.

For that alone he should be voted out. But he's given us hundreds of other reasons. There's 1,100 reasons in the form of men and women who wore the uniform of the United States. There are the abuses of Abu Ghraib, products of a system that shows open contempt for the Geneva Conventions and all other international agreements. There's the continuing malfeasance on the part of corporate America; the administration turns a blind eye to their misdeeds, offers them tax breaks, and allows them to write public policy while they hemmoraghe American jobs, shed health care coverage, and leave entire communites desolate. There's the systematic reduction in standards protecting the environment. There's a net job loss, and a deficit that dwarfs anything that even the most die-hard big-government Democrat could ever dream of. And most distressingly of all, there's the idea that no matter what happens, he's not responsible. It's "just a few bad apples." "The troops didn't search hard enough." It was Saddam Hussein. It was France's decision not to join the Coalition. It was never the fault of the man who, at the end of the day, is responsible for steering the course of America. If he doesn't understand the responsibility he holds, then it's time to make him understand -- by taking that responsibility away from him. Vote him out, America. John Kerry can do better, and he will do better. Give him the chance. And I hope, after tomorrow night, that I never have to say another word about the mess George Bush has made of our country -- because there will be good people on the job, fixing it.

And if not -- then we keep fighting him with every breath in our bodies, on every issue that counts. And that's all there is to it.

But I've got faith in John Kerry. And I think he's going to be my next President.

>> I kept myself up until 3:30 AM last night (completely evaporating the tenuous improvement on my sleep-cycle that the end of Daylight Savings Time had given me) reading The Confusion, the second book in Neal Stephenson's "Baroque Cycle." (All three books are now released, though only Quicksilver, Book One, is in paperback.) I'm only on page 292 of 815, and already there've been amazing nautical feats, a handful of dead French nobles, and rather a lot of globe-hopping. They're fantastically amusing books, straddling the line between pulp and high-falutin literary fiction in an admirably tenuous way. And you're guaranteed to learn something interesting (although Stephenson does play fast and loose with historical figures in order to maximize the story's impact. But hey, who wouldn't). I'm way behind the curve in when I picked them up (I only read Quicksilver this summer, but it was released in fall 2003), but I recommend them nonetheless. That is, if you've got the time to slog through nearly 3,000 pages sometime soon. Which, being unemployed, I do! Hurrah!

(Stabs self in neck)