They Will Rise Again From the Tundra

Last year's pumpkin carving, because I'm a schmuck contributing to the death of Halloween.

Halloween is dead.  Officially.

I’m not generally a fan of sweeping declarative statements like the one I just made, but I’ve been collecting evidence on the long, slow decline of the holiday, and as far as I’m concerned, there is sufficient reason to believe Halloween will never be what it once was.

I grew up in a decade that wasn’t favorable to the holiday, the 1990s.  October 31 almost ubiquitously presented a young Chicago suburbanite with a miserable night marked either by the beginning of an early cold snap or a late-autumn rainstorm that would have turned us all pneumatic if our parents hadn’t insisted upon wrapping us in large, puffy coats and hiding our costumes in the process amid fervent protestations and candy-fueled tantrums.  But we went out there, goddammit, and ran around all night, and … Read more

The rants don’t come easily these days — at least not as easily as they once did — save for a few impromptu outbursts when something ruffles the feathers or playing the jester.  Other than that, there is little to be said about current events.  Things continue much as they always have, Barack Obama or not, and the Republicans, as clinically insane as ever, need not worry too much about a paradigm shift to the Left.  The Democrats are not a party built for political hegemony.  Infighting and weak knees normally derail any such hopes and all for the better, I suppose.  Perhaps the Dawn of the Third Party is not so far away as it seems to be, though the dim hope that the American voter might realize the stagnation wrought by the two-party yo-yo is one better left unspoken lest the eventual disappointment proves too much to bear.… Read more

Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism, as it is the merger of corporate and government power. Benito Mussolini

The week begins tomorrow. Back to the office and the choked highways. In spite of the suffocating monotony of the Chicago suburbs and my tortuous daily commute, it’s too minuscule to care in light of recent events, personal and political alike. I’ll steer clear of the personal aspects to spare you the boredom suffice it to say I am wracked with a plethora of insecurities. It might be time to sell my genitals for scrap if I can find a good price.

But let’s take one bright spot to heart since there are few in which to bask. Sarah Palin was booed today (mostly) while dropping the ceremonial puck at a Philadelphia Flyers hockey game, and it’s a wonder she managed to keep that disingenuous, pasted-on smirk of hers in tact. What … Read more

Making John McCain the President is like giving Grandpa the remote control to the VCR. Brian Milsap

I think that’s a damn good quote.  It’s catchy and true, and I’m friends with the man who said it.  All good reasons that it’s been stuck in my head for a week or two.

There is a sad lining to these words, though, because the truth is that neither Obama nor McCain have the slightest idea how to fix this economy.  They can debate about foreign policy all they want.  Those decisions will be made by nameless white men behind a massive smokescreen that, as far as I can tell, has been hiding this country’s policy rats since the establishment of the FBI.  And it will work the same way with the economy.

The president is and always has been an overstated role in the government.  Anyone who’s taken a high school … Read more