~ we will be out of town for the anniversary that occurs tomorrow. though it is still not time to see it pass without acknowledgment, we find that the prospects for our country’s political future are too dire to allow for detached melancholy at this time. so instead we will share with you a figurative image which for us has been a warm memory for the past three years, one of the few we can still remember as an unqualified pride in america:

you are in an impromptu blood donor line on the plaza before new york’s city hall, waiting with the only other b-pos blood donors, a black man and an indian woman. the man asks asks, “where are the cameras now?” as you gaze across the plaza and see helmeted construction workers helping doctors and nurses climb into the back of a scorched dump truck, preparing to drive back to the world trade center. silently, you are pleased that there are no cameras.

while not exactly cooking something up, the work.group has reheated an old dish, making hash of leftovers and serving it with a side of salsa verde; the delicacy is known as ex_nihilo.

~ congratulations for dick cheney are in order; he has the dubious honour of having said the most outrageous thing we have heard since jerry falwell told us that the september 11 attacks were our punishment from god for our harboring of gays and the aclu. admittedly, if you were vice president of an administration that has accomplished nothing except no bid contracts to your former company, one which still pays you deferred salary and has not accounted for over $1 billion money it has received from the gov’t, presided over the first loss of jobs since the great depression, the loss of health insurance for 5 million americans, and allowed another 1.3 million americans to fall below the poverty line this year, you’d probably be reduced to threatening americans that if they vote for your opponent that they will be killed, too. the ‘double-digit’ lead reportedly enjoyed by bush for a couple of days was troubling, indeed, but when one watches the incumbents, who were presumably ‘making us safe’ or whatever for the past three years, become so desperate that they tell us we will die without them in office, one is heartened.

we know that republicans try to inspire irrational fears into americans, such as the fear of gays who will destroy the family or the fear that minorities will get to vote or the fear that you will not own a bigger car than your father owned, but this is the most blatant and explicit threat—that of death—that we have seen. we mean, who remembers lyndon johnson’s campaign ad with the mushroom cloud? who remembers the billboards with black hands reaching for a white child under the heading ‘vote republican’?

~ speaking of not ‘making us safe’ after all, if we do get the terrorist attack promised by dick cheney, will we also get a refund on that $200 billion spent on a war in iraq that was supposed to keep the terrorists at bay? “we’ll fight them in mosul, so we won’t have to fight them in macon”…or something.

~ speaking of losing in iraq, some of you may recall that the angry red planet declared that the radical moqtada al-sadr would not be captured alive; and after countless deaths and the annihilation of najaf, we are back were we started. the us army – and some marines – had to watch al-sadr walk away unscathed whilst declaring the delightful news that he was going to ‘enter politics’; he was given a free pass by the iraqi gov’t last month, so his boys were able to kill seven marines this weekend. what are we going to do next year when the iraqi gov’t (supposedly) is no longer appointed by the u.s.?

~ if anyone from npr is listening, could you clarify what you mean when you say ‘moderate radicals’ condemn the killing of school kids in russia? is it ‘radical’ to kill anyone who disagrees with your religion/politics, but only ‘moderate’ if you don’t kill children? our guess is a ‘moderate radical’ only kills teenagers? what if you are a teenage male who kills adults in order to keep their politics out of your religion?

~ You’ll have to take our word for it when we say that we crafted a witty and astute retort to the attitudes and misrepresentations in a recent speech by one of our Senators. However, considering that the senator’s strategy is that he would rather be a pariah of notoriety than a pissant in obscurity, we reckon it would be best to spend no more bytes on his memory. regardless of how well he tore his party a new one, his true dubious accomplishment is that many more folks throughout the rest of the country think that georgians are opportunistic back stabbers. rather than rant and rave about this sellout, we’ll wait until november 2nd and watch him wonder where all of his new found friends have gone.

~ this is not about our senator, but about the reaction of the delegates to parts of his speech: why does a Republican delegate cheer when someone says something like “the b1 bomber dropped 40% of the bombs” on anyone. is it just to disturb those of us who do not find titillation in the violent death of others?

~ when the seas of shit are at full tide, or, if you will, the poppies of shit are in full blossom, a cheering domain name briefly clears the foul air: www.zellout.com. though simple, it certainly beats the typically uninspired, pseudo-political slogans we must tolerate, such as ‘lick bush’ or ‘cheney is a dick’.