Name:
Location: Vienna, Virginia, United States

A graduate of Dartmouth College (2005) and Washington and Lee University School of Law (2010). These are my personal blogs, and the musings expressed on them do not reflect the positions of my employer. They do reflect my readings, thoughts, and aspirations, which I figure is good enough.

Tuesday, November 02, 2004

Feelin' Groovy

Closet of Voting

I actually voted about a month ago when I sent my absentee ballot home, but I'll still tune in for the media spectacle tonight when we find out if America really is a nation of tools. Actually I'll probably be watching The Daily Show special starting at 10:00. If anyone hasn't read the transcript for Jon Stewart's attack on Crossfire or seen the footage, it really is very telling. Here's the link to the transcript if anyone wants to read. It makes me sad that Stewart can only be a voice of reason because he's on Comedy Central. Because Bill Maher, who I believe was immensely underrated on ABC, got banished to the depths of HBO a little after 9/11. And besides the two of them, there really is no other smart late night host right now. Even Letterman's writers shy away from real opinion. And Conan is good, but not nearly as ascerbic as Stewart or Maher at his best.

I did, however, like Conan's bit in which Triumph the Comic Insult Dog visited the post-debate spin room. The spin room should really be spinning, at about 50 RPM. That way, after half an hour, people would have to leave and vomit, which is exactly what I think my reaction would be after half an hour in there.

It was wonderful that Steward did what he did, since CNN has been a bastion of stupidity since even before 9/11. Their form of sensationalism is even worse than FoxNews because they have real viewership. Anyone can tune out people like Bill O'Reilly and Ann Coulter because they're so obviously at the far end of the see-saw, telling everyone else to stay away from their brand of self-assured conservatism. But when CNN, the "24 Hour News Network" allows people on Crossfire and Larry King to just yell at each other over a laugh and applause track, it can really change the opinion of those that actually care enough about the news to watch CNN.

Watching SNL last night really made this all the clearer. While SNL sucks more now than it has at any point in the past ten years, part of it is really because "news" networks like CNN make such farces out of what is going on in the political world that there's no longer a point to spoofing politics. When Rudy Giuliani comes on after a debate and spouts some Bushisms, and the anchor turns to Hillary Clinton so she can spout some Kerryisms, one is never sure whether to laugh or cry.

There, that was my political rant of the day. I don't like politics because we have a former CEO jerking the puppet strings of a man who is certifiably retarded, a former Mr. Universe in office in California, and a Democratic Party that has no backbone. And the government still is and will be for a while a privileged group of old white men deciding the fate of women's uteri. Uteruses. Utereeses. Oh, and Nader is a tool.

On a lighter note, my brother has informed me that our FF7 characters were in fact level 70ish by the time we finished disc one. We had obtained Omnislash and mastered several materia. So I was understating it. Time wasn't a sparse commodity back then. Oh what I would do to have the concept of spare time enter into my life again. I suppose I'm using some of it right now to blog though, so I shouldn't be complaining.

Bless easytree.org again. Thanks to it, I'm listening to a Simon and Garfunkel concert from 1968 entitled "Voices of Intelligent Dissent". Whee!!!

Oh yeah, and if I can direct your attention to the nifty sidebar, which is there thanks to my l33t HTML skills learned in 7th Grade under the tutelage of good old Mr. Silvaggi, there are several webcomics there, one or two of which is sure to pique your interest.

Well the first picture is actually not a webcomic. The second one, the redhead, is a link to Queen of Wands, a very amusing and sometimes extremely angsty webcomic. Great writing that incorporates a healthy knowledge of comics, cynicism and Bohemianism.

Then we have Brent Sienna from PVPOnline, a comic by Scott Kurtz that is really mainstream geekdom at its best. Plenty of Star Wars and Marvel references and Skull, the Blue Troll that is invisible to the impure.

Ozy, from Ozy and Millie, a left-leaning anthropomorphic comic that occasionally has flashes of brilliance. More often than not it's politics is a little heavy handed, but it also channels a lot of Calvin and Hobbes, which is nice. A little much at times, but still . . .

Penny-Arcade I linked to before. Gabe and Tycho are kind of the anti-Kurtz, not as in anti-Heart of Darkness but as in their brand of webcomic celebrates being insiders. You really have to know your video games to get a lot of their references. They're also too violent and profane to ever get mainstream like Kurtz but that violence also gets them as much 18-35 male readership as Maxim. Maybe not quite as much.

Megatokyo has fallen off a bit since Largo left with most of the comedy, but it's still amusing at times. Piro channels a lot of Chobits and Love Hina, and that's probably why his comic drags as much as it does. Even good anime has a habit of making absolutely nothing happen (One Piece).
And last is a link to MacHall, a college student run comic that updates rarely now, but still has great art and is consistently amusing when it does update.

Yeah, so those are the ones that I read regularly, along with Scary Go Round by John Allison (I think that's him), which is as surreal and absurb a comic as I can stand. It is very funny though when you get it. And sometimes when you don't too.

Peace, Man. Cool Beans

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