The streak is over

Me with my headband, a lamp and a bloody honker

Two days before my 32nd birthday, I suffered the first bloody nose of my life.

I wish I could say it happened after I got into a fistfight for freedom, defending the honor of a plucky, kind-hearted prostitute, or just doing a whole bunch of blow, but the fact is my wife's diagnosis was probably right: "The air is dry and you spend too much time picking your nose."

Depends on what your definition of 'is' is

The Clintons are lying.

You know it. I know it. Eric Zorn of the Chicago Tribune knows it.

You may have heard the Clintons, and even John Edwards, going on about how Barack Obama has been praising Ronald Reagan. It's not true.

Tribune columnist Eric Zorn clearly lays out the truth in his blog today, transcribing exactly what Barack said and how the Clintons have lied about it.

An excerpt:

"Hillary Clinton, Jan 18:
My leading opponent the other day said that he thought the Republicans had better ideas than Democrats the last 10 to 15 years.
Bill Clinton, Jan 18:
(My wife's) principal opponent said that since 1992, the Republicans have had all the good ideas....I'm not making this up, folks.

Well, yes he is. The key, inflammatory words in the Clintons' quotes are better and good, and I invite you, reader, to find it in these transcripts of what Obama has actually said:
'I don’t want to present myself as some sort of singular figure. I think part of what’s different are the times. I do think that for example the 1980's were different.
'I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it.
'I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and government had grown and grown but there wasn’t much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating. I think people, he just tapped into what people were already feeling, which was we want clarity we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.
'I think Kennedy, twenty years earlier, moved the country in a fundamentally different direction. So I think a lot of it just has to do with the times.
'I think we’re in one of those times right now. Where people feel like things as they are going aren’t working. We’re bogged down in the same arguments that we’ve been having, and they’re not useful.
'And, you know, the Republican approach, I think, has played itself out.
'I think it’s fair to say the Republicans were the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time there over the last ten, fifteen years, in the sense that they were challenging conventional wisdom.' "

There you have it. A lesson in dirty politics from the couple that should know better.

Happy King Day

I hope you're doing something good on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
I thought this speech, delivered May 17, 1957, was appropriate for the season.
"Give Us the Ballot," Address Delivered at the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom
Here's a brief excerpt:
" ...But even more, all types of conniving methods are still being used to prevent Negroes from becoming registered voters. The denial of this sacred right is a tragic betrayal of the highest mandates of our democratic tradition. And so our most urgent request to the president of the United States and every member of Congress is to give us the right to vote. (Yes)
"Give us the ballot, and we will no longer have to worry the federal government about our basic rights.
"Give us the ballot (Yes), and we will no longer plead to the federal government for passage of an anti-lynching law; we will by the power of our vote write the law on the statute books of the South (All right) and bring an end to the dastardly acts of the hooded perpetrators of violence.
"Give us the ballot (Give us the ballot), and we will transform the salient misdeeds of bloodthirsty mobs (Yeah) into the calculated good deeds of orderly citizens.
"Give us the ballot (Give us the ballot), and we will fill our legislative halls with men of goodwill (All right now) and send to the sacred halls of Congress men who will not sign a "Southern Manifesto" because of their devotion to the manifesto of justice. (Tell 'em about it)
"Give us the ballot (Yeah), and we will place judges on the benches of the South who will do justly and love mercy (Yeah), and we will place at the head of the southern states governors who will, who have felt not only the tang of the human, but the glow of the Divine..."

Now listen to this:

My Endorsement

Eleven months ago – Feb. 21, 2007, to be exact – I used this space to announce my intention to vote for Sen. Barack Obama for President of the United States of America.
I was getting a little ahead of myself.
What I meant to announce was my intention to vote for Sen. Obama in the Jan. 26 South Carolina Democratic Primary as the Democratic nominee for President.
Although the stage is a little smaller, the stakes are not. And nothing has changed my mind about who is the best candidate to lead our country out of these terribly divisive times domestically and horribly troubled times worldwide.
Not John McCain being charming, funny and smart on Face the Nation with Bob Scheiffer.
Not Mike Huckabee playing bass and being charming, funny and smart on Meet the Press with Tim Russert.
Not actor Fred Thompson doing the folksy “I’m Just a Regular Guy Sitting at the Counter of a Small Town Diner Talkin’ Straight Talk” routine in his commercial.
Not John Edwards pulling his campaign up by the bootstraps and promising to do battle with the evil American corporations that are running and ruining this country.
Not Hillary Clinton crying on cue in New Hampshire.
Not Bill Clinton reverting to Hillary Clinton’s former role as paranoid conspiracy theorist on the campaign trail, whining after his wife’s defeat in Iowa that New Hampshire party officials were to blame for what he saw as her impending doom there because the state scheduled its primary too soon after Iowa. Then it was the media’s fault because they conspired against Hillary by giving Sen. Obama “a free ride” and calling his campaign “a fairy tale.”
No, only one candidate has inspired me to believe that America can be great again and moved me to give up by long-held ban on bumper stickers. And that candidate is Barack Obama.
But as a longtime Clinton family supporter/apologist, it saddens me that things have gotten so negative from their camp. Politics is a dirty business, I know, but this is how the other side is supposed to act. Not us.
Last week, on Jan. 8 at 7:58 pm, I received a phone call from an area code I didn’t recognize. I answered it and the person on the other end told me I had been selected to participate in a public opinion poll on the upcoming primary in South Carolina. I agreed to take part because it sounded like fun and I like it when people take the time to hear what I think.
First the guy asked me a couple questions about who I was supporting. I told the gentleman about my unwavering support for Obama, rating my opinion of Barack as “extremely favorable” and telling him it was “very likely” I would vote for him Jan. 26.
Then our conversation soured.
The inquisitor on the other end of the line asked me to rate how the following statements influenced my opinion of Sen. Obama. I knew something was up when an early statement said something about Sen. Obama supporting the issuance of driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants “who are stealing jobs from hardworking Americans.”
I recognized the tactic from an article I read in Vanity Fair a couple years back about how our current unforgivably inept President and his campaign managers, led by legendary leech Karl Rove, smeared American hero John McCain in the 2000 South Carolina primary by using, among many other dirty tricks, what they call a “push poll.”
A push poll is an old trick campaigns employ to plant misinformation about candidates and spread rumors using telemarketers disguised as researchers. But their goal is to shape, not measure, opinions.
In 2000, South Carolina voters reported receiving similar calls where they were asked, “Would you be more likely or less likely to vote for John McCain for president if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?” I guess I would say “more likely,” but let’s get back to my personal anecdote.
The final straw of my phone call was when I was asked how I felt about Sen. Obama belonging to a black supremacist church on the Southside of Chicago. I laughed out loud, and actually, so did the guy asking the question. We both recognized it as ridiculous.
I traced the call to a telemarketing firm, Parker Consulting in Tucson, Ariz., but I know they were just paid hatchet men. I’m just depressed about who my gut tells me did the paying. As they say in the business, it’s “very likely.”

I had to have this

My new amiga GiuCe had this on her Block de Notas and I had to have it.
It's a commercial for a thirst-quenching Peruvian beverage called Chicha Morada. I didn't know it came mass-produced in plastic bottles a la "Sunny D," but I'm all for it.

Here's the Wikipedia entry on the drink and here's a recipe.
If you're not ready for a purple corn drink, there's a new compilation of Peruvian chicha songs (psychedelic/surf-styled electric guitars mixed with cumbia rhythms and Peruvian folk music)by Barbes Records.

You'll be better when you read this book

I'm sure I can't adequately explain how great this novel is. Junot Díaz writes the way people talk and it's beautiful. The narrators in this perspective-shifting novel make the book pop, but there is so much goodness to be found.
You learn about everything from the history and fukú of the Dominican Republic and the bloody reign of Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina (someone I'm sure your high school world history teacher knows nothing about) to role playing games and anime.
It's funny, it's sad, it's educational. It's the best book I've read in a long time, but make sure you have this and this handy to help with translation.
You should read it. Don't wait until it comes to a theater near you.

For the record

Can You Dig It? returns from holiday vacation with this:

We had a great Christmas trip to see the family in the Quad Cities. On the way there, some stranger in the Atlanta airport, who claimed to be Australian (although he did not once say "G'day mate"), carrying two bags of O'Charley's leftovers gave my 15-month-old daughter a $20 bill for her college education. I spent part of it on a 1/2 pound jalapeño cheddar double melt from the airport Wendy's, which I ate minutes before boarding a small plane for a two-hour flight. Crikey!

Things soured a bit on our return trip to Atlanta when some gaunt, greased out little Santa Claus-looking man made a pitch for the very same $20 by Utah (I mean Idaho, but I accidentally said Utah --thanks to my Idahoan friend Sarah who caught my mistake)-Senator-Larry-Craiging me in the restroom.

I'm not imagining it.

I accidentally made eye contact with the man as he was leaving the bathroom, then as I saddle up to the urinal, guess who appears two potties down, trying unabashedly to get a peek at my carry-on luggage? I grumbled, "WTF," stopped midstream and considered moving to any one of the other 30 available pissers in the room. He looked the other way, probably wondering what kind of crazy MFer spews out Internet acronyms in airport bathrooms on Christmas night.

I ended up just finishing the job where I stood, exiting rapidly without washing my hands and feeling quite violated for a day or two.