On behalf of myself, welcome to the Friday before the election. Last night I did some phone banking where we called residents about Issue 112, the Cleveland school levy. It was interesting to hear what some people had to say, but I doubt I convinced anyone to vote for it. I got two people to accept a yard sign though. The best comment I got went something like this:

Me: So can I count on your support for Issue 112 in the upcoming election?
Her: Fat chance! I own a house. Bye! *click*

I can’t blame her though, it is a property tax increase, the first school related increase in over 8 years, and the ward I was calling is extremely poor.

Just when I thought I’d seen the end of the Bush wearing a wire conspiracy, some evidence surfaces that seems to make it pretty obvious. Take a look for yourself, and read the article for Bush’s recent comment on Good Morning America. I know that if Bush is re-elected, we’ll never hear anything about this again. Still, I can’t help but hope that after he’s defeated the media will continue their consistently juvenille behavior and mock him in a big way. Perhaps that’s an example of something today’s media might actually be good for.

Most news right now is in the shadow of the election, regardless of importance. Yet I have a feeling that, after the election, the dire situation the airlines are facing due to rising fuel costs will become a prominent story. “It’s like they’re all treading water, but they’ve got 100 pound weights around their necks,” said airline consultant Robert W. Mann of Port Washington, N.Y. “You can only do it for so long.”

Americans are getting way fatter, especially when you compare us to the 1960’s versions of ourselves. The average man’s weight rose from 166 lbs. to 191 lbs.!

Bill O’Reilly has settled his sexual harassment suit confidentially. I don’t think I’m alone when I say, “dammit”. Then again, when it comes to debunking right-wing media personalities, Rush Limbaugh was already exposed as a total druggie, and that didn’t make much of an impact. Still, this is one guy whose voice America could do without.

These Halloween costumes are hysterical!

Photoshop Phriday this week is ‘Children’s Books All Grown Up’.

Have a good Halloween folks, thanks for readin’. Vote Peltier.

Yesterday there was some kind of issue with me making it to the blogger site, so I couldn’t post anything, even though I had some links gathered up. I’ll try to make sure none of them were anything important. Today I’ve just been genuinely busy, and in fact, I’m still busy, so here we go.

Personally, I’ve never doubted the fact that the Bush cartel had no idea what they were getting into when they sprinted into Iraq. It was obvious from the start that we were in way over our heads, but thanks to a cooperative media and Bush’s unfounded yet constant optimism, we’ve never heard a single admittance of unpreparedness. Until now. Rumsfeld has finally said the US had no plans for Iraqi insurgency. What’s more, according to the linked article, he did it using his patended fighting technique/fancy hand motions.

Great. There’s already 58,000 missing absentee ballots in Florida. I really don’t want to say much about this because until we’re presented with the disaster that November 3rd promises to be, we won’t have any idea how to react. I’ve been looking forward to having this election over with, but things like this make it seem like it’s only going to be more hectic and infuriating afterward.

Yasser Arafat has been slipping in and out of consciousness lately. I have no speculation as to what will happen after he passes on, but something might happen, who knows.

Bush has made the transformation to a full-fledged healer!

Anyone see the lunar eclipse last night? I did.. just for a little while. It was pretty kick ass, but thanks to my fair city and its wonderful steel mill, it was as hazy as LA.

Lastly, the Red Sox won the World Series for the first time since 1918! Way to go Sox!! (I used to root for them, back when Clemens was a younger lad.)

Everyone get over to HeroMachine and make a character! When you’re done, send them to r3tr0blog@gmail.com and I’ll post them! (You need to do a screen capture with PrintScrn, and then save it in a graphics program… including MSPaint, if you have to.) Oh, and if you can get into this SomethingAwful.com thread, check out the great ones being made!

Well folks, this doesn’t happen much, but today my browser crashed and I lost all the links I had prepared for you. I’m afraid I don’t have the time to go back and find them again.

However, I do have a picture of my mom’s cat indulging in the strangest cat behavior I’ve ever seen. Normally cats hate water, but for some reason this cat thinks it’s some kind of toy. She’ll climb up in the sink and wait for you, then when you turn on the water she’ll bat at it with her paw and even jump into the sink and let the water just hit her on the face! At one point both of her rear legs were sticking up in the air as the water poured right onto her nose and she clawed at it. What a freak!

I don’t have much to offer today, so here’s a picture I took outside the West Side Market of a guy with a whole pig on his shoulder. Try not to look at the fat woman walking.

More polls and more ridiculous last-ditch campaigning is about all the news has to offer today. I don’t trust the polls, but most are indicating Bush is up by 2% over Kerry. Even though he’s been a vast source of ranting for this blog, there is no part of me that wants him re-elected. I can fill this baby up without having him to bitch about.

One thing that I think America could stand to get rid of is high fructose corn syrup. It’s in god damn everything. I’m surprised Dasani and Aquafina don’t somehow manage to slip a little bit in. I’m sure it offers little if any nutrition, and as far as I’m concerned, it makes things too sweet. Well, scientists are saying that honey could be a great replacement for it, and I for one have to agree.

Evil Clown Generator

Comic

Today at work I’m copying videos as fast as I can. I have two running at a time, and it looks like I’m going to be here for a while. It’s too bad those high-speed or bulk VHS copiers are so damn expensive.

There’s been a ton of polls lately, but this one has to be the worst of them all. It’s updated every morning, so I always see “who’s ahead today”. Oooh! It’s sooo exciting! I understand it’s too much to ask that news agencies cease shoving these irrelevant figures down our throats, but I wish they wouldn’t release them as though they were the pinnacle of accuracy. This one claims a +/- 2.9% margin of error. I’d say it’s more like a +/- 68% error! You polled 1,200 people out of a nation of almost 300 million. How in the fuck are you accounting for that? Moreover, why do we need to see these things every day? Are people such pathetic slaves to the media that they’re changing their minds based on the current results? (Don’t answer that.) There’s only one poll worth keeping an eye on… the one on November 2nd. Even so, I predict we won’t know who won until at least Christmas.

Reuters reported a story of a family of six killed in Falluja, and the military denies it. I know that the photos taken may have been damaging to the credibility of the troops, but why would they even bother, considering they’ve killed somewhere around 14,000 civilians? Perhaps it’s just that not many photos are making it back to the nations involved in the conflict. According to our commander in chief, everything’s going perfectly! (Right here I was tempted to rant about how Bush purportedly told Pat Robertson of the ‘700 Club’ back in March 2003 that there would be NO casualties in Iraq… but it doesn’t seem substantiated enough at this point.)

Unfortunately, whales and dolphins won’t be able to sue Bush… this time. A marine mammal activist lawyer filed a lawsuit against both Bush and Rumsfeld for allowing the US Navy to use a particular form of sonar that has been shown to cause tissue damage to marine mammals. Once again they’ve narrowly escaped the grasp of the court system. Everyone keep talking war crimes, and if Bush doesn’t get re-elected, we could finally see some retribution for the worst presidency in our history.

According to Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter, the US is celebrity-obsessed and thereby distracted from our own global realities. I don’t know what psychology credentials this guy boasts, but I’d say that’s a pretty fair assessment. Even our presidential race is an obvious character contest. Come to think of it… when has Bush ever tried to do something “cool” like Kerry or Clinton? Kerry has his motorcycle and guitar, Clinton has his sax and cigar… but how has Bush shown off? Shit… that may be the first admirable thing I’ve ever noticed about the guy. Unfortunately for him, I’m still young and that just makes him out to be a loser. So this editor from Vanity Fair was hoping that after 9/11 happened, we’d realize that we need to be more global-thinking. As he put it: “That lasted for as long as it took the words to come out of my mouth.”

I wouldn’t subject you to a funny pet video if I didn’t think it was really hilarious. Trust me on this one. Find out what a cat does when tape is stuck to its fur!

Alright, I guess I’ve got a moment here. I’m working on two different videos at work and one of them requires me to have 12 copies, plus there’s a lot of training sessions going on this week and that’s my department. It’s coming along.

I have absolutely no legitimate news to relay today. Good news for everyone!

First, let’s take a look at some of John Kerry’s lesser known campaign platforms. Here’s a few things you may not have known about him:
1. John Kerry supports urinating in public to show excitement for a book.
2. John Kerry supports smallpox blankets.
3. John Kerry supports lying about your penis size.
Check out the link above for all the concrete proof you’ll need.

More often than not, ultra-religious freakazoids rely on the Bible to justify their hatred of homosexuals. Well, what if the Bible contained passages of titillating gay sex? Then what, fuckfaces?!! ReligiousTolerance.org has done some research and found a few sections of the Bible that they think could be interpreted as totally homolicious. You be the judge.

Florida Election Ballot Simulator

The Onion’s ‘What Do You Think?’ on Bill O’Reilly’s sex scandal. Curtis Fletcher’s comment almost made me shit my pants laughing. (I love how they’ve cultivated the personalities of these same 6 people over time… I think this is my favorite Onion feature of all.)

This is fucking awesome. Any of you interested in space travel have no doubt heard of ion propulsion, or perhaps solar sailing. Well, the University of Washington is working on something similar called “Magnetized-beam Plasma Propulsion” or mag-beam. Essentially there’ll be an initial “push” from a plasma station, then a plasma station “reeling in” the spacecraft, and finally a plasma station to slow the craft down again. Instead of taking 2.5 years to get to Mars, it could take just over a month, or 90 days round trip! Now that’s what I’m talking about!

Many people are hip to the fact that TV rots your brain. Now, with new TV-B-Gone, even if you don’t own the television that’s bothering you, you can do something about it! This company’s made a keyring remote that only has one button: off. I was just imagining how sweet it’d be to use in this one sports bar in Brookpark, Harpo’s. They must have 90 goddamn TVs in there. Supposedly it works on just about any TV. I’m tempted…