I Am Very Tall

Another weekend, another day in the office. Here's a quick picture to lighten up my day.

Another weekend, another day in the office.

Neon shines through smoky eyes tonight
It’s 2 am - I’m drunk again it’s heavy on my mind

I could never love again so much as I love you
Where you end where I begin is like a river going through
Take my heart, my eyes 'cause I need them no more
If never again they fall upon the one I so adore

Excuse me please one more drink
Could you make it strong cause I don’t need to think
She broke my heart my Grace is gone
One more drink and I’ll move on

One drink to remember, then another to forget
How could I ever dream to find sweet love like you again
One drink to remember, and another to forget

Excuse me please one more drink
Could you make it strong cause I don’t need to think
She broke my heart my Grace is gone
One more drink and I’ll move on
One more drink and I’ll be gone

You think of things impossible then the sun refused to shine
I woke with you beside me your cold hand lay in mine

Excuse me please one more drink
Could you make it strong cause I don’t need to think
She broke my heart my Grace is gone
One more drink and I’ll go

Excuse me please one more drink
Could you make it strong cause I don’t need to think
She broke my heart my Grace is gone
One more drink and I’ll be gone
One more drink my Grace is gone
One more drink my Grace is gone

For the last month, I've been in a pretty bad place. I've been working pretty much non-stop on my applications and have also had a ton of job-related work to do. For various other reasons, I've also been lonelier and sadder than I've been in about three or four years.

Tonight has been a most excellent reprieve. I went to a converted comedy club/bar called Comix tonight, where I and a large contingent of New Yorkers watched and cheered as Barack Obama completed his two-year march to the White House. The atmosphere was more charged than anything I've ever seen, with the entire crowd constantly erupting into cheers for Obama. Everyone was openly excited and emotional, with random strangers hugging and giving each other high fives. I might have even got a bit emotional myself - while I was being interviewed, a reporter commented that it looked like I had tears in my eyes. It was truly an atmosphere of love and camaraderie, cheesey as that may sound. The girl that was constantly trying to feel me up took it a little bit too far, but I'm going to chalk that up to electoral spirit.

In any case, Happy Election Day, America. Congratulations, I think we got it right this time.

Douglas MacKinnon, former press secretary for Bob Dole, is concerned that the media is in the tank for the left.

Under the recent headline “Why McCain Is Getting Hosed in the Press,” Politico editors John F. Harris and Jim Vandehei opined:

OK, let’s just get this over with: Yes, in the closing weeks of this election, John McCain and Sarah Palin are getting hosed in the press, and at Politico. And, yes, based on a combined 35 years in the news business we’d take an educated guess — nothing so scientific as a Pew study — that Obama will win the votes of probably 80 percent or more of journalists covering the 2008 election. Most political journalists we know are centrists — instinctually skeptical of ideological zealotry — but with at least a mild liberal tilt to their thinking, particularly on social issues. So what?

“So what?” Those two cavalier words alone speak to the larger problem. Who cares if “80 percent or more of journalists covering the 2008 election” will vote for Barack Obama? Journalists, their editors, management, the candidates and the American people should care.

I think this fascination with evenness is odd. The real issue is whether the media is being truthful and giving deference to facts. If McCain is simply wrong on the issues, has repeatedly lied and attempted to make a very large election about very small-bore issues, then I think the media should be in the tank for Obama. As Campbell Brown put it (paraphrased), "If Candidate A says it's sunny and Candidate B says it's raining, a reporter should be able to go and look out a window."

To me, a bias in the media is only a problem when they begin to report false information, ignore significant issues, or focus on irrelevancies in an attempt to support their candidate. If McCain was not actually old or a survivor of multiple skin cancer surgeries, then the reports to the contrary would be an issue. If McCain was raising large, substantive issues about the negative impact of Obama's economic policies that are simply being ignored, then we would have something to talk about. The focus on Sarah Palin's clothes are actually a problem.

The thing is, I really have no sympathy for any Republicans that are pushing this bit about a media bias. If anything, the Republican Party has been the party that has most systematically attempted to abuse the media into reporting what it wants. Witness Fox News, which functioned as a giant echo chamber replaying blatantly false allegations that Obama was a terrorist, a secret Muslim (so the fuck what?), etc. Witness the McCain campaign's efforts to paint Obama as a "celebrity." Let's also note that the McCain campaign has been extremely hard on NBC for perceived bias, declining requests for interviews, etc.

What about Obama? He sat in for an interview with Papa Bear Bill O'Reilly.

In any case, the election is over tomorrow, and I will be extremely happy about that. Curious to see how this media stuff plays out.

Haven't posted in forever, mainly because I'm bogged down with a ton of personal and job-related work. The last couple weeks have been extremely rough and I'm looking forward to the light at the end of the tunnel. Of course, some lights are looking a little closer than others, but that's a different story.

One thing that I'm looking forward to is the election being O-V-E-R. I'm also hoping that someone puts in a law that puts limits on the length of campaigns, because I think it's a serious problem when these things start lasting about half of a presidential term limit. Doesn't anyone have any real work to be doing? Of course, when the campaign is gone, half of the outrageous material that I tend to respond to will (hopefully) disappear from the media and I'll have to go back to talking about random stuff all over again.

Two quick general election related items. Number 1 - a hilarious comment from an Amazon discussion board:

KAA says:
obama will take your 401k money and give it too his arab friends. then he'll take your guns away so you can't fight him when he and his terrorist friends come to eat your children!

bill ayers!

birth certificate!

socialist, devil worshiper!

joe the plumber!!!!

I just thought that was really funny, if sadly close to the mark. You've probably seen the second bit, but in case you haven't:
Also funny, without the sadness overtones. Halle Berry is also in it, which is an added bonus. For all of you ladies out there, sexual icon Forrest Whitaker is in it too. There's a follow-up video on Youtube that is equally amusing, but I'm leery of embedding five billion videos.

Anyway, I'm mailing in my vote today. Hope everyone else out there is doing the same.