some morning-after-the-morning-after reflections on the election

It's funny. Now that it's over, the election seems inconsequential. You can't say that anything is materially different today than it was two days ago. And I know, that's part of the problem, but really now, how much of a difference could Kerry really have made? It would have been more symbolic than effective at this stage of the game. Obviously Americans need to be even better educated about what a complete jackass George Bush is. (A friend wrote to me yesterday, "...don't ever allow yourself second thoughts about his moronism. This is the C-student who bankrupted two companies and got his first passport after becoming president." Don't know about the passport thing or even how important that is (lots of people just don't need one), but the bankruptcy claims are interesting.)

I'm anxious to see what he'll get up to next, actually. Just watching him speak on TV has a lot of entertainment value as an activity unto itself.

I've been in a bit of a news blackout, but I've heard two interesting bits on CBC Radio today. One, speculation that Clinton will be the democratic presidential candidate for 2008. Hillary Clinton, that is. And two, the results of a poll question that asked, "If an unnamed, imaginary Democratic presidential candidate that was similar to Bill Clinton was on the ticket, how would you vote?" The responses were skewed heavily in favour of the Clinton-esque candidate versus Bush.

As twid so accurately pointed out, you guys need a viable second party to vote for down there. Let alone a viable third party. So, good luck with all that, eh?

Hey, kim_jong_il__ is back!

http://www.livejournal.com/users/kim_jong_il__/8919.html

How lovely. I've missed the very funny shit that goes on in that LJ.

beautiful suspense excerpt

I had to quote this excerpt from Robert B. Parker's Family Honor (1999), a novel-length thriller penned by the same author as the Spenser series (i.e. the series upon which was based the 1990s Boston-based PI TV series, Spenser for Hire). Spenser is not the protagonist in this novel, though. Instead, it's Sunny Randall, a tough, attractive blonde private detective who, interestingly, is the ex-wife of a mobster's son (who's involved peripherally in the business himself).

The excerpt is more poignant if taken in context. In this scene, Sunny is being chased by a would-be mobster named Kragan who knows that she has information that could incriminate him. Once Sunny makes the tail (i.e. discovers she's being followed), she slams on the brakes just in time to avoid a shotbun blast coming from her pursuers. She does a fast U-turn and drives to the first place within sight: a restaurant that happens to be owned by a black gangster named Tony Marcus whom she knows personally from prior experience. The scene opens after Sunny has squealed to a stop on the sidewalk in front of the Marcus's restaurant.

( Read the excerpt here -- it's worth it )

Now come on. Wasn't that beautiful? A piece of suspense art, that was. Bob Parker has got it going on.

And doesn't that make you want to be a gangster? Just for a moment? Man, I'm glad all the ghetto kids are getting is 50-Cent -- if they read this shit, they'd join the gangs in droves. :)