Mosh

Eminem has a new song out, Mosh. And you can view the video here. I'll be the first to say it's not a "great" song, but it's angry and pissed-off, and it's one of the best "go-vote" videos I've ever seen put before the Eminem target audience. It's really pretty.

And very, very angry.

I love it.

I do want to say something about Eminem - believe it or not, I'm a big fan. Yea, he's got a lot of misogyny in his songs. Lots of rage and anger, particularly directed at his mother and the mother of his daughter. There's at least one song on the three CDs of his that I have that's so incredibly woman-hating that I have trouble listening to it.

But.

Eminem speaks to something right in my gut. That passionate anger against a society that wasn't made for me. He's trailer trash. White, yes, but no son of money. He's pissed off at everybody and doesn't know who to rail against. And he speaks right from his gut. With anger. And you can hear it in his voice.

I have respect for people who do what others believe they can't do, and do it because they love it - and use those powers for "good." Usually.

The video's a great build-up of rage against Bush, and Eminem fuels it right into the best weapon we've got next week.

Today's Alaska Pic

I'm behind on my new novel draft. Need to finish ch. 1 today. 100 pages by the 20th.

More later...

Today's Alaska Pic

I'm behind on my new novel draft. Need to finish ch. 1 today. 100 pages by the 20th.

More later...

Myst IV

Myst IV is out! Myst IV is out!

Need I say more?

I have very fond memories of lying on my mattress on the floor in my cockroach invested flat in Durban, eating brown rice w/peri-peri sauce and playing Myst III: Exile.

Those were the days.

FCC OKs Cingular bid for AT&T

I wondered why my boss was funneling stuff onto my desk this morning, and why the phone kept ringing...

Here we go:

FCC OKs Cingular bid for AT&T
Commission joins Justice Department in giving OK for $41 billion cellular deal.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Federal Communications Commission said Tuesday it has conditionally approved Cingular Wireless' $41 billion cash acquisition of AT&T Wireless Services Inc., clearing the last big hurdle for the deal....

A combined Cingular and AT&T Wireless will have about 47.6 million customers in 49 states, surpassing current market leader Verizon Wireless.

This is huge.

I Love My MA School

Yet another reason I love my MA school -

I had noticed that one of the buff boxing women at my MA school, Ray - who I was partnered with once and mentioned in a post a couple months ago - had started wearing her shirt untucked during class. This was a month or so ago, and I hadn't really paid attention to it. She was still banging the crap out of shit, still jump roping, etc.

A couple weeks ago, I noticed she was doing modified situps on her side when we did medicine ball partner situps.

Huh. Weird.

Yesterday, in the changing room, it occured to me that Ray had put on twenty-five pounds in about two months (the untuck-the-shirt-trick works every time).

Hey, I thought, the only people who gain twenty-five pounds in two months are --

Oh.

"Can you feel anything yet?" Saran, one of the MA veterans asked Ray as she geared up.

"Oh, are you kidding? I've been feeling things for months."

"That's cool."

"Yea. It's cool."

Ray is over four months pregnant.

And she's coming to class and continuing to kick ass.

I LOVE being alive in this century. Ask me what time period I'd choose to be born a myopic woman in, and it would be this one. If we can get over the conservative social pressure, and continue to fight for the rights we've got while expanding on them, we've potentially got an incredible power to live the sorts of lives we all want to live.

As fighting young professionals - pregnant or no - and crazy bed-hopping artists; should we so choose.

Just for You

1) Go to google.com
2) Type in: weapons of mass destruction
3) Hit the "I'm feeling lucky" button, NOT the "Google search"
4) Read the "error message" carefully.

Someone at Google (UK) has a sense of humor.

Off to See the Wizard

So, one of our small office number is now off to Iraq. He's signed out and packed up and he'll be getting on a plane Thursday. He'll be overseeing the construction of cell phone towers. Need I mention that people like Blaine and Yellow don't believe he's qualified to do this?

Hell, who cares, right? We're bleeding our tax dollars out the ears anyway. Why not send incompetent people over there to help out so they can fuck the job up even more so we can bleed more money?

"I'll see you guys around Christmas," he said as he headed out the door --

and it was all I could do not to say, "Unless we see you on CNN first."

If anyone wants to know why the war in Iraq is costing so much, I can tell you, as our company is one of the ones contracted there. Employees get paid 2.5X their base salary (tax free), plus two plane trips home a year, and free room and board, transportation, satellite phones, and internet connections (likely through Halliburton).

I actually signed up to go with the first wave of contractors last year in June. I figured "Hey, it's our mess, we should clean it up." And 2.5X my base salary meant I'd be pulling over 90K (tax free). I have a crapload of student loans and a credit card that's maxed out every month. It was tempting.

Then things started to go to hell. And I realized nobody actually wanted us there. Not just the guys out blowing shit up, but the Iraqi contractors on the ground. I heard that local Iraqi firms were bidding on rebuilding work and US firms were coming in and charging 20-30X the amount the Iraqi firms were - and the US firms were getting the contracts.

What would it have cost the US if we hired out local contractors? It's not like Iraq is a wasteland (we haven't blown up *all* of it yet). There are cities there. Bridge builders. Telecommunications people. They *do* have cellphones there, people. And they have technicians who know how to build those things. Welcome to the 21st century. Not everybody in Iraq lives in a hide tent and hunkers over a dung fire.

So, one of ours is outta here, and I'm staying here.

But hot damn, that 90K looked good.

I understand why he went. The battle between greed and morality is ongoing.

Visualize Winning

I admit it: I got a bit teary-eyed. That alone tells you just how freaked out I am at another 4 years of international disaster and homeland fascism.

Check it out.

via Jenn.

On Useless Weekends & Other Joys

Rolled out of bed at 7:30am on Saturday, ready to dress, shower, do some free weights, and head downtown for pilates followed by local writing jam session.

Stumbled into the kitchen and realized I really, really, didn't want to do anything at all. Stayed home, watched adventure movies, did some rewriting of what I'd done Friday (which seemed really brilliant on Friday, and looked like something I must have written while on crack by Saturday morning), and started reading The Origins of War.

Jenn did our twice-yearly book count and came up with a combined total of 1377.

There are worse addictions we could have.

The Age of Anxiety

An American just returning from five years abroad takes a look at the current US political climate:

Fearful of the present, the outside, the alien, the defender of America looks backward to a mythical golden age in Puritan New England. But now the white anglo-saxon Protestant is armoured with a computer. The culture of soft fascism cannot be reduced to the traditional bogeymen of the American left: even in its liberal years, the United States was an ardently religious country; Americans were ardent nationalists even when they fought for Europe in the two world wars. Nor is the appeal of soft fascism to be treated with simple contempt. The terror attack tripped a domestic switch about experiences of marginality that people have trouble naming and about which they can do little. Abroad, Bushism registers a wounded national honour; at home, confusion about living honourably...

For a long time the American intellectual left has been out of touch with the American people. It has spoken in the name of the people but not to them. Now, in the reconfigured landscape of economics, class and culture, however, the educated, cosmopolitan liberal is a social victor. Even the sculptor in Fanelli's struggling to make ends meet is a social victor; nobody can rob him of his work and worth.

The right has perhaps understood that victory better than the victors themselves, in giving fresh life to the taunts of "cultural elitism" aimed at the intellectual left. The attack embodies a classic dilemma: when a young man with a good degree and an expensive lap-top attacks injustice, the ordinary person feels patronised.

For the past four years, the rich and powerful in America have capitalised on just this social distance, between the cultural elite and people beset by anxieties about personal insufficiency and mutual respect. The victors have defended themselves by saying, but we are just like you, loyal Americans; the defence rings false because they aren't domestically the same. Those bewildered glances out of Fanelli's window, the knowing sniggers at Cooper Union, are signs of an inequality as ambiguous as the word "American".

Read the rest over at The Guardian

Via Jenn

Wow. What a Nightmare!

Last night, I had a nightmare that I couldn't vote. My voter registration hadn't gone through. I showed up with my registration card, to no avail. I wasn't allowed to vote, because I was a woman, and voting democrat. When I tried to get in the booth, I didn't understand the punch card, because it wasn't a punch card anymore. I was voting by touch screen. I didn't get any kind of physical receipt cataloging my vote. I was herded out of the library by smug-looking officials, and I burst into tears.

150 years of American women fighting for suffrage, and here we were again.

Gosh. I sure am glad I woke up from that nightmare.

Ah, Crossfire

Ah, Crossfire... let me count the ways...

Remember that Jazzercise instructor Jennifer Portnick who was told she was "too fat" to be one of their fitness instructors (though she'd been successfully teaching for some time, apparently), and took Jazzercise to court over it?

Well, she got to be a Crossfire debate point between Marilyn Wan (author of "Fat!So?") and radio talk-show host Neal Boortz (not sure where his authority to speak on the issue comes from) back in May. The discussion revolved around whether or not somebody who's 240lbs can "represent" the ideals of a fitness franchise.

Keyword: Fitness. Right?

Ha.

CARLSON: Now you know as well as I do that most people do Jazzercise and other sorts of jumping around in front of videotapes to get thin. Now you can see the problem if you own Jazzercise -- having a 240-pound instructor's a pretty bad advertisement for your product. It implies that it doesn't work. So can't you understand why they wouldn't want to hire a 240-pound instructor?

WANN: You know, I think the fitness industry is shooting itself in the foot by marketing thinness, rather than marketing fun. When I go to Jennifer's Portnick's class, I have fun. I feel great. I get healthy. My weight doesn't change. That's not my purpose. In fact, the latest numbers show that about 37 percent of Americans are doing no exercise. And I think if we welcomed people of all different sizes into exercise classes, they might come and have fun and get healthy. Would they get thin? I don't care. I really don't think the research supports that they would.

Someday, Tucker's bow tie is going to start spinning. That will be a great day.

The kicker comes when Boortz starts offering up the rehashed American reactionary hate speech:

BEGALA: Mr. Boortz, you support laws then, right? Do you support laws that say we will force companies to hire qualified people who are black. ...

BOORTZ: Oooh, Paul, you said qualified. This girl is not qualified.

(First intimation that we're in trouble: he referred to a 38-year-old woman as a "girl." Ah. That speaks volumes, actually)

BEGALA: Do you support our civil rights laws?

BOORTZ: In some -- for some civil rights, yes. For honest civil rights, not the right to be a lard butt and lead an exercise class.

Did he just say that?

Why yes. Yes, he did.

As Wann points out, the "qualifications" for being a fitness instructor include the ability to teach an hour-long class, six days a week, sometimes back-to-back classes. Portnick is 240lbs - I'd guess she's 5'6 or so. She's formidable, yes. Does her weight impair her mobility? Not so much. Obviously. Or she wouldn't have passed the fitness tests that got her certified to be an instructor.

Duh.

Now, predictably, Boortz and Carlson bring up the issue of models: models have to have a certain "look" in order to follow their profession. The argument goes that Jazzercise instructors have to "look" fit. First, I agree that models need to be a certain size - runway models all need to be the same size so they can all fit into the same outfits. They need to be a certain height for the clothes to hang properly, and they have to have "looks" that don't draw people's eyes away from the clothes. I'll give them that. But somebody who's otherwise a perfect "fit" who doesn't know how to walk down a runway (say she or he doesn't eat enough and faints halfway down the runway) isn't going to be a model, are they? (I realize I'm grasping for straws with the model thing: I've never believed it takes any sort of smarts or talent to be a model, so my natural biases are showing).

Who decides what "looks" fit? There's already a standard all instructors have to pass that shows they can successfully teach the classes. That'd be a "fit" test, right?

As someone who's been to a jazzercise franchise, I can tell you this - as a patron of such a facility, what I want to do is move around and have fun. Losing weight (at the time I went to Jazzercise, I think I was 16 or 17) was certainly a major goal for me at the time, but I realized also that just moving was good for me, and I wanted an instructor who got me through all this movement with the most fun. As a fat girl who spent most of her childhood being hounded by people of both sexes about my weight, I had (and am working to shed) a terrible fear of thin women. Thin, "hot" women were the ones who were the absolute meanest to me. They were like little devils come up from hell to torment my size. Now, of course, I realize the thin-woman backlash was so strong because I represented everything that they feared: fat; while walking around not-hungry, as many of them were. We all tend to resent those we see who aren't playing by the rules and are somehow getting through life anyway.

So, being at Jazzercise, my favorite instructor wasn't the thin little blond woman who looked like she'd curl her lip at me if I ever approached her, the one who looked like she went home and vomited up her lunch. No, my favorite instructor was the 200lb black woman with the cropped hair and big laugh and amazing sense of humor who looked like she could kick my ass. She was fit and tough, and most of that weight was muscle, with a good cozy layer of fat over it.

*That's* the instructor that kept me coming back.

I think Wan is right on when she says that places like Jazzercise are selling themselves short by promoting weight loss instead of fitness. If you're toting weight loss, people get frustrated unless they see huge results in a very short period of time - hence the success and popularity of diets like Atkins that shed weight very quickly. It gets us motivated to keep going. Unfortunately, a lot of fitness programs don't work that quickly, particualy if you're the typical American woman who's spent a lifetime going on periodic dieting and excercise binges, followed by binges of another kind. Your metabolism is gonna be screwed up. Your body's gonna be angry with you. And as you get older, that metabolism slows down.

What keeps people fit and healthy in the long run is regular excercise and a reasonable diet (throw out all that crap processed food, keep your white bread and sugar intake nil at best, very, very low at worst. STOP binge eating, for all you bingers like me). And to keep people interested in exercise, it needs to be fun. You want to go there and not feel like a fucking reject idiot, a fat loser. And when there's somebody up there who's fit and fun and inspires you to kick your ass, then Jazzercise is doing its job and making money to boot: people come back for classes with good instructors.

Jazzercise is a franchise. If the local congregation (that's the first word I thought of to describe the local clientele) really doesn't like a particular instructor, they'll let you know. The number of students will plummet. Numbers will drop off. They'll start complaining and ask for the skinny blond to take those classes over instead, and relegate the fat instructor to the crappy 3pm class.

They'll let you know if they don't like their instructor.

At my MA school, Sifu Katalin looked me in the eye when she shook my hand. Coach Fernando didn't treat me like I was a worthless idiot. As someone who's internalized a lot of the hate-against-the-fat attitudes, I was ready to fold away into the woodwork at the first sign of disgust or derision. And there was none of that. Granted, I do realize that I have an inflated sense of my own size (most women do), but it was important to be at a place where everybody was supportive.

I also realized later on that a couple of the amazons there had shed 50-70lbs over 2-3 years of classes. If the goal is weight loss, I knew I wasn't going to see it very soon, or all at once. It was gonna take a long time. But damn, was I gonna be buff on my way there. And I was going to have fun.

For the record, Sifu Dino is likely pushing 230-240 as well, and nobody's questioning *his* ability to lead martial arts and fitness classes. He could wipe the floor with every one of us.

Of course, he's a man. He's supposed to be Big and Scary.

Huh.

Once again: are we toting health and fitness, or trying to get everybody into a size 2?

Tell me again why it's so important for all of to look the same?

Oh. Yea. So jerks don't call us "lard butt" on national television.

What is this, grade school?

Crappy Writers and Crappiness in General

Got another couple flat rejects from agents for crappy query letters for fantasy saga book 1 (6 months turnaround for one of them - for a *query* letter).

"You're a crappy writer I've never heard of. I can't sell three copies of this frickin' crap you crappy writers keep pitching. Fuck off."

Why do I do this shit, again?

Oh, that's right: cause I'm going to write books anyway. I may as well try and sell the goddamn things.

I'm going to rent some movies and drink something.

I've got another novel to work on tomorrow.

Choking on My Morning Coffee:

via atrios

Check out: Spring Break Fallujah

And Notes of All Sorts

Today's mixed bag:

Sarah Michelle Gellar, Buffy in the long-running Vampire Slayer TV series and star of the coming The Grudge, wants to follow Pierce Brosnan as the next 007.

The star says: "I don't see why Bond shouldn't be played by an actress. Everybody else seems to be talked up for the role but so far no female has been considered!"

Go Sarah.

In other news, MSN is helpfully trying to help out poor Men who have this terrible, terrible problem:

Do I intimidate women?
I’m very successful in my career and earn a high salary. Since I’m 43 and never married, I have been able to buy many luxuries for myself unlike many of my colleagues who are married with children. I have a beautiful loft in a posh downtown neighborhood, wear a leather coat in the winter, vacation at spas and top resorts around the world, and my business card says “President.”

However, despite all this, I am usually quite lonely and would love to meet the right woman. When I go on dates, I rarely get a second, and my friends have told me that it’s because I intimidate women. I have dated a range of women from CEOs to secretaries but have not found someone secure enough to pursue me. How can I find a woman who is comfortable with what I’ve achieved?

NOT. Luckily, Amanda puts `em straight.

Speaking of keeping things straight, check out marriagerights.com for some fun facts (and some really, really good TV spots) about putting the marriage rights issue into perspective. The deeper I drudge into the politics of gay marriage, the more pissed off I get. The spots take awhile to download: I recommend "Threats" and "Permission" (the Sex Toy one is apparently not work safe...).

Polyamory is Just Wrong

"... She explained polyamory to her mother-in-law, whose response was "That's just wrong.... It should be either multiamory or polyphilia, but this mixing of Greek and Latin roots? No. Wrong."

I love people.

via metaquotes

Today's Alaska Pic

OK, my chiklits.

New book writing starts in earnest today. I've got a wacky-strict schedule of 3-5 pages a day, so I've gotta get cracking. Taking Friday off as a writing day - I do my best writing from about 7pm-2am. Likely going to go ahead and start the Saturday cafe writing days with local writers as well. It'll get me off my ass.

150 Punches

Had boxing class last night with Sifu Dino. It's only the second time I've worked with him, and you know, I suppose there's always gotta be one semi-evil instructor at an MA school.

First, I do want to say that I was in a brutal woman mood last night, and if he was really all bad, I would have walked out. He's an OK instructor and knows his shit, but I wasn't in the mood for shit last night. If Coach Fernando is Mr. Miyagi, Sifu Dino is John Kreese the Evil Cobra Kai Sensei.

So the goal was to work the bag for two minutes, then throw 150 punches in 30 seconds, which gets you to the "over five punches a second" level. He told us to keep track, and at the end of 30 seconds, we called out our scores (I was 101 - just over 3 punches a second). One guy forgot to keep track, and Sifu Dino goes. "Then we do it again. Let's go. You guys think I'm kidding?"

And we did it again.

Not bad in itself. Good discipline crap (or good at teaching people to lie, anyway).

Then we got paired up, and as we had an odd number of guys, and I was the tallest woman, I was paired with a guy. I like being paired up with guys because I think it's more realistic. If I get in a fight, it's more likely I'm going to be dealing with a guy.

At the end of the round, Sifu Dino was pacing the ranks of partners and yelled, "90 seconds! We're not playing patty-cake here, people! You guys can exchange numbers after you're done! What, you guys think you're on a date!"

If you wanna piss me off, play the kiddie-date card.

Come over here, you slimy son of a bitch, I thought, and I'll kick the shit out of you (of course, rationally, this guy would wallop me with his little finger, but seething anger isn't rational).

Fucking. Stupid. Piece. Of. Shit.

I wacked the crap out of the mitts, and got some tap shots from my partner, something else that also pissed me off. Sifu Dino didn't tell us to grab our mouthpieces before doing mitt work, then had our partners smack at our faces after each punching combo (so we could work on blocks). This is a good drill, because you gotta get used to getting hit in the face - or, ideally, get used to *blocking* someone hitting you in the face. But he kept telling everybody to hit harder, which means I'm getting my face walloped without wearing a mouth piece. Which pisses me off. I have really good teeth, and I'd like to keep them that way, and avoid getting my lip split for no good reason (real sparring would be another matter, of course).

So we end the round, and he gives another little crass date-phone-numbers line, and my irrational self was just absolutely seething.

My rational self knew that mine was the only mixed-sex pair, and the comments weren't personal, and the fact that they were pissing me off so much was because I'd gotten so pissed off about that Ladder Theory crap that I ranted about earlier in the day. When I'm pissed, little bullshit things can set me off.

This was a little bullshit thing, and I was pissed.

Bashing on the mitts after the Sifu's haughty little lines, I got echoes of other voices, groups of guys talking about women like our sole purpose is that of penis-sheath and sperm dumpster, idiot guys and jerk girls telling me I'd failed to be a "real girl" because I didn't look right, dress right, eat right. People telling me I was too tall, took up too much space, talked too much.

And all those crappy voices saying: you can't. You can't. You can't. Can't. Can't. CantCANTCANTCANTCANT.

Fuck. You. You. Stupid. Piece. Of. Shit.

Men have this "freak-out hysterical women" stereotype that seems to baffle them. "Hormones," they say. Something instrinsically womanish. They're part right, but not for the reason they think. Highschool age girls especially will burst into tears for apparently no reason. They'll freak out about what seems to be a totally innocent comment. A lot of this is trying to find some kind of outlet, some kind of release. Women are allowed to cry. Men aren't. They're given other avenues to express their displeasure at the system. You've got a culture and often, a social circle, that's banging you on the head telling you how to be now that you've passed through puberty and get forced to look at yourself as a gender instead of a person (and using sex/social attractiveness as reward for good behavior as you get older), and you've got no idea how to handle it. Guys explode into adolescent violence and/or start to worry about how to gain sex points. And women... and women...

I keep getting told "can't."

Men wouldn't want to screw around with me, my elders consoled. I wasn't the sort of woman men would screw around with. I was the sort they married.

But. Wait. That's supposed to make me feel better? I don't want to get married! I want to hang out with guys who are my friends! I want to hang out with good people! I don't want my entire social life to revolve around a husband! I don't want people to look at me like some sort of sex-point meter!

It's OK that you're a fat girl. Fat girls can be smart. Just be a smart fat girl. You know that stereotype, right?

But.. but... I wanna fight! And smart girls don't get laid!

You're not supposed to want to get laid. You're supposed to want to get married.

Who says so?

You can't go to South Africa. 1 in 3 rape rate. You can't buy a one-way ticket to Alaska, you've never been there. You can't jump off the bridge at Molten Falls - girls don't do that.

Can't. Can't. Can't.

Fuck you.

WHAM! SMACK! BASH! I'll show you my dating behavior, you slimy prick!

The thing I *really* spent my college years learning was this: it's all bullshit. It's all make-believe. When I hear other people say "can't" or my own little socialized self monitor freaks out and goes, "You can't. You're a girl," I ask myself this: If you were a guy, would you do it?

Funny, how merely altering my gender makes me so much bolder, and makes so many decisions so much easier. Take my womb and my fertility out of the question, and it's almost like I can have the autonomy of a "real" person (read: a man). I always wonder what it would have been like, to be raised like a guy. To not have been so afraid about the sex=pregnancy thing, the onrushing hordes of potential rapists (read: sex=pregnancy and of course sex=AIDS=Death), the constant hammering about serial killers stalking women, the concern about who's handing me a drink at a party, who my partner could potentially be talking to about bedroom antics, whether or not people thought I was a slut and therefore a low-class outcast, to not always have to consider my fertility as being my sole goal and purpose in life, to not measure my corporeal form by those of plastic people and place my entire self-worth on it.

It would be different. Other worries, of course - I would have gotten into WAY more fights if I was a guy - but different worries, and I believe, not nearly so pervasive, or so tied up in my physical body and its fits and starts, it's physical attributes and manifestations. Nobody would be passing legislation on my womb. Nobody would be threatening to rape me if I didn't have sex with them (unless I was in prison, or the military). In fact, I would have no stigma around rape at all, really.

It would be a different sort of world all together.

So.

The good news is, I felt a lot better after class.

I need to buy a punching bag.

Jon Stewart is My Secret Boyfriend

"They said I wasn't being funny. And I said to them, 'I know that, but tomorrow I will go back to being funny, and your show will still blow.' "

Also, the always entertaining crime/mystery writer John Rickards has got a post up about why American-setting crime novels are far more interesting than boring British ones. Some good points about the differences in the policing of Britian and the US that amused me.

Kerry's ahead at electoral-vote - looks like Florida is gonna get to decide the election again. Damn Floridians (current company excepted, of course). Speaking of politics, my brother also pointed me to an article from FOX news about the 11,000 British people who wrote to the swing state of Ohio and tried to get everybody to vote for Kerry. Because they're Americans, Ohioans WROTE BACK:

"Have you not noticed that Americans don't give two shits what Europeans think of us? Each email someone gets from some arrogant Brit telling us why to NOT vote for George Bush is going to backfire, you stupid, yellow-toothed pansies ... I don't give a rat's ass if our election is going to have an effect on your worthless little life. I really don't. If you want to have a meaningful election in your crappy little island full of shitty food and yellow teeth, then maybe you should try not to sell your sovereignty out to Brussels and Berlin, dipshit. Oh, yeah - and brush your goddamned teeth, you filthy animals."
Wading River, NY

Please be advised that I have forwarded this to the CIA and FBI.
United States

Ah, America. Full of loving tolerance. Friends of the UN (after all, we created it). Fun-loving neighbors to all. But here's the kicker point, which I think well-meaning Brits should have considered before beginning their writing campaign:

I just read a hilarious proposal to involve your readership in the upcoming US presidential election. At least, I'm hoping that it is genius satire. Nothing will do more to undermine the Democratic cause in Ohio than having patronising Brits wander around Clark County telling people how to vote. Just, for a second, imagine if the Washington Post sent folks from Ohio to do the same in Oxfordshire. I'm saying this as a Democrat, and as someone who has spent the last few years in the UK. That is, with all due respect. Please, please, be rational, and move slowly away from the self-defeating hubris.
United States

And, also via Empire of Dirt, here's some more Wednesday wackery.