And then he tried to peck the wallet out of my shorts...

For those that are sick of the political that I realize I've focused on far too often recently, I offer the following.

Earlier today we took Maya to her 2nd lifetime concert. Justin Roberts @ the Moore Theatre where she saw Dan Zanes last Spring. Justin isn't especially overwhelming. He'd never be called the Rolling Stones in contrast to the Beatles for kids tag that might be applied to Dan Zanes. But he can play quirky songs with a rockin' edge. The half-filled Moore was largely entertained for the 75-minute set. Maya was be jammin'. But, in the most telling moment of the entire show - when Justin Roberts and his entirely fun supporting cast of "Not Ready for Naptime Players" came back out for a single-song encore...Maya asked when Dan Zanes was going to play. Getting compared to a different artist is never fair. Gawd knows I've heard it far too often whenever Brett Favre gets brought up in reference to my high school football career. Regardless, I've give Justin Roberts a solid B rating for the show. Now if only Dan Zanes would come through Seattle before next April.

There are plenty more Maya stories that might be of interest, but I'm still fixated on one freakish moment yesterday when I was prepping to run around Green Lake. For those that don't know of what I speak, Green Lake is an urban oasis for Seattlites that all of us occasionally run/walk/bike around. Yesterday was a particularly clear yet brisk Fall morning. With a full moon sinking over the Western horizon. I dropped Maya off for her morning session with the Lutherans early with the not entirely unitentional motive of getting a run in around the Lake before things got busy. Everything was going according to plan - I parked in the half-filled lot that's usually the busiest, stretched, and got the iPod set with a few fresh distractions. And then I walked toward the trail. And got dive-bombed by a rogue crow that "cawed!" loudly as he/she hit me just below the chin. No blood. No rabies (hopefully). But how screwy is that? Who, I ask you, has ever been more of a defender of the birds? Well, maybe Robert Kennedy Jr. Or pirates. Still, I haven't been able to look at our feathered "friends" the same way since. I hate to be alarmist. But be afraid, America. We've done something wrong and "they" know it. Remember, you heard it here first.

Hope your own conspiracies deal entirely with college football today. Rock on.

Or about the price of a used Hummer

A few tidbits of scary news caught my eye this morning.

USA Today breaks down a Congressional Budget Office report that does the long-term estimate on the cost of the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Hold onto your hat - $2.4 Trillion. The Bushies are already calling bullshite on any mention of the report. But with the latest fiscal year request of $196 Billion for borrowed cash and the pre-war Bushie estimates of around $50 Billion TOTAL, I'm expect that two and a half TRILLION is probably nearing the actual mark. By the way, that works out to $8K for each and every American. Even the rich ones.

All the smoke over Blackwater USA's cowboy attitude is obviously indicative of lots more fire there (sorry for the unfortunate metaphor given all the scariness in Southern California). In a story that will quickly dissipate, the State Department has $4 Billion in annual contracts with them and 16 other private mercenary companies. And our people under Condi @ State have 17 people overseeing the contracts, or an average of over $230 Million per person. Sound fiscally responsible? I don't think so either.

Mitt Romney picked up a telling endorsement - Bob Jones III of the infamous Bob Jones University. So a Mormon is now palatable to the outer fringe of American evangelicals. Proving that he too is a uniter, not a divider.

Hope your own news perusing focuses mainly on the start of the World Series today. Rock on.

The Line

I'll start out obvious today - we live in an age ripe for political satire. Rank hypocrises fly by all of us like so many roadside billboards. Yet I've always expected that there was a dividing line. That line runs between those trying to manipulate our electoral system (the Parties' apparatchiks) and those making fun of manipulating our electoral system (everyone else). Weh-eh-eh-ell...the Florida Democratic Party crosses over that line by supporting a particularly hilarious satire site that went live today - DraftKatherineHarris.com. It features YouTube clips of past compilations of her somewhat obvious crimes. It offers some of the cheesecake that makes Kat so eternally delish. But, I must admit, it goes somewhere that I don't think either Party should go. If the people running the campaigns become as snarky and cynical as the brilliance behind our Nation's best satirists, we've stepped over that line a stride too far. Judge for yourself.



Hope your own lines are uncrossed today. Rock on.

UPDATE: I just saw last night's "Colbert Report" and he used "the line" as a joke to define the silliness surrounding his fake campaign for Prezidunt. So neither of us stole it. As far as I know.

Let's all please agree to stop calling it a "bully pulpit" for the next, oh, 15 months or so, mm'kay?

Maya's sick and has been so for a few days. Discomfort on the level of a Larry Craig interview. But there are a few nuggets that I need to weigh in on before all the highly-paid pundits steal my thunder.

Sam Brownback's dropping out of the GOP race. So all the Brownbackers will now presumably become Huckabees. Ah, poetry.

The House failed to override Dubya's SCHIP veto by a handful of votes. Somewhere right now, Rahm Emanuel is toasting the future of his Party with Snidley Whiplash-like glee. Meanwhile, millions of kids are suffering. After a few days of seeing how much a child can suffer with exceptional healthcare, I feel more than ever that we as a Nation don't know shite about this issue any longer.

Dubya's invocation of "World War III" as a boogeyman during yesterday's press conference will, in my estimation, be one of his most quoted banana peels from this era of incompetence. To even bring it up from his self-proclaimed "bully pulpit" indicates how little he knows about his job. After nearly 7 years on the job. If he was a teacher, he'd have hit the bricks by the final bell yesterday. Instead, we've got 15 remaining months of this goober.

Seattle was warned that a big windstorm was bearing down on us today. It veered and it now appears that British Columbia might soon be leveled. Which is a drag, because I still hadn't made it up to Whistler.

Hope your own hatches are battened today. Rock on.

Maya gets close to what I could only assume was the tamest lion at the Woodland Park Zoo.

Maya gets close to what I could only assume was the tamest lion at the Woodland Park Zoo.
Originally uploaded by emaggie

Maya gives her new neighborhood's park some bouncy love.

Maya gives her new neighborhood's park some bouncy love.
Originally uploaded by emaggie

Maya practices for her audition for the remake of Pippi Longstocking.

Maya practices for her audition for the remake of Pippi Longstocking.
Originally uploaded by emaggie

"Yea, maybe you're right Daddy. There might be a few hairs on the back."

"Yea, maybe you're right Daddy. There might be a few hairs on the back."
Originally uploaded by emaggie

"Seriously, Mommy. Ron Paul makes a lot of sense for a nutty dude."

"Seriously, Mommy. Ron Paul makes a lot of sense for a nutty dude."
Originally uploaded by emaggie

Get 'em started young...

Get 'em started young...
Originally uploaded by emaggie

Maya's primary yard duty is dumping the mushrooms in the composting bin.

Maya's primary yard duty is dumping the mushrooms in the composting bin.
Originally uploaded by emaggie

Maya checks out one of the umpteen cameras her Dad has trashed in days past.

Maya checks out one of the umpteen cameras her Dad has trashed in days past.
Originally uploaded by emaggie

After our most recent unfortunate camera incident during a playdate with friends in Minneapolis, I've once again made a visit to Best Buy to get a replacement. Since I'm working my way through the entire field, this one's a Canon. My initial reaction is conditional love. Expect many more shots over the next few weeks as we test it. Hope your own drops are all lemon today. Rock on

Throwing immense piles of elephant poop

Last night's GOP debate was atrociously lame. While too many are focused on the internecine sparring, the tipping point moment was Mitt Romney saying that a President would need to "sit down with his lawyers" to determine if a pre-emptive attack on Iran was doable. Ahem. Ron Paul went apeshite and will surely see his already crazed internuts send cash by the bushels in response. Everyone else just looked horrible both before and after. Rudy Guiliani has the scariest worldview imaginable - he must be having marital problems. Again. Fred Thompson has as much of a chance of becoming President as David Spade. Duncan Hunter and Tom Tancredo both have to be gay given the Larry Craigness of their vitriolic nonsense. Sam Brownback and Mike Huckabee have the dumbest names in the history of the Republic. If any of these maniacs are our next President, we're all moving to Canada.

Hope your own debates are about chicken vs. fish today. Rock on.

Bowling for Crandon

It's so typical that it barely makes the front-pages of America anymore - a killing spree in a small town due to some sort of hothead snapping like a treebranch in a light wind. But the massacre of 6 people and the killing of the cop who murdered them over a stupid argument surely caught my attention. Because it occurred in a small town in Northern Wisconsin much like the one I grew up in. Crandon, Wisconsin. Just outside Rhinelander on Highway 8. Full of people that live to hunt and fish and snowmobile and cheer for the Packers. In the early morning hours after the Homecoming game and dance, a jilted boyfriend got insulted by an ex-girlfriend and the friends she had over for pizza and movies. He went back to his car and grabbed this gun.



Then he killed everyone in the room except one who was critically wounded. The shooter was a 20-year-old off-duty cop. The town is devastated. And the Nation shrugs. There's a GOP debate in Michigan tonight. Do you think anyone's going to ask that field of gun nuts to comment? Me neither.

Hope your own weapons are locked not loaded today. Rock on.

Without realizing - shame on all of us.

Here's a hand grenade - the piece on the Bush Administration's torture policy in today's NYTimes cuts to the existential core question of our Nation's survival. Read it. Dubya has loved to defend his actions over the last few years by saying some retard version of "history will decide." Well, this smells an awful lot like history. Even if you don't give a rat's arse about civil liberties or if the nuances wash over you like so much simulated drowning, it is chilling. I'll sum it up for those that can't be bothered by the itemized dissembling of our core values about human liberty. The Bushies believe that torture can be defined to allow for the shite-beating of people we capture in foreign lands. Head slapping, naked exposure to freezing temperatures and simulated drowning are not torture. At least if it occurs off American soil. This piece is chock full of the most astonishing crap since the last season of anything Paris Hilton was associated with. But the stunning asides - John Yoo being known as "Dr. Yes" within the Justice Department, James Comey calling out David Addington as the nefarious bastard that he surely is, Janet Ashcroft sticking out her tongue at Fredo Gonzales and Andrew "Lowest Possible" Card as they left her husband's hospital bedside? Frickin' priceless. This one's gots legs. Bet your last diminished, disgraced dollar on that.

Hope your own national disgraces deal with womens' World Cup soccer today. Rock on.

Looking back...

We've been back in Seattle since Sunday after a weeklong visit to Wisconsin and Minneapolis. Unless you know us well, you probably had little idea of this brief change of locale aside from a few pics that I'd posted. My family's home is Wisconsin's gorgeous Northwoods has a dial-up Intenet connection so I just kind of dropped off the radar for a bit when it came to posting. And our time in Minneapolis was more of a chance to visit old haunts and hang with cherished friends than a time for commentary. So as a means of catching up, I'll give a brief rundown before I get back to my usual brand of snark.

My hometown is within a few miles of the highest point in the State of Wisconsin (Timms Hill, just outside Ogema). Fall always comes early to that part of the State. This year's colors maybe weren't the best ever. But they were so utterly gorgeous that all day long I found myself marvelling at new angles or what seemed to be rapidly changing hues on the rolling horizon lines or the gravel roads that we drove down repeatedly. We spent quality time with Grandma and Grandpa for Maya. We tried to get her excited about the animals to no avail. We saw the land complete its yearly march through the harvest. It was beautiful. Little changes in the land of my youth. I hope you can see that in your own life, no matter the fashion.

Minneapolis surprised me in so many ways. On a long urban hike just before going to the Gophers game Saturday I saw the phenomenal vista that is the new Guthrie Theatre alongside the utterly rejuvenated "Mill District" just West of the rapidly improving mess that is the 35W Bridge Collapse District. Maya got some playdates with the kids of college friends of mine. We used to be so punk rock. Now we're so pleasantly normal and connected to our new hometowns. I see Minneapolis and Seattle as cities cut from the same cloth - vibrant, stylish, somewhat misunderstood places that welcome families, college kids and immigrants alike. Sure, I'm biased as hell. But to all those that showed me a chunk of what I used to know so well in a slightly revised light, thank you.

Hope your own memory lanes are lined with the falling leaves of autumn today. Rock on.