This Is Hardcore

So apparently I need to post more to be exciting. There were some technical difficulties with posting over the past few days, however. Moreover, my computer has some major malfunctions, and I'm not sure how much life is really left in it.

The lyrics to this album : should replace the Bible in Western culture.

My time over the past week has been divided between the virtual world of decadence, Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, and the real one, Atlantic City.



This weekend I lost 145 dollars playing card games that must have been harder than I thought. After opening a hope-renewing fortune cookie and getting a "Chinese" massage, I put ten dollars on the Red square in Roulette, and proceeded to turn that ten dollars into 163 big sexy dollars, recouping my earlier loss.

Then I spent more than 110 dollars at the nudie bar. Thirty of that was me donating to the birthday boy's lapdance fund, because I felt bad for his loss of 400 bucks at Blackjack. I am so nice.

Even though I do wonder about the morality of all of the above, I think my message of "Fuck you, moral minority," will echo the world over for weeks to come. More importantly, though, I was able to see street names from Monopoly in person, and beat the ensuing jokes to death, annoying everyone I was with.

So there you have it, I've gone all 'diary' on yo' ass.

The globe cries, America says "Fuck you, pussies!"

There seems to be a good deal of sentiment on both sides of the post-election fervor (and yes, 'libertarian' is a side) that is downplaying or trying to assuage the fear and depression in those of us who voted Kerry.

"Downplaying" is actually a very nice way of describing the "Lost respectfully and shut up you crybabies" attitude of the Republicans, who of course would do the same.

And as you can see from this post, saying "Well Bush will probably be kept in check this time around, even though he will control all branches of government and democracy is in ruins" doesn't quite work to 'assuage' me.

What's implicit in both of these points of view is that this is just an election like any other, and not the "most important election of my lifetime" as Kerry put it. Meanwhile, the Daily Mirror in the UK says "How can 59,054,087 be so dumb!" and the French TV satellite feed we get in my house has been on live since lastnight trying to decipher what the hell is going on. My friend at JMU who is French tells me "the whole world is down" and "this is pretty much the worst thing that could happen for the world." Many believe a terrorist attack is a given, now (11.9?) and the European Union has interpreted this as a reason to accelerate their own militarization.

My mother saw her T.A. crying today and asked "Why are you crying? You're from France, anyway." She replied, "I'm a citizen of the world, too."

Pessimism and negativity are easy traps to fall into and should be avoided and called out, but sometimes you have to be realistic. Somehow this type of talk doesn't strike me as "whining" or "hyperbole."

The European Dream

So 5 people I know have told me over IM today that they voted for Bush. Many times they "beat around the Bush" (pun!) before I got the information out of them; I guess I would be embarassed to if I voted for Bush. By the way, even more people I know voted for Badnarik (Libertarian) which isn't much better, but I won't get into that here.

Meanwhile, I read this article in the Washington Post over the weekend. It's worth getting a free account for, but the gist of it is that Europe is doing much better than the United States socially (as always), economically (this is new), and culturally (of course). So it becomes tougher and tougher to justify remaining in the States where I have no job, no future, and less and less contact with friends. However, the election isn't over yet tonight, so I may not be forced into any decisions yet. I do agree with Robin Quivers, though, in thinking that a second Bush term would take this country into a cultural and economic territory that I do not want to participate in.

Not to mention living amongst people (they're not just in the deep South apparently), that approve of our war criminal President. Please please please please please win tonight John Kerry!!!!