#36 - four more years.

i don't know if you guys have heard about this yet, but there's a presidential election in three days. i tell you what...i am so ready for this election season to be over. tonight mccain is on snl. it's really wearing on me. i used to have tolerance for all the excess negativity baggage that comes with an election season. for the most part, i've held off on discussing the election here, so i'm going to go on for a while in this entry...you've been warned...

as a younger, pluckier man (of 22, 26 & 30...my bday was two weeks too late for the 1992 election) i only voted in one of three presidential elections, in 2004, believing that in 1996 & 2000, i didn't need to vote because the presidential election was easily going solidly democrat in massachusetts, where i lived at the time. local elections & issues? yeah, for some reason i didn't think about those.

i first registered with the green party & when i got to the polls on election night in 2004, i discovered that there was no green candidate on the ny ballot. i'd just sort of assumed that david cobb would be on the ballot, but nope...as a result, nader got my vote & when i had to go to the dmv to get a new license after being mugged the following february, i changed my party affiliation to independent...or so i thought. as i discovered when i went to renew my license earlier this year, i had actually chosen to become a member of the independence party. oops. now i'm an independent.

this election season, the degree to which people believe the following things astounds me:

- that barack obama is a muslim because his father came from kenya & his middle name is hussein. kenya is 78% christian, according to the c.i.a.. although the name hussein has prominence in shiite faith, barack shared the middle name with his father, who was an atheist. obama belongs to a church, for christ's sake! i'm a confirmed catholic & i don't even belong to a church. my middle name is richard...does this make me a crook? don't even get me started on the idea that barack obama isn't a u.s. citizen. i'm sure plenty of army brats have ties to just as many countries as obama & that doesn't make them less of a u.s. citizen.

- that this matters. muslim ≠ terrorist, folks. all religions have their terrorists.

- that acorn is intentionally registering "illegal voters." acorn's role is to try to get as many people to the polls as possible. is it their fault if a member of acorn, driven by voter registration goals, registers a potential voter & that potential voter has already been approached by someone else on the street a few weeks earlier & they decide to register a second time just to make sure they're actually registered? from what i've heard in reports, these registrations are often sent in flagged by acorn as potential invalid registrations anyhow.

- that this matters. unless any of these people go to the polls twice & vote, risking a $10K fine and five years in prison, it has no effect on the outcome of the election...zero.

- no hillary clinton = sarah palin. i mean, really, ladies? are you serious? i think hillary clinton is up there among the most skilled politicians of recent time, but sarah palin? is this really the woman you want to represent america as the first female elected to the white house? you would give up your right to choose to support her? i can think of 1,000 women who, from a feminist perspective, i would want to hold that distinction before sarah palin...i'd even put her behind maria shriver. at least maria has experience as a journalist, is married to a republican governor of one of the world's top ten-largest economies & is a kennedy.

- that barack obama = socialism. barack obama's definitely an advocate of spreading the wealth through social programs, in an effort to make more people's lives better. that's just his style of politics. some people don't want government to have that role. that's cool, although it's baffling to me that there are people who are christians who won't vote for obama. last i checked, doing whatever possible to benefit the greater good (i.e. spreading the wealth to ensure people have food, shelter, education, a better life, etc.) was part of jesus's teachings, but i haven't been to church in a while, so that may have changed.

- that sarah palin ≠ socialism. last i checked, one of her claims to fame was that as governor of alaska, she helped get every alaskan citizen an additional $1200 rebate, spreading the wealth from oil profits. i may have got a c in my college economics class, but that sounds somewhat like socialism to me.

on the flip side, i'm sure there are accusations that are being made by the obama camp about mccain/palin that are way off-base (hey, remember joe biden? what ever happened to that guy?), but since i'm more liberal leaning, i haven't paid attention to those as much & therefore can't speak to them. either way, when i go to the polls on tuesday, neither mccain or obama will get my vote. in fact, i'm probably going green...that way, i'm supporting a candidate who's both black & female, which makes me totally progressive & revolutionary. luckily, the green party is actually on the ny ballot this year.

i will say this about the 2008 presidential election--it's gotten people amp'd about politics again. that'll come in real handy if mccain happens to steal the election & folks across the country decide to riot. if that does happen, let's keep that energy up, people! democracy rules!

#36 - four more years.

snack: pizza bagels
drink: dogfish head 90 minute i.p.a.

snack time tonight is a pair of pizza bagels, made with thomas' whole wheat bagels, some francesco rinaldi mushroom, pepper & onion sauce and borden six-cheese italian blend. that means mozzarella, provolone, asiago, parmesan, romano & fontina cheeses! i don't even know what fontina is! how exotic of me, right?

i've had many a pizza bagel in my time. they were an easy pop-it-in-the-toaster oven snack back in high school & college & have been for most of the second half of my life save a brief five-year-or-so hiatus that ended a few months back. english muffin substitutions are always acceptable for this snack. recently, i have this thing where the pizza bagel can not cross my lips without a pound of crushed red pepper sprinkled on top. it tastes like burning.

my beer accompaniment, the dogfish head 90 minute i.p.a., was voted the winner of the realbeer.com "battle of the beers" contest three years in a row, from 2003-2005. i can't tell if they even give out this award any more. for all i know, dogfish probably broke it or something. i guess that's what happens when you let someone win three times in a row. regardless, the people voted (via the internet) for their favorite beer & their voice was heard, loud & clear. but seriously, the beer is really good...& the descriptions of the beers on the website have me wicked excited & i'm now obsessed with the idea that i need to go to rehobeth beach, delaware to the brewery ASAP. anyone up for a road trip? under an obama presidency, gas prices will magically drop even more & we'll actually be able to afford it, due to pagan islamic magic! yay, magic!

#35 - weenie howla.

i was at the local better-than-average for my area grocery store earlier this evening purchasing a lil' snack & couple of frosty beverages for a night of chillin' at my apartment. when i got to the beer section there were two girls from the neighborhood there, picking out a six-pack for the night. i grabbed my beers & snack & got behind them in line at the register. the guy behind the counter, who was probably in his mid-to-late twenties, was flirting with the girls, offering them halloween candy from the festive pale white bucket at the end of the register.

they left with a goodbye & as soon as they were on the other side of the sliding doors, he turned to me, smiled & said, "man, there are tons of hotties out tonight," to which i replied, "i bet the candy helps, huh?" the sad thing is that both of our statements are true.

for me, this scenario illustrates that which, as an adult with no kids, makes me both hate & love halloween. on halloween, adults do & get away with the stupidest of things.

females: a majority of the women (at least in nyc) dress up in the sluttiest outfits possible. as long as you are wearing a normally inappropriate amount of makeup & all black & you slap on a pair of cat ears/devil horns, you have a costume...but why stop there? there are a wide range of sexy costumes that you can wear, from a sexy cave woman to a sexy nurse to a sexy cop to a sexy sarah palin, which is basically a u.s. flag bikini with glasses & a ms alaska sash (hunting rifle not included). unfortunately, the costume's only available in up to size a 10, so sorry ladies who are over that size. apparently it's not possible for you to be sexy and/or the vice president.

males: this is your night to act like a jackass, especially to women, who will be flocking to you for the first time since sometime around last halloween because, well, girls love hugging and/or having their picture taken with chewbacca. if you're lucky, you might get to grab a boob or something. too bad your hoglike sweating inside the chewbacca suit has made you as moist as a gym towel...my halloween hero...the office's jim halpert, who in this week's episode, went as "dave."

i can't wait for the day to come when i might have a child of my own to take out trick or treating & subdue my hatred for halloween...& that'll be fine, because halloween is for kids.

#35 - weenie howla.

snack: cheddar beer flavor kettle chips
drink: southern tier brewing co harvest ale / brooklyn brewing co oktoberfest

you'd expect that since it's halloween, i'd be snacking on some sort of candy or treat, but nope...i decided to go with a bag of chips & a bag of chips that have the word "beer" in the flavor to boot--cheddar beer flavor kettle chips. they're pretty tasty overall. since they're kettle chips, they're nice & crunchy. the flavor's akin to cheddar flavored tato skins. you know the ones. the ones with baked potato appeal, cause they're made with potatoes & skins that are real. they're no longer made by keebler (who is now owned by the kellogg co) & are now made by the inventure group & also marketed as a t.g.i.friday's snack. i don't really taste the beer in these kettle chips, but that's okay, because i have two actual beers right here.

the first beer is from southern tier brewing co, out of lakewood, ny, which is about an hour & 45 min down route 90 from buffalo. it's an extra special bitter hoppy beer, but not too much so. enjoyable enough. the second is a brooklyn brewing co oktoberfest. there was a time when i was actually excited by brooklyn brewing co, but as happened with my former favorite local beers before brooklyn--harpoon & sam adams--i've drank so many of them over the years that they've lost their luster...seems like a theme, doesn't it?

in attempting to close, i'd like to draw a desperate parallel between my feelings toward brooklyn beers & what happened with me & halloween...they've both lost their luster. end transmission.

#31 - asian rim of terror.

please note that for the duration of this entry, all uses & offshoots of the word terror should probably have quotes around them. you can thank dubya for that.

hey, remember his 2002 state of the union address? it was his first one, four months after 911, the one where he took occasion to throw down the gauntlet to iraq, iran & north korea. AXIS OF EVIL BITCHES!!! Y'ALL ARE GOING ON THE TERROR LIST!!!

we all know what happened to iraq & well, if w just had a little more time, he'd get to iran (fingers crossed for mick & the pale in a few weeks! maybe mccain can co-opt more beach boys songs for the cause!). as for north korea, when we began dragging our feet again about removing them from the terror list & began trying to change our negotiated terms, they raised a stink that eventually led to them deploying missiles to their west coast last thursday. as a result, we up & took em off the terror list two days later, just before your beloved college football squads took the field for their saturday competitions.

you see, back to june, north korea very publicly destroyed a water cooling tower at their nuclear facility in yongbyon & in exchange, it was expected that they'd be taken off our terror list, leaving iran as the lone remainder in the axis. you may remember that in recent years, we removed libya from the list after they made "amends" for some of their terrorist actions, which included blowing up a pan am flight over scotland.

as for north korea, they kidnapped anywhere from 16-80 japanese citizens in the late 70s & early 80s & used them to teach north korean spies how to be japanese. in 2002, after denying for a long time that they had done so, north korea eventually admitted to & apologized for kidnapping 13 japanese. they've abducted south korean citizens as well & their more notable act of terror was in 1987, when north korean agents blew up a korean air flight, the largest act of terror ever against south korea. pretty sure they never had to apologize for that though...& then there's the whole nuclear proliferation thing.

...so north korea, congrats. you're off the list. that's how it works round here. themz dubya rules.

#31 - asian rim of terror.
snack: newton's naturals wasabi blazing peas
drink: 22 oz. sapporo reserve

whew, boy do i love wasabi peas. these ones are made in malaysia, which means they might have been made with love by a 10-year old...although "newton's naturals" does seem like a pretty harmless company, at least in name, so i should probably avoid the needless slander. wasabi peas are awesome at clearing you up. i need to learn how to apply moderation to them though. many a time, i've found myself continuing to shove pea after pea into my mouth even though i'm past the point where my eyes & nose are leaking in unison.

luckily, i have a tall can of sapporo reserve to wash them down with. the sapporo can & its inordinate weightiness intrigues me to no end. it makes it so that you think there's a bunch more beer left down there in the can & then out of nowhere, you've got no more beer, sucker. sapporo was the first japanese beer i ever tried, back in my freshman year of college, when a few of us discovered a sushi restaurant in kenmore square that would serve us plucky 18 & 19 year olds. it was also the first time i tried sushi. it's probably a mall now. i mean, kenmore's pretty much one big mall now anyhow.

#26 - shawn's fantastical hoighty toighty ice cream sandwich.

...so i'm watching the emmy awards tonight on abc & it's a three-hour show, so that means tons of commercials & of course, that means tons of commercials for abc's fall lineup. that means tons of commercials for a lineup that includes samantha who?, ugly betty, desperate housewives, boston legal, brothers & sisters, eli stone, dirty sexy money, life on mars, grey's anatomy/private practice and pushing daisies...oh, and the crappy reality tv shows.

the best part about the ads for these shows is that each commercial ends with the note that next week is, "national stay at home week," an occasion created & announced by abc's pr team about a month back. what this means is that with tomorrow being the start of fall, we should avoid the outdoors at all costs & plop our asses down on the couch for the next week to absorb the abundant wonders of abc's fantastic fall lineup.

if you choose to not celebrate national stay at home week, you're disobeying a national holiday & not only would that make you a communist, but christina applegate would probably never talk to you again. samantha who? sassy christina applegate, that's who!

#26 - shawn's fantastical hoighty toighty ice cream sandwich.
snack: bierkraft's dark chocolate gelato & cherry blondie
drink: lakefront cherry lager beer

with the emmys, i'm enjoying a dark chocolate gelato & cherry blondie from bierkraft, the local yummy beer & cheese & gourmet food shop. a few weeks back, i went there to buy some beer & on the way in, noticed a sign they had posted on the door that suggested pairing their chocolate chip ice cream sandwich with a smuttynose old brown dog ale. i passed on that particular occasion, but filed it away for later.

the other night, i decided to go back & pick up the combo. i got the smuttynose but when i saw the ice cream sandwiches in the freezer, the dark chocolate gelato & cherry blondie made getting that pathetic chocolate chip one a non-option. at the register, i discovered i was purchasing a $5 ice cream sandwich. hoighty toighty. that night, i totally drank the smuttynose & then the freezer door got left open for a couple hours at some point during the evening, so the ice cream sandwich got a little thawed/melted. undeterred, i went back to bierkraft today & picked up the lakefront cherry lager to pair with it.

they're both really tasty. the ice cream sandwich itself is so rich & tasty & filling that it's a two-sitting ice cream sandwich...it'd better be for $5! as for the beer, it's brewed with wisconsin cherries, which i assume are good based solely on their work in the field of dairy.

in closing, yay mad men yay!...and people sure do love tina fey, huh? "the elaine may of our time," according to alec baldwin's speech...which means she has both a mikey & nickey and an ishtar in her. people probably love tina so durn much because she's wittier than any other female on earth & a verifiable stone. cold. fox. seriously, i'd give my left...

#16 - billions served.

here's what i love about the olympics...& by saying "love" & "olympics" in the same sentence, i am not implying that i love the olympics. i hardly ever watch them really. actually, now that i think it through, i'm using "love" in a sarcastic manner. like, "wow, i love your haircut a wicked lot. seriously."

so what i love about the olympics is the over-the-top melodrama & the stories that the announcers use to enhance it. friday night's opening ceremonies were cool visually & all but incomplete without the announcers' calm description of tai chi (not an olympic sport, btw) or quick mention during the parade of nations of the recent assassination attempt on the president of maldives, which was thwarted by a boy scout...son probably got a mess o' badges for that. on an announcer-related note, can we please force tim mccarver to retire? in conclusion, without the announcers' brilliant words, the games would be incomplete. once again...sarcastic.

i suppose i could have shut off my tv & not watched the olympics at all but the important fact here is i that didn't. china & its billion citizens were trying REALLY HARD to impress me & make me forget about all the bad things the chinese government has done in the past, so i stuck around. i mean, you wouldn't walk out on your brat niece's big flute recital no matter how many times she's peed on your carpet & no matter how much the rug ties the room together, would you?...so while i watched "china through the ages" & the announcement of for the most part, every country in the world, i passed the time with a "tasty" snack & drink pairing...

#16 - billions served.

snack: pringles extreme screamin' dill pickle
drink: samuel smith organic cider

when i was purchasing the evening's snack & drink pairing, i grabbed the items at different stores & it's safe to say that i was so drawn to their individual characteristics that i gave no thought to their to their combined tastes. zero.

dill pickle & apple.

on an individual level, the dill pickle pringle concept is quite comical. they've made them a part of their "extreme" series, which also includes kickin' cheddar & blazin' buffalo wing. from these flavor names, i instantly deduced that in order to be extreme, you must drop your g's. beyond that, i'm confused as to how the dill pickle became an extreme item & for that matter, why the particular dill pickles used in the making of these chips are screamin'. am i to believe that the dill pickles used in the making of these chips are akin to barreling down the face of a mountain bellowing into the wind with excitement? even though these chips are tasty & at times overpowering, i'm skeptical that there is or ever will be anything extreme about a pickle. prove me wrong, vlasic. prove me wrong.

as for the samuel smith organic cider, i love everything i've ever tried by good ol' sammy & his sons. i love the oatmeal stout, the nut brown lager, the taddy porter...all of them. i would even love their organic cherry fruit beer if they let me...& told me where i could locate said beer. if wikipedia can be believed (& we all know it can), in addition to being the oldest brewery in yorkshire, in the past, samuel smith brewery has removed its logo from pubs & in pubs that it owns, no "large-corporation spirits" are served. those crazy crazy u.k. people with their nutty socialist economic beliefs. it's definitely no capitalism, i tell ya! luckily for us, it's no communism either.