Only here would that happen.

I met up with a friend of mind from England who is also attending this convention (the Audio Engineering Society, if you find that information interesting) and we managed to find the one single restaurant in San Francisco that serves shitty food. It's expensive, the portions are large, and it all sucks. The milkshakes were pretty good, though, so there's a bright side.

After I dropped him off at the flat he's staying at, I came back to the hotel, and decided I'd go for a quick walk around the 'hood, and see what's what. While it's true that I have achieved a certain measure of success, the area around this hotel is above my pay grade, to be sure. Hermes. Bulgari. Prada. Gucci. Etc. Etc. One thing I noticed on my walk is there is obviously a club around here that is entirely populated with really, really wealthy Chinese people, as they were all on the way to it. I didn't actually see the club itself, but I have a mental image that looks roughly like the closing scenes in "Big Trouble In Little China," minus Kurt Russell. I will note for the record that Chinese people can wear Prada with a certain carelessness that actually makes Prada look pretty cool. When white people wear Prada, they generally look (and act) like fucking douches.

Anyhow, I'm wiped out. Convention tomorrow, home on Sunday in time for Entourage.

Seeing how the Senate managed to git 'r dun, I'm intrigued to see exactly how much lipstick the House will put on this pig to accomplish the same thing. Once again, my Senator (Ron Wyden) voted "nay," and for that he's the business. My other senator, the soon-to-be-voted-in-to-oblivion shyster Gordon Smith, voted "aye" and he used the fact that he was able to attach a $3.3B earmark to subsidize cutting down trees in Oregon as a justification.

This fucking stupidity is just rampant.

In other news, you might recall that I mentioned a couple months ago that Bank Of America had cancelled our credit cards with that company; they used some bizarre "you have a history of late payments" as justification, which our credit report from any of the three agencies will prove is simply not true. The simple fact of the matter is that we hadn't used them in months (years?) and BOA was tightening their credit, and they sent us the same bullshit form letter they sent to everyone else they did this to. Well, today I get a letter from BOA that I pre-qualify for a $30K line of credit. Huh. Fancy that.

I also got two pre-approved credit card offers from Washington Mutual in my mailbox today.

These people are fucking insane.

I can't speak for your representative, but mine (Peter DiFazio, a democrat, natch) voted against. My man.

I will say that I don't think either candidate fully took advantage of the format, but it did benefit Obama's more relaxed, gentlemanly style. Obviously, I'm not an "undecided voter," whatever the hell that is, and I just want to see my guy do well. Frankly, he could have done far, far worse, considering.

In other news, for some reason there is a recent resurgence of SMG sales in actual record stores. We have no idea why, but the whole SMG catalog on Positron has literally been flying off the shelf in the old-fashioned plastic disc form. Go figure. I jokingly told Elle this morning that I should take advantage of the sudden upswing and release an SMG E.P.

The funny thing is that waaaaaaay back in the mists of time, circa July 11th, 2008, I posted this wherein I said, in short, we are fucked. And I also said that Jeff Campbell's comment to that post would be a nice touchstone for how woefully misguided his opinions can occasionally (okay, almost always) be. Where's John Steinbeck when you need him? As it turns out, I was the one that was wrong. I was optimistic. And thanks to the wonderful deregulatory spirit of the Clinton administration, coupled with the outright travesty of mismanagement that is the Bush administration, the share of this bailout that my wife and I are responsible for is, at a bare minimum, $4600. And I don't even own a motherfucking house and all my credit cards get paid to $0 every month.

Capitalism can be a real fickle bitch sometimes.

Back from the Great Outdoors, specifically Rabbit Valley in the high desert of Central Oregon. Pitched my tent, hunted for gemstones (the über rare Oregon Sunstone, otherwise known as red labradorite, only found in a 2 square mile area in Rabbit Valley and nowhere else on Earth), ate shitty food, breathed the fresh air of a complete and utter lack of civilization, and reveled in the vibe of being the only human being within at least 20 miles. It was pleasant.

In more immediate news, I'm going camping tomorrow. I haven't been camping in, oh, let's just say 25 years, because that sounds about right. I've spent all summer acquiring the various bits and pieces needed to actually brave the outside without wi-fi and a refrigerator, so tomorrow morning I'm heading out to the Central Oregon desert, whereupon Man v. Nature will commence. With any luck, the 20 hours I actually spend outside won't cause any permanent harm.

As far as I can tell, this woman has two special skills: being shrill and pushing out kids. The former has gained her a good career in politics. The latter, well, one of them is named "Piper," another fucks jocks bareback (perhaps another round of abstinence training is in order there), and that's all I have to say about that.

I actually had hoped as recently as this morning that this was going to be a relatively high-minded campaign with the Republicans matching what the Democrats offered last week and speaking of their stance on various issues. But instead, they trotted out the usual suspects for an endless litany of "I know you are but what am I" bullshit. We can expect the usual swift-boating and "he fathered a black baby" nonsense it seems, rather than an actual debate on the issues of our time.

But that aside, boy do I dislike that woman. I'm not sure how her ability to get the rest of the country to foot the bill so people in Alaska can have the lowest per-capita tax rate in the country applies to a national office, and that's not for me to say anyhow. What I do know is that the Republicans seem to prefer if I vote personality rather than issues, unless those issues are "God, God, Guns, God, God, Guns, 911" and "God." Did you notice that Giuliani ended his speech with the "shining City upon a hill" line. Ever hear that before? You might have if you spent any quality time in a fundamentalist christian school like I did. I find it slightly ironic that the author of that line would have had Giuliani hung for even one of the many sins he's committed according to the Catholic rite, never mind the fact that he would have been hung just for being Catholic. I'm sure that's what the founding fathers hoped to avoid when they put "under god" in the Pledge of Allegiance. (As per Ms. Palin.)

Man, I'm fuming.