Todd Stadler's blog

[untitled #447]

While my parents and I were hiking out at Silver Falls State Park, we met an older man who told us this anecdote:

"I went to Marie Callender's yesterday for lunch and I ordered a bowl of soup and some bread."

"The girl who took my order said, 'Awesome!'"

The man then pointed to the waterfall behind him and said, "This is awesome! Soup and bread, that's not awesome."

I can't wait until I get old so I can be crotchety. It seems like it should be so much fun.

[untitled #446]

In Oregon, as in other states, we have these humorous anti-smoking billboards that parody old Marlboro advertisements.

One of them shows two cowboys riding horses with a beautiful sunset behind them, with the caption "I miss my lung, Bob."

Sometimes, I like to think that it's not the other cowboy named Bob, but the lung, as in "I miss my lung, whose name is Bob."

Ah, humor from the Mary Poppins school.

conspiracy of dunces

More fodder for cynicism is to be found in a New York Times article on Democratic opposition to the clamor for war in Iraq.

[Ted] Kennedy's position ... complicates the task of Mr. Daschle. He and other Democratic leaders had hoped to move the resolution quickly through the Senate to focus on his party's core message highlighting economic distress before the November midterm elections.

Hmm. It all seems so well-coordinated now. By focusing intently on the imminent war in Iraq (don't fool yourself — it's going to happen), the Republicans aren't just distracting us from their apparent ties to the fake energy crisis, corporate collapse due to shady accounting, the stupidity of that giant tax cut, the increasing national deficit, and so on.

No, they're also forcing the Democrats to be complicit in this action. If, as Daschle wants, the Democrats acquiesce and grant Bush eternal power extreme, then they can go about painting themselves as the right-thinking saviors of mankind in time to win the election.

However, in so doing, they are forced to say that Bush is right about this whole Iraq thing, and we get a war that, as with most wars, gives even more popularity (and power — let's not forget power) to the president.

If however, as Kennedy wants, the Democrats struggle and fight this Iraq thing to the bitter end, more pre-election time is spent talking about the Iraq issue to the exclusion of the aforementioned domestic issues.

And the Democrats end up looking very unpatriotic, unamerican, and unconcerned for the obvious fact that Saddam is coming to attack us right now look out he's right behind you!

It's brilliant. The only problem I have is that I generally assume the people running this country are not bright enough for such a scheme (and I'm not being partisan here — I think most politicians and their strategists are pretty dim bulbs, most days).

"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity" and all that.

So it's a choice between the cynicism that it's all a conspiracy or the super-cynicism that people, most notably politicians, are dumb.

Hmm ... the lady or the tiger?

bulletproof with butterfly wings

So Defense Secretary Rumsfeld has "bulletproof" evidence that ties Iraq to Al Qaeda. That evidence, however, is "not beyond a reasonable doubt".

Man, bulletproof isn't what it used to be. Maybe he should call his evidence "water resistant".

Either way, I doubt we'll ever get to hear the evidence. But I trust that, whatever it is, it's worth killing several thousand people over. I mean, that's not so many people if we turn out to be wrong.

Another stellar quote from the linked article: "If [Saddam]'s on the run, he's not governing Iraq."

That's just great. Are we planning on attacking Iraq, only to have Saddam escape us once again?

Because, you know, having the whole exiled leader who has possibly died and therefore is possibly a martyr but either way has grown in myth and influence has been nothing short of a stellar strategy in dealing with Al Qaeda, who it should be noted, we are apparently no longer so concerned with rooting out and dismantling.

It's not like we started bombing Afghanistan with the explicit intent of getting them to give up bin Laden, I mean.

Yikes. Such bald cynicism. I need a vacation from the news. Let me know if we change any regimes while I'm gone.

[untitled #445]

The folks at USBank apparently pride themselves on their service, which comes with a five (!) star guarantee, but I'm not sure any of those stars explains why the teller (upon noticing that I had an account with First Tech Credit Union) decided to ask me for advice on formatting the partitions on his hard drive at home. Nor why his question involved explaining that his friend, who had given him a pirated copy of Windows 2000, died from an electrical shock in a "science experiment gone wrong", noting that "ten thousands volts will do that to you."

I think they should offer a six star guarantee, with the sixth point being "You will be able to conduct your money transactions without the teller making incorrect assumptions of your technical knowledge or telling you sad stories you really didn't ask for."

[untitled #444]

Hooray for half- ... um, -heartedness!

Tired of the previous hack wherein I displayed every blessed thought I'd posted, I have have come up with a slightly more advanced hack by creating a hastily-written archive for the thoughts.

I would do more, but my parents are in town this weekend, there's a Sleater-Kinney concert, I haven't seen enough of my girlfriend, I'm leaving for Italy soon, and darn it all, I'm tired.

Speaking of half-finished hacks, you can also check out my "we need something up as soon as possible, but (hopefully) Todd will go back and make it nicer later" job over at www.portlandrevels.org. Because it's half-there.

[untitled #443]

Overheard in the office:

"Nobody told me they were shooting a movie in front of my house."

"Oh! You should take the kitties down to the set and let them see!"

What is that person's deal with kitties, anyhow?

[untitled #442]

Mere days are left before the Italy trip.

At this same point before my first trip to Europe, I was frantically running around outside and up and down the stairs in my house in an attempt to break in my newly purchased walking shoes.

But the shoes kept hurting, so I took a different pair, which some kids laughed at in Barcelona, causing me to buy some even nicer shoes, which were recently declared unrepairable.

But this time, I bought my new shoes ahead of time, and they're already broken in.

Incidentally, I first heard of these new shoes from a guy with my name, and only then because I did a search for my name, which led to an blog entry in which my first trip to Europe was mentioned.

It's all rather dizzying, but the upshot is that plans for Italy are going as, um, planned.

Shoes are so important.

[untitled #441]

Huh. a guy from my graduating class at Rice is now the CEO of a company. After having been a vice president elsewhere.

And here I am, what, doing contract web work, not sure if I'll be working past October.

This is the kind of situation that is supposed to get me all in a tizzy, but, really, I'm pretty happy.

But maybe it's the chocolate milk talking.

[untitled #440]

Though this link was e-mailed to me a while back, I am just now getting around to posting it, owing to my extreme laziness or busy-tude.

Regardless, this delay ensures that the meme has run its course, and that most of you have seen it. Those that have not, know that you are on the low end of the internet forwarding chain.

It is for the latter that I present: "The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins", an unfortunate collision of geek culture and the 1960s.

[untitled #439]

A while back, I got an e-mail from a T.W.I.N.K.I.E.S. Project visitor. The bulk of his message was:

[I am the] Director of Education at Lincoln Children's Museum, a role so lofty I can do this on worktime and justify it with our Mission Statement.

I respect that.

in deep

So in reading an article on a friend's blog, I came across an article on deep linking, the practice of linking to useful content rather than just the front page of a web site.

Apparently (as the article was written only a few months ago), there is still a lot of hubbub over this practice because, what, it bypasses advertising and makes a web site more useful? Who can fathom the mind of a lawyer?

Anyhow, the article above mentions that my hometown newspaper, the Dallas Morning News, is the company in question that hasn't quite grasped how to use the internet.

According to their terms of service (section B.4), links to other pages on the site besides the home page are strictly verboten.

And, of course, I just deep linked, because I'm pretty sure it's legal, and I know that this whole debate is stupid.

If you're scared of people using your web site, with the possibility of not-so-bright folks not realizing when they've left one site for another, then go back to your print outlets. And get a good book on how the web works.

Meanwhile, don't tell anyone at the Dallas Morning News about this site I found the other day that has hundreds of deep links to all sorts of files in the dallasnews.com domain. They'd freak out.

[untitled #438]

I'm wondering if, for my trip to Italy, I should learn useful phrases like "no, I'm not a big fan of Bush's policies, either" or "don't blame me, I didn't vote for him." Or maybe I can just make do with a simple "no, it's a Canadian accent — trust me."

[untitled #437]

In keeping with the next week's theme of going bat-freaking insane with work (freelance web projects, normal work stuff, and preparing for a trip to Italy (my current Italian skills involve communicating my lack of ability to communicate in Italian)), I have reverted to music that once accompanied a similar time of stress and too-much to to do, too little time.

Yes, it's back-to-college music week. And what luck that my early college years were chock full of angsty fare like Pearl Jam and Nirvana (and, um, Ace of Base and the Spin Doctors, but I don't own any of that) which only makes my current struggles seem that much more real.

Right, I need a ten-year old (!) song to make me feel that my staying up until almost dawn for several days in a row is more legit. That's dumb.

Okay, one note about Pearl Jam's song "Glorified G" and then it's back to stupid freelance work. Beeman's friend used to think that the lyrics "glorified version of a pellet gun" were "twenty-five hammers and you know it's true".

That makes me laugh every time. What does "twenty-five hammers even mean? If you're going to hear something wrong, wouldn't you expect it would be something that made more sense?

Also, "glorified version of a pellet gun" is a kind of goofy way of referring to a real gun.

[untitled #436]

Hmm. My alma mater, Rice University, is Seventeen's coolest university. Perhaps things have changed since I was there, but I still have vivid memories of not being able to find anyone to go to dinner with because they were all studying like mad.

Mind you, all the energy that built up from studying so much occasionally let itself out in some interesting ways, but does that make it the coolest?

No, I'm guessing that what pushed them over the "cool barrier" into the "cool[est] zone" was university president Malcolm Gillis, who has asked everyone at Rice to wear "shades" (apparently some sort of coolster lingo for sunglasses), noting that "If people insist on calling us cool, then maybe we should act the part, at least part of the time." Now that's cool!

wolf blitzkrieg

Ooh, look! CNN revamped their webpage. Here are some articles I found worth commenting on.

Let's get cynical! Saddam claims that Bush wants to attack Iraq in order to control its oil supplies.

It's scary to think that I share a cynical point of view with the Iraqi leadership, given that I don't share their propensity for using weapons of mass destruction.

Still, I'll be interested to see how this plays out. Saddam is pulling out all the stops. If the inspectors find something, then Saddam is an idiot. If they don't, then maybe he was just clever in how he hid it.

Either way, we'll likely attack Iraq. But I'm sure we'll drop the bombs in a compassionate way.

...

Reading about yet another round of violence and escalation in Israel and Palestine (just how much is left of that compound, anyhow — a corner?), it occurred to me that there is a lesson to be learned here. And that that lesson will likely go ignored.

Regardless, my thought was that Israel is a nice case study for those who say we can control terrorism through heightening security, diminishing civil liberties if need be.

As I understand it, Israel is a more secure state than America could ever be, barring some wholesale rewriting of the Constitution (not that Bush isn't trying that).

It's a smaller, less ethnically diverse country, which should make it easier to defend and spot potential terrorists. And there seem to be far fewer civil rights, or at least expectations of them, than Americans have. Most citizens seem willing to put up with all sorts of inconveniences to lessen their constant exposure to terrorism.

And yet, Israel experiences terrorism very regularly. Accordingly, it would seem that jacking up security alone will not solve the problem.

But when people (by which I mean "liberals", though not all agree the two are synonymous) suggest that we mitigate terrorism through changing oppressive foreign policies and attempting to improve the lives of would-be terrorists (perhaps by not supporting their undemocratic leaders), they are routinely derided.

Has such a solution ever actually been tried? Sure, we have lots of shoring up to do to increase the security in this country, but that can't ever be enough. Why do we consistently ignore this other option?

Maybe it's because it's better for our oil prices if the people are oppressed by totalitarian, I mean royal, regimes.

Whoops, sorry. Saddam made me type that.

...

Enough of the Middle East. Let's move on to the Far East, to China, where they have found bucktoothed dinosaur fossils.

Now people, I thought the era of such blatant stereotyping was over. Next you're going to tell me the dinosaur also wore thick, black-rimmed glasses.

...

Finally, a vaguely disturbing article about how messed-up our brains are.

My favorite quote: "Our brains are not built the way we think; the inner mind is more bizarrely constructed than we might think".

Chew on that a bit. Why is it that our brains, the things with which we think, think that we should think differently than our brains actually think? If a woodchuck could chuck wood.

And with phrases like "we count on our brains to sort it all out", the article seems to encourage a view wherein there is me, and then there is my brain. I expect my brain to do things, apparently with an organ that is not my brain.

Not that I don't often talk like that myself. But isn't it odd? Do we exist outside of our brain? Apologies for the freshman psychology ponderings, but, well, I never took freshman psychology.

[untitled #435]

Another one from the referral logs. Somebody actually found my site using this "Google mirror", as they call it. [joke about "reverse engineering ha ha"]. When I first went to the page, it was eerie, as if I had slipped onto the Bizarro internet. Anyhow, I haven't thought about spelling my name backwards since, what, high school.

But poking around on the "Google mirror" host site, I found a link to the informative How much is inside?, which puts my little Hershey's Kiss guessing game to shame.

[untitled #434]

There is something happy-making about stopping work on your freelance web project late at night, knowing that not only is it one of the best-looking web pages you've made in a while, but it works in all the browsers on your computer, even those that don't do CSS well. Yes, even with CSS or images turned off, or heck, in a text browser. But as the site is still being developed, this will remain a teasing note of self-congratulation.

[untitled #433]

Today I picked up a book lying around the office, only to find that every page was blank. There was no ink to be found in the book – not even on the cover.

I had discovered the world of bulking dummies – books that are physically identical to the final printed product, but without any printing. They're made for the purposes of determining the physical aspects of the book for dust jackets, packing materials, and so on.

But never mind that. Do you know how eerie it is to find a book with absolutely nothing in it, not even a UPC code or company name? The book seems somehow magical, as if its contents were hidden from the average person's view, or had yet to be conceived of.

And lucky me, I have such a book in my possession, courtesy of the Timber Press art department. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it yet, but it's just a good thing to have in one's possession.

[untitled #432]

My friend Jerry recently returned from a trip back home to Indiana. I enjoyed his encapsulation of the culture there:

Everybody (everybody) has an electric can opener. And when the electric can opener breaks, which they always do, the only sensible thing for a self-respecting Hoosier to do is to go to Target and buy a new one. Duh! Recycling is to be found nowhere, and I only accidentally stumbled on to one of just a handful of organic food stores in the entire state of Indiana, Wild Oats. The TV is always on, and you wouldn't be caught dead without a soft drink in hand on a hot day. Oh, and it's diet, of course!

What's funny is that, as vastly different as this sounds from the culture here in Portland, it's more or less the same culture I grew up with in Richardson, Texas. Mind you, Richardson has come a long way since then. Still ... electric can openers, huh?

[untitled #431]

Urgle ... reading dry documentation standards on four hours of sleep late in the afternoon is not a formula for success.

[untitled #430]

You know, I bet not too many people, on their deathbed, have said, "I wish I had seen Big Top Pee-Wee."

[untitled #429]

Text! Text! Text! Okay, so I got impatient and went ahead and put up this new column, even though I'm not near done with all the code that needs, um, coding.

For instance, there is no way to access archived thoughts, much less link to individual thoughts right now. Accordingly, I kludged the code to show every thought I've typed in so far.

But I was getting tired of hiding all this time-sensitive (not to mention earth-shattering and Pulitzer-Prize-winning) content. I'm really busy right now, and the odds of my getting anything major done on a non-paying project like this one is slim.

So yay for kludges and haste and all those other good things. I'm hoping that subsequent entries in this column aren't as banal as this one.

watch me now

I got a new watch while I was up in Vancouver.

That makes for the second Swatch I've bought in Canada, both of which had alarms on them. In fact, the alarm was why I bought this one, so I'll be sure to wake up at the right time on any train rides across Italy come October (foreshadowing).

Although I have owned many a Swatch since 1985 (making it one of the few brands I am strangely loyal to, especially given the sometimes questionable durability of the plastic bands), this is the first time I have owned a digital watch that I can remember.

Yes, I managed to go through the entire decade of the 80s owning nary a timepiece with a liquid crystal display. Not even a calculator or a Pac-Man watch.

But here's my point: my new Swatch plays this little animation for no good reason when you hold down one of the buttons for a while.

It involves a dog wearing what appears to be a fez. He walks for a bit, then seems to get excited about something, waving his arms. Finally, he urinates on a lamppost, causing it to melt and fall over.

This, to my mind, is why American watches will never be as good as Swiss ones. Forget the precision clockwork mechanisms (what, in a digital watch?), does your watch have a urinating dog on it?

[untitled #428]

Bush to China: "We'll believe your lies (It's the New York Times web site; you know the drill) about the people you want to crush if you believe (Ibid.) our lies (Ibid.) about the people we want to crush".

[untitled #427]

Hey, wow. Friday the 13th two days after September 11th. That can't be good.

[untitled #426]

Okay, just when I was going to send a check off to George Bush to pay for a warhead to knock off Saddam, along comes Tom Tomorrow. Thank goodness. Not only did his most recent comic instill a goodly dose of cynicism in me, but his blog linked me to the following articles:

• A history lesson on the media and justifications for going to war
• A possible immediate application of said lesson (scroll down to the subhead "President misstates 'facts'").

an american celebration!

Tomorrow, as anyone with access to some sort of communication device knows, is September 11th. Much in the same way that July 4th is not merely a date, September 11th seems destined to be an evocative phrase, a concept.

A concept that will, apparently, henceforth be known as Patriot Day. It is perhaps an awkward designation for an awkward day. After all, the reason we remember September 11th has little to do with patriots, as such.

And, all told, I'd really rather not commemorate what happened on September 11th. Lots of other horrible things have happened to masses of people, and by and large we don't celebrate them. Besides, there are all sorts of holidays already on the calendar to celebrate what's good about America. Do we really need this?

But then, this is a nation that also marks its independence on a date that occurred several years before that independence was actually won. Maybe we just like commemorating things.

I can certainly understand a desire to emphasize the good things that have happened in the past year. For some people, that includes an increase in patriotism. However, I find the naming of the day ironically reminiscent of one of the bad things that has happened as a reaction to September 11th.

Furthermore, I can't say that patriotism (and the concept that often acts as its double in America, jingoism) does a whole lot of good. I can't believe that patriotism would have prevented the events September 11th, nor do I believe that it will prevent further problems in America's foreign relations. Quite the contrary. I would argue that only when we get over our petty differences and stop cheering for particular plots of land we just happened to be born on will we make much progress at all. But I am a foolhardy idealist.

Perhaps what set me off was the e-mail, sent by a friend who I'm sure meant well, that I got in the mail today. It asked me to join "everyone in the USA" in driving my car with the headlights on during the day.

Never mind that many cars have daytime running lights that are always on. What I want to know is why someone always tries to organize coordinated activities like this, and why so many people think that they accomplish anything.

It just seems so aggravatingly American – rather than address any problems that may exist, much less any underlying causes, we'll just say "rah rah" for a couple of minutes and go back to doing whatever it was we were doing while we were ignoring our government's actions.

But what does it prove? That Americans forward e-mails like they're told to? That Americans want to prop up the nation's floundering car battery industry by causing people to accidentally leave their lights on in the parking lot? That Americans love doing anything symbolic that doesn't involve long-term change-effecting effort?

If anything, I find the notion insulting precisely because America is a great country capable of doing so much good. Not just symbolic "looks great in the papers" good, but real, world-bettering good.

And if it's that result-oriented good that you desire, then I have an idea.

Rather than driving with your lights on tomorrow, don't drive at all. And not just on September 11th, either. Make a concerted effort to significantly diminish the amount of driving you do. And then pass this idea on to everyone you know. Yes, everyone. Even those without e-mail.

This action, undertaken by even a small chunk of Americans, would result in cleaner environment, fewer traffic accidents and their attendant injuries and fatalities, and as a pleasant side effect would reduce our dependence on other oil-producing countries, not a few of whom sport totalitarian regimes (which often engender terrorism), harbor terrorists (including the majority of those involved in the September 11th events), and support terrorism against other states.

As it's already September 11th on the East Coast as I write this, we haven't got much time, so get the word out. You heard it hear most recently: stop driving your car on September 11th. That's the kind of pre-emptive strike I can rally behind.

P.S. I've heard that everyone in America will also be driving with their headlights off in the evening on September 11th. Pass it on.

P.P.S. I've also heard that anyone who flashes their headlights at a patriotic car with its lights off is either a gang member undergoing an initiation or a terrorist. They should be shot.

b.c. buddies

Julia and I went to Vancouver, BC over the long Labor Day weekend to celebrate the socialist labor movement with our comrades in solidarity up north.

Of course, I'm lying. Barely anyone in America seems to recognize the actual meaning of Labor Day, any more than they do that other bookend to summer, Memorial Day. Or the Fourth of July, really. Isn't every American holiday just an excuse for sales and barbecues?

So we just went to relax and enjoy the dollar coins.

We took Amtrak up to Seattle (unfortunately, trains don't run at the right times to ride all the way to Vancouver from Portland, so we had to bus it from there), and stayed in a hostel, making it the closest thing to a short European trip one could achieve without, say, heading to Europe. And without all those annoying foreign languages!

I liked Vancouver fine, although I don't think I was as impressed by it as my friends had been. But since I don't have much to say about Vancouver, I'll just let some photos tell the stories. And the captions. We can't forget the captions.

[untitled #425]

This morning, my head somehow managed to play selections from Squirrel Nut Zippers' Hot and Philip Glass' Koyaanisqatsi at the same time. You'd be surprised how well some of their themes work together. Really surprised.

[untitled #424]

Am I losing my mind, or just my edge?

The constant onslaught from the Bush administration seeking to prove that we absolutely have to attack Iraq now is making me wonder if there's something to it all.

I mean, it's not just your average bulletheads like Bush and Cheney clamoring for the head of Saddam on a pike. Colin Powell and Tony Blair seem to think it's a good idea, too. Am I naive to think the latter two are anything but cronies of Bush in the Good Ol' Boys' Network?

But don't worry - all is not roses and sunshine here at Cock-a-hoop. I still cast a rather raised eyebrow at the timing of this must-bomb-now push, coming as it does in the weeks before a national election that could shape our country's next years, politically. An election, it should be noted, that seemed to be in the Democrats' favor, what with all the collapsing companies, sour economy, and such.

But you don't hear much about that now that it's all-Iraq, all-the-time. Who's wagging whom?

[untitled #423]

A high school student e-mailed me today with the results of an experiment her class had done involving how Hershey's kisses land when tossed.

The experiment was apparently designed to teach the students about mean, median, and mode, that stalwart troika of high school statistics.

Their teacher, for reasons not clear to me, wanted them to e-mail their results to a "stranger out-of-state", and this student picked me because of my involvement in the T.W.I.N.K.I.E.S. Project.

I was intrigued by the students' results that indicated that Hershey's Kisses land on their base (the flat part) 25% of the time. So I did a thought experiment, reduced variables when possible, and, lacking an actual Hershey's Kiss to measure and observe, guessed a bit.

After a period of time that most people would easily deride as "too long", indicative as it was of "too much free time", I came up with a number that was pretty close to the observed 25% probability of a Kiss landing on its base. So that was fun, if pointless. I dare say the two are related.

[untitled #422]

Big Score at Timber Press: I now have keys to the building where I work. True, they aren't my own copies, but those of someone who is always here when other people around. Still, it's one step closer to actually being hired full-time. It also means that when I go to the bathroom late in the afternoon, I won't have to stand around knocking for five minutes to be let back in.

[untitled #421]

There is a tremendous racket occurring on the roof of our office building, which also happens to be our ceiling. It sounds (and sometimes feels) roughly like being inside a tooth during a root canal. Were I to hear the noises I am hearing anywhere else, my first instinct would be to get away, quickly. Instead, I am writing silly notes to myself and hoping that some construction worker doesn't come crashing onto my head.

protest ants

I attended my first major protest two weeks ago when President Bush came to town.

Although I had been to a few other carry-signs, march-around-downtown, yadda-yadda events, I say this was the first major one because it was the first I'd been to that involved so many people. And pepper spray.

President Bush was in town to raise money for Senator Gordon Smith, a Republican who is running for re-election this year.

The event Bush and Smith were to attend was a private affair meant only for those with cash to blow. For example, if you had $25,000 you wanted to get rid of, you could have your picture taken with President Bush and also have an environmental regulation suspended in your name. Um, maybe that last part was only implied.

It wasn't clear why Bush and Smith decided to hold the event in Portland, as many of Smith's supporters are from outside the liberal area west of the Cascades.

What was clear was that Bush did no favor to Portland in visiting it. For the privilege of having our esteemed leader drop by, we got blockaded freeways, stopped or altered bus service, blockaded streets downtown, and a several hundred thousand dollar bill to cover these expenses, to boot. Jackboot, that is.

Keep in mind that Bush had no other reason to visit Portland than to raise money. He didn't make any goofy pronouncements or give a mealy-mouthed speech to his constituents, he just came to build up the war chest. Quite literally.

Which would be fine if I and everyone else in Portland didn't have to pay just so he could hold a fundraiser. I don't want my tax money to support the Republican party. I don't even want it going to support the Democrats! I would like it if my money was used to support services in my city, which is having a hard time making ends meet as it is without goofballs flying in from the east coast to charge several months' rent for a dinner with other goofballs.

Ahem.

But that is just one unfortunate power of the presidency. Never mind that the Republicans once criticized the Democrats for abusing the president's ability to draw a crowd as a fund-raising technique.

If George W. has his way, his powers will also include the ability to wage war without the consent of Congress, much less of the American public, and to arrest U.S. citizens indefinitely for no reason better than that the government thinks they may be tied to terrorism.

Add to that the usual complaints (and how sad that they should be labelled as such) about a foreign policy completely dominated by protecting our oil interests and the president's sleeping around with large corporations, and you will know why it was I went to the protest.

I was tired of reading the paper each evening and feeling my pulse race, knowing that I had no actual recourse to stop the erosion of America that Younger Bush has brought about.

The sad truth is that when you are in the minority, voting does nothing, and for reasons that escape me, the majority of people in America are not outraged at what is happening in our government.

I can whine about it all on this web page, which certainly acts as a release valve, in addition to potentially educating those who are unaware of the administration's actions. But that doesn't do much to bring about a feeling of having done something.

Now, I have never been a big fan of protests, as they tend to accomplish little with a lot of noise. Too often these days, there is no focused message, just a tenuous uniting of various anti-something causes in an event that seems to bring together what many people would consider the fringe of society — you know, dyed hair, dreadlocks, piercings, critical thinking skills, all that.

And to the end that protests make people feel that they have done something in lieu of actually doing something that would effect change, they are detrimental. It's like drinking a Diet Coke instead of actually bothering to exercise.

That I went to the protest in spite of these reservations speaks to how very upset I am. And to the fact that I can think of nothing else right now that will accomplish change.

The protest was held in the blocks that had been barracaded around the hotel where the dinner was held. The blocked-off streets gave a rather festive feel, with people able to walk around without fear of being run over by a stream of cars. Errant cops with something to prove, maybe, but not cars.

If you've ever seen a protest, you'll know what things were like for most of the time I was there. All sorts of people, not just those with piercings, tattoos, and dyed hair — including old folks and couples with babies — milled around, many of them waving signs.

Some of the signs were clever, many of them were not. I thought about making a sign, but I couldn't pick any one issue that I thought needed to be focused on to the exclusion of others. I also have a hard time expressing myself in few words, as this entry demonstrates. Besides, who is convinced by bumper sticker arguments?

And, of course, there were the cheers, which often sounded suspiciously like retooled chants from the 60s, with newer, more relevant lyrics. This shows a sad lack of creativity for both the protestors and the presidency. Those in the streets could surely spend some time coming up with some new rhyme schemes, and the guys in the White House could surely learn to stop sending off our boys to fight pointless wars with little to no moral justification.

All of this would have, of itself, made for a boring, if well-attended, protest. What made it exciting, and probably why I am writing this, is that at some point, things got ugly. As in ugly sticks. And chemical irritants.

I'd like to say that I was on the front line when things went sour, and I can tell you exactly what happened. But I was there with Girlfriend Julia, and neither of us felt particularly compelled to press ourselves through the masses just to get close to the men dressed like robots holding various implements designed to hurt us. So we hung back.

But from the footage I have watched, and the testimony of people who were obviously not looking for trouble, this is what happened, as best I can tell:

At some point, for reasons that aren't entirely clear, the police decided that they had to push back the blockade they had made, even though the protesters had been respecting the barriers erected by police for several hours.

The police swarmed around to the protester's side of the barrier, whereupon they apparently tried to communicate that they were pushing the barrier back, even though they were the ones who set it up in the first place.

I say they "apparently" communicated this, because no one in the crowd seemed to have heard it. Maybe it had something to do with the police failing to use a bullhorn to communicate crowd control concepts to hundreds of people trapped in a small area.

At this point, the police apparently declared a state of emergency. Again, "apparently" because the first I heard of it was later that night on various web sites. You'd think that the police would have thought this an important enough concept to try to communicate it to more than the twenty protesters directly in front of them, but I guess the police thought they would all pass it on to their friends behind them. Suffice to say I heard no declarations of a state of emergency from the police, and I was half a block away.

I won't even go into how bogus it is that the police felt a need to declare a state of emergency at all. Wait, yes I will. States of emergency are reserved for things like hurricanes and droughts and bombings, not for peaceful gatherings of people. "Help! Help! Call for backups! They're peacefully assembling! Call in Delta Force!" I mean, doesn't that strike you as the sort of thing we meant to avoid when we created America?

Apparently upset that no one was listening to them mumble directions, the police, emboldened by their temporary suspension of regular laws, began assaulting the protesters. Really, that seems to be the best way to describe it. Did you watch the footage from the local news channel?

The police pushed people with their sticks, beating them if they didn't move fast enough (never mind that a person's speed depended greatly on the speed of everyone else behind him). And the choice few at the front lines got pepper-sprayed for, what, being near the front line?

And then the police decided to drive their cars through this crowd they had just whipped into a frenzy. It seems so clever now, in hindsight: push them back, spray them with pepper spray, and when they have nowhere to go because there are so many of them, drive several cars straight into the crowd.

Little wonder then, that some protesters chose to beat on the police cars, much as one would beat on the hood of any other car seemingly trying to run one over. I'm not saying it was a wise move to do so, but I understand why the protesters did it.

What amazes me about all of this is that, up to the day of the protest, I was generally the type of person who believed that police were decent people, and that whenever scuffles like this broke out, it was the fault of a few rabblerousers that attacked the police first.

What I have seen and read since that day have sadly convinced me that this is not so. The police showed up to the protest in their robocop armor when the most frenzied action was a bunch of goofy protesters dancing around. They proceeded to strip us of our right to assemble with no justification, and then assaulted a large number of people who did nothing wrong.

What am I supposed to think? I'd never had any beef with the police before, as I've never been arrested. But now when I hear sirens, I cynically wonder if the cops will show up, declare another state of emergency, punch me in the gut, laugh, and drive off. And I'm no police-basher.

Sadly, I doubt anything good will come of the protest. The media uniformly played up the violent aspect, showing the several minutes of agitation caused by police aggression among the several hours of peaceful protest.

The police defended their actions with lots of mumblety talk about having different officers from different cities working together, and blaming the protesters, and the usual bunk. The mayor stood behind the police chief, presumably because she didn't want to get clubbed by his baton.

And, as far as I can tell, the couple thousand angry people that day went back into hiding, perhaps happy that they had made the news and, presumably, "smashed the state" or something. Maybe they'll have t-shirts for sale later.

It's sad, really. There's a lot to be learned from that event, on both sides, but it appears that no one is going to learn anything.

And I, for one, am tired of thinking about the whole matter and want to simply publish this account for posterity's sake. But I thought I'd let you know.

So that next time you ask me why I'm so bitter, I won't have to tell the whole story again.