Oh, the Horror.

Gerry's Corner: Well, I wanted to go out trick-or-treating tonight, so I went to the local costume shop to find a good disguise. There was a whole section of presidential masks, but - surprise! - none of good ol' Awesome Dude. Well, I refused on principle to get any other costumes. I wanted to go as myself, but if they didn't have me in stock, I can't very well do that, can I? So I'm moping at home, hiding razors in delicious apples for the kids who'll swing by, or for Not-Betty if she crosses me again.



I saw some good costumes today during my constitutional today (I don't just take 'walks,' friends - I was freaking President). Here were a few of my faves:

• "Betty" - Not-Betty dressed up as Betty Ford today. Kind of poofy white hair, wedding band. She really made me think I was married to her. Excellent execution.

• "Kenny G" - This guy had corkscrew pasta stapled to his hair, and was honking on a soprano saxophone, stuck in the side of his mouth. He was also wearing jeans, a sports coat, and a solid-colored t-shirt, though I guess that could have made him look like Don Johnson, too.

• "Guy With Girlfriend" - It was this guy with slicked-back hair who had a girl just, like, attached to him, as though she was trying to suck snake poison from his neck. And his ear. And his elbow, somehow. I don't know - it looked pretty gymnastic. They looked kind of happy together, but then again, it was just a disguise, so I wondered if they were really together.

Front Page: Earth to John Kerry. You are not running for anything this year. Everyone is tired of hearing from you with your tortured aristocracy and your simpering condescension. Since I'm pretty tired of Bush having carte blanche to pass pretty much whatever legislation he wants without fear of legislative reprisal, I would like the Democrats to win back the House and the Senate in a week. There are many things that are helping this cause along - over 100 soldiers have catastrophically perished in Iraq this month. The Mark Foley scandal. The spiraling national debt. The hyperbolic reaction to the Michael J. Fox commercial. Cheney saying that waterboarding's fine. Bush moving away from 'Stay the course.' George Allen's racist comments and his discomfort with his Jewish past.

And yet, all this work - all these close races that tireless Democrats have tried to win - all of that could easily be for naught because John Kerry thinks he's the fucking man. His comments today here in California in support of Phil Angelides (who, by the way, looks just like the type of person that Schwarzenegger would have given a wedgie to in school), DO NOT HELP. He was supposed to say this:

"I can't overstress the importance of a great education. Do you know where you end up if you don't study, if you aren't smart, if you're intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq."

Instead, he said this:

"You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq."

Well, guess what? Every single right-wing nutcase (way to the right of me) jumped on this and stomped on it like - oh, I don't know - an elephant. Michelle Malkin devoted at least five posts to this today. The current headline on CNN.com right now is "Bush: Kerry owes troops an apology." The third most e-mailed story from The Boston Globe's website is this one.

All John Kerry had to do was:
• immediately backtrack during the speech and correct what he meant.
• explain what he meant by way of offering an apology/retraction (a 'Me and My Big Mouth,' if you will).

Instead, he said this, which pretty much amounts to "I'm John Fucking Kerry. I can say what I want the way I want because I'm right and everyone else is wrong to accurately quote the words I myself mangled, regardless of the peril and anguish I put upon all the Democrats' potential gains." In that 'explanation' linked above, by the way, he didn't explain at all what he meant to say. He let all the jerky - yes, jerky - loudmouths frame who he is, just like he did in the 2004 election. Shame is his name this evening, and probably for a long time after if the Democrats lose any ground because of him.

Kerry made me so mad that I briefly contemplated moving to Canada this afternoon. Thank God for For Better or For Worse. Today's strip is an abomination against all of mankind. Allow me to set the stage: April, the youngest Patterson daughter, is in a band that used to be called 4evah. Their lead singer was a young tart named Becky, who decided that the band was holding her back. She went out and signed a recording contract and calls herself Rebeccah now. The fact that she could sign a recording contract seems like proof that she was good enough to assume that a bunch of middle school musicians would indeed hold her back. So Becky and April have some bad blood. Becky is famous now (as famous as one can be in Canada, anyway - I mean, I'm like a god there, but that's just me) and has fabulous hair. April's band has become resurrected with a new lead singer named Eva; their new name is 4Evah and Eva, which makes me want to projectile vomit. Both Rebeccah and 4Evah and Eva are playing a Halloween dance at their middle school. April's group was sucking in rehearsal, until they discover a secret weapon: April's creepy, moustached Uncle Phil, a professional jazz trumpeter who is in town only because his father (April's grandfather) has suffered a stroke. You'd think that Uncle Phil would offer some critique of the band's performance, or write some music for them. I'd be a little uncomfortable having a 60-year-old man showcased on trumpet in a band of middle schoolers, and mortified if he was related to me. Well, gentle readers, feast your eyes:



This is preposterous on a number of levels:

• The instrument jazzy Uncle Phil is playing is called a 'hose-o-phonium,' which the kids apparently can't even say (another reason American education kicks Canadian education's ass). Why not his trumpet? Is that illegal?
• Rebeccah thinks they're good?! But they're not! Not at all! Uncle Phil is playing a beer bong! And no good music makes a sound like "BAWAAAAAAAAAHHH" or "Bweeeappafrazzzawappazzazzzzzapakatawakatawaaaaaahhzzzzz."
• Uncle Phil decided to wear his KKK costume, which might play well in white-bread Canada. Unfortunately, For Better or For Worse is distributed all across the US, where this artistic choice is not so much funny as it is horrible and punishable by death, as far as I'm concerned.

There are more bullet points to add here, but I'm so damned angry today. Looks like I'm not gonna move north, though.

Tomorrow, I'll talk about the latest movie I went to see, Death of a President. For now, I'll leave you with this latest example of Islamofashion. I don't think L'il Kim is quite clear on the concept.



There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe,
Gerry