Someone told me a great story today. It’s not my story, it’s also sensitive to that which pays my bills. So, it ain’t my place to tell.

However, I will comment — I fucking love how stupid people are.

I have a hope, a deep-seated, comfortable and sure sense in my guts. I know that the sun will continue to rise and set. There will be wars. There will be love. Babies will be born, and all of us shall pass from this mortal coil.

These things I know. And, I know one more thing. No matter what utter stupid falls into your lap, caresses you with its wonderful improbability, no matter what, someone will top it. Or bottom it, I guess.

It’s the stuff of dreams, really. It’s knowing that every forehead-slapping “D’oh” has a better trainwreck waiting around it’s corner.

People are crude and dumb and unknowable. Fucking idiots. I love that.

We spent today in Santa Cruz, kicking around the Natural Bridges State Beach and around and about.

We checked out where the Monarch butterflies hang out, whilst migrating and sexually hibernating, and I took some pics. The orange leaf looking things, ain’t leaves, and the caterpillars love the milkweed.

On the beach itself, gulls and pelicans were the subject matter for another bunch of pics. M. started tossing walnuts to the birds, while I mentioned that Hitchcock shot some gull abuse scenes in Northern Cali.

The last of the animal watching was the herds of surfers riding the waves. I ain’t never seen that many folks floating at once, so I had to take pictures.

Then the sunset, and we took off.

Work was so at a level of burn-out suckitude last Friday, writing at all this weekend seemed too much like fucking work to cope. I focused instead on the vitual and took a million and six photos and whatnot. Also framed a couple for the boy-o’s new, swank, executron type office.

I gotta admit though that one of the perqs of the workplace is the quasi-academic thang that gets rocked. There’s an occasional emeritus dude or two from the school next door using office space and generally writing.

One such character is doing a book on something I know a bit about, since good old Pat was a virtuoso — Guilt. Yup, something I am fucking, damn, spanking truly good at. We talked a bit about the cultural influence of people’s perception of guilt. The word from the professional psych dude, it ain’t so much the Catholic, it’s the Irish what makes me feel this way. Moralistic pricks from the Emerald Isle.

Talking about guilt and the possible Asian corollary, shame, which may or may not be a chauvinistic, ethnocentric concoction by Westerners not getting the whole bowing shit and honor and stuff, was looking to be the high point of the day.

Then the work day ended, M. came by and I experienced freedom. We wondered down to Mountain View and stumbled upon Frank Warren of PostSecret.com by happy accident, giving a talk at Books, Inc. Rock on independent bookstores and gurus of simple, brilliant websites for helping me to forget about work bullshit completely. Fucking completely.

Coolest thing about the PostSecret session was hearing about the art exhibit base. It’s definitely one of those simple ideas you just wish you had. And, boiled down to a few words on a single postcard is the essential truth thing, I’ve heard tell about. ‘specially in the comedic circles.

Now that I’ve forgotten work, with stress and fatigue, but guiltless and without shame, I’ll wake up again tomorrow for some new shit, I’m sure.

I went to work with a smile. A smile born of a blow for democracy, truth, the Constitution and the American fucking Way.

Then, I got into work and the buzz was about the upcoming Bush speech/press conference. Alrighty then, I fired up the audio on this here ‘puter and got ready to listen in to the little monkey boy and leader of the free world.

What ho, though, before the speech began, scary old man, Defense Secretary Rummy, ready to cut and run. Awesome.

My favorite quote from the press conference:

To our enemies: Do not be joyful. Do not confuse the workings of our democracy with a lack of will. Our nation is committed to bringing you to justice.

It might be treasonous, but to our enemies, I’m pretty damn joyful my own bad self. And, that thing about will and bringing you to justice, maybe we’re all clarifying a bit on who’s our enemy. Friends, OK, ‘cept you heartless terrorist motherfuckers?

Around lunch I had the proverbial chery on my ice cream soda of politic joy. Lunch included BREAD PUDDING. I loves me some bread pudding.

Consider this a whisper of a shout out to Rick Santorum and Katherine Harris.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

You lose!

A woman, a liberal woman no less, might soon be Speaker of the House. A chick. A brazen, mouthy, left-leaning wench from SF. What the fuck?

In Boston, in Massachusetts, in the state where I grew up, looks like there will now be a black dude, an African American man, ensconced in the govenor’s house. An Afri-fucking American in a state once know for Louise Day Hicks spewing utter bullshit in its name. And a Democrat for the first time in like 20 fucking years. Again, I say, what the fuck?

Near’s I can figure the end times are well nigh. Nigh. Fucking way nigh. End. Times. Fire. Brimstone. Make sure your insurance premiums are up-to-date.

Or, dare I hope for a better deal?

I voted early this morning (actually kind of last night). I had an absentee ballot, because there’s not enough registered voters in my ‘hood to keep a poll open. I filled it out at home, and dropped it off down the street on the way to work.

M., on the other hand, hasn’t changed his address. I’m pretty sure it’s ‘cuz he digs the fucked up place at which he votes. I wrote some shit about it before, how his polling place is a garage. A suburban fucking garage.
Some guy’s house.

I went with him a-polling and saw it for myself. Chaos worthy of, I dunno, Haiti, maybe? Maybe somewhere in Kabul. Nah, inspectors probably kept that shit out of the garage.

In San Jose, we got the tree-lined streets of cliched TV suburban-ness.

And, you got garages. AKA, polling places in the eighth largest economies in the world.

Like any garage, there’s a bunch of shit. And, like any third world polling place, the families gather round and vote together, people mill about among openly viewable ballots, and all is done under the watchful eye of portraits of important leaders. Leaders like Orville Redenbacher.

But, it’s Cali. It’s Silicon Valley. So, there’s ‘puters. Cutting edge technology, programmed by code monkeys across the world, or inexperiencedly and questionably at Diebold.

I was pretty psyched, M. got the magic Redenbacher screen.