October 2004 Archives

As reported elsewhere, the Washington Redskins have successfully predicted the outcome of every presidential election since 1936. In short, if the Redskins win the home game before the election, the incumbent candidate/party wins. If the Redskins lose, the challenging candidate/party wins. The Redskins hosted Greenbay today, and lost due to an extremely unfortunate/fortuitous penalty. So, if history holds, the election belongs to Kerry.

Anyone who's heard me strike down one of their third-hand anecdotes as a dopey urban legend knows that I'm skeptical about these things, but I'm somehow drawn to this particular correlation. It's probably because I like the idea that the outcome of the election is determined by something other than popular will.

As a final note, I'll point out that if the Curse of the Bambino can come crashing down, there's no reason for the Redskins/Election link to hold up. Either way, I'll be eagerly awaiting next year's Supreme Court appointment firestorm.

Two new strips, as promised. Both have to do with Halloween, sort of.

Conservation of Sexiness once again addresses what Halloween is really about, and demonstrates that I really have no eye for color whatsoever.

The Druids Would Not Be Pleased was inspired by the inappropriately imperial beer selection at yesterday's Halloween keg. Once again the two characters have dressed as Law Students for a Halloween party.

That's all for now. I need a new pen.

I realize the strip updates have been coming in spurts lately. The weekend should see two or three. In the meantime, please enjoy these delicious Photos from the Berkeley Technology Law Journal/Boalt Hall Women's Association/Asian Pacific American Law Students Association Halloween Keg in the Courtyard and Costume Contest, held this afternoon. Oddly enough the costume of choice among about 90% of the attendees was "Law Student."

[The part about us both being conservative was an embellishment for effect. To add your support for The Phil Hendrie Show, please e-mail those bastards at Clear Channel at talk910@clearchannel.com.]

Dear KNEW,

We are extremely disappointed with your decision to drop "The Phil Hendrie Show" from the KNEW line-up. We have been fans of Phil for several years, and after we relocated to Northern California we were delighted to learn that Phil was available on an SF station. Needless to say, the news of his departure was very upsetting.

AM radio is literally overrun with conventional conservative talk. While we consider ourselves to be conservative and appreciate the conservative viewpoint, we only need to hear the daily Republican talking points so many times in a day. Your existing line-up of Armstrong & Getty, Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, and Michael Savage more than satisfy the Bay Area's need for conservative thought.

Phil Hendrie is one of the few remaining entertainment-oriented personalities on AM radio. Frankly, he's the only AM radio personality we've managed to find that is actually creative. His innovative humor has an appeal that's lacking both in the television medium and elsewhere on the radio spectrum. And because Phil is a conservative Democrat, his limited political content appeals to a much broader audience than other hosts in your line-up, thus affording your advertisers the benefit of a broader listening public. Replacing Phil with yet another conservative mouthpiece is a blow both to the quality of radio entertainment and intellectual diversity on the air.

We hope that you will reconsider your decision to drop Phil's show from your line-up. We have enjoyed listening to Phil Hendrie on KNEW for over a year and, frankly, once he's gone our radio dial will likely never land on your station again.

Sincerely,

Us

I just wanted to post this here cartoon from Time Magazine's website and take the opportunity to say that I sincerely hope, from the bottom of my cockles, that this year's election will be several times more chaotic and controversial than all that crap in 2000. I'm hoping for vicious litigation in every single swing-state. You know, just in case anyone out there is still clinging to a single shred of faith in our electoral process.

I broke tradition this year and celebrated by birthday early (I usually do it after Halloween, if at all). Pictures from the hoo-ah are here. Miraculously I managed to get the whole album uploaded in the right place with a title and captions and everything without pestering Gene with my ignorant questions and mistakes.

Mad props to everyone who showed up, to the very resilient girl who spent most of the party studying right in the midst of us, and everyone who wrote snazzy captions in the Slam Book. Extra special props to Meli, for the snazzy Slam Book and the earth-shattering chocolate-chip pumpkin bread. No props at all to he I-House staff members who threatened to call the police on us and, after that failed, showered us with guilt and condescention. Heartfelt apologies to Sean, whose generous gift of imported Pepperidge Farm cookies somehow didn't make it back home with us. I can only hope they ended up in the accordion somehow.

Gather 'round, folks, it's time for another I Fought the Law feminist rant.

Dr M and I went to Skate's on the Bay last night to celebrate the receiving of Dr M's Master's Degree. When you call Skate's to make a reservation they always ask if it's a special occasion, and if it is they give you a complimentary dessert. So, when Dr M made the reservation she told them that we'd be celebrating a Master's Degree.

We arrived at the restaurant to claim our window table. The hostess looked us up, saw the note, and said, to me, "Congratulations on your Master's Degree! What did you get it in?" I was a little put off at being asked about a degree I didn't earn, so I pointed to Dr M and said, "It's her degree, actually." The hostess then shifted her attention and the conversation progressed to its logical conclusion, and Dr M and I had a wonderful dinner overlooking the bay and didn't think much of it.

Until the end of the meal, when our waiter brought use a big slab of key lime pie, looked directly at me, and said, "Congratulations on your degree. Where did you get it?" Again, I pointed to Dr M, and said, "It's her." And again the conversation progressed after the minor hiccup.

So there you have it. Latent gender stereotyping lurks in every corner.

There's a new strip in town. I promise this will be the last one with the word "prick" in the title for at least two weeks.

When I drew last week's strip I decided that every strip in October would have something to do with Halloween, and hence this week's well-endowed nurse. If sexy nurses aren't an important part of Halloween, I don't know what is.

I went and got poked full of viral egg whites today in the hopes of staving off another Christmas Day visit to the emergency room. When I first saw the headlines about the vaccine shortage I thought it was just the same shortage that happens every year, until I heard the troubles about the contaminated plant in Liverpool. Chiron, in addition to fucking up half the U.S. supply of flu vaccines, has been involved in enough Federal Circuit patent litigation to make them a household name among patent geeks from San Jose to San Francisco. Somehow I think the litigation arising out of the flu vaccines will have very little to do with Chiron's patent portfolio.

Anyway, the 'Tang Center is apparently being super stingy with its flu shots this year, and I had to sign a declaration stating that I was a person of precarious healthfulness before they agreed to stick me. The clinic was wall to wall old folks with a few shameless twenty-something asthmatics. The nurse (who bore no resemblance whatsoever to this week's guest star) told me that I was the first patient actually affiliated with UC Berkeley that she had seen.

And so, my annual bacterial infection won't have any pesky flu viruses standing in its way when it invades my throat come December. Keep your eye out for a reprise of The Troat Anthology if Molly fails to keep me away from the computer in my steroid-induced delerium.

Yes, I realize hardly anybody knows what The Throat Anthology is. And that's the way it should be.

I'm opening the Halloween season with a big "Fuck You" to all my Celtic brothers and sisters. Your holiday is stupid, and white people made it better. Deal with it.

Before I forget, this week's strip is dedicated to Rebecca C. Brown. This morning I couldn't find my special drawin' pen, but brought my penciled strip to school anyway, planning to ink it over the course of the day with one of my inferior note-takin' pens. I ran into RCB in the donor lobby of Boalt, told her my troubles, and she reached into her bag of tricks produced a pen identical to my drawin' pen, which she then gifted to me. Unfortunately it was out of ink, and I still had to use a lousy pen, but A for effort, Rebecca!

I spent several days this week fretting over how unfunny my original conception for this strip was, and so I finally decided to add the Real Ghostbusters reference and a shout-out to two previous strips. This is all meant to distract you from the fact that all the humor is in the bottom right corner of the second frame.

More importantly, I can't seem to find any Hostess Scary Cakes. So far all I can find are Donettes with "Happy Halloween" printed on them. The little donuts don't appear to have any substantive holiday alterations, but I'm afraid to buy them lest I discover that the chocolate frosting conceals orange cake, which we all know would be a filthy abomination. But fortunately Molly has made several loaves of pumpkin bread that could bring peace to Eastern Europe, it's that fucking good. Could use maybe some orange frosting and sprinkles, though.

There should be a new strip soon. I have it in my head, I just haven't converted it into a form perceptible by other humans. It tangentially involves pie, though it does not, unfortunatly, involve 14-year-old English brats posting cliche poems about how lame America is.

One of the reasons I haven't drawn it yet is because I've become consumed with submitting Photoshop Phriday / Comedy Goldmine entries over at Something Awful. A sampling follows, if you're interested. My skillz are still developing, as should be obvious.

My first serious attempt was the Bush-Kerry Dog Show, submitted in the "alternative presidential debates" thread. I'm pretty happy with the way the right (Rove/Bush) side came out but there are too many things wrong with the left side to get into right now.

One thread that's been going strong for a few days involves taking the hellish artwork of Zdzislaw Beksinski and making it "happy." And nothing spells joy like strippers.

A recent thread that didn't go anywhere involved taking movies starring former sitcom actors and replacing the sitcom actors with has-been actors from the same sitcom. In my estimation, Michael Fishman was the great underappreciated talent of Roseanne.

Finally, under the "science fiction in real life" category, I submitted two marginal entries. I show you Quintesson SCOTUS not as any testament to my Photoshop skills or creativity, but just to demonstrate the outer limits of my nerdery. If you don't know where the multi-faced image is from, Optimus Hummer may give you a clue right before he dies.