The new idea inspired by stuff kind of alluded to in the last post is a radio show that would just go back and forth between two different genres every week. Girl group pop and coke rap, old folk/country and noise rock, free jazz and early electronic music, no wave and disco, outsider music and greatest hits, video game music and metal. The idea being that genre format radio just strips music of its individuality and that by juxtaposing it with an imagined opposite it brings out the strengths in both and destroys false binaries. Then there'd be me talking about maybe esoteric subjects throughout, but in a humorous manner. Maybe I could even do something not unlike WFMU's Aircheck where I would juxtapose insane political opinions from both the right and the left. (Since most political opinions from the left aren't actually that insane, it would probably just be hippy blather instead.)

I am going to blog about the new Clipse album because that is what white people do with this type of rap in the year 2006.

What the fuck Sam Hockley-Smith, like I get that the beats are good in theory, like that Momma I'm So Sorry song, that's a beat I would like for a shorter period of time than four minutes.

Anyway okay remember when I was talking about Cadence Weapon and I was saying that the punchlines are good but the stuff that's chosen to be repeated as hooks isn't exactly well-chosen? The shit that gets repeated on this album is stuff like, on that Momma I'm So Sorry song highlighted earlier, "I'm so obnoxious," which, for those who haven't heard it, is pronounced "ob-nok-SHISSS" which is so goddamn obnoxious. Is that how the lyrics are smart? In that meta way? Like is the meaning of the word "Trill" some kind of sniglet about words that don't mean anything, and on a mixtape somewhere they defined through some kind of anacronym?

Not that it's all bad. "I love you like I love my dick size," that's a good line. Oh wait, that was Method Man. Right before I listened to the Clipse I was listening to Only Built For Cuban Linx cut up with selections from that Rhino girl group box set. I guess that just comparing all rap to the Wu-Tang Clan isn't exactly a good critical standard, especially since my response pretty much always comes down to "This isn't as good as the Wu-Tang Clan."

So how about food? My roommate compared the girl group stuff to candy which made me start comparing music to foods- indie rock is quesadillas, tacos, and other easily wielded, relatively light, mexican foods (not burritos, they spill). Anyway southern rap is either bacon or like the deep-fried Oreos and Snickers bars you can eat in Atlantic City. When dude is saying "Wamp Wamp" I am saying "oh fuck, my arteries!"

Alright maybe I am missing the good lines, it's totally possible. I just realized that I was so distracted by dude's extended S'es and the nonsequitur "Miami Vice!" that I missed the line about "My only accomplice my conscience" that I saw somewhere on the internet and I was like "that's an okay line."

I think I stated in an earlier post that Craig Finn gives me the whole "music where the lyrics say so many references" thing that I like in rap, which probably makes this shit suspect. (Although it seemingly doesn't make that dude Tom Breihan suspect, even though IT REALLY FUCKING SHOULD) (Again, new record, not that good, but I found a gem of a lyric amongst the cast-off tracks. "She said she was coming but she mostly made hard fast noises. It sort of sounded like The Locust," but maybe that's not funny if you're not a huge nerd.)

And wait what the fuck is with this stuff about Jews? I just heard something about "This Pyrex is Jewish" which - okay I rewinded, that makes sense. Jews love money, got it. Sorry I doubted you, Clipse. I thought you were just spouting nonsense but I was wrong. This is a good beat, doing that whole fake Indian bit that was Timbaland's shit for a while (By the way, Jazz: Indian food.)

Oh iTunes alphabet- It turns out that The Coachwhips is what I want to hear when The Clipse is done playing. But only one, oh iTunes, why'd you have to keep going, fuck.

Oh shit it just became clear to you the reader that I haven't heard all of this- Just the first few tracks and a few days ago I heard that Trill song. I thought I'd start writing and do it real-time style but the downloads stalled.

I will say this though, holy shit I wish these beats went to Ol' Dirty Bastard, because this record is better than that also delayed all the goddamn time A Son Unique record which blows.

But I guess that mostly yes what I want rap is highly specific, which is probably symptomatic of it just not being my shit very much.

This Thanksgiving was spent all by my lonesome, with Alex gone to Portland and the buses having stopped running so I couldn't go to the little gathering I was invited to. I baked an apple pie with a lattice top, a turkey lasagna, and made some mashed potatoes. All good! The turkey lasagna was a weird compromise based on the idea that my mom would make stuffed shells at family holiday dinners for my vegetarian brother, liking turkey but having cooked a turkey breast like two weeks ago, and having lasagna noodles around for a while. The lattice top was an attempt to try something new that would be visually impressive when I went to someone else's gathering, but then that didn't happen and yeah a lattice top is just not as delicious as the crumb topping.

But on Tuesday I grabbed some movies from the library. I've watched two of those. One was the Philip Kaufman adaptation of The Unbearable Lightness Of Being, which I got with pretty much no expectations- I think I wrote earlier about how the book wasn't very good, (with the exception of the one line that was transformed into the name of last year's Shining album) and thought that maybe the movie would bypass some of my problems, with the addition of nudity! It's not a good movie. Leaving aside the source material: The cinematography is pretty decent. Daniel Day-Lewis looks like a jackass throughout, in that he seems like a late-eighties idea of what a man who can have sex with whoever would look like- Someone I'd like to punch in the face! And do to the aging of that type of eighties idea, it actually is almost kitschy, not a monster at all. Juliette Binoche is alright, charming in some kind of twee way.

But tonight I watched Black Narcissus, the Powell And Pressburger film from right before The Red Shoes, which I haven't seen. I really liked the solo Michael Powell film, Peeping Tom, and that one made me reconsider my preconceptions about them as being like Merchant-Ivory type boredom peddlers. Now I'm watching the documentary on the cinematography, which is fucking great, especially for technicolor technology, which, as the documentary explains, is fucking crazy. As for the plot- It's easy to get characters confused, what with most of them being identically dressed nuns, and with that so goes thematic conflicts. Two notes: one being that Pink Narcissus is a gay porn film made by a guy there's a song about on the new Matmos, and the other being that there's an Indian actress in the film whose real name is Jean Simmons, which is funny to me. It's a good movie. The next Powell/Pressburger movie I see will probably be The Life And Death Of Colonel Blimp, which Patton Oswalt named as one of his three favorite movies- unranked, just one of those "oh I can't just pick one" moments.

The third movie, which I haven't watched yet, is Jean Cocteau's Testament Of Orpheus.

My dad was in court yesterday, and he's not going to prison. He's had his license taken away, but he still has his car, and is still driving it.

According to him, his lawyer pulled something out of his ass that seemed like it could set a legal precedent. State vs. Nicholson and a ruling in favor of drunk drivers. Yes, the family name will live on! Happy Thanksgiving!

When talking, there were hilarious parallels in our lives that I don't think he noticed. He, having moved out of his parent's house finally, sleeps on a mattress that lies on the floor. His apartment doesn't have enough natural light and so induces depression. And he doesn't have a driver's license. Funny stuff!

The conversation ended with an acknowledgement that we don't have a very good relationship, and him wishing to fix that by communicating more. Who knows how that will turn out?

Parent-child relations are so weird at this age, and probably from now on. I guess it's based around being very different people, but having been around the other person so much that you know their reasons for being the way they are and can maybe relate to them so you like/love them based on that knowledge, although the knowledge of certain details are still completely disgusting?

In other news, I'm doing animation for this art installation. I keep on making decisions to do really ambitious experimental things. Here's hoping it's a good habit. The latest idea I've had, for a possible Senior Thesis, would be to do a film that's basically structured like Koyanasqatski (sic) or something, but filled with talking, and about human interactions rather than the environment and creation myths. Until then it's experiments to get to that point, and when that point is reached I'm sure my brain will have moved on to something else entirely. When I say experiments I don't mean it in the arty sense, I mean the scientific sense. But even then, like a child's sense of science experiments, trying to replicate things I've seen but haven't done and use to my own ends etc. Like for this animation, the experiment is hand-drawn perspective shifts of a fairly large scale, the type of thing which is probably mostly seen in computer animated stuff, but sloppy and about a stick figure with swords jumping over an overweight man impaled with missles, and then lighting those missles on fire because his swords are on fire.

I'm working hard right now, feeling like I'm building something. I'm turning a shirt that's kind of shitty into something awesome, beginning with sewing Black Dice in yarn onto the front in a near-replication of the Creature Comforts sleeve. I need to make it longer and give it a hood and maybe a fleece lining.

I guess it might look like shallow frivolity. But it feels like building something just the opposite.

The other day I learned that another friend from Evergreen was pregnant and was amazed that we still haven't yet improved the world to the point where such a thing seems like a good idea. Except for the fact that doing such a thing, if you're the right person, is just the type of gesture that leads to that type of thing. I still think the same thesis of a short story I wrote a couple years ago, that art on a grand scale could save people on a small scale.

There are times when I think it might be for the best that women don't find me attractive. Like when a girl plunges her hand through a window for catharsis over sexual frustration and depression and ends up cutting a vein and bleeding all over a party, with the object of desire (who is mostly uninterested due to being involved in a relationship with someone who is not fucking crazy) being the only person able to talk said person (who is drunk) into going to a hospital.

I went to a party. I walked home. It was far from here. But a good party by I think any standard.

I wore a Black Dice shirt I made that day, that almost replicates some writing on the Creature Comforts sleeve.

I said a funny joke about having the charisma of a thousand Jay Lenos and ate some sort of spicy shrimp stew. Also there were beers, friends and enemies, and a shitton of strangers. Those strangers seemed mostly uninteresting.

I thought I would have more reportage, but what is there to say, besides an exasperated "Women!"

I fall asleep in class quite a bit, possibly to the point of coming off narcoleptic. It's early in the morning, rarely engaging- Things happen.

Also I am unhealthy. And I fall asleep during other things, because of the sleep schedule being not-so-hot.

So it's 3:38 now, and I'm not tired.

I napped earlier, and when I went to bed two hours ago I started to think about my plans to make myself a Black Dice shirt. Plans that I really would like to follow through on.

Today, I was told by a partner in this art project that she doesn't get mad at most people- Only me, because of the confrontational way of speaking which I basically attribute to the East coast. Rubs her the wrong way. And this is someone I like, obviously. Why is that obvious? Because it's someone I talk to like a normal person, which is to say that there are a lot of jokes and whatnot.

Alex ordered a copy of the Brian Chippendale book, Ninja. This was a few weeks ago, when it became available for preorder from Picturebox. I'm anxious for it to arrive. A lot of the Fort Thunder comics don't really grab me- There's a reason I didn't buy Teratoid Heights when it was in print- but I like the posters a lot, and the stuff I've seen from this (Stuff on the Gallery Agniel website) looks fairly advanced, actually possessing emotion rather than the Maggots era stuff I've seen. I found out before attempting sleep today that the Highwater Books site has online strips I'd never seen by the likes of Chris Forgues (CF) and Ben Jones, and I kind of like those guys' work more than the stuff more directly borne out of Fort Thunder. Most of the Highwater site is no longer online, due to the company shutting down. The stuff that persists does so mostly at random.

While talking comics: Here's one of the few pre-Roast Beef and Ray Achewood comics I've read that I think works.

Kids In The Hall Season Two Disc Two arrived from Netflix, and so Alex got to see the Daddy Drank sketch which is never far from my mind.

Okay so The Wire. I find it hard to roll with pretty much any TV, let alone TV dramas, these days. Even the HBO stuff- A lot of it leaves me cold. But I just finished downloading and watching season four of The Wire, which we kind of paced, although the season isn't done yet. I've never seen season two. I imagine it's good, but there's been a huge leap in quality.

Complaints about this show: They're not good at using music, except as a background element. The opening credit sequences, where each season a different cover of the same song plays, is always awful- A bad song and bad cover versions. If memory serves, every season so far has also ended with a montage sent to music as a way to tie up loose ends while accelerating through time. These parts are always kind of awkward and that has something to do with music as well.

Anyway, people have compared the way the show works to novels, hinting at quality beyond TV. A lot of the writers are prose writers. David Simon's a former journalist, George Pelecanos writes crime novels. I'm pretty much convinced The Wire is better than their books, especially once you start to take all of the show as one work that grows in scope with each new season. It's just so hugely structurally complicated, at this point there's probably as many characters as The Simpsons or Gravity's Rainbow. I get lost as to character names. It's just so huge. It has to be, each expansion of the cast into new territory starts to seem integral to what it's doing.

What it's doing is huge, genuinely important seeming stuff, about basically the deterioration of inner cities, a liberal view of how society fails through a combination of bureacracy, politics, pettiness, and people's brutality. I really can't imagine it working as a book and still capturing the basic human nuances- The simple ease of acting at sketching characters.

At the same time, it works on the same basic visceral entertainment level of any cop show, although one that seems to wear its dark sense of humor more on its sleeve. And it encompasses the criminals on the other side, selling drugs, which gives greater humanity and sociological insight, at the same time giving you different people to root for and against.

The level of structural complexity is probably what makes it seem not fun at all, even though it's actually what makes it so entertaining- There's so many people to care about and they're all thwarting each other. It's drama and... yeah, ridiculously complex. It really does feel like the best TV show, even though it might not be my favorite, due to a handful of biases.

Well, the whole Lucid Thoughts idea has mostly not panned out, due to only having the energy for such things when I'm really tired, where my mind can't really handle such things. But I'll try to articulate things.

Kramer's Ergot is this anthology of arty comics that's been pretty much the premier of the aughts. It's expensive, but it's big, in full-color, and prints a lot of stuff that wouldn't otherwise get such exposure, a lot of minicomics people, but working in full-color so it's all very pretty. Daniel Clowes called it an heir to Raw, which was the big art-comics thing in the 1980s, but says that with the reservation that no one in Kramer's Ergot is as good as Gary Panter or Charles Burns. Gary Panter has actually had stuff in volumes five and six, but that was arguably half-assed and not the point anyway. The point of the book is that it features new people.

Alex has bought volumes four, five, and six. These are the ones that matter, basically, as the first couple were smaller, black and white, and... well, no one cares about anyone in the first two, which were basically just the size of normal comics.

The thing that's most important is that the quality hinges on the longest stories, whoever gets the most chance to shine. The longer stories are the high points. Part of this also comes down to who is getting the longer stories. In volume four, it's Souther Salazar and CF, both of whom are kind of awesome.

Souther Salazar's stuff is actually completely amazing. He does these collage-comics, that he prints himself. (although I don't really get how, due to the high-quality that seems evident) There's a lot of emphasis on pen and ink drawings, but there's a kind of collage texture at work. He's in all three books, but gets decreasing pages each go-round. His stuff is great- It seems to go back and forth between this stuff that's kind of poetic sensitive-boy comics and this stuff that has this really funny, childlike edge to it. Five and six have more of the latter, with the creation of these characters Fervler and Razzle, who are minimal stick-figure animals, but- There's a lot of texture and a lot of jokes per page, on different colors of paper so it comes off beautiful even in the simplicity. Issue four he's got a bunch of comics, at least one of which I know is a reprint of a minicomic. It's called Please Don't Give Up, and it's words of encouragement accompanied by drawings of kittens. This might sound awful, but that's because I'm consciously selling it short. It works because of the variation of the lettering, and the quality of the drawing, and the ability to sell that type of really direct writing. It might seem weird and art-objecty, but I feel like the appeal's the same as that found in Craig Thompson's comics.

Marc Bell's in all of them too. But I hate his comics kind of a lot- I think they're stupid, unfunny, and really dense with this wordplay-writing that's exhausting in its attempts at cleverness. I've seen it a lot and have never liked it.

CF's stuff is good, though. He's a noise-rocker guy, who put out an album on Load Records I've been listening to. His noise stuff is just kind of there and existing, but sometimes, like on half of the eight tracks on the album I have, he does this singing over just a strummed electric guitar with a good tone. That stuff works a lot for some reason. It's noisy, but human. I wish I could say his drawing was a parallel to it, but it's not. He does these kind of simple pencil drawings, sometimes watercolors over them, and tells stories. The thing in 4 isn't as good as the bit in 5 in a way that I'm just willing to chalk up to progress. In both 4 and 5 he gets a while to do his thing, while in volume 6 he and Souther Salazar (who holy shit has an amazing name, in case you'd noticed it and didn't think I did, how could you not) both get five pages so it's not really satisfying as an aesthetic swim.

CF founded Paper Radio with Ben Jones, before Ben went on to do Paper Rad with the Ciocci siblings. I really like Paper Rad, I think their stuff is funny. They're in Kramer's as well, and are superstars. Their piece in issue six is fucking crazy-It starts off as a Seinfeld riff (Paper Rad are really into shameless copyright violation) where Kramer trips on drugs, peels the skin off his couch to find 90s indie rock CDs contained within, which he then listens to, being so inspired by Smog that he draws a comic where Bill Callahan takes out his huge dick. It's funny and it's obnoxious. All their stuff is good though, basically.

Okay I shouldn't just run down all the content. There's a lot of it. Most of it has its charms. But not all of it.

Anders Nilsen does a great thing in issue four about Sisyphus and a Minotaur.

The stuff I like is mostly stories. Some of it isn't. Some of it is drawings and collages. This stuff doesn't grab me so much but it really helps add to the overall next-level vibe.

Issue five is the best on the whole, essentially. It has lots of people given extended chances to work through their ideas. Chris Ware gets four pages. It's the one most likely to throw out traditional comics stories that work as narratives. (Kevin Huizenga!) Issue six is mostly short work, but some people get extended chances. Matthew Thurber comes off as funny and impressive with a comic that has a narrative that's just really weird in how it develops and what it's about. It just seems ridiculously fully-developed for someone I've never heard of, as a complete and total voice. Oh, and Shary Boyle gets a showcase for her paintings, which are completely great. Although I'm not certain how good the printing is- The watercolor stuff just gleams on a flat-screen monitor, better than the printed page. There's a lot of good people who just do short work though, and it ends up being pretty unsatisfying.

What's weird is the nature of the arty comic though. Daniel Clowes was talking about Raw being better, and what's funny there is how piss-poor comics were in the eighties. Even the good ones, what was hyped at the time. Like, I downloaded some Chester Brown Yummy Fur comics- Chester Brown is a creepy weirdo, for one thing, and this is the era before he did autobio comics about him being a loser, where he just did surrealist stuff. Totally critically adored at the time. It's interesting, but just- Not literary, is how I'd best put it. Not like that's necessary at all for something to work, endings, but it's so much about the tone. It doesn't work as literature. That shouldn't be a prerequisite, but it's just not even an issue in most eighties comics, having an ending with emotional weight and a point behind it.The precedent just isn't there- It's all ongoing serials and comic strips or underground comics drawn while high. Or slice-of-life auto-bio which never really ends or has a literary arc. That stuff isn't here as well, for the most part. But I feel like Clowes' point probably has more to do with the higher standard that exists now, that he kind of helped to create. But then, I haven't read Raw and Charles Burns is pretty fucking great.

Anyway these comics are expensive and I didn't buy them. But I've read them and they have their appeal even if on the whole they don't add up to my favorite shit, which is just kind of the nature of the anthology.

One cool thing about the new volume is it gives dates of birth for the artist. A lot of them aren't thirty yet. But only one was born in the eighties, and that's the editor/curator, Sammy Harkham, who appears in each but who I haven't mentioned. His stuff isn't very good. It's encouraging in its vision of youth who are older than me but have a bead and now seem to know what they're doing. What's funny is how relatable what they're doing is to someone younger. I read an interview with Sammy and he, in talking what he liked and put in, talked about the sincerity of all of it, and how, even though it might seems arty, it really is either totally comics or coming from that worldview and set of aesthetics.

I want to inaugurate a series of essays here, called Lucid Thoughts, where I am much more articulate and try a bit harder to talk about things. Perhaps I will even write drafts in Notepad in advance.

But now I see that it is late and I really shouldn't rack my brain at this point. But I'm thinking the first two installments will cover the TV show The Wire, and the comics anthology Kramer's Ergot. I think my talk of the latter will be more critical than what I've seen but my talk of the former will be more blind hyperbole of the type normally associated with praise of that show.

Before that, some inarticulate thoughts on the TV show Garth Marenghi's Darkplace. It's a British comedy that's a parody of eighties British television. Which would place it in the same category as the Owen Wilson/Jack Black/Ben Stiller/Rob Schrab pilot Heat Vision And Jack, if this didn't have more levels. It stars Matthew Holness, who was one episode of The Office, and some people who just seem to flutter around current British comedy. It's funny, with the last episode maybe being the funniest. It's hard to explain why it works. Partly it's because it's parody, and the things that are the funniest don't actually seem like jokes, just come off as very over-the-top moments. Or, because these moments are frequently violent, make the show seem darker than it is- It's very light, it's a parody, but one executed by British people giving bad line readings rather than the staff of Mad Magazine. It shares with The Office the ability to write bad jokes and not have that reduce the overall effect, which strikes me as something hard to do, as someone who thinks of humor as coming very natural and every time I see someone say a joke that strikes me as awful, I think about how even when I am just making stupid jokes for the sake of saying something I don't say things that awful because it's not how my mind works.

Tomorrow there will be lucid thoughts.

I have to keep a journal for this class I'm in right now. And by have to keep, I I mean I falsified a few weeks of entries not too long ago, late at night, pounding out words meditating on art. I came up with a lot, thought about posting it here, but thought that would be too self-indulgent. This stuff here is written with at least some awareness of an audience, and an audience consisting of people I like. The other journal, done for class, is being kicked like scraps into the void of a teacher whose opinion I don't really care about, and so I can write in these self-reflexive curlicues. I came up with a glossary explaining the shorthand I use when talking about art by way of reference to work that already exists, in the way I like about it, to make it clear when I talk about wanting my work to be like rapping I mean that I want it to be really expressive of how awesome I am and where I'm from, not a reflection of hip-hop culture. I don't talk about how I get what I like about rapping out of The Hold Steady's Separation Sunday. Although I do, even though I like elements of rap music that aren't present there. Again, Separation Sunday is pretty great. Although the more that I think about it, their new record, not so good.

I have other writings to do for that class, all with varying degrees of formality. The journal being the least formal, and the most formal being critical analysis essays about art shows that leave me completely unmoved. I'm avoiding writing one of those now, as I listen to Califone.

Califone are one of those bands with a cool aesthetic and sound but not really the type of melodies that stick and bring me back leaving aside a few moments. They're a good band and I own none of their records. Their best songs are covers, I think: The cover of Slayer's South Of Heaven they did with Modest Mouse that was the first thing I heard is really great, as is their cover of Psychic TV's The Orchids that's the highlight/centerpiece of their new record, Roots And Crowns. If you haven't heard them, I should point out that they don't sound like any of those bands. They're really into the Harry Smith Anthology Of American Folk Music but there's electronics at work, creating their own kind of buzzing textures to replace antiquated recording technologies for stuff done on computers. There's the stuff of clay and mud but also wires. The lyrics mostly seem like cut-up, which is why The Orchids comes through so strong- The refrain of the chorus is strong enough to stick in the mind as an idea, which cut-up doesn't do so well.

I saw the Borat movie. Some people like the skits more for adhering closer to their idea of what smart satire is but this is much better-paced and has a lot of fat trimmed that would've been left on for the TV show. Momentum! And sight gags. Cinema! Arguably dumbed-down but if you're making points about stupidity - Hey I don't know how to finish that sentence. I was going to say that "too much intelligence seems elitist" for like a second there but that's not actually true. How about if you're making the argument that it's too dumbed-down, you're coming off elitist and superior to a movie that's actually pretty damn funny and pretty smart. Anyway yes it's funny but I imagine that the hype will destroy it, especially once the hype starts to turn into spoilers. So see it as soon as you can with as low expectations as possible. Your expectations should probably just be "I bet this will be funnier than all those movies that I refuse to see because they look god-awful, like Employee Of The Month."

I borrowed a copy of George Saunders' In Persuasion Nation from my friend Graham. I think it's good, funnier than Pastoralia, but I still wish that he could work all his tones into something all-consuming, balancing the haha with the affect a bit more strongly, the satire with the humanity. He gets at it sometimes with some stuff in this, but that's so different from the pieces that are closer to the traditional short story. I guess I'm wishing for him to become a novelist, but if he were I'm imagining he'd probably just write Catch-22 which maybe isn't necessary in this "Catch-22 has already been written" era. Hopefully that bit of criticism should hint to you all that George Saunders is pretty fucking good.

I also read Sarah Vowell's Assassination Vacation. I tell of the history I learned to my friends who seem largely ambivalent. And I'm being selective from what she talks about, narrowing it down mostly to talk of sex cults and anarchists. It's a fun goddamn book.

I imagine that if I write more here I will write more elsewhere also, in those books I'm writing, that I lent excerpts to friends, who didn't read said excerpts. I haven't been doing a lot of writing lately.

Goddamn, Califone. Quicksand And Cradlesnakes is pretty good, even though I don't often listen to it. I don't listen to the sound of rain too often either, but that says nothing about it's quality.

I am opposed to bumper stickers, but were the scenario to come, I'd gladly have a "Sasquatch/Obama for a cooler tomorrow" sign in my window, or on my lawn.

Sasquatch made his presence known in a Montana mountain town that was veering towards economic collapse. He ran for mayor and won, with a plan that called for a greater tourist industry and an influx of new capital. He worked all day passing legislation assisting small businesses and spent his nights doing what he could as a tourist attraction, as a guitarist in a rock and roll combo that would play at struggling taverns.

People came from all around to visit the town with the rock and roll Sasquatch mayor, and their money would go to local bed and breakfast owners and restaurant proprietors. Taxes were never even officially raised, with sales taxes funding a great deal of improvements. The Sasquatch made sure the funds went to improving the public schools and building a library for the citizens, never neglecting them in favor of the tourists.

He ran for governor and won, not just in youthful college towns like Missoula but throughout the state. Even though he was a Democrat, there was no stigma attached. The Sasquatch had never even gone to college.

He was the most electable Sasquatch the United States had ever seen. And the Democrats took notice, realizing that a Sasquatch driven ticket could win over the libertarian west as well as established strongholds.

And then the Republicans took notice, and ran their own mythical creature. "Minotaur/McCain for a tougher America" might not appeal to you, but it took hold of the heart of the American people. The Minotaur was tough on everything: Crime, terrorism, immigration, welfare. He had certain lines he wouldn't cross though. Being punished in a massive labyrinth had made him sympathetic towards the stipulations of the Geneva convention. He was also opposed to Domestic spying.

They set him lose in Afghanistan, and using skills learned in the labyrinth, he emerged days later with a mangled corpse he claimed belonged to Osama Bin Laden. The dental records matched.

The Sasquatch responded by giving speeches about a variety of issues. He avoided certain hot-button issues involving sexual politics, but the general "Hey everybody let's chill out" tone hinted at liberalism. He spoke of the importance of taking care of the environment, which the minotaur ignored as an issue.

There are rumors that either creature, if elected to office, will let the facade drop and go on a murderous rampage. There are precautions in place: The Sasquatch can be easily put down. In the event of a Presidential Minotaur rampage, there is a series of bombs planted in Washington DC to turn a segment of the Mall into an island, and to move the seat of governance back to Philadelphia.

So yes this election day I will be voting for the party of the Sasquatch. The Minotaur might be better than George W. Bush but there's still something scary about his vision of America.