You don't vote, you don't count. And you DO want to matter in this lifetime, don't you?

Click on the header at the top if you want an early Halloween scare (and a laugh, too). But remember: if you don't vote, this is what could happen!

*Most of these images are available from the individual artists or various Obama campaign sources. I recall after the first post-apartheid election in South Africa, I had a phone conversation with a magazine editor in Capetown who was amused that pristine ballots from the election with Nelson Mandela as a candidate were selling like hotcakes. Something tells me that these posters are going to be a lot more popular than "Nixon's the One" or "I Like Ike."

See? We CAN all get along!

You betcha! Think of this as America's new drinking game*

*Or if you prefer, you can donate a dollar to the Obama/Biden or the No on Prop 8 campaign.

Arnold does it again

Amid the flurry of over 300 bills that Gov. Schwarzenegger vetoed (faster than I suspect he could even read what they were) was one designating Harvey Milk Day.

Not as dumb or mean-spirited (or just plain stupid) as this mayor in Kansas playing dress up.

Or the guy who wanted to get real close for a photo. Why? Why?

November 15 Fundraiser for author Stuart Timmons

Artists and authors will gather to raise funds for the medical expenses for Stuart Timmons, recovering from a stroke, at the ONE Institute (909 W. Adams Blvd, at Scarff, between Figueroa and Hoover) on Nov. 15 from 3 - 5 p.m. The event is co-sponsored by the Lambda Literary Foundation, Monette/Horwitz Trust and Drk/rm photo lab.

For reservations or more information call 213-741-0094. Contributions may be sent to

Stuart Craig Timmons Irrev. Trust
c/o Gay Timmons
POB 472
Los Gatos, CA 95031.

Banned Books Week Sept. 27 - Oct. 4, 2008

What I wish I was having tomorrow (it will be volleyball-grade wonderful at the beach)!

Hide yer booty! It's Talk Like A Pirate Day! Arrgghh!

The interior of 221B Baker Street, London

This is going to be a most interesting election...

I hate to follow good news with bad

The final day of business for Acres of Books (and that is no exaggeration) will be October 18th.

After the compromise wrought from the hollywood CRA in their classic David vs. Goliath struggle, one would think the Long Beach CRA could find a way to keep this icon as part their redevelopment schemes, which have not --to be kind-- always worked out for the best, unless you're with a demolition firm or like fug-uttly buildings replacing classic early 20th century facades such as Acres of Books, shown above. The imitation streamline-moderne of the downtown Long Beach shopping center is a poor replacement for the original.

But I guess what I think about it doesn't matter.

George Takei and Brad Altman

Live Long and Prosper

Steinbeck map of America by Molly Maguire in the collection of the Library of Congress

Not that it has anything to do with what I'm reading at the moment (The Painter of Battles, by Arturo Perez-Reverte), but it's a cool map that I hadn't seen in a while...

What a difference (during hurricane season) a day makes

As recently as Memorial Day, the water levels of Lake Okeechobee were at a record low; now authorities are draining the lake to prevent the possibility of flooding South Florida.

As any student of Florida history knows, the storm surge from the lake poses a threat to life and property almost as severe as if it were the coast. Turn your back on the lake in a wet season at your peril; of course, if humans weren't building in places where they have no business being in the first place, maybe Nature knows what's it's doing.

Unfortunately, humans aren't going to go away any time soon, so Nature will take it's course, and if they have any intelligence, the humans in the path of its fury will learn to get out of the way.



Even if none of the storms this season make a direct hit on the Florida peninsula, eventually one -or two, or three-- will. And you thought Katrina (or Andrew) was something, well, just hold on to your hats...

Actually, to look at the projected landfall of the next few storms, finding a dry place in Florida will be like trying to find an honest politician in Miami.

This is what America looks like now

I thought that the Dems were going to have to get Zhang Yimou to get any decent buzz for the convention. Well, he can save his plane ticket.

From Palestine to Soweto to Sadr City, there are people who will now have faith that this is not a man who will bust down their door and destroy their lives. Once again, people will be able to say, "Thank God! The Americans are here!"

To say nothing of what could happen from Neah Bay, Washington to Key West, Florida; and Imperial Beach, California to Van Buren, Maine.

Who's dismayed more? The Borg Queen or John McCain?

Teachers with guns? That'll liven up those faculty meetings!*

And I betcha that the art and music departments will get all their funding, now, too... or else!





*The Texas state legislature votes to let teachers bear arms. Who's next? Hotel maids and garment workers? Yee haw!

How I spent my weekend; no, I didn't talk like a pirate ...yet!

Not a nice (or smart) thing to do

Gov. Schwarzenegger, as threatened, signed an executive order to reduce the salaries of 200,000 employees to the Federal minimum wage as a result of the ongoing state budgest stalemate. Arnold is personally worth more than $100,000,000.

The ripple effect of his stunt could end up costing the state more money. Not to mention make him very unpopular around state employees.

Obamatopia

It is hard not to to listen to the whole of Sen. Obama's speech in Berlin and feel almost a little disoriented, in that this has come to pass in our time.







There is no audicity where hope is concerned here...











I get the feeling that things are truly possible... for our country, our planet, our future.









It doesn't hurt that Obama is possibly one of the gifted orators of our time.

It may take more time than I have left on this planet to process the headiness of the possibility of humanity today.





When I think of where we have come from, in my lifetime, to where we are now (even if it remains but a possibility), it's a good thing.











Maybe --just maybe-- the promise that this election holds for us may come to pass.




I'm certainly not going to take it for granted that it will happen. Nor be devastated if the real evildoers among us keep us from reaching that goal. At least I can see it is possible.

This is probably as close as I came come to that sense of wonderment that Europeans felt in the past when they realized that the optimism and "can do" of the American spirit wasn't just hollow air.

McCain can't have it both ways

First, Sen. McCain lambasted Sen. Barack Obama for a lack of foreign policy experience. Then when Sen. Obama draws a crowd of 200,000 in Berlin, he snidely says, that he'd go to speak in Berlin, too, but he preferred to spend his time in America's heartland campaigning.

I'd thought that it would be fitting for McCain to have a post in the Obama cabinet as a show of bipartisanship, most fittingly as Secretary for Veteran Affairs. Yet now that he's letting the far right dictate more of his platform, and spoken out against gay adoption (among issues), perhaps it would be time for him to consider retiring from politics altogether.

Help save the last tattered shreds of your democracy

The California State Legislature is about to balance the state budget by taking funds needed to run libaries. Our education programs have yet to recover from the last time they did this kind of circumvention of the people's will with taking funds from vital programs.

The Republicans want to concurrently allow tax loopholes for the wealthy and to offer unjustified tax rebates.

Call the Governor at (916) 445-2841, Assembly Speaker Karen Bass at (916) 319-2047, Senate Pro Tem Don Perata at (916) 651-4009; and call or email your State Assemblymember or Senator ...today!

Kay Ryan, our new Poet Laureate

Photo by Alan Dep

There have been Obama magazine covers, and then there have been Obama magazine covers

It's not that Obama supporters don't have a sense of humor, nor the ability to appreciate satire, but at some point, as good an artist as Barry Brill is, he might want to consider that just maybe he might have missed the mark with his New Yorker cover.

The day my heart doesn't miss a beat when a police car slows down as it approaches me, or I can put the memories of the 60s behind me (not all the them; just the scary ones).

The bad news is Cody's bit the dust; the good news is so did Jesse Helms

Not only did Cody's finally give up their long struggle to stay afloat, but two other California independent bookstores, Acres of Books (with over two million books!) in Long Beach and Libreria Martinez in Santa Ana, are in danger of shutting their doors.

If there are no more independent bookstores, don't presume you're always going to have the right to read whatever you want. That would make a fine scorched earth exit plan for the Bush administration, if independent bookstores were to disappear. Humans aren't that far behind the polar bears when it comes to treading water this summer.