Our boy came to play tonight, proving that language can be a beautiful, beautiful thing. As we all knew, the Commander and Thief was going to come up short on foreign policy. What we didn't know was that he was going to come up this short.

Clear, concise, organized, articulate, and everything Dubya is not, Kerry's performance in the debates tonight was clutch in a campaign that has been breaking under the weight of the GOP cash flood of character attacks. With a clear distinction between histrionics and history, repetition and reality, and fear and freedom, Kerry showed concretely the wise words of our 41st: "I think Democrats win when people think."

In 90 minutes, everything changes, and we got a real campaign again.

You too can be an American hero. Now I'm all for wacky get-out-the-vote initiatives, but this is a bit of a stretch. God bless America.

My productivity is getting truly sacked by Fall of Nations, the latest timesink from the crew at work. A web-based resource strategy game based entirely on simple mathematics that refers to me constantly as "glorious, Enlightened One," you could say it scratches an itch particularly close to the pleasure center of my brain. Still middling in the median 35% of the rankings, I've been building up an insidious espionage infrastructure bent on raiding the treasuries of the fools who oppose me. With a clean interface driven on geekly stats derived from values of "Intelligence" and "Attack," it only takes a competitive ladder to change the game for me from a simple math exercise to a holy crusade; a war to build a vast empire from the bones and ashes of my enemies.

Math and competition can do strange things to a guy.

We've been trying out a new drummer while our beloved punk rocker Jenn takes her leave. The guy we've tapped is an excellent player and almost as fun a basement as Jenn, so don't think for a second we've forgotten how to rock. However, things almost came to a screeching halt this evening when Ted and I had to break the news to him that we are, well, you know...

Geeks.

This, to my credit, came as quite a shock to him. Sitting around after a particularly rocking practice, Ted and I are talking about the upcoming Jyhad tournament on the weekend and our plans when he predictably asked what the hell we were talking about. After informing him it was a more complex Magic-type card game with vampires, it took him a little by surprise.

Equally surprised were Ted and I, naturally thinking that our respectively appearances and mannerisms scream geek from forty miles away. I like to think I represent 24/7, but apparently building your entire musical career around a song about an 8-bit ex-girlfriend just isn't good enough to be geek anymore.

Tomorrow I'm going to tuck in my shirt, just to show him.

I heard a guy the other day say that he was voting for Bush on his "character," since he had no idea what his policies were. Of course, this is so insanely wrong that I couldn't pop his particulary bubble (must be getting more mature in my old age), but if I had lived up to the notoriety of my youth, I don't think I would need the law professor, but I would have taken him.

Increasingly I find that a lot of folks are throwing their support for their Commander and Thief simply because they think he's their type of guy. Apparently, I'm the only one who isn't a millionaire playboy son of a former President, because I just don't see how the hell he speaks for the Everyman. With an upbringing of incomprehensible privilege and access, an adolescence of unimaginable excess and hedonism, followed by an adulthood unbelievable free of accountability or responsibility, just how can Soccer Mom and Nascar Dad put the big W sticker on the back of their respective minivans? My boss said I'd figure it out when I was in a higher tax bracket.

That's a lesson I can afford not to learn.

We all knew it was coming. But we knew it wouldn't make it any easier.

On the third page of the arts section in the paper this morning, underneath the ads for Jim's 24-hour Plumbing Service and a grand opening for a gentleman's club a nation rocked for 30 years of punk rock learned of the passing of one of its grandfathers, Johnny. Between sips of coffee and the light sound of Blitzkrieg Bop playing in a cell phone commercial, a country read a small obituary as a symbolic footnote for a music movement. On morning commute radio, 40 year old DJs spoke a little softer and wore their old leather jackets a little prouder. Anchormen on Headline News remembered nights they had long forgotten, politicians forgot feelings they had last night, and a teenager with a mohawk gave the finger to his teacher without knowing quite why.

Rockstars will rock tonight a little less harder. Mothers will nag tonight a little less sharper. Dogs will bark tonight a little more loudly. Kids will sleep tonight a little less soundly. And with the passing of a legend, the world will notice a little less than it should but a little more than it expected.

And it's going to be okay.
It's going to be alright.

I was lugging my drums across a street in downtown Providence to a drum circle that I had erroneously been told was being held at as220, when I heard from the truck that just let me by a loud shitneck shouting, "Fatass!"

I should explain that it had been a particularly poor couple of days and the comment struck my temperment such that my drums were temporarily forgotten and a confrontation seemed appropriate. I approached the door without a word and tried to open it as he slowly inching away while looking another direction. Finding it locked, I thought I'd announce my displeasure with his comment by giving the door a stiff kick and pounding at his rolled up window.

Terrified the thirtysomething man looked back at me, said something muffled by the window, and pointed the other way. To my embarrassment, he was pointing to a half-naked homeless woman who was waving at the traffic and dancing in the middle of the road.

I apologized for my lack of perception, and we both went our separate, hurried ways.

An anger so large it could breathe. Is that the flash the blinds the conscience of the suicide bomber walking towards a school bus? Is that the snap that breaks the sanity of the revolutionary with his sights on a soldier? Is that the final brick in this century's Berlin Wall?

Is the suicide bomber the terrorist or the terminally terrorized? He doesn't evangelize. She doesn't reproduce. He doesn't arm militias. She doesn't lead them into battle. He or she uses that fundamental understanding of pain learned over years of direct consumption to expel a final breath for a gruesome bone-splintering spit into the eyes of the perceived enemy. A dying gasp held for a moment as a plunger is pushed to put enemy and innocent bystander alike in the post-mortem crap shoot of another life; a final farewell boat ride for twenty bought with the tears and tribulations of one. What shred of hope would have turned him back? What could be said to keep her finger off the fatal button? What eleventh hour message of deliverance could be handed those who have lived their lives in ruinous refugee camps already two generations old?

I'm sorry doesn't seem quite good enough Sam. Not good enough by half.

The Severe Beating of JC came up short on opening day of its DVD release, only half of the sales from Finding Nemo proving concretely that computers beat Jesus every time.