Welcome to the National Stage, Alaskan Barbie
Published September 30th, 2008 | 
I hope Biden calls Palin out on every single line of her canned bullshit
Obama, Wins Debate by Split Decision
Published September 29th, 2008 | Let’s face it, although Barack Obama has many strengths, debate is not one of them. Thankfully, it’s not a real strength for McCain either and, unlike McCain, all Obama had to do was show-up. For McCain’s part, he showed his age. He came across as a cranky, doddering fool, often incoherent in his answers. He teetered on the brink of losing his cool a couple of times during the debate and absolutely refused to look Obama in the eyes, dismissing him as if he were not even on stage, but was, instead, sitting back in a green room somewhere.
And look at the last eight years. On the Republicans’ watch, we’ve seen our country attacked, 2 wars, Katrina, our economy desimated (unemployment gone from 2.1% when Bush took office to 6.1%, bank failures, credit and housing disaster), a complete lose of respect and diplomatic prowess abroad, while our leaders tried to distract us with fake controversies over gay marriage and time-consuming, money-wasting hearings over the use of steroids and prohormones in professional sports among other things.
Obama, had he been a more skilled debater, could have destroyed McCain, but chose to either counterpunch or absorb blows for the 90-minutes. But McCain didn’t truly land that many blows for all the punches he threw. For the most part, McCain chose to clinch and crowd Obama, making it difficult for Obama to respond forcefully or for Jim Leher to interupt. But Obama won, because he showed up, looked McCain in the eye, maintained a reasonable command of the material and looked Presidential. McCain did not. Still, I would have loved it if, during one of those moment in the debate when McCain fired-off one of his typical comments about Obama’s inexperience, Obama had thrown a grenade back at him and said something like, “John McCain, you’ve had 26 years in Washington to set things right and you haven’t demonstrated leadership — you haven’t shown you can lead a boy scout jamboree.” John McCain would’ve had a meltdown in response and his race would’ve been over as far as America was concerned.
I’m looking forward to the vice-presidential debate between Biden and Palin. Since most of the enthusiasm for the McCain-Palin ticket is largely based on the Palin factor, the VP debate might prove to be the real game-changer. If Palin demonstrates the same level of ignorance and unpreparedness on stage that she’s demonstrated in the few interviews she’s done, Biden will be the one to deliver the knock-out blow to McCain’s bid for the presidency. Barring that, Obama better hope that he makes no major mistakes for the remainder of this contest because unlike Obama, I do think Americans are stupid enough to vote for McCain and there are a lot of people out there who won’t vote for the “black guy” in any event.
He’s Sinking in Quicksand — Somebody Throw Him a Rope!
Published September 26th, 2008 | As I’ve said before, I’m not a big believer in writer’s block. Rather, I don’t see writer’s block as a disease but a symptom of a larger problem that doesn’t have anything to do with writing. What does have to do with writing specifically is what I’d prefer to call writer’s malaise. Whereas, with writer’s block, you are better off identifying and solving the problem causing the block rather than “writing through the pain,” with writer’s malaise, the only thing to be done is to write through it.
So what is writer’s malaise? It is a profound dissatifaction with one’s own writing and the creative process. It happens. You get stuck in a creative rut and the more you try to get out of it, the more it feels like you are running on a hamster’s wheel, a spinning treadmill of death. You become a burn-out case. Let’s say you write horror stories. That’s your thing — your only thing. You’ve been writing the same fucking stories the same way for years. You’ve gotten to the point where you are very efficient at writing those stories but you’re just plagiarizing yourself. You just don’t like to write anymore. It’s not that you can’t write another story, it’s that you don’t want to.
Maybe what you need to do is to try writing something else. There is great joy in discovery. Try writing in a different genre. Try poetry. Try a screenplay. Write something other than horror. How about a memoir? Take a trip outside your comfort zone and challenge yourself. That’s the only way to deal with your creative stagnation.
