dateline: florida
one boil, one heart attack, and now jeb bush is growing breasts. what will become of our country if the republicans win the presidential election?

ha ha ha.

This letter was just received from England:

NOTICE OF REVOCATION OF INDEPENDENCE
To the citizens of the United States of America,

In the light of your failure to elect a President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective today.

Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties Over all states, commonwealths and other territories. Except Utah, which she does not fancy. Your new Prime Minister (The Rt. Hon. Tony Blair, MP for the 97.85% of you who have until now been unaware that there is a world outside your borders) will appoint a minister for America without the need for further elections. Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. A questionnaire will be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed.

To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, the following Rules are introduced with immediate effect:

1. You should look up "revocation" in the Oxford English Dictionary. Then look up "aluminium". Check the pronunciation guide. You will be Amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it. Generally, you should raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels. Look up "vocabulary". Using the same twenty-seven words interspersed with filler noises such as "like" and "you know" is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication. Lookup "interspersed".

2. There is no such thing as "US English". We will let Microsoft know on your behalf.

3. You should learn to distinguish the English and Australian accents. It really isn't that hard.

4. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as the good guys.

5. You should relearn your original national anthem, "God Save The Queen", but only after fully carrying out task 1. We would not want you to get confused and give up half way through.

6. You should stop playing American "football". There is only one kind of football. What you refer to as american "football" is not a very good game. The 2.15% of you who are aware that there is a world outside your borders may have noticed that no one else plays "American" football. You will no longer be allowed to play it, and should instead play proper football. Initially, it would be best if you played with the girls. It is a Difficult game. Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to play rugby (which is similar to American "football", but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour like nancies). We are hoping to get together at least a US rugby sevens side by 2005.

7. You should declare war on Quebec and France, using nuclear weapons if they give you any merde. The 97.85% of you who were not aware that there is a world outside your borders should count yourselves lucky. The Russians have never been the bad guys. "Merde" is French for "shit".

8. July 4th is no longer a public holiday. November 8th will be a new national holiday, but only in England. It will be called "Indecisive Day".

9. All American cars are hereby banned. They are crap and it is for your own good. When we show you German cars, you will understand what we mean.

10. Please tell us who killed JFK. It's been driving us crazy.

Thank you for your co-operation.

credit where credit is due

saw the aftermath of a shootout on my way to the hospital last week. they really put little tents on the road in each place they find a bullet.

i can't believe i am still up. i have started going to bed at 10pm lately, much to mike's consternation. i say that like i just started, i have actually been going to bed early for quite some time. but now that he's out of town for the weekend, i am up til all hours. hm.

tomorrow i have to have some things happen to my foot. i thought it was just some kind of xray, but then i was told it involved something administered intravenously and needing a bone sample. now i wish i hadn't been so cavalier about needing someone to come to the hospital with me.

most of the time i am ok with having fraser living in another country. but some days there's no denying that it's pretty much the worst thing in the world.

only a day away from a four-day thanksgiving weekend. i am thankful that i will be spending it home sleeping instead of the traditional dysfunctional family feud that most people experience. although, in a related vein, i did call home yesterday to share the joy of the first snowfall with my family and instead became engaged in a bitter exchange about the election. this time not only with my parents but also my grandmother, which was an exciting twist. apparently the world would be much better off without me and the other east coast liberals.

my brother killed a deer.

had a birthday wednesday. i am 27 now.

Another story from the UK, this one from the London Times, is a bit more disturbing: The FBI is being asked to investigate how thousands of mainly black supporters of Al Gore were given ballot papers that had allegedly already been marked for rival candidates. This doesn't seem to have been picked up by the American press...yet.

From the Observer (UK): If Dubya steals the White House, American democracy will be a joke.

here's one of my posts from last week, dubyafied!

wednesday, big time, october 11
moose had his good dog class tonight, which I never heard of. I'm a plain speaker, and, uh, he didn't bite anyone, big time, so we was real proud of that, which is illiterate children. I'm certain of this, big time, at the end he even got to run around loose with all the other dogs, or something, and even when they sniffed him, big time, he didn't bite anyone, which is illiterate children. I'm certain of this, uh, so that was double good, which I never heard of. When I was a boy in Midland, uh, moose was the only jack russell terrier there, uh, but there was a beagle so he wasn't the only little guy. I'm a plain speaker, and, uh, right now mike is trying to teach him to shake hands, where wings take dreams. I can get it done, so, or whatever, good boy.
posted by ash at 10 or 4:23 PM EDT (GMT-5 or 4)

in other news, george w. bush has admitted that he was arrested for driving drunk in maine back when he was a young man of only 30. Bush admitted that he was in fact drunk at the time of the arrest, and has been drunk for most of the campaign.

"Shit man," he started. "Here it was all this time when you guys thought I was just a duckin' fumb-ass, when all that was the real probloblem was that I was fuckin' hammered. Like all the goddamn screwing up words and budgets and leaders names and shit was just cuz I was buzzin', you know."

"It's not like just cuz, I'm wasted won't make me a good Presinent," he reasoned. I know this totally kick-azz hangover cure. If you electatec me, I will share it with the whole fuckin' country, and no one'll ever be hungover again," he promised. "And that's the role of a leader -- to share wisdom, to share experience with people who are looking for someone to lead."

was looking at interesting site which features near-death bus rides and was reminded of my own. i must have been in 9th or 10th grade when, starved for educational experiences, the national honor society of idabel high school went on a ride up to poteau, oklahoma to hear jimmy carter speak to a bunch of junior college students (and us). on the way back, they decided to make it a doubly educational experience by taking us to see some runestones which were situated on top of a mountain (actually, in retrospect, it was probably a tall hill. we were, after all, in oklahoma). on the way up our bus driver, whose name escapes me but was possibly "blue", turned a bit sharply and hit a concrete retaining wall. no worries, we continued merrily up the mountain/hill. about halfway up, the bus started sliding backwards a little on the steep parts and just generally making very slow and noisy progress. for reasons which are beyond me, the grownups made the decision to carry on, and once at the top, we pulled onto a "scenic overlook" (you got it, a ledge) to check out the damage. turns out the hydraulic brakes had been punctured and lost all pres.... hey, the bus is moving! so while all the adult/teacher/chaperones were out looking at the bent bus, all the kid are on the bus ride from hell. it may well be worse in my mind that it was in reality, but the reality of the bus wheels sliding over the ledge and scraping as the bus started over the edge was enough to terrify me for a good long time. not enough to keep me from riding the substitute they sent for us home, but quite a bit.

finally the product we have all been waiting for: a software utility which quickly detects and blocks cat typing. i don't know about you, but my cat is constantly trying to screw up my life when i am away from the keyboard. if he isn't hacking into microsoft using my userid he's trying to sell the dog or hook up with some pedophile on irc.

now if only i could find helper apps that would prevent moose from spilling a cup of coffee into the hard drive and alert me before i stepped on a computer left carelessly on the floor, i would be certain to achieve my ultimate goal: world domination.