A Farewell to Calls for Arms

I Mailed my absentee ballot today via Her Majesty's Royal Air Mail. As I sat on the Hall Quad, or waiting in line at Jan's Pantry for a Baguette, trying to decide once and for all which oval to fill in, Brits one and all seemed to have an opinion: "Don't vote for Bush or I'll take it away from you" said Dom. "Make sure you pick the right one, ma-love" Jan told me. "Kerry/Edwards or they won't deliver it" Matthew says. The folks at the Post-Office seemed to regard the "Official Civilian Overseas Absentee Ballot" label on the envelope with a note of desperate hope and foreboding. It was as each of them were telling me with their eyes, "we're counting on you chap. Don't let us down, not this time."

I understand their concern. To be British and politically thoughtful is to have genuine concerns about the world, whether you vote Labour or Lib-Dem or Tory. Its a once-upon-an-empire that's now struggling to find its place between its own glorious past and a future with either the United States or Europe at-large. But all of them understand that their own fates are entwined with ours and with the fates of all the citizens of the world. And this doesn't make them guilty of a kind of shallow cosmopolitanism so common among Hollywood actors and M.A. students at the Walsh School. No, the Briton can care about the stability of Europe, and yet spend the pound and veto the EU Constitution. The Briton can care about Kashmir though his colonies there are long gone. The Briton can have genuine, deep and almost inexplicable affection for America and Americans, and yet question the war in Iraq because by God his brother is in the Black Watch in Fallujah. The Briton can do all of these things and be as loyal to the Union Jack as Churchill or Thatcher. Why? Because he's seen empire and been humbled, and for all intents and purposes, he's usually a decent neighbor.

So to Dom, Jan, Matthew and all the nervous Brits, I can only offer my best and the continuing affection of my countrymen. I don't see the same visionary in John Kerry that you seem to, I see a mediocre, absentee wannabe statesmen with a hapless ambition, and I wonder where have all the great Americans gone? But even still, I don't think I let you down on that ballot. My vote is confidential, but I will say this: His name starts with "M" and ends with "ichael Badnarik". Cheers.

-Foster

PS: If all the self-hating American socialista backpackerazzi here say they are voting Kerry/Edwards 2004, how come all their shirts say Abercrombie/Fitch 1972??

On a Serious Note:

I am putting this response to my Red Sox rant up here, perhaps against its author's wishes, because it's that fucking good. Rarely does a man of the people humble we Powers-That-Be at the Enfranchised. To do so is to earn an Imperial reprieve at the Colosseum of Your-Ass.

"Just read your post, and I wanted to send this via email instead of via comment (or via pseudonym). Obviously you've heard about how youths everywhere have revealed themselves to be members of the Red Sox Nation over the last two weeks. But you shouldn't be so pessimistic about this. Last year during the ALCS, I can remember only one kid here getting visibly upset as Aaron Fucking Boone homered off Wakefield, and he's a football player whose background is working-class Bostonian. Even during the series, most people were indifferent. But for some reason, be it narrative or hype, this year's Yanks-Sox series stoked passions in even non-baseball fans like my Chilean bio major roommate, who a month ago thought the infield fly rule was a scientific theory. Obviously the comeback made people instinctively identify with the Sox: hell, it follows the plot of every sports movie ever made. The most bizarre thing of all is how people's interest in the series went beyond mere spectatorship. They actually became Red Sox fans, acting as if they had been there as Bucky Dent hit his homer or Buckner let Mookie's grounder roll through their legs; they actually absorbed the consciousness of an 85 year old retired cop from South Boston.

Maybe it's that people want to feel like they're part of a winning team? Maybe it has to do with malaise over the state of our country? Here, we're supposed to be the world's great superpower, beacon of hope and freedom, but mired down in an unacknowledged guerilla war in a country that two years ago posed no threat to us. Our once mighty army is being handcuffed by Pentagon ideologues who launched the most misguided war in three decades, if not in American history. America isn't supposed to be like this. We're optimistic, not pessimistic. Our history is of perpetual motion and progress, guided by a sense of mission and providence, and rarely have there been times when people question our national myths and mythmakers. Today is like 1980: our military power has been humbled, energy prices are skyrocketing, the economy is teetering, geopolitics are in flux, the incumbent president is a spectacular failure who's fiddling as the Mid East burns. Enter the Red Sox - the Miracle on Turf. They're ordinary men, underdogs, who against all odds defeated the great and arrogant power. They're Boston patriots, they're our rebels, our founders. They fit into our national founding myths. They give us a reason to believe in ourselves again.

That and people are insecure douchebags. Lemmings, all of them. I want to take a bat around campus and physically assault every third person I see. It was Schaedenfraude that brought me to the Sox, but after seeing all these NYC private school ass clowns dressing up as Sox fans, I want to emigrate to someplace where they don't give a shit about baseball. Montreal looks promising.

PS. I just realized the plague that will be Buddy Christ/Johnny Damon Halloween costumes. If you don't mind, I'm going to go set myself on fire."

Mr. Campion, wherever you are, I think you just earned yourself a Kerry vote.

-Fosterius

On a rainy England nite, I found myself pleasently tanked on cheap pints and waiting patiently in line for a debate at the Oxford Union Society. (For those of you who don't know the Oxford Union, it is a gentleman's club that for 175 years has given fops in black coats and white bowties a place to sit back by the library fire, drink single malt scotch, have a smoke and read the Financial Times .) This nite, the adjoining debate chambers were packed to capacity with a veritable whos-who of British prep school valedictorians. The resolution before the Union: that "This House would re-elect George W. Bush"

First up two American D.Phil students spoke, one on each side. Then, American tax crusader Grover Norquist spoke for Bush and the editor of the Mirror (the New York Post of the UK, ran a story publishing all 150 pictures of people executed under Bush's tenure as governor of Texas)spoke for Kerry. To top it all off, the third round brought Member of Parliament, First Minister of Northern Ireland, Leader of the Ulster Union, Nobel Laureate 1998, Right Honourable Mr. David Trimble esq. to cap-off the case for the affirmative. In response, the negative fielded....... Richard Dreyfuss. A very drunk (complimentary Union sherry) if not strangely eloquent Richard Dreyfuss.

I had a chickenscratch speech all drawn up and ready to go if I was recognized to speak by the chair, something to the effect of: "Madam President, distinguished colleagues, we find ourselves in the Jaws of one of the toughest presidential campaigns in the history of the United States. Much anti-American Graffiti has been sprayed about this chamber tonite, and I feel compelled to dispel some of the rhetoric being proferred about Mr. Bush's Opus of foreign policy. While it is true that we have not caught Osama Bin Laden, we have had many Close Encounters with high-ranking Al Qaeda fighters along the Pakistani border. And Iraq has not been without its share of successes. Saddam Hussein captured, his heirs apparent dead. Some members of the infamous card deck are still on the loose, for instance former Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, so-called "Baghdad Bob". You might ask, "What About Bob?" why hasn't he been captured? I can assure you it is only a matter of time before Bob and his cohort of insurrectionists are Staked-Out and captured. In closing, this House must pass this measure, for the sake of my country and yours. My name is Daniel Foster, and I support The American President."

Oh, and for those of you interested, the measure failed by a 4 to 1 margin, my speech notwithstanding.

-Daniel "Webster" Foster

Congratulations, Red Sox Fans

Whether you're a diehard or a bandwagoner, a proletarian at BU, bourgeoisie at Harvard, or the odd gray between of upper-middle-class New England Violet-Bloods at Boston College or Tufts; whether you hate the Yankees or just the evil-somehow-vaguely-republican-empire they represent; whether a vote for the Sox is, to you, a vote for Kerry; if resent your parents and their money and your Phillips-Andover education and you swear that that Dominican guy thought of you as black or latino or whatever he was for just a split second as you high-fived in the bleacher seats at Fenway (your friends took the box behind the plate); if you tried to climb the Monster and fell 100 feet to parapalegia; if you rioted at Smith or Amherst or UMass, where most of the locals haven't heard of baseball; if you spotted that worn-out Sox cap at the "vintage" clothing shop and knew right away that it'd make the perfect accompaniment to your hemp necklace at the WTO protest; whether you're a thirty-something Hollywood leading man who rode into glory on your best friend's talent and J-Lo's ass, a man responsible for the propogation of more bad script than penmanship week in third grade; contrarians and Phish fans everywhere; misunderstood, misillusioned, misanthropes; angst-junkies, Ragers against all kinds of Machines; part-time workers of the world, from Brookline to New Haven to Providence, from all four corners of the Abercrombie empire, WASPs and WASCs unite! O, ye martyrs from all walks of privilege, you are the chest-strapped suicide bombers of this great country, the persecuted, the ignored, the uncolored; for a moment that bar in Cambridge was the hill on Golgotha, it was the compound in Waco, it was a temple to the Sultan of Swat from whom you turned your eyes 85 years ago, and who has now, in his infinite power and mercy, finally forgiven you. It inspired you so much, you even slid your Vodka and Red Bull a few more inches down the bartop, cautiously kept your hand in your wallet pocket, and let that 20 year-old son of an Irish cop from Southie slide in and get a better view of the postgame. So it is you, Boston Red Sox fan, that I offer my praise and supplication. Congratulations. Now you're unique, just like everybody else.

-Foster

The Word Mirror

"Judge a man by his parties." That was the point of The Great Gatsby. Or the opposite. I can never remember. The point is, I do. And so I wonder, what would magical child's birthday party carnival equipment would you most desire? Some people would go for the Bouncy Castle of Anti-Gravity. Others for the Pin-the-furtherly-absurd-animal-part-on-the-Griffin! (For more amusement, also consider Centaur).

But me? I choose the Word Mirror.

See, the Word Mirror's a funny thing. Whatever you put in front of it, it shows you the reflection of the word in it. For instance, if you stand in front of it and laugh ("Ha"), you will see in it a contemplative version of yourself ("ah"). If you're male ("he"), prepare to seem apathetic ("eh").

It's less than impressive to bring a race car before a mirror of any sort and see another reflected back. But for some reason I would be highly amused by bringing Teddy Roosevelt and his thought bubble to in front of the water passage in the Isthmus and seeing it shown back at me. Perhaps this has nothing to do with the Word Mirror at all, and is only because of Teddy's mustache.

Of course, several profound realizations could be made while the birthday boy, now two years old, is amusing himself with a box and some string. For instance, several household objects, a light "bulb" and a door "knob" both become onomatopoeia. Anybody wearing a "decal" would find themselves in, I dunno, some sort of corset? And by the simple act of "retool"ing a device, you'd get to witness honest-to-god vandalism.

Of course, all this is small potatoes, compared to the simple joy of dragging, before the Word Mirror, one small dog.

Observation:

If you ever find yourself on the verbal defensive for having allegedly done something, and you attempt to make things better by invoking the phrase "I would have to disagree with that characterization", you have already lost.

Next time, try "I'm sorry."

The Enfranchised Finally Gets around to Endorsing some Candidates

That's right, its the quadrennial again and we here at The Enfranchised see it as our duty, nay our reluctant and disillusioned irrelevant formality, to guide you, dear reader, as you wade through bodies of exit pollsters and hired goons, electioneers and disenfranchised (the Trotsky to our Stalin, the Turner to our Hooch) on your way to the voting booths. Since we---as 47th degree Free-Masons and members of the Illuminati Oversight Committe---do not vote so much as impose our absolute will wantonly on the masses from atop our Ivory Towers and within our Halls of Power (and occasionally from the john), we figured its the least we could do for you proletariat.

The US Presidential Race

1st choice:
The Libertarian Ticket. If you really hate the status quo and want to stick it to the Man who's straddling both sides of the aisle these days, don't vote Nader. Give Nader the presidency and he'll conduct all his foreign policy via letter-writing campaign. No, vote Badnarik/Campagna. They'll know exactly what to do with the federal government. Namely, destroy it.

Honorable Mentions:
Personal Choice Party: This, we're sad to say, is the only ticket on the ballot to feature both a bona fide member of the International Brotherhood of Prizefighters, and a porn star eligible for Social Security. And just think, if President Charles Jay should perish in an unfortunate White House shower shivving incident, you'll have a capable Vice-President to step in whose foreign policy credits include The Sexual Ecstasy of the Macumba (1975) and Beyond De Sade (1979).

Peace & Freedom Party: Interestingly, the presidential candidate--a French bon vivant by the name of Peltier--has never met his running mate. Maybe it has something to do with Peltier's conviction and ongoing incarceration for the 1975 killing of two federal agents. If the PFP ticket takes the White House, Peltier may well be the first President to pardon himself since Ford ate some bad borscht and got the runs at the SALT II talks in Vladivostock.

Ronald "John Galt Jr." Gascon, Write-in Pennsylvania: I think the name says it all.

Jack Grimes, United Fascist Union: Jack Grimes' rather modest goal is to institute a New World Order by spreading a military dictatorship across the face of the earth. This will presumably be facilitated by our near-at-hand development of psychic powers, with help from UFOs and Satan, without whom Grimes would never be the political force he is today. Sadly, Grimes was never the same after the loss of his brother, Frank, who was driven to madness and an untimely death at the hands of one Homer J. Simpson. We won't link to his website, but you can find it. Make sure you read about his difficulties in getting to an out-of-state campaign event, because mom's car broke down. Jack lives in an apartment above a bowling alley and below another bowling alley.

The British PM Race

1st. choice
Labour: Blair's an Oxford grad. Michael Howard went to that...other place...in the Fenlands. Fenlands Polytechnic I believe its called.

Honourable Mention
Lib-Dems: That Lib-Dem bird I met at the Union bar kind of had a thing for me I think. Plus, in the UK, Democrats actually are liberal.

The Afghani Presidential Race

1st choice
Somebody, for the love of dear and all mercifucl God, SOMEBODY.

Miscellaneous (US Senate, Illinois)

1st choice

Alan Keyes, Republican: If anyone ever wondered what Kermit the Frog would be like if he were a bearded, black ultra-conservative Catholic, wonder no more.


Me? I'm voting Bull-Moose.

-Foster

Funetics! (It's like Phonetics, but Fun. Wait, no it isn't).

Everyone has a dialect. The South, Boston, San Fernando Valley. All these are famous for their dialects. But my personal dialect is not so regionally based. As near as I can discern, I speak "Overly correct English", with hints of "Passively Aggressively Grammatical." For instance, in most dialects of English, the following is an acceptable interchange:

Random Person: How you doin'?
Dialectical Speaker: Fine.

But in my dialect, it would occur more like this:
RP: How you doin'?
DS: I *am* doin*g* fine.

Aside from its verbal awkwardness ("I am" is a bad iamb), this was also revealed in the June 1998 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine to be the response most likely to get the shit kicked out of you in 87% of circumstances. Luckily, I attend a university that's a preserve of people willing to be such asses, and I can explore these consequences.

Take the email I received today. It raised the issue of how to spell a certain burger chain's name. And I realized the following progression:

In N Out. This is how any knave off the street might spell it upon first hearing. In fact, given today's knaves, we'd be lucky if it didn't end up 1N |\| 000u7! (1 M SO 31337).

In And Out. The way my other overeducated friend spelled it. This is the way the words are spelled.

In-N-Out. This is the official brand name, registered trademark, In-N-Out burgers. See what they did, there? Being hip by having a touch of the proletarian in them. They're hip, with it. A reminder of years past when such corporate desecration of the English Language was newfangled.

In And Out. How I will henceforth spell their name. Let's face it, I'm not cool. Yes, I am familiar with their preferred spelling. But just as there are people who would calque my adored "Philological Semantics" to "Phizzle Sizzle", I find that I must, to maintain my "credibility" (from the hip-hop term "cred"), rewrite it as In And Out. The only alternative is to remember that awful time in Mr. Vivona's 7th Grade Art Class when I referred to "gangsta" rap. Emphasizing the "sta". In my mind, the current generation of police-fuckers and kitten-killers didn't deserve the "er" that men like Al Capone and Machine Gun Kelly had earned.

In everyone else's mind, I was a dorky, white middle-schooler taking his cues on urban culture from a well-skimmed Newsweek article.

Misery Marketing

As I was watching television tonight, oh gentle reader, my roommate was sucking at the TiVo game, and so we revisited the long-forgotten world of commercials. One captured my attention. A series of black screens, each with simple white text. One read "I only drink on weekends." Another "I only take them for pain." "If you had my problems, you'd drink too." I was captivated!
And then, just when they had me hooked, bam. It was just some superfluous rehab clinic. Look, if you can still speak coherent excuses, how much help can you really need? No, these proclamations had so much more potential. That is, alcohol has left about half of their marketing opportunities on the table. Blonde bombshells and sports events are not their only market. This may sound overly holistic, but... if you think it's a reason to drink, it is.
Again, my humble suggestions for how to take advantage of darker motivations, for fun and profit!

Bud Light: Cause she's not coming back.
Hummer: For when it's "a good size."
Orphaned Puppies: Halfway to philanthropy.
Sony TV's and Playstations: If people come to your room to watch the game, it must be cause you're friends!
Tower Records: With our sales associates, no personal taste is actually required.
Kerry Edwards 2004: Without Roe V. Wade, do you still think she'll want to?

Oh, and in the spirit of attempting to connect with the proletarian tradition of blogging, allow me to say:
song of the moment: Koka Kola

I am Christ. This has nothing to do with the rest of the post, but I've decided to seize on Bentley's habit of beginning each entry with captivating irrelevance. And, in the continuing spirit of onedownsmanship, I'll add a few choice beverages of my own, UK edition:

Alcoh-Pops: This is the euphemism Brits use in an ill-fated attempt to make the likes of Schmirnoff Ice and Bacardi Silver suitable for human consumption. If you're drinking it, you're at a club called "Filth" somewhere in the Midlands that lives quite well up to its name. You're stunningly attractive, yet have no ass to speak of, and as per common law statute, are "sort of" dating a musician from London. Or you're an American.

Carlsberg: You're a scared shitless Fresher from Devonshire, in over your head at Oxbridge and you're nursing it, at £1.80 a pint, as if it were your blessed mother's breast milk. Or you're a lagerphilic American.

Carling: You meant to order a Carlsberg, but you're too far into it to care. Or you meant to order a Carlsberg and you're an American.

Tetley's Bitter: You're a bic-headed rugby hooligan called Jimb-O, and currently letting the dartboard know what a "fuck-king cunt" it is for refusing to hold onto that last triple twenty you need to beat Dom and the boys. Or you can't afford Carlsberg because you got screwed at the currency exchange and you're an American.

Guinness: You are a former member of the Irish Republican Army, perversely embittered by the vagaries of war of peace. Once, you were a hero of the Counties, now nought but a by-gone relic of "Troubles" your people would just as soon forget, as every day they inch closer to an unholy union with the Orange Men; or, if the pint is sitting unattended and two-thirds full on a crowded bartop, you're an American.

John Smith's Smooth: You are presently dressed in full sub-fusc, black suit, white bowtie, gown and mortarboard, with a pint of dark brown smooth in one hand and a rusty, chipped iron and wood bucket chained to your other, and you've just been instructed by the right honourable master of your drinking society to fill the bucket, "one way or another." Or you tried this instead of Guinness because you're an American.

Budweiser: You're a self-hating Brit or a Brit-hating American.

Pimm's: It's summer term and after six days of play, you've just handed Albert Lord Rothermere's eldest son a sound trouncing at the cricket grounds of Christ Church Meadow. Or you're an American who's never quite forgotten the first time he saw King Ralph.

Champagne: You're a Brit and its either Monday or Tuesday, or late in the week, or Saturday, or the day you go to Church. Or you're celebrating having just become an American, having just met an American, or having just heard about the existence of Americans.


Eat, drink, and be merry. For tomorrow we drink.

The Right Luxury for the Right Moment

Conspiracies abound. Not on the grassy knoll or in a soundstage in Santa Barbara made up to look like the moon. The greatest conspiracies are among snobs and critics. Anybody can turn the hope of the human race, that we could walk on the moon, into money, and the most lucrative spin-off of the so-called alleged space program is astronaut ice cream. Hardly a gold mine.

But critics turn indistinguishable aromas into absurd evaluations. Who among us really thinks that a liqueur may really have "notes of evergreen", unless you're drinking through a coniferous straw? Or that a cigar may remind you of chocolate? And in a genius stroke of crossover mentality, they've begun to say market alcohols with tastes of tobacco and tobacco with flavors of alcohols. Truth is Beauty, Freedom is Slavery, Dogs and Cats, living together.

So, here's me trying my hand at it. And if any of the mentioned brands want to send me a case of their product as a trial sample, I can promise they will be mentioned again with kind words.

[Editor's Note: Many critics make the mistake of treating selection of intoxicant as a sensual experience. It is, like every facet of the truly trendy, a fashionable one. So instead of recommending a cabernet for a beef dish, a nice chardonnay for that chicken marsala, or an Australian Shiraz to go with Grilled Porcupine, I've attempted to match them better with how they might best be used.]

Coors Light: That new flick starts in ten minutes, your buddies are in the car revving the engine, the Cineplex is eight minutes away, and you only have a tenspot in your wallet.

Cobra Malt Liquor: You flunked your Spanish Midterm. Your ex-girlfriend was last seen in the vicinity of some other guy's crotch (or worse some other guys' crotch) and gyrating wildly. Your hamster died. And it's only fucking Wednesday. Best accompanied by Swisher Sweets. Sideways trucker cap optional.

Hennessy: Best when streaking the office of the President of Stanford. Just a bad pun? Yes. Cliche? Yes. But it's not like streaking is original.

Lagavulin Sixteen Year Old Single Malt Islay Scotch: You have just negotiated a deal that will secure the peace of a continent for years to come. But it cost you your family. Drink up, boy. The Nobel in Peace will be small comfort for never seeing your five year old son grow into the man you always hoped he would become. But at least it comes with enough cash to keep you in booze indefinitely.

Natty Lite: Beer pong.

Natty Ice: Beer pong. But with an ironic twist, because you're actually a Republican and you brought it home in the backseat of your Bimmer 3-series (the 5-series wasn't too expensive, it just wasn't quite what you were looking for). Don't forget to wear your collar up!

Charles Shaw: Summer Barbeque with friends, but a few old grudges. This way you'll get drunk enough to actually mention all the shit you've been holding against them for years. And when it comes down to fighting, and they attempt to shank you with the twisted edges of their Rolling Rock bottle, you'll have the extra inch of glass to ensure that it is their face and not yours that is bloodied beyond recognition.

Diesel, Everclear, Bacardi 151, anything that's more alcohol than anything else: You just bought a Sidekick/Hiptop/SmartPhone. It can take pictures, and send them to your friends. Or you can IM on it with your friends. Or remember the phone numbers of 950 of your friends. Or pull a Cyrano and talk for you to your friends. Until you realize you have no friends. Imbibe. Imbibe with a speed hitherto unknown, until you start seeing double. That way, if you make just one friend, you'll end up with two!

Djarum Cloves: You're sitting on your porch, blasting The Shins, and hoping that cute Indie boy from last week's Otter De-oiling still remembers your name.