Two Feet Tall - Lyrics & Chords

Here's a new song I wrote in Tahoe last week, and took a quick youtube of my initial practicing of it. It started out as a folk song, but evolved of its own volition into folk-reggae.

Two Feet Tall - Lyrics & Chords

E Esus E F#min B7
She was fated to be eliminated.
Esus E F#min B7
She was bloated the day she was promoted.
A Bsus C#min
She was flailin’ like a Palin,
Dmaj7 A
And shining like a nickel,
Bsus C#min
And feelin’ like New Zealan’,
Dmaj7 B7sus6 B7 B7sus6 B7
While mining for a pickle.

She was grumpy and dressing pretty frumpy,
She was angry at silly Lily Langtry.
She was diving off the ivy,
Then crashing on the pavement,
And sobbing like a robin
Dmaj7 B7sus6 B7 B7sus6 D7/B  
While splashing cross the raiment.

G F#min
I love a girl who’s only two feet tall,
Bmin7 D7/B
Her eggs are barren, but she cares about toaster ovens.
G F#
I like the curls that hide her prayer shawl.
Bmin7
Her legs are buried deep in the earth’s crust,
D7/B B7  D7/B B7
And I lost in her bust.

She was psychotic, and half-auto-erotic,
She was mothering, so much so she was smothering.
She was flying neath the oceans,
While hiding from the fighting,
And crying crystal potions,
Confiding in the lightning.

I love a girl who’s only two feet tall, &c.

She was gorgeous as Florida’s mortgages.
She could plagiarize, and she had a teenager’s thighs.

She’s stalling to be famous,

She photo-bombed on Fox News,

She’s crawling to Uranus,

With Pluto on her socks and shoes.

I love a girl who’s only two feet tall, &c.
I love a girl who’s only two feet tall, &c.
© 2012 The Manna Tease

More Verbiage Spoilage: Sarah Palin's uses "cackle" as a collective noun

Again, I have to disagree with the blogosphere about Palin's twisting of language, & side with the sometime governor for her creativity. I love the use of "cackle" as the collective noun for "rads." The Huffington Post complains that none of the standard dictionary definitions of cackle "are appropriate in the context of Palin's tweet." I recommend wading thru the whole quote:

莎拉裴琳準備2012年選總統?(Is Palin gunning for 2012?)

#Shakespalin folio

While I was warning not to be too hard on Palin for comparing herself to Shakespeare, I didn't realize that twitter was exploring a hatchtag called #Shakespalin, here are some highlights:

But soft, what light from yonder window breaks? It is the East, and I can see Russia from my front porch.
-@freehawk

To suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous liberals, or to quit halfterm, and by opposing, rake in speaking fees
-@normative

Henry VI, part you know, well, all of them.
-@acoyne

I came, I saw, I refudiated.
-@homescribe

Neither a thinker nor a reader be / for thought oft loses both itself and friend / and reading dulls the edge of Fox TV
-@djsamk

"How's all that bein' and not bein' workin' out for ya?"
-@jon_ames

All the perfume in Arabia shall not sweeten this ink-stained, crib-noted hand.
-@spskenski

All the world's a stage, and I can see all of it from my house.
-@paulandstorm

Friends, Real Americans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to play "gotcha" journalism
-@paulandstorm

More on Sarah Palin poetry here. My essay on Palin & the English language here.

A big welcome to "Refudiate", Sarah Palin's new word in the English Language!

I was just reading at Mediaite.com about Sarah Palin's invention of the word "refudiate" (which she tweeted yesterday afternoon), and the tweetosphere's subsequent mocking embrace of her malapropism.

This was taken down by her people & a correctly spelled one was quickly put up. "Refudiate" was already a big hit tho, & her response is endearingly both self-deprecating & aggrandizing:

She was mocked for comparing herself to Shakespeare. The headline at Mediaite was "Sarah Palin 'Refudiates' Criticism, Declares Self Shakespeare on Twitter". Okay, that's a masterpiece of a headline, but slightly false advertising, because comparing yourself humorously to a great writer is a different bird than Declaring Self. (Somewhat unrelatedly, John Lennon actually said the Beatles were bigger than Jesus, but he didn't mean he wanted them to be. He was just making an interesting point that resulted in a lot of Beatles burning parties. When he later sang "they're going to crucify me," he actually was Declaring Self, but again with a wink. Luckily, bardophiles aren't generally into book-burning, and have a subtler appreciation of celebrity metaphor, or there'd be a lot of "Going Rogue" bonfires.)

I want to urge the blogosphere to back off from defending Shakespeare against Palin's comparison! She's absolutely right! And she even makes an important point that Americans especially of all English-speaking nations shouldn't forget. In France, there is a committee that makes sure no foreign words creep into their pure tongue. And they ended up with a very silly language! English has always been mostly the opposite, letting itself evolve naturally, and gladly welcoming slang, foreign words, incorrect foreign words, mistakes, malapropisms, portmanteaus, nonsense, & coinages from all corners. I think that this makes English healthier, more chaotic, more fascinating, and more honest about the nature of language than faux [sic] French puritanism. Palin was also dead-on to compare it to "misunderestimate", because a number of Bushisms were lovingly adopted by a world that hated him & are now used widely even in contexts which contain no reference to Bush. (Another word, "strategery ", was invented by Saturday Night Live in 2000 to parody Bushisms, & not only became a real English word, but was adopted by the Bush administration itself; they had an official Department of Strategery. Stephen Colbert's word "truthiness", coined in 2005, is included in the latest American dictionaries.) .

If you want to read a good book which discusses the debate between keeping English a controlled language versus letting English be an organic language, I recommend Simon Winchester's easy read The Professor & the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary. On the losing side of this argument was 18th century Irish author Jonathan Swift, here's an excerpt from his treatise "A Proposal for Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining the English Tongue".

There is another Sett of Men who have contributed very much to the spoiling of the English Tongue; I mean the Poets, from the Time of the Restoration. These Gentlemen, although they could not be insensible how much our Language was already overstocked with Monosyllables; yet, to same Time and Pains, introduced that barbarous Custom of abbreviating Words, to fit them to the Measure of their Verses; and this they have frequently done, so very injudiciously, as to form such harsh unharmonious Sounds, that none but a Northern Ear could endure: They have joined the most obdurate Consonants without one intervening Vowel, only to shorten a Syllable: And their Taste in time became so depraved, that what was a first a Poetical Licence, not to be justified, they made their Choice, alledging, that the Words pronounced at length, sounded faint and languid. This was a Pretence to take up the same Custom in Prose; so that most of the Books we see now a-days, are full of those Manglings and Abbreviations. Instances of this Abuse are innumerable: What does Your Lordship think of the Words, Drudg'd, Disturb'd, Rebuk't, Fledg'd, and a thousand others, every where to be met in Prose as well as Verse? Where, by leaving out a Vowel to save a Syllable, we form so jarring a Sound, and so difficult to utter, that I have often wondred how it could ever obtain.

That is right, under Swift's proposals, we would not or should not be allowed to contract or abbreviate words, lest English be difficult to utter. It cannot be! Swift also had grievances about many 'slang' words entering the language, like "banter" & "mob", which he accused of being "invented by some pretty Fellows" & "now struggling for the Vogue." Heaven forfend! Since the beginning of time, every generation has groaned about newfangled words becoming trendy. The word "lengthy", for instance, was once thought to be a horrible American abomination.

I think the archtype for an American nonsense word becoming common in languages around the world, is "okay." The etymology of "okay" is shrouded in academic controversy, probably because some academics have trouble accepting that it could have originated in a dumb joke. To sum it up, incorrect acronyms were popular jokes in New England newspapers in the 1830s, and "O.K." (meaning 'All Correct') came to being during the presidential campaign between Andrew Jackson (who was supposedly a bad speller) and Martin van Buren (who maybe tried to re-define the acronym to stand for his nickname, Old Kinderhook.) According to the wikipedia, "The country-wide publicity surrounding the election appears to have been a critical event in okay's history, widely and suddenly popularizing it across the United States." But there you go, political humor leading to the creation of a word that's now ubiquitous all over the world. It's alternately been attributed to Greek origin, Native American (Choctaw), & African slaves, each of which is a more tidy & rational explanation, but language isn't tidy or rational.

Anyway, the speed with which trendy words or political jokes can become language has increased with the internet, so that Sarah Palin can coin a word on Sunday & I can write an essay defending it on Monday. Welcome to the English language "refudiate", whatever the fuck it means.

(PS, to prove it wasn't a typo, and actually a word that Sarah Palin thought existed, here's the archive video of her actually saying it earlier this year.)

More Sarah Palin Poetry: Small Mayors Quote Unquote

Befoulers of the Verbiage

It was an unfair attack on the verbiage
That Senator McCain chose to use,
Because the fundamentals,
As he was having to explain afterwards,
He means our workforce.
He means the ingenuity of the American.
And of course that is strong,
And that is the foundation of our economy.
So that was an unfair attack there,
Again based on verbiage.

-Sarah Palin

Last November, Julian Gough famously wrote about Sarah Palin as a poet: "What the philistine media take for incoherence is, in fact, the fruitful ambiguity of verse. [...] A great poet needs to leave open the door between the conscious and unconscious; Sarah Palin has removed her door from its hinges." He was referring to a poem he had rewritten in verse & called "The Relevance of Alaska" (we quoted it here last November - "And the relevance to me / With that issue, / As we spoke / About Africa...") Sarah Palin poetry is back like the eskimos: Hart Seeley has a collection at Slate.com, there's some analysis by John Lundberg at the Huffington Post. Someone named Beau Vent is selling an eBook called "Tap That Verbiage, Also". And seemingly unrelatedly, last night, Conan O'Brien had William Shatner read some of Palin's resignation speech as beat poetry with bongos & upright bass:



I love that Alaskan imagery, especially the bit about being midway between extreme temperatures. I've also already posted this, but I feel it didn't get enough notice, the composer/pianist Henry Hey set accompaniment to one of Governor Palin's rambling sentencagraphs in the style of Steve Reich's The Cave:

You know,
Small mayors,
Mayors of small towns--
Quote, unquote--
They're on the front lines.

News: David Rees entering Mitt Romney's Essay Contest

David Rees (of the "Get Your War On" comic) has been blogging about his plan to win Mitt Romney's "Free & Strong America" essay contest. Here's the developments: On June Tenth, Rees wrote:

...sorry for the light blogging recently. I’ve been busy with top-secret procrastination secrets “they” don’t want you to know about.

Anyway, for all the writers out there, I was scanning a list of grants and fellowships (Yaddo, Guggenheim Fellowship, McArthur Genius Award, etc.) when I found a new prize that raises the bar on prestige and reward:

"Mitt Romney political organization, the Free and Strong America PAC, is offering supporters a new chance to take an expenses-paid trip to Boston and join Mitt himself in his family’s seats at Fenway Park for a Red Sox Game."

[...]All you have to do is write an essay about “What A Free and Strong America Means to Me.”

A half hour later, he blogged:

250 words or less? Please, I can knock this out in 25 words or less.

I reckon that's only the equivalent of ten or twelve twitter-twotes, which is more than I'm used to writing these days. Too bad, tho, it costs $50 to enter! Another half hour after that, he wrote:

DEVELOPING … more information about the Mitt Romney essay contest …

The author of the best essay will get to go to Boston with a guest, while the other top-five essays will be featured on the site, and the authors will receive baseballs personally autographed by Mitt himself.

I’m telling everyone now: DON’T BOTHER ENTERING THIS CONTEST. I AM GOING TO WIN ALL THE BASEBALLS.

“What does a free and strong America mean to me in 250 words or less?”

That is the question I’m going to answer. Anyone who tries to answer it before me, you’re going down.

The next day, "Gathering My 250 Words"

I stayed up all night thinking of what a free and strong America means to me in 250 words or less … and dreaming of baseballs signed by Mitt Romney! (Seriously, if anyone else even thinks of entering this contest, there’s gonna be trouble courtesy of Hi & Lois, aka my FISTS.)

Anyway, I’ve started collecting my 250 words for the essay. Here’s what I’ve got so far:

Free (duh!)
Strong (double duh!)
America (figure I’ll need this one)
The (x5) (stockpiling definite articles is smart, according to my writer friend)
Declaration of Independence
Terrorism (x2)
Principles
Bravery
Mitt Romney (x3) (LOL, a little buttering up never hurt anyone, right?)
YOGA (this is my own little twist I’m bringing, this’ll take the judges by surprise and I’ll win the contest!)

Still need a few more words … I’m working on it … I can smell the Romney sky box already …

Yesterday, a competitor reared his head:

I checked out Mitt Romney’s new web site, freeandstrongamerica.com, to see if there was more information about the essay contest I am going to win.

Lo and behold, in a blog post about the essay contest, a commenter named Chris Bentley has posted the following:

To me, free strong America means that when someone steals, there is punishment. Is that yours? No? Then you can’t take it. See? It’s simple. Another thing free strong America means to me is that if I want my family to have a puppy, they can have a puppy, OK? Thank you Milt for all you’re doing.

“Milt?”

This Chris Bentley fellow is going to give me a run for my money. Well, that’s fine– I’ll just run faster, harder, and stronger than him.

Those baseballs are mine.

My best to Mr Rees. Too bad the essay contest isn't democratically voted upon, as it should be in a Free & Strong America, then we could tilt the scales. I also noticed at Romney's website, one of his many studly sons Tagg Romney is still blogging for him. I wonder, when did Gov. Romney start consulting with Gov. Palin for baby names? OR, since Romney's children are older, maybe that's the secret influence of the Republican Guber-spawn names. (Remember, The Onion's suggestions for more Palin baby names were Frag, Moss, Scoot, Skiffer, Minnow, Plow, Snatch, Twiglet, and Drum). I think Tagg & Milt should unite with Track, Trig & Tripp, form a secret monosyllabic male society, & CONTROL THE WORLD.

Babies

In honor of the Obama girls naming their new puppy after Bo Diddley, here's "Bo Meets the Monster."

	Bo Diddley - Bo Meets the Monster
	Found at bee mp3 search engine

This Saturday Night Live sketch about Madonna & Angelina adopting "spicy brown babies from crazy places", I keep returning to it, I think it's the funniest skit from that show since Sarah Palin.

You think you know fashion?
Well fashion's a stranger.
You think fashion's your friend, my friend?
Fashion is danger.
-Flight of the Conchords

First Interlude (Ahmad) for Vibraphone & Organ: Score & MIDI-playback

Mrs Whiting Smith (here pictured to the left, after solving the Case of the Lost Head Pot) called me today at around 1:30pm, when I was waiting in the car outside of my house-mate's favorite thrift store (also Sarah Palin's favorite, by no means not coincidental), if I could supply more music for her joint percussion & organ recital this Friday. Apparently, it was supposed to be an hour long, not the thirty-five minutes they originally supposed, & I am their favorite underemployed composer who can supply pieces for free within a several hour notice.

Let it be known I arranged this piece & had score & parts posted on the web, like, four hours later.

Here is my explanation of the piece in an e-mail to Mrs Whiting Smith:

from J____ Welsch _@itwaslost.org reply-to _@itwaslost.org to B_____ Anne Whiting Smith _________@gmail.com, David S____ ____@gmail.com date Mon, Mar 2, 2009 at 6:48 PM subject Ahmad

Bonnie & David,
Okay, that piece is about three minutes long. It's an arrangement of the first interlude from the piano sonata I wrote for Mr Holt, which was based on a section from a motet I wrote my senior year of college (called Ahmad). I like the orchestration of it for vibes & organ...

The motet had text adapted from the Sura An-Najm [the star, 53:1-18] in the Qur'an, adapted from the "meanings" by Mohammed Marmaduke Pickthall (which is the most King James-y version of the Qur'an - there's no such things as a "translation", because the Qur'an is only in Arabic) - - anyway, I wrote the text from lines 11 thru 18, the original lyrics, into the score, because I thought Bonnie would like it. It's considered the most mystical section of the Qur'an, describing the prophet's reception of the prophecy. (Ironically, the few lines that immediately follow are the famous "satanic verses", cause of much consternation.) You can just call the piece "First Interlude" if you program it, for sensitive church audiences. In shia, Islamic law, it's illegal to set the Qur'an to music, so I was a bit concerned when I wrote that motet that I would be stoned to death. My piece was received with great indifference by the sheikhs.

Okay, my roommate & I are about to run off to an animal rights lexure. Let me know if there's any problems with the score or confusion or whatever, or about the other piece.
Bonnie, the little 'e' in the measures 4 & 8 is for your vibes without the low 'e', which is ideal.
David, are those fast footworks, like, ridiculous, or normal? I don't really know how to write for organ. Perhaps I'm being over-cautious.

James
________________________________________________________________________
I uploaded the score & vibe part into a Picasa (google) photo album, which I'll post a slideshow of here. There's some errors, it's just a first draft.

This time round, I'll take the risk of posting an mp3 of a MIDI playback of the piece.

A cautionary disclaimer about MIDI playbacks, especially intended for those listeners unfamiliar with the genre:
This is a ROBOT whacking out the notes from a computer file, performed using the cheesiest phoney-sounding 1990s synthesizer sounds (my beloved Yamaha PSR-500m, which was bought at Cosco for a few hundred dollars back in the day, has taken a few dives off of its stand, had its circuit board RE-SOLDERED by my retired computer-engineer of a father, & can still produce a lovely robot MIDI playback if I ask it nicely, here in the year 2009.)
"Ahmad" is not necessarily an un-cheezy piece of music. However, the robot version will sound especially bad, & duplicate any inherent corniness, combined with a heartless lack of human expression & mindless adherence to tempo & rhythm. I supply the MIDI version to give a sneak peek of the piece, help a future performer get a gist of the piece, & for the fun of all. At age 14, listening to MIDI playbacks on the very same synthesizer of my teenage compositions, a neighbor accused my work of sounding like "video game music". I'm not offended this year by that criticism as I was as an upstart. I felt vindicated when, a few years ago, I heard NPR play a MIDI playback of sections of John Adams' not-yet-then-performed-or-recorded opera Doctor Atomic, which were beautiful, & used nicer technology than I can afford; & amazing that an NPR news piece can use robots to illustrate an article about a piece of music still in progress. It also helped assuage some hangups I've had since highschool, when I was one of the first composers notating using early PC software, that I'm somehow faking it, using technology as an impure aid. (I mean, no one would blink if they found out that Tony Morrison used Microsoft Word, right?) Since then, I've learned that several of America's greatest living pre-computer composers, John Adams (born 1947) & Steve Reich (born 1936), now use a similar process as myself - notating onto computer software & using robots to hear what they're writing while they're writing, & after it's completed to assist the performers learning the piece. Okay, I didn't intend to write so much of a rant, but me & MIDI playbacks go wayback, & now we're alive in the middle of the Age of the Blogosphere, I'm proud to arrange a piece & post a score & a demo mp3 in the same day.

Quotes & In Conversation

Suggesting that we stop recognizing married people:

Yesterday I called a woman’s spouse her boyfriend.

She says, correcting me, “He’s my husband,”
“Oh,” I say, “I no longer recognize marriage.”

The impact is obvious. I tried it on a man who has been in a relationship for years,

“How’s your longtime companion, Jill?”
“She’s my wife!”
“Yeah, well, my beliefs don’t recognize marriage.”

President-elect-elect Obama on the manly dog he will be bringing to the White House:

Barack Obama [asking about Barbara Walters' dog]: "Cha Cha?"

Barbara Walters: "It's short for Cha Cha Cha."

Obama: "What is a Havanese?"

Walters: "It's like a little terrier and they're non-allergenic and they're the sweetest dogs.."

Obama: [Face suddenly changes.] "It's like a little yappy dog?"

Michelle Obama: "Don't criticize."

Obama: "It, like, sits in your lap and things?"

Michelle: "It's a cute dog."

Obama: "It sounds kinda like a girly dog."

Michelle: "We're girls. We have a houseful of girls."

Obama [with hand gestures]: "We're going to have a big rambunctious dog, of some sort."

I do also believe that this is the finest & wittiest Obama impersonator:

Go read Dave Eggers' funny Thanksgiving play in the New York Times,
& Sarah Palin Poetry:

And the relevance to me
With that issue,
As we spoke
About Africa and some
Of the countries
There that were
Kind of the people succumbing
To the dictators
And the corruption
Of some collapsed governments
On the Continent,
The relevance
Was Alaska’s.

What the philistine media take for incoherence is, in fact, the fruitful ambiguity of verse.

Here she is, in a work I have taken to calling “The Relevance of Africa.” (Not a single word or comma has been changed, but the line breaks are placed where they naturally fall.) In it, Palin blends the energy of free verse with the austerity of a classic 14-line sonnet... A great poet needs to leave open the door between the conscious and unconscious; Sarah Palin has removed her door from its hinges. A great poet does not self-censor; Sarah Palin seems authentically innocent of what she is saying. She could be the most natural, visionary poet since William Blake.

-Julian Gaugh

November Quotes: Elephants Falling Down

We [The Republicans] cannot be a majority governing party when we essentially cannot compete in the Northeast, we are losing our ability to compete in Great Lakes states, we cannot compete on the West Coast, we are increasingly in danger of competing in the mid-Atlantic states, and the Democrats are now winning some of the Western states. That is not a formula for being a majority governing party in this nation.

Similarly we cannot compete, and prevail, as a majority governing party if we have a significant deficit, as we do, with women, where we have a large deficit with Hispanics, where we have a large deficit with African American voters, where we have a large deficit with people of modest incomes and modest financial circumstances. Those are not factors that make up a formula for success going forward.

-Minn. Gov. Tim Pawlenty, surveying the challenges for the Republican Party.

At least they're still popular in Real America. I have a solution for the GOP, don't be evil, & you can spread your base beyond the wealthiest & naivest of white male Americans.

In related news, exactly what kind of humor is this article from The Onion? Violent, political slapstick?

Bush Tumbles Wildly Down Washington Monument Staircase

WASHINGTON—President George W. Bush sustained 24 broken bones, massive internal hemorrhaging, and a severe concussion Monday after falling down the entire staircase of the 555-foot-tall Washington Monument. According to White House press secretary Dana Perino, Bush was making his weekly climb to the monument's observation floor when he lost his footing on the top step, slipped, and struck each of the obelisk's 897 stairs with the back of his skull during an uncontrolled descent to the base of the structure. President Bush is resting comfortably in Bethesda Naval Hospital.

As for Sarah Palin's belief that Africa was a country, if you haven't heard, that rumor was leaked by a "top McCain advisor" named Martin Eisenstadt from the "Harding Institute for Freedom & Democracy" (named for one of our worst presidents), & jumped on by the news networks & spread around quicker than it could be debunked:

“With the 24-hour news cycle they rush into anything they can find,” said Mr. Mirvish, 40.

Mr. Gorlin, 39, argued that Eisenstadt was no more of a joke than half the bloggers or political commentators on the Internet or television.

An MSNBC spokesman, Jeremy Gaines, explained the network’s misstep by saying someone in the newsroom received the Palin item in an e-mail message from a colleague and assumed it had been checked out. “It had not been vetted,” he said. “It should not have made air.”

But most of Eisenstadt’s victims have been bloggers, a reflection of the sloppy speed at which any tidbit, no matter how specious, can bounce around the Internet. And they fell for the fake material despite ample warnings online about Eisenstadt, including the work of one blogger who spent months chasing the illusion around cyberspace, trying to debunk it.

-Richard Pérez-Peña, New York Times, 12 Nov. 2008

Different Palins

I'm about to head up to Lake Tahoe for my young brother's nuptials. During my free time, I'll be able to scan my two new Western Harmony anthems, exciting stuff, one of which is a celebration of the dancing in the streets I anticipate on November Fourth. "Let the slave grinding at the mill run out into the field." So come back to the website in due time for fresh recordings & shape-note scores.

If you're not familiar with Steve Reich's use of speech-melody, a compositional technique he's developed & returned to thru-out the decades, especially in the pieces Different Trains, City Life, & his two multimedia operas The Cave & Three Tales. If you have a few minutes before watching the third video posted here, spend some time with the clips below from City Life (1995).




The following is pianist Henry Hey's speech-melody derivation of Sarah Palin's interview with Katie Couric:

Veeep Live-Blogging - Post Number Four, Gays & beyond

Hello, welcome to our Live Blogging of the excitin', fast talkin', disagreein' Vice Presidential Debates. Play the flute, Sarah! Say something stupid by accident, Joe! Isn't that what we're all here to see, enough with this excellent performance that they're both giving. It seems like they've both completely agreed on gay marriage, wasn't expecting that. I thought she preferred to exorcize gays with her Alaskan-African witch doctors. We're here live! LIVE! LIVE!

6:42 West Coast Time Sam du Groing here in "University of Alabama" maroon. Joe Biden's making outrageous promises to end this war, which Palin calls a "surrender."

alert! alert! Palin says "Nookyoolur" multiple times.

6:something pm This repeated mocking of Obama wanting to meet Bad Guy Dictators without "precondition", is a bizarre talking point, especially when so many leading diplomats totally agree. Oh, Good, Gwen just called her out on it. And she's like "I just talked with my good old friend Henry Kissenger." Old friends.

loving the contrast between Biden's specifics and Palin's generalities.

she get's real huffy when she's running out of time.

6:59pm I had no idea that Barack Obama has been wrong about so many issues. How dare he?
We just opened some red wine. Does Joe Biden drink red wine? Is he one of us?

his teeth are too white for red wine...no purple wine stains here

7:02pm Her American flag broach is like ooober-patriotic. Biden's is tiny. How come they keep running out of time, when it seems like this is going on forever? KC says "he looks tired."

What the fuck is a "Bosniac"?? I think I might have had a bit of that last night.

somebody is acting super-cutesy. I'll let you decide who it is.

jumping from memorized talking point to talking point.

7:10pm It's gotten to the point where all I here is "Bob Lawbla, Bob Lawbla, Bob Lawbla..."
No! Please don't bring Wasilla Main Street to Washington!

7:12pm She just thanked Biden's wife, "god bless her, her reward is in heaven". What????

7:14pm What a vice president does............ Do you get the feeling that they're losing their minds & getting feisty, kooky..... KC says "Many children left behind."

BUZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ WORDS.

7:26pm "You do what I do as governor & hire your friends & relatives."
Isn't this over by now? My head is spinning.

apocalyptic closing statement from Palin. and she said "shall". what?

7:30pm Okay, six hours later, it's over! Phew. Time to eats aubergines & arugula.

My verdict: Knockout for Joe.

Dude, I thought she was totally charismatic, in a terrifying way. Okay, I've got dinner guests, I've been multitasking like hockey mom, thank you all, I look forward to our future endeavors.

LIVE we're LIVE Blogging! The Vice Presidential Debates! Here!

Yes, you might wisely point out, that, if we were real political bloggers, we'd be in St. Louis tonight in the internet-press room, instead of spread around in left-leaning enclaves of America watching this shit on Television. But I ask you! Do they have hookahs in the press room? I'm not sure if Missouri has banned smoking indoors, but I still doubt it would be smiled upon by the conservative blogosphericals.

It's time to ask ourselves: Who is Joe Biden? Does he drink white wine? Would he enjoy the hookah, if it wasn't a potential political liability. Does he eat like me or think like me? Is he ready to be president on day one, hour one? Is he just another east coast liberal? Is he just another weathered Washington politician, is that why he knows so much stuff about stuff?

6:03pm Western Time! Look there they are! Joe & Sarah! On Stage! Sam du Groing here blogging in red.

Joe is an honest, blue-eyed irishman.

Is it just me or does miss alaska look a little deer-in-the-headlights?

6:08pm How unfair, Biden is rattling off about all the things he's done in congress. Also, speaking of unfair, isn't it a little biased to have this debate moderated by not just a black person but simultaneously a woman person, sort of biased towards BOTH Obama & Palin.

yeah, she only hates Biden, the white guy. Sarah has said "darn right" 5 times so far.

6:12pm She seems extremely polished & confident. I hope they ask about the terrible issues plaguing Eritrea. And watch her stumble stupidly over the pronunciation of President Isaias Afewerki's name. She's never even been to Africa!

6:15pm Holy shitzoids! She really is talking straight to the American people!

6:19pm Biden's calling out McCain-Palin on their lies about Obama & raising taxes, but do you think people really believe the Democrats anymore, no matter how many times they point this out? Hey Grainne, looks like we're here alone so far. Where's Seattle? Where's Bulgarious?

Bulgaria always ditches us. is it because he's engaged? is it because bulgarian kids are hogging the computers? is it because it's some godawful hour in bulgaria? has he forgotten how to write in english?

6:26pm Text message from Brains: "How's it going? Any trouble, gaffes? I'm running home."
I told him they're both talking real fast. Biden stumbles over the word "characterizes", my God, he's toast.

"toxic mess on main street" ????

6:30pm I'm glad she cares so much for Main Street & hates those Wall Street greedy fat cats.
No one seems to be around anywhere. My roommates should be home by now to watch all this, I have eggplant parmesan (Democrat food) in the oven, & expecting a few others over as well. No word from anyone, everyone's missing in action. Of course, my glasses were STOLEN a few days ago, so everything's been a bit blurry any way.

sweet yummy alaskan oil will solve everything and give us all orgasms and eternal life.

6:33pm Okay, now she's sounding a bit dumb & wishy-washy on Climate Change. This is what we've been waiting for, creating crazy run-on nonsense sentences a lot like Tina Fey's impersonation last week.

6: 35pm Text message from Brains: "Listening on radio during walk home. Yeah, they're talking fast. Sarah doesn't attribute it to man."

"wonderful, you agree on gay marraige" - good on gwen.

foreign policy....yay!

"your plan is a white flag of surrender" - that's weak.

NEW POST UP THERE! move on, move up, MOVE!

Live Blogging: Veep Debates Preparatory Thoughts

We're open & live, a half hour before the debates get going. Good evening! Welcome to the Itwaslost.org Vice Presidential Live Blog. Sam du Groing here signing in, with a loaded-&-ready hookah, prune-flavored Romman Tobacco mixed with a little classic Double Apple, & the finest Jordanian Lemon Wood coals warming on the fire. We invite the wide world to follow along with us, in the comment section, or e-mail o ((at)) it was lost dott oh-arrh-gee! Any opening thoughts from the peanut gallery?

To whet your appetites, here are two videos. The first, of Sarah Heath playing the flute at the talent portion at the 1984 Miss Alaska Pageant. The second is a rare television show from 1977 - about six minutes into this clip has John Denver & Johnny Cash singing Country Roads.




And if you haven't seen the two teaser posts - the Sarah Palin Video Game, & a lovely little video about the city in Alaska where you can actually see Russia.

5:30pm Western time Sam du Groing alive & well in Berkeley, I'll be using this "Indian Red" color. Bob is singing about how "the highway is for gamblers, better use your sense." Not sure what he's talking about.

5:55pm If you go to CNN.com, where I'll be watching all the action, click on live videos. The video player that pops up is pretty fast & plays on most slow computers. The third live video down just has a simple feed of the room, wherever in "reality space" that actually is taking up space, & there's some nice ambient noise of a room full of people sitting in terrified silence & submission, occasionally coughing. Were they told not to talk, or are the lucky few who got to be in the audience just especially reverent?

5:59pm CNN seems to have found a few voters who are "still on the fence". Trick to be on the televions: be one of the last three undecided voters.

Grainne here. Gwen's jacket looks like a fluffy comforter of the type you'd expect to find in a housetrailer.

my boy Biden seems to be in good form tonight.

NEW POST NEW POST! Go HERE!