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December 24, 2007
Merry Christmas!
Coming up soon - "Where Are They Now?" - five years later.
Posted by lorelei at 08:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (28)December 12, 2007
The Dead Zone of the Republican Presidential Candidates
After watching a few excerpts of various debates and reading many articles about the Republican candidates for president, I sometimes think I have woken up in the middle of a Stephen King horror novel, particularly The Dead Zone.
Most of you may remember that story (a good book, bad movie and worse television series) where a school teacher, Johnny Smith, suffers a head injury in a car accident, lapses into a coma for five years, and awakens with clairvoyant powers. One of his visions involves a corrupt politician whom he decides to assassinate rather than risk his prediction of nuclear disaster.
Not that any of the Republican candidates would use a child as a bullet shield like the character in the book (although Giuliani might), but another more bizarre group of caricatures would be hard to gather:
- An aging, forgettable, slothful, dimwitted actor with a trophy wife whose new "role" is as avuncular, compassionate-conservative Reagan for the new millennium.
- The demented military hero who has been Dubya’s sock puppet (despite Karl Rove’s vicious defamation campaign that derailed his candidacy in 2000) and war apologist for the past five years; the only issue on which he has maintained any consistency is what constitutes “torture”, having been a victim of torture himself.
- Then we have the front-running Kennedy-wannabe who essentially threw the conservative platform under the bus when running for governor of Massachusetts, likened his sons’ campaigning for him to serving in Iraq, blends the already blurry line between church and state, and left his poor dog in a carrier on the roof of a car during family vacations.
- Speaking of religion (and how can we not?), there is the crazy preacher who lost 200 pounds or something (gave up Twinkies for God, I guess) who has a checkered history with releasing murderers and claims to have a mandate from God (oh, great, like Dubya) to be president.
- Who could overlook the loose cannon libertarian doctor from Texas who doesn’t believe government should be involved in anything (so why is he in Washington?), who’s got some great ideas and energetic supporters all over the Web, and is by far the most amusing to watch, but he hasn’t a snake’s chance in hell of winning the nomination.
- Then there’s the anti-Christ: thrice-married, dress-wearing, mobbed-up whackjob Ghouliani. If he wins the nomination (which I doubt, but you never know these days) and, heaven help us, the election, I will be on a plane to Costa Rica faster than you can say “Nine Eleven.”
Even Stephen King would have been hard-pressed to come up with this skeleton crew.
December 05, 2007
Outrageous! Intolerable!
This was Joe Biden's characterization of the Bush administration's saber-rattling for the past year (over faux nuclear threats from Iran) during the NPR debate in Iowa yesterday. Of course Bush and his cronies have known every detail about Iran's nuclear technology before and since its suspension of weapons development in 2003.
Despite the Commander-in-Chief's chronic, blithering incompetency, I believe the CIA knows what color Ahmadinejad's bodyguard's boxers are right now. Hopefully that is not politically incorrect. Not that I really care.
There were other good quotes I noted after listening to the podcast of the debate, including:
MIKE GRAVEL: These brave people in the intelligence community just drop kicked the president...and boxed him in!
BARACK OBAMA: [To the president] Don't let facts get in the way of your ideology!
JOE BIDEN: Iran is not a nuclear threat. This march to war has been going on a long time, ever since the "Axis of Evil" speech. And the Senate did not stop him!
JOE BIDEN: Language matters! This is not a "rush to war," because that implies there is going to be a slow march to war. There should be NO WAR. There is no justification for war!
You go, Joe!
HILLARY CLINTON: They [undocumented workers] probably made some of the beds in our hotel rooms last night!
And here is Lewis Black for some comic relief:
Yes, I now can embed videos on the blob. Yay!
Posted by lorelei at 04:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (39)December 04, 2007
Obama's Mama Must Be Proud
I have been shaking my head all morning at Hillary’s web site article (and the backlash in the press) where she criticizes Barack Obama’s essay in third grade (and his “Kindergarten musings”) about becoming president and how that refutes his denials that he hasn’t been planning to run for years. I mean, seriously. Can you imagine what they’d dig up about me? Or 90% of other Americans? Good grief. This is why I can never run for public office.
I can see the headlines, now: “Loretta's opponent's campaign discovers that the frontrunner spent the better part of her primary school years in the hallway copying out her spelling words as a punishment for being disruptive in class and defaced her religion book with snarky captions over Lord Jesus' head.” Yes, that would go over really big with the Christian Coalition.
I can't help laughing about Obama’s Kindergarten musings, because one of the funny stories in the family repertoire involves Lauren’s Kindergarten graduation. Each of the graduates in the small, private school of ten students (all girls) was asked what she planned to do when she grew up. One wanted to be a veterinarian, one a doctor, one a firefighter, the usual stuff, and when the teacher asked Lauren, Lauren said, “I want to work at Blockbuster!” When the teacher asked why, Lauren said, “Because then I’d get to watch movies all day!”
Of course we laughed and still laugh about it today. But, if Lauren had said, “I want to be President of the United States!” I would have said, “Yeah, Baby!”
Why can’t my kid say that? Obama’s mama must be so proud. Really.
Posted by lorelei at 08:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (20)December 02, 2007
Happy 5 Year Blogaversary!
Yes, friends, it's been five years.
It’s hard to believe that it was five years ago, in December of 2002, that “Observations of a Misfit” was born in the blogosphere. In that five years there were hundreds of entries, dozens of design changes, thousands and thousands of comments, friendships made and lost, and who knows how many lurkers influenced by the live blog show we performed every day?
In honor of our impressive lifespan, and despite being a totally slacker blogger for the past year, I have decided to start blogging regularly again.
For my return from semi-retirement, it only seems fitting to give my remaining loyal readers (are any of you still out there?) an update on our old pal, Scott Peterson. I have a very interesting story to tell you:
Was Scott Peterson Really Gay?
During the Peterson trial, The National Enquirer and other tabloids routinely published articles suggesting that Scott Peterson was gay (or bisexual). Among the witnesses to Peterson’s sexual proclivities included a transvestite dancer, a bartender, several women who claimed to have met him in bars, his sister, Anne Bird, and, most recently, his fellow inmates at San Quentin.
The latest headline on The Globe shouts that Peterson has AIDS.
Believe it or not, Stone Cold Guilty is still selling here and there (thank you), and whenever news of Peterson hits the tabloids or booksellers, it results in renewed interest in my book. Most recently, a screenwriter in California named John contacted me to share information that corroborates my two-trip theory.
According to John, Peterson frequented a gay bath house in Berkeley and was there on Christmas Eve day, as opposed to actually going out on the boat from the Berkeley Marina. I never believed Peterson launched the boat that day, because he really didn’t have enough time to do what he claimed to do (fish), much less dump a body out near Brooks Island or in the shipping channel that was over a mile away. I theorized his visit to the marina was to check his work from the night before and get a launch ticket as an alibi.
John claims he worked at the bath house where Peterson was a regular and that Laci discovered his secret (gay) life. Instead of the popular love spin where Amber Frey was the motive for murder, some people think Peterson murdered his wife and unborn baby to cover his closet gay life.
I don’t have any problem believing that Peterson was a switch hitter. It would certainly be in character as a malignant narcissist for Peterson to fear the exposure of a dark secret that would ruin his life (or give Laci grounds for an expensive and debilitating divorce). Similarly, I never supported any romantic hype that he killed Laci to be with another woman. Peterson always struck me as an alley cat, so his finding pleasure with either sex would not surprise me at all.
His visiting a bath house in Berkeley would support my theory that Berkeley was a stomping ground for him, and not because of his sister (whom he did not visit until after the murder). It also explains why he wanted to stay with the Birds when he left Modesto to escape media scrutiny. Peterson’s familiarity with Berkeley, Richmond, the Albany Bulb, and the east bay area in general would support my theory that he actually launched the boat during the night of December 23 from Richmond, motored to the shipping channel and dumped the body in deep water after doing research on the tides and water depth a couple weeks prior; evidence of which was discovered on his computer and presented at trial.
According to an article in The Globe (that I read while standing in line at the supermarket this morning), Peterson had a violent and bloody altercation with none other than Night Stalker, Richard Ramirez (who is, let's agree, a living character from a Stephen King novel). Ramirez allegedly sold Peterson some bad meth and Peterson was a very unsatisfied customer. The story reeks of fiction, but it was amusing, nevertheless. Prison guards who broke up the fight fear they have been exposed to Peterson’s tainted blood as rumor has it that Peterson contracted AIDS during his closet homosexual life.
Time will tell.
Meanwhile, there is a book coming out this month written by an anti-death-penalty-advocate that purports Peterson confessed to the murder during one of the author’s visits to San Quentin. The news release describing the book was so badly written, I find it difficult to believe that anyone would take this book seriously. And speaking of badly written books, I have yet to finish the book that came out a few months ago by a few of the jurors, and I had to return it to the library. Yes, I am a slacker. I’ll get up to speed, I promise.
Posted by lorelei at 01:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (25)