Some reading my previous entry may think I'm an apologist for Bill Clinton; if so let me clarify. I never voted for him; my disillusion with the man occurred right at the start of his presidency, when he caved in to the establishment and backed down on allowing gays in the military - he showed his true colors then. All hope for positive change by his administration died with the subsequent quashing of his Health Care reform plans. Please don't think me Republican for a moment - the party of Phil Gramm, Jesse Helms, and Orrin Hatch? I know my politics - from my own radical position in the spectrum, Republicans, Reactionaries and National Socialists all look alike, so I'd rather see Bill in the White House than Bush or Dole. Now, given the choice, I'd much rather have a President Gore, but impeachment will be even more distracting for the nation. Make no mistake - the media establishment is in bed with the Right Wing, and they're making mountains out of the most trivial of molehills, but I'm not fooled by their disinformation campaign. For more elaboration on my real feelings check the letters column in yesterday's Salon, and read the ones from David Travis, Jeffrey B. Silverstein, Bobbijo Harris, and Gary Novak. They tell it better than I can.

On Usenet today I saw this relevant .sig:
"I did not have sexual relations with that woman." -- Bill Clinton
"Read my lips -- no new taxes" -- George Bush
-- Which one hurt YOU More?

From The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of (Chapter 4 - "How SF Defused the Bomb"):

Radiation creates mutants, and in due course the Bomb would be responsible for just about every mutation that a special effects team was capable of: men with terrible skin diseases or two heads, or simple bad-ass bikers of the Mad Max variety. Post apocalyptic bikers are not true mutants, of course. Properly, they descend from a later, tamer form of doomsday movie that began with "Panic in the Year Zero" (1962), in which a nuclear war is the stimulus for survivalist fantasies. In "Panic", Ray Milland is a dad who shepherds his nuclear family through the anarchy that follows the bombing of Los Angeles. This time the monster unleashed by the bomb is a trio of elderly juvenile delinquents who first appear in a hot rod. In "The Day The Earth Caught Fire," a British nuclear catastrophe movie of the same year, anarchy takes the form of a congo line of rebel youth wearing only swimsuits and playing jazz on their saxophones.

Television and science fiction, though they've lived a long time together, have not enjoyed a happy relationship. Television, the dominant and more affluent partner, has been blithely unaware of this fact, which is often the way in such cases. Science fiction, on the other hand, has felt, well... used.

Obscure Olde-Time Radio note - today I found a "Great Gildersleeve" site where I discovered that the same pseudo-child actor did the voices for both his nephew Leroy and Sherman (Mr. Peabody's sidekick). By George, they did sound alike! Like many war-time Americans my favorite programs from that era are Gildy, Amos & Andy and Jack Benny - I love that stuff.

Urggh - I'm bloated. Gave into the temptation to have that most American of meals, a hamburger with french fries. Not a crummy fast-food burger, but a well-made item, with real fried julienned potatoes. I suppose I should've had the requisite cola beverage to complete the troika, but I never drink that stuff anymore - maybe a root beer now and again, but tonight I just had ice water, my favorite drink. The meal was at "Fresco" - I've been craving one of their burgers since my uncle had one during our meal there.