Katt and I painted some dragons last night. I can see why it’s a popular pastime. There is no definitive dragon the way there is, say, a definitive horse. If you paint a horse that’s got really short legs and a really long neck, people are going to get upset. If you paint a dragon that’s got some anatomic trouble, though, people will be all, “Hey, that’s cool. Dragons are crazy like that.”

There’s a similar relaxingness about painting, especially if you don’t really know how to paint. Paint, to me, is quite uncontrollable. I brush out a stroke, and usually, it ends up not having the HSV value that I thought it would, or it starts dribbling into adjacent strokes, or it’s all streaky instead of smooth. Once you accept that, then the unpredictability becomes amusing. Usually.
 

So, here’s my guy:

Somehow, he ended up with the color scheme from the Five Alive carton. (I bet that stuff would be not so great if I had it now, but I remember it as the pinnacle of fruit drinks when I was 7. I hear it’s still in grocery stores in other states, so I’ll have to look out for it.)
 

As is often the case with the color schemes I come up with, it looked better when I moved the hue slider on it in Photoshop:

Lesson learned: When painting stylish flame decals, don’t skip out on the red. It activates the “Aw, hell yeah” centers of the brain.
 

Here’s Katt’s dragon:

He’s definitely way more animal-like than my dragon, what with the snout, tongue, and curly toes, yet at the same time, he knows the ways of man.

Art, like, makes you think and stuff.

So, after all of McCain’s stunts, there were no surprises. Neither side crushed (at least from the measure of moving the polls, not from the measure of correctness), but oddly, McCain gave the longer-winded answers. Obama nailed McCain on Iran, Spain, and taxes. McCain looked tetchy and smirked a lot (which supposedly lost Gore his debates) probably held on, in the eyes of undecided independents. Tim summed up well what helped him:

‘The problem with this debate is that there’s way too much “There’s Big Scary Stuff out there that’s gonna get you!”

And any time that feeling is established, simplistic conservative talking points play better.’

So, yeah, I can’t say who “won.”

Update: EDS thinks McCain won. I can kinda see that, but what I’ve realized is that I have no idea what criteria these people who are still undecided are using to judge debates and candidate worthiness. Here’s some of his thoughts on the debate:

EDS

Hey, here’s some good news: I think I’m the only person who thought McCain easily won that debate!

Me

The Corner at the National Review also thinks that.

EDS

Well, they probably don’t count.

Me

The problem with figuring out who won the debates is that I can never figure out exactly what is going to play and what isn’t.

EDS

All those undecideds on CBS thought Obama won, which I thought would’ve gone exactly the other way.
 
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Well, the automated posting is back. I just couldn’t stay away from it. Except this time:
 

• I’ve kept the link posts from del.icio.us and the Flickr posts out of the main weblog. They show up on the side.
• They update every hour instead of each day.
• Each link or picture is its own post, upon which you can comment.
• They stay out of the main RSS feed, too. However, you can subscribe to a separate feed just for the sidebloggin’! If you’re into that kind of thing.

 
Because WordPress (understandably) as a really clunky way of posting by email (you have to send the email, then hit Wordpress to make it POP into the email account) and no documented REST interface, I ended up doing this using the Python mechanize module. It seemed hacky, but then I got over it.

Mechanize is pretty smooth, but unfortunately, the current nature of web forms is going to make it less useful, unless it extends to be able to execute javascript. Forms are generated now, and what’s generated is often pretty messy, with a lot of unnamed elements. That can be gotten around, though. The real problem is that, instead of having the form do the POST, submit buttons on forms are often just javascript triggers, and some javascript function creates the actual POST request.

This is what stopped me from extending my autoposting script to also drop the links into Facebook “Posted Items,” which also have no explicit API support. Then, even more people could have seen my links and my important opinions about them! I actually started to try to determine what kind of POST request the javascript in their “share on Facebook” bookmarklet generated, but then I thought: Wait. Why the hell am I doing this? And then, I stopped.

Dan:
hey, don’t worry, the fundamentals are strong
Me:
You know, we have, like, good workers and stuff.
Me:
So, everything’s cool.
Dan:
unless you’re saying you hate the workers, that is
Dan:
i wonder how many people will actually be fooled by that
Me:
Yeah, so if the “fundamentals” of the economy were bad, McCain would say, “Hey, our workers are bad.”
Me:
Heh, there’s no way in hell he’d every say that, so the “fundamentals” of the economy are always going to be good.
Me:
In fact, the workers were good in the Great Depression.

I went canvassing in Iowa this Saturday, and although I’m encouraged by the results, it was a hellish time.

I’m hesitant to report a negative canvassing experience because I already know that there’s a lot of irrational fear about it. But hey, if you want to hear about a smooth and positive canvassing experience, you can check out Dan’s account of his trip. What I’m going to describe here is pretty close to a worst case scenario.

Before I do that, though, let me sum up the results. Our team hit about fifty houses (well, that we could account for), partly because of the rain delaying our arrival. In those houses, which were thought by the campaign to contain undecideds and sproadic Democratic voters (SVDs), there were six (I think) people that were definitely going to vote for Obama, four that were for McCain, several that were undecided, and even more several that weren’t home.

That’s far from being statistically significant. Nonetheless, it was encouraging to see in a neighborhood with so many McCain signs. And I needed to be encouraged. That McCain’s outright lying seems to have made this a close election disgusts me.

So, here’s the cast:

Bill: He graciously drove us in the worst driving weather I’ve seen in a long time. I was planning to drive, but the turnout was large enough (around 70 people, according to the thank you email they sent) that the organizers said that they had enough drivers, to my relief.

He’s an active member of AFSCME (he’s a municipal worker), a (liberal) Catholic, and a widower. He’s probably in his sixties and is incredibly well-read when it comes to history, politics, religion, and probably other stuff, too.

Mary Jane: A single mother with kids in college, she immigrated to the US in the ’80s from Canada. Like Sarah Palin, she grew up playing hockey and has a quaint accent. Unlike Sarah Palin, she’s a secular Jew. One of her kids was pretty sickly while growing up, so she had to deal with a lot of healthcare system bullshit. She almost had to move her kids to Canada when her daughter contracted a life-threatening illness that she couldn’t pay the treatment costs for. Fortunately, a friend knew a charitable doctor who was willing to do the work for free.

Me: You know. 31-year-old elitist, currently unemployed by choice. Asian, no kids, no wife. Enjoys board games, metal, Apple products, reading about Pokémon, martial arts, and shrimp. Does not enjoy working or lattes. Is OK with but not crazy about arugula.

Senor Cardgage: Well, that’s who this tale is all about.

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Here’s what Poplicks and FiveThirtyEight.com have to say about action in these last fifty days:

Let’s do this:

“The story of the organizer and volunteer effort is one that needs to be told. It was much underreported in 2004 just how potently the Bush ground campaign organized. Say what you want about his governance – and we all have – but his competitive fire was lit for the election race. Republicans turned their voters out. Who’s got more heart this time? Missouri boys say: Show-Me.

This year, all available evidence suggests the Obama campaign is doing something unprecedented with its organizing efforts. Is it this: 29’2.5”?”

“Finally, an appeal to all Americans, regardless of voting age or partisan bent: do something tangible. It is now or never. Fifty-four days. Do something that will make the face you see in the mirror on November 5 proud. Push yourself. Suck it up. Work for it. Make a sacrifice you would not otherwise make. Leave the confusion and nonsense behind and perform your one and only noble function of the time – move.”

This is what it comes down to. Not the bad tabloid story that is Sarah Palin. Not sucking at the teat of polling data. Not even Matt Damon (but we still luh you).

As the 538 dudes recognize, Bush didn’t win in 2004 because Americans are stupid. He won because the GOP turned out their base and did it impressively. Mathematically, it should be the Democrats turn but only if they turn out their base.

(Emphasis added by me.)

Sign up and help out. If you don’t live near a battleground state, phonebank. When we’re invading Iran and Roe v. Wade is overturned, don’t cry into your corn flakes that you didn’t do shit to try to stop it.

To quote from Exodus:

Get up on your feet
Don’t look so obsolete
And thrash like an athlete!
Don’t sit there on your ass
Don’t look like you’ve got too much class
To be harassed!
You know we guarantee
This is the key
So rage or get the third degree!

You know what’s at stake right now, so FIGHT!

She got way closer than I did:

O HAI.

Here’s something I noticed about the crowd at UFC 88: They booed every fighter that wasn’t American or white.

They booed Rousimar Palhares when he entered the cage. He’s Brazilian, and Brazilians are pretty commonplace in the UFC and in MMA in general, so my guess is that they’re not longtime fans. Katt was surmised that they were probably the kind of people that wanted all Brazilians to go back to Mexico. And unsurprisingly, at the main event, they booed Rashad Evans, who’s American, but also black.

When Korean fighter Dong-Hyun Kim walked out, they broke out the “U! S! A! U! S! A!” chant. When he won by split decision, they booed like crazy to take away from his win.

Now, decisions in MMA and pretty much any other combat sport are subjective and always subject to controversy, and I could understand this fight being called either for Kim or his opponent, Matt Brown. Kim easily took the first round. Brown had the second. In the third, Brown threw more strikes and Kim’s takedown attempts were mostly unsuccessful. However, Kim landed a very heavy elbow shot to Brown’s head, the only significant event of the round.

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I did some more drawing from memory to activate my prefrontal cortex and also just to do it. Today, I drew a grasshopper and made two attempts at drawing McCain.

Here’s the grasshopper:

After I was done, I remembered that the abdomens usually extend past the hind legs and that the it’s probably physically impossible for the hind legs to get stuck between the wings. I didn’t remember what grasshopper feet looked like, either. I had a lot of fun coloring it, though.

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