Um, today I'm gonna be responding to Bush's State of the Union address, so I'm just giving y'all fair warning; there's a high possibility of a spaz out. If you would prefer not to endure one of those today, just read Marian Wilkinson's brief reporting of the speech on the front page of The Age. She's sober, concise, and yet, she leaves you pretty clear about the troubled relationship Bush’s posturing has with reality. It’s very accurate reporting. Check it out. Anyway, back to me. You see I, on the other hand, don’t have to be sober. I can even call Bush a dick. Yay for me. So… Bush is a DICK! OH MY GOD! What a fucker! He was talking about “activist judges" who ”insist on forcing their arbitrary will upon the people“, and he signalled that, in such a climate, a Constitutional Amendment might be a reasonable route to take because “Our nation must defend the sanctity of marriage” [cheers and applause]! AAAAARRGGGHHH! There is so much to deal with here, let me just break it down. First of all, ARBITRARY! Is he fuckin’ serious? ARBITRARY?! Did he not even read the Supreme Court and the Massachusetts decisions to which he is clearly referring? You know, the one from last year when the Supreme Court said that the State had no business legislating the private consensual sexual behaviour of its citizens, so it struck down sodomy laws? And then that other decision in Massachusetts, when the court found that preventing same-sex couples from marrying was against that state’s constitution because, you know, refusing to issue marriage licenses and such to free adult citizens meant that the state was treating them as second-class citizens, which anti-discrimination amendments at both a federal and state level had made unconstitutional? These were all reasonable, law-abiding decisions made on cases that had been brought against the State by private citizens. They make sense, if you read them. So, um, ARBITRARY?! What the fuck? Hmmm, the only way I can understand why Bush said that is either (a) because he’s in the habit of being intentionally deceptive, or (b) because maybe the only information about these decisions that he actually read was the dissenting opinion in the sodomy case from Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, which, as I recall, was CRAZY! So, okay, now I’m finished with the whole ‘arbitrary’ point. You’re lucky, really. If you’d been in my house when I heard that on a Triple J news bulletin while having a shower, you would have been treated to about twenty minutes of my indignant, wet-footed stomping, up and down the hallway from my room to the living room, always intending to get properly dressed but always hitting upon some other brilliant response before making any great advances in that department and thus turning on my heel and returning towel-swathed to the living room to screech things like “ARBITRARY?! ARBITRARY! What the fuck is he talking about? ARBITRARY?!” at my family, who didn’t really need to be told all that, cos they kinda know about this stuff already. Count yourselves lucky that I am such a consummate figure of restraint when I blabber on at you guys.

So, moving on to my second rant. And keep in mind, I am limiting myself to responding to ONE statement made by Bush in his speech. It’s just that there’s so much wrongness to deal with. In ONE statement! So, another thing not to like is his whole “activist judges” thing. It scared me big time. You wanna know why? Because it made absolutely clear to me for the first time that there is really NO disconnect between the fundamentalist Christian radio talk-back shows [who popularised the ‘activist judges’ tag], and the Administration running the country. Rather they have a direct line. EEEEEEEK! These guys make laws, direct policy, and apportion funding, yet it appears that they just don’t have a clue about anything except for being CRAZY, because they take their cues from CRAZY HATEFUL people. I don’t really have any more points to make, but can I just say that I really didn’t like that whole “Our nation must defend” bit either, because it was like making ‘the sanctity’ of heterosexual marriage a matter of nationalist pride.

Other hideous and spaz-out worthy statements that I cannot get into today include “Some in this chamber and in our country did not support the Liberation of Iraq”, which was his jumping-off point for saying something about how good it was to have removed the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program, or something. Another was his promise to boost abstinence-based sex education funding because abstinence was “the only certain way to avoid sexually transmitted diseases”. Grrrrr. That guy’s got real problems. Seriously, [as Al Franken would say] “he gives me the willies whenever he speaks. I don’t like him”. Not everyone is insane though. Many were astonished that Bush would repeat the same lies about ‘weapons of mass destruction’ in Iraq, and its ‘links’ to Al-Qaeda. Even the Washington Post editorial wrote “He made no accounting of his mistaken, exaggerated statements about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction”. I mean, the WASHINGTON POST! However, my favourite response was this one, from a Democratic congressman; “His policies are extreme, and, in most cases, aren’t working”. Yeah!

Mmmm, fun times last night, though, despite my awkward and embarassing crap-dancing [and that doesn't mean 'charmingly' crap, it means 'crap' crap]. Ventured back into a ‘nightclub’ for the first time since Year 12. Erin made promises of free entry, free drinks, and great music, and she delivered on every one [with a little help from Furze]. I don’t know what people know about the ‘Melbourne scene’, but I don’t know much [despite having been born and raised here]. All I know is that the Nova cinema does cheap movies on Monday, and now, I also know that on Wednesday nights at Room, rock music is played by Rock DJs. Hee hee. And last night, I got to be one of those hangers-on at the door who can dismiss lists because ‘my friend knows the DJ’. Awesome. I love doing that stuff, because like, that whole ‘my friend knows the DJ’ thing has been such an amusing diss, loaded as it is with connotations of huge wankerism, that I always get a thrill making visits to ‘the dark side’ where people actually say such things. The thrill has of course always been ruined by the fact that I’m just out with friends and other friendly people. Damn ‘dark side’, you’re not dangerous or corrupting at all! Just good tunes and stuff. And there’s nothing more fun than watching Erin rock out and dance as if she’s in her bedroom. Actually, what might be more fun than that was watching her blast the drunks who were changing their flat tyre at 7/11 at 5am using Furze’s jack, but being all slow and rude and stupid about it. Cue Erin; “For fuck’s sake! I could have changed that fuckin’ tyre by now. What the fuck is wrong with you? Hurry the fuck up! Hey, he’s doing you a fuckin’ favour here. Fuck off!” Ah, the memories.
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For Quote of the Day today, there is one clear winner, but also two honourable mentions that tickled me. First off, there’s this ET teaser about their fashion-focused coverage of the opening day of Martha Stewart’s trial, which went “Martha’s trial by design: her ten thousand dollar Hermes purse, and what’s underneath that long black coat”. And then there was this other ET quote [ET is a really funny show] about Michael Jackson, which went “No more SUV-dancing for Jackson. That’s just one of many recommendations reportedly coming from the singer’s legal team”. Haaaaah hah! However, there can only be one winner, and it is this one, from the collection of drunks with the flat who were enquiring of Furze, “Are those your chicks? Where did you get them? Did you pick them up tonight?”. Hee hee. Man-talk is funny.

Anyway, I’m off. I’ve got two fat, thick and important-looking envelopes to look at that just arrived in the post from RMIT. I am so important.