If Barack Obama picks someone out of the box — a Hillary Clinton or Jim Webb, perhaps — then I think we have a good chance of winning.  But if he goes with a safe choice, a vanilla choice like Tim Kaine, Evan Bayh, or Joe Biden, we’re sunk.

McCain’s pick really isn’t as important.  McCain’s victory is predicated on making Obama unacceptable, not on selling John McCain.  At the end of the day the only moves that count are Obama’s.

I’ve played the Battlefield series since its inception in 2002 with Battlefield 1942. In that time, I’ve been team-killed for planes, run over by my own teammates, and killed in a barrage of friendly artillery fire many times.

I’ve been playing on XBOX Live since 2003. In that time, I’ve had my sexuality questioned, my skill disparaged by team mates, team-killed mercilessly, and generally been reminded of why I hated bullies in high school.

Lately, I’ve been playing the new XBOX 360 game Battlefield Bad Company, which has mixed the traditional Battlefield team-killing, with XBOX Live idiocy.

Case in point: two nights ago I spawned on a new server to find myself instantly attacked by my own squad mates. Not just team mates, but squad mates. Their leader tossed a grenade at me and immediately started telling me about how he was going to kill me.

Instantly, I was surrounded by him and his goons in a tight circle.

“What are you going to do about it, Jeff?” he said to me.

I had not spoken to him, yet. Didn’t intend to. Instead, I pivoted around the circle until I found the leader and knifed him. For a moment, the bullies were shocked.

“He knifed me!” the guy shouted, surprised.

His friends opened fire and killed me.

“He knifed me!” the kid squeaked again. There was a tinge of admiration in his voice.

Deciding that I couldn’t hurt my permanent stats by committing another inevitable team-kill, I left the server for happier pastures.

You have to have a thick skin to play on XBOX Live. Really, I have nothing more to say than that.

One of McCain’s Naval Academy and POW acquaintances explains why he isn’t voting for McCain (via Andrew Sullivan).

When I was 16 years old, I thought the Judybats were the greatest band on earth. My only question now as I look back at them on YouTube is what the hell was I thinking? I saw this band five or six times in college, even interviewed them once. Who knows how many thousands of times I listened to their records. My later participation in the 1990’s indie pop scene was undoubtedly influenced by my early love of the Judybats, but their music does not hold up in 2008.

Can you believe this video sold me on them enough for me to go out and buy their CD for $18 in 1991 money? What’s that, like $35 today? Actually, the Judybat’s Native Son was the first CD I ever bought. All my previous records were enjoyed on analog audio tape.

I’m trying to figure out the horse in the video. It’s some kind of metaphor for sexuality or drugs or something. Huhm.

Some of my friends have reminded me that I haven’t blogged in awhile, so here I am.

I’m pretty depressed by the election.  Longtime readers may recall my depression during the primaries — as well as my conviction that my guy (Obama) would lose.  He didn’t!  Huzzah!  But now we’re going into the general and the inevitable smear campaign has begun.  I used to like John McCain, but now I don’t.  He’s become a complete tool, and his incompetence and bad judgment has been on full display, despite the “liberal” media looking the other way.

Apparently the only way he can win is to make everyone think Obama is unacceptable.  That means smears — racial, political, even religious.  There’s a rumor going around evangelical circles that Obama is the Anti-Christ.  Seriously, you can’t make this shit up.  Longtime observers of the evangelical movement may recall that there was a time when Mikhail Gorbachev and Saddam Hussein were both the Anti-Christ in the 1980’s and the early 1990’s respectively.  The world didn’t end then, and it’s not going to end now.  But if it was going to end, I’d say John McCain’s proposed war with Russia would be a good place to start.

If Obama reveals a high school Advanced Dungeons and Dragons habit, we’re all going to be sunk.

On the home front, the girls are getting bigger, but the potty-training is not coming along as well as we liked.  Apparently some kids can be resistant to  potty-training.  It doesn’t surprise me that mine are.

I’ve seen a total of four movies this summer: Indiana Jones, Incredible Hulk, Iron Man and Batman.  That’s more than all of 2007.  They’re actually letting me out of the house, again.  My favorite of the four, shockingly, was Incredible Hulk.  Edward Norton’s Bruce Banner is a real guy struggling with his demons — there may be three big action set-pieces in the Hulk sequel, but the meat of the film is with Norton’s struggles with the monster inside him.

Although I liked The Dark Knight, I wasn’t as blown away by it as many of my friends.  Heath Ledger was good, but I think he’s suffering from the inevitable halo effect of tragedy.  Brenden Lee’s performance in The Crow experienced similar support.

The Dark Knight somehow managed to take the creepy villains of the torture porn genre (i.e. Saw, Hostel, etc.) and apply that archetype to the Joker.  This means he’s not a real character so much as an inexplicable force for terror.  Granted, it’s watered down, but I was troubled by the amount of marketing dollars spent trying to get children to the theater.  The Dark Knight is a dark (I know, haha) film geared towards adults.  There’s no good reason for them to have made action figures and sold them at Walmart.  If you ask me, the movie should have been rated “R.”  My girls would have nightmares for months if they even saw a photograph of the Joker.  Being a parent has definitely sensitized me to the sale of violence to children.

On the music front, I’ve bought a number of great records.  Throw Me The Statue’s Moonbeams is a phenomenal pop record, and I’ve grown extremely enamored of Bowerbirds’ Hymns for a Dark Horse, which is in the “Americana” genre of indie rock occupied by such favorites of mine as Andrew Bird and Joanna Newsom.  Bird’s Soldier On EP is definitely worth a few hundred listens. The addition of American and European folk traditions to indie rock has been an incredible breath of fresh air.  Of course, I’d be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge that guys like Will Oldham and John Darnielle have been doing this for years.

I’ll leave you now with a live performance of Bowerbirds performing “Dark Horse,” which is available on  Hymns for a Dark Horse:

My dog is dead, and my grief is limitless.

Back in 1997, Tina and I got married and bought a puppy — a black and tan dachshund we named Marshall.  Marshall didn’t live long, dying after a botched neutering.  Tina and I were heartbroken and not in the best frame of mind.  So a few days later, we went to a pet store and bought a crazy little boston terrier that the girl who worked at the store had named “Taz.”  We renamed him “Archie.”

Archie was a difficult puppy, but this is not unusual for male boston terriers.  They have a generous spirit and a kind, easygoing manner, but they are full of energy.  They get bored easily, and they love to destroy things.  But they are equally gentle and loyal.  Boston terriers aren’t right for everyone — like all purebred dogs, they have their quirks.  But Archie was right for us.

I remember at the height of my despair  one early walk I had with Archie.  I was still grieving the loss of the first dog and wondering if this new puppy was a mistake.  We were on the path behind our apartment at the time, and suddenly he stopped, closed his eyes and felt the warm sun on his face.  Then, he sniffed the warm spring air, took a deep breath and sighed.   Suddenly I realized what was happening — he was enjoying the world, the sun, the beautiful weather.

As someone who had previously only owned dachshunds, I was pleasantly surprised — dachshunds are difficult breed, high strung and obsessed with their owners.  But here was a dog that was taking it easy, enjoying the day.  It was this moment that my bond with Archie began, when I realized that his crazy puppy phase was just that –a phase.  That everything was going to be okay.

He was my dog, and I loved him.

Jump forward 11 years later.  Archie, sick and failing, his time so short.  I had no inkling of what his death would really mean to me — how intertwined he was in my life.  My whole daily schedule was centered around his needs — walks, feedings, walks.  He slept with me every night, burrowed into the space behind my knees, warm and comforting.  What would my life be like without him, my friend, my companion, my faithful dog?

Unable to walk, Tina held him on the floor in my mother’s house, our daughters flanking her,  saying their goodbyes.  I was in the kitchen, desperately trying to replace his bedding for what I knew would be his final trip in the car — my mother and I were taking him to an emergency animal hospital to have him put to sleep.

Just as the girls said their goodbyes, Archie looked into Tina’s eyes, and she would later tell me that she saw that he was saying goodbye to her.  And then his eyes rolled back into his head, and his labored breathing ceased.

“Oh my god,” Tina said.  “He’s dying, I think he’s dead.  Come quickly.”

I rushed to her side, but I was too late.  My dog was dead.  Gently, I lifted him from her arms, and placed him inside the crate on the fresh blanket.  His body was limp and still, completely at rest.   I thought about that crazy puppy so long ago who loved to feel the warm sun on his face.  And I felt the vacuum his death had opened in my life.  Never again would we walk through the streets of Adams Morgan together, across freshly fallen snow, the white streets silent and empty except for him and me.

And no longer would my beloved dog be by my side at all times — no matter what, Archie made sure I was never alone.

Now, I tell the girls the story of Archie’s life, as we try to help them make sense of his death.  Anya understands, she knows he’s not coming back.  She avoids talking about him.  But Rachel doesn’t quite get it — she thinks he’s just somewhere else, waiting to rejoin us.  And maybe she’s the one who’s right.  Maybe he is out there waiting for us, waiting for me.

I know this isn’t true.  But I like to delude myself.  Maybe someday, Archie and I will walk Florida Avenue again and stop at every tree.  Maybe he will ride along side me again when I move the car on Thursday mornings for street cleanings, and maybe when it’s late at night and I’m sad and alone, he will be there to comfort me.  To tell me in his quiet way that everything is okay.  We are a pack, a family, and we are together.

Well, I’ve been thinking about watching Good Night and Good Luck again on DVD.  It’s one of the movies I bought during the first year of my girls’ lives when I couldn’t sit down and watch anything without being interrupted.  I believe I had to watch it with the volume down, and the only way I could understand what was being said was to turn on the captioning.

So, I’ve been toying with the idea of pulling it out of my collection and giving it another spin, but I wonder if its impact is important, anymore.

At the time it was released, it was one of the few mainstream Hollywood films that put the Bush administration on notice for what they were doing to us.  The McCarthy/Bush parallels at the time were incredibly strong and anyone who opposed the war or the administration was scared that some big ugly jack boot was going to drop.

But now with Bush on the way out for good, I think there’s a sense among many on the left that our problems are over.  Me personally, I’m not all that fired up about it anymore.  With the Dems in control of too houses of Congress, most of the damage to our civil liberties is now contained.

So without the specter of an all-powerful witch hunting political party hanging over our heads, does Good Night and Good Luck still work?  Maybe as a historical document, but like later seasons of Battlestar Galactica, it’s lost a lot of its potency as a work of politics.

Tina’s out tonight setting up her Artomatic installation, while I’m at home with the girls.  Rachel and Anya are running around the house with buckets on their heads, singing the tune to “Here comes the bride.”  It’s kind of funny.

My dad, who died in 1993 and never heard of the Internet, is listed on a Web site of dead Airforce airmen.  There are pictures, which are credited to my mother.  It’s strange to see him there.

Sorry it’s been a million years since I blogged — I’ve been working on a film treatment, redesigning a Web site at work, and even finding time to play Grand Theft Auto IV. But I’m procrastinating fiercely at the moment, so I’m taking the time.

I am sorely depressed about the election. I used to read political news all day long at work as it dripped into me via an RSS reader, but now I mostly ignore it. I am convinced now that Obama is toast — it’s like all the people in American who didn’t want him to be President found their excuse with Reverand Wright, so all they do is blah blah blah on and on and about it in the media to the point that the words Obama, Reverend and Wright all blend together and form one pastiche of a human being. One would think that Obama and Wright are the same person, or that Wright is running for office. It’s insane.

George W. Bush was never held to account for any of his dubious associations, nor has Hillary Clinton. There’s a double standard at play here — a standard that only applies to Barack Obama.

So anyway, that’s why I’ve been avoiding the election.

GTA IV is awesome, by the way.

I can’t stop listening to “San Bernardino”, from the new Mountain Goats LP, “Heretic Pride,” so I thought I’d share.

There is a line you cross the moment you become a parent, it’s like your old self is some bizarre alien species.  Hearing your child (or in my case, children) cry just as they’re born is the most magical moment a parent will ever experience.  That cry — that scream of defiance against the sudden shift from the internal world of the womb to the external one — is proof that your child has been born and is wonderfully alive.

It was that moment that I crossed the line.  Rachel’s voice was first, then Anya’s.  And this song perfectly captures that moment and that feeling of change.