1. Being a 6-foot-2-inch fly-on-the-wall is pretty uncomfortable.

2. Grinding out herbalism without an epic flying mount is a much bigger PITA than I anticipated.

3. There might soon be an interesting Australian TV series. Keep an eye out.

4. I’m not the only one disdainful of uncritical niche film markets. I should really write an essay on the topic, but that might give people the impression that I have a valid opinion.

5. Almost a month on, the words “President-elect Obama” still launches an enormous grin on my face.

From the latest artist’s statement over at The Pain:

With less than a month now to go before election Day and the country in a shambles, Obama is ahead in all the polls and even I am cautiously, against my better judgment, starting to hope that maybe, just this once, the shitheads will not win. Of course I’ve hoped this several times before, only to be sucker-punched and laughed at by the Shithead Nation. Which could well happen again if enough people secretly turn out to be racists behind the electoral booth curtain. Even if Obama does win, it still feels like a depressing confirmation of one’s most cynical and misanthropic suspicions that things finally had to get this bad—the country in ruin, mired in two losing wars and on the brink of a global Great Depression—before people would grudgingly consent to vote for someone intelligent for a change. It’s hard to believe we might actually have someone smart running the country again; as my friend Megan said, “It seems almost bizarre.” No doubt as soon as we’re at peace and running a surplus again the shitheads will vote for another hawkish, tax-cutting demagogue, like an alcoholic with a few months’ sobriety under his belt who decides that things are going so well that a coupla beers aren’t going to hurt anything.

The Pain asks: Why are you voting Republican in 2008?

Option #2 reminds me of a piece I read the other day. I can’t quite tell if it’s serious. If it is, it’s a fairly unnecessary defense of the ‘redneck’. If it’s serious, it seems some degree of a subculture in the US has adopted the term as an inside endearment. The problem with this is that as applied to the people described in the article, it’s a misnomer. Not once in the article does the author mention the defining characteristic of a redneck: they’re racist, bigoted fucks. That’s what concerns people, or at the very least that’s what concerns me. That the next US election will be decided by closed-minded ignorant shits who have no business being the inheritors of the US founding fathers’ legacy.

Or perhaps, since Jefferson owned slaves, I’m the one reading it wrong.