While we've all heard alot about blue states and red states, we also know that there are blues living in red states and vice versa.  To get a better look at the breakdown, there is a website that breaks the presidential vote down by county to show a more accurate visual representation of the vote.

This is the most detailed image from that site using a range of colors from primary red to Purple to primary blue to show how the vote occurred across the country.

While this doesn't argue that the vote's result was good, bad or indifferent, it is certainly interesting.  It also shows that Democrats are not just living in coastal enclaves and that Republicans don't 'own' the center of the country. 

"The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved."

- John Ashcroft, 2004.

Thank you, John.  Now that I don’t have to worry about being robbed or blown up, I think it’s time for you to take a well deserved vacation….

Terror alerts are being lowered in Washington and New York.  Security barriers are being dismantled on Capitol Hill.  Statues are decently covered.  E-mail and library records are being sifted through to locate those pesky pacifists and free-thinkers.

Now, we just need to get those last few terrorists holed up in Fallujah and round up all those liberals trying to force us to marry members of the same sex and the US will become a veritable Nirvana.  (If I’m allowed to refer to a Heaven-On-Earth in non-Christian terms.)  But those minor mop-up operations can be handled by someone else.  You’ve already done so much to make the world a better place.

The mission really is accomplished. 

A couple days ago I picked up a novel by an author I’ve never read before – China Miéville.  It was essentially a random purchase based on the back cover synopsis and a cool title – Perdido Street Station.  So far, I’ve read about 1 page and he’s completely blown me away.  One paragraph in particular pulled me in simply by the incredibly strong images drawn as I read.  This is a description of the city of New Crobuzon:

   The river twists and turns to face the city.  It looms suddenly, massive, stamped on the landscape.  Its light wells up around the surrounds, the rock hills, like bruise-blood.  Its dirty towers glow.  I am debased.  I am compelled to worship this extraordinary presence that has silted into existence at the conjunction of two rivers.  It is a vast pollutant, a stench, a klaxon sounding.  Fat chimneys retch dirt into the sky even now in the deep night.  It is not the current which pulls us but the city itself, its weight sucks us in.  Faint shouts, here and there the call of beasts, the obscene clash and pounding from the factories as huge machines rut.  Railways trace urban anatomy like protruding veins.  Red brick and dark walls, squat churches like troglodytic things, ragged awnings flickering, cobbled mazes in the old town, cuts-de-sac, sewers riddling the earth like secular sepulchres, a new landscape of wasteground, crushed stone, libraries fat with forgotten volumes, old hospitals, towerblocks, ships and metal claws that lift cargoes from the water.

   How could we not see this appraoaching?  What trick of topography is this, that lets the sprawling monster hide behind corners to leap out at the traveller?

   It is too late to flee.

- China Miéville, Perdido Street Station, 2000.

The last cigarette I had was Monday morning about 3:00 am at the Halloween closing party.  (have to put those stories in a different post).  I'm sure Gilbert noticed this over the past couple days as he's usually too observant not to ...

It's mostly an economic thing.  I'm broke until friday so I don't have the cash to buy any new cigarettes ....

This morning was the first time I mentioned it out loud.  I told Gilbert that I hadn't had one in 54 hours over the phone.  His response was, 'I don't know why you're doing this to yourself - it hasn't worked in the past.'

The only good thing I can see about yesterday's election is that now Dubya will still be in office to sort out his own mess in Iraq and with the deficit, etc...

The Dems proved once again that they cannot win by playing Republican lite.  They said they learned that in 2000 and again in 2002.  I wonder how many times they have to learn it before they stop putting up candidates that are to the right of the majority of the party.