Fortuna for You

I saw 300 and it was silly. I'm studying for the Mass Media and Popular Culture in the '60s midterm and the material is silly (technoscience/posthuman condition- ha!). Listening to Alexisonfire's 'This Could Be Anywhere In the World' and it's driving.

Now for some meat: I participated in a town hall conference call with Republican Representative Jeff Fortenbury and 400 some other Nebraskans. The call came when I was sitting at work. A recording of Jeff asked if I wanted to sit in and press # if I wanted to ask a question. 'Fuck yeah,' I whispered to myself. I pressed # and waited my turn to ask one of my fearless leaders a biting question on current politics. Just to make sure I didn't waste my turn, I perused the politics section of Yahoo news, gathering all the up-to-date happenings on The Hill.

I was expecting the call to be some sort of preemptive "Imma run me a exploratory committy for dem der prezidential chair," thing. But the commentary from both sides was informative and, above all, smart. There were a few times when Jeff would get an Earl from Yukmouth, NE and Earl wanted to know where his goddamn oil was from this goddamn war, but Jeff handled it with an appreciative chuckle and a thanks for calling (side-stepper). And there were a couple of state or county questions that were below Jeff's uber-political radar like Betsy from Urganda, NE wanting to know when they were going to get new firetrucks, dammit.

There were quite a few veterans asking Jeff about what these kids fighting in Iraq had to look forward to coming back. What type of care would they get and why they were over there. Hell, some of the guys broke down on the phone. For the 40 minutes I overheard, there was only one ignorant man commenting that "we in da mideast because yall wouldn't got no job if ya ain't got no oil an whadda about those 12 million immagents?" (hey, I heard it as immagents) "We needa close off our boarders!"

No, I didn't get to ask a question which is good because I probably would have botched it anyways. It was going to have to do with Bush stifling FOIA and Amendment 1 through his defiance with the Gonzales inquires. But, it probably would have came out as: "I'm an independent and I don't like you." Something really whiny and...well- silly.