CNN is so lame. Everyone knew that Clinton was going to slaughter Obama in West Virginia because of the “tailor-made demographic” for Clinton there (i.e., older, poorer, whiter, more female, and more undereducated — not exactly a demographic I’d be proud of). And yet, in absence of suspense, they need to create a story around how this overwhelming loss creates doubts about Obama’s “electability.” Irrelevant, or is CNN implying that the majority of Americans are older, poorer, whiter, more female, and more undereducated? Maybe so, but in head-to-head polls with McMaverick, both Dems lose West Virginia. To me that means in W.V. a white women is just a little less unappealing as president than a black man Supporting this theory is the fact that John Edwards (white man from the South) is taking in 4-5% of the vote and he’s not even in the race (so to speak) anymore!

West Virginia will not matter in the G.E. And all this emphasis on the race factor is so misleading. It’s not a black-or-white issue. In fact, I don’t think that race per se has been the determining factor — after all, how does one explain Obama’s overwhelming wins in states like Idaho (79% to 17%), haven for white supremacists? Oh yeah, it’s a caucus state and they don’t matter because caucuses bring out the loony activists who actually care about politics and thus inform themselves and work actively in electing their candidate. But according to the Clinton campaign, they don’t matter. God forbid that we have American voters who actually educate themselves on the issues and show passion and commitment to the process. Sorry, I’m ranting again (surprise!), but what this whole long Democratic primary process has brought out is how utterly undemocratic the primary process is. That’s the real story, CNN — do a piece on that.

That’s what the fortune cookie that I just cracked open says. Dashing and bold are fine, but will I be happy?

First, apologies to Clinton supporters who clearly are not undereducated white bigots. Second, apologies to West Virginians who are not undereducated white bigots.

After reading this article in the LA Times about the “troubles” West Virginia may give Barack Obama next Tuesday, I say good riddance to the 65+% of those polled who say they are voting for Clinton. Who would want to be associated with supporters who say things like:

“I’ve got 50-some guns, and I wasn’t crazy about Obama’s talk about small towns,” said Sam Vetter, 64, a farmer and lifelong Democrat who regrets voting for Bush in 2000. “Besides,” he added, “Obama just doesn’t sound right for an American president.”

Or how about this gem:

Hand-lettered campaign signs promoting Democrats running for family-court judge and assessor cluster along Hardy County’s winding roads. There are only a few signs for either Obama or Clinton, but in one yard, a placard with a red slash on it mocks, “Osama, Obama and Chelsea’s Mama.”

The sign belongs to Eric Hardy, 38, a former Democrat who works at a woodworking plant. Now a die-hard Republican and president of the West Virginia Coon Hunters Assn., Hardy opposes any Democrat “who wants to go after my guns.”

Obama “takes the cake,” he said, “because of, you know, who he is.” He suspects Obama for his “Muslim name,” and comments by his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., rankle him. “He’s just a mistake any way you look at him,” Hardy said.

Yo! Chelsea’s Mama! You can have ‘em, the whole lot of ‘em, all. Go off to West Virginia and talk about how many times your papa took you coon hunting when you were a kid, knock back a few beers, crack a few racist jokes, and you’re sure to crush Obama in the West Virginia primary. I see no pride in winning a state that where so-called Democrats are gun-toting, socially backward bigots. I would actually be embarrassed if Obama won West Virginia….

This is such a cool story it’s worth repeating here. Two dumbass dudes burgled $5000 worth of laptops, ipods, game consoles, and other electronics from the White Plains apartment of a woman who works at an Apple Store and who has a .Mac account. Lucky her, too bad for them. When a co-worker at the store noticed that it appeared that she was online with her MacBook (but wasn’t), she went logged on to another Mac at the store, launched the “Back to My Mac” feature of .Mac, which allows remote access to a second Mac, and was able to activate the built-in camera on her MacBook remotely. At first there was just an empty chair there, but moments later one of the dumbass burglars (who ended up being a friend of a friend of the victim) sat down and she was able to snap a photo of him and send it to the police. Shortly thereafter arrests were made. All thanks to a smart Mac users, a MacBook with a built-in camera, and a .Mac account. I’d like to see a PC user pull that one off — oh wait, who’d bother to steal a PC laptop anyway….?

Sara and the boys left for Florida (Grayton Beach) last night for week. Safa isn’t with me until Monday. She and I were supposed to join them for the last half of the week, but things got complicated, so I’m home alone. Abandoned. The upside: All day I’ve been blasting music from my Mac Mini (via my MacBook Pro) to the 5.1 speaker system I have connected to my AppleTV. Awesome.

Last night I finally watched the very intriguing anime film Tekkon Kinkreet. It’s directed by ex-pat American anime man, Michael Arias, who has been hanging with Studio4°C for a long time. It’s based on the manga Black and White and features a superflat style of character design set against gorgeously imagined and realized settings:

Since it features these two orphaned street urchins (White and Black, above), it seemed fitting that abandoned Gray me take comfort in it. I won’t bother to try to recount the plot; I’ll only say it’s worth seeing. Kinetic, eye-grabbing, off-beat, colorful (in all senses).  As his directorial debut, Arias did pretty damn well.

After a little blogging and reading tonight I might watch something else, not sure what.

The other reason — besides Goya Day — that May 8th is one of my favorite days is that it is the birthday of my favorite author, Thomas Pynchon, who is — unbelievably — 71 years old today. Somehow I can’t picture him as that old. Maybe because the only image I and most of the world have of him is this photo:

Pretty goofy, huh?

I’m ashamed to admit that I never got back to reading his latest, Against the Day, because of other busyness and my current reading — out loud to my wife almost every night for 15-20 minutes before lights out — of Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle. Still, Gravity’s Rainbow is my #1 and I will always came back to it for writerly inspiration. I do wonder what he looks like nowadays and where — besides The Zone — he might be….

Goyaboy’s favorite holiday is today, May 8th, in Okinawa — “Goya no Hi” (Goya Day). As I have explained before, this is one of those Japanese play-on-words holidays: 5 (May) = go and 8 = ya. Read about it (in Japanese) here. This year an Okinawan farmer planted a goya that yielded a “Siamese Twin” goya! Apparently two flowers bloomed from one bud and created a monster — 30 cm long and clearly joined down the center:

The one that the farmer’s older daughter is holding in front is the monster, the other is a “normal” goya for comparison. I will of course be making goya champuru tonight, although with the far inferior Indian bitter melon — it’s rare to get the south Chinese/Okinawan variety here in Nashville. And of course I’m wearing my made in Okinawa goya shirt today. And finally, I encourage you all to listen to a little Radio Go Go Goya! to celebrate today.

UPDATE: Here’s my goya champuru, while cooking:

It ended up being tasty, but the boys picked out all the goya while Sara did in fact eat it all.

After Obama’s whumpin’ of Clinton in North Carolina and stronger-than-expected finish in Indiana yesterday, superdelegates, such as Arizona Democratic Chairman Don Bivens, have reached what he calls a “decisional plateau” while Clinton’s campaign continues inexorably downhill. Nice, phrase Don — what the hell is it supposed to mean?! Just jump and declare for Obama and help get this thing over with already. There is no glory for fence-sitters. In any case, Obama scored 4 more SDs today, one being a switcher, which reminds me of the Apple campaign about getting PC users to switch to Macs. Clearly, Hillary is the boring PC — sooooooo drab and soooooooo 20th-century — while Barack is the hip slick youthful Mac with a face to the future. Now, of course Macs are better the PCs both in looks and reliability. Just look at the beating Barack was taking with all the negative press about irrelevant things (Wright, “bitter”) and he’s still going strong. On the other hand, Hillary continues to embarrass herself by denying reality and constantly changing the definition of what matters to be the nominee (it’s moved from delegates to popular vote to electability). It hurts watching her desperation. Can’t one of her friends simply pull her aside and tell her how stupid and disingenuous and selfish she appears? She has so earned my utter disdain when before I simply didn’t like her very much. It’s amazing how much of a disservice she’s doing herself, not to mention the Democratic Party. 

Attention, all you people on decisional plateaus: please help put Hillary out of her misery and jump. Now. Please.