Obama wins, Artaud and Gravel tie for fourth

How about Senator O? The man just needs to play a little touch football in front of some photographers and this game is over.

Saw somewhere that Mike Gravel got 240 votes in S. Carolina, which is about what I would have picked up if I had spent a weekend down there carrying a big sign saying "Vote Clancy" and buying people drinks.

Candidate Antonin Artaud, dead now sixty years and a Frenchman at that, is in a statistical dead heat with Gravel. When asked about his position on legalization of drugs by a local reporter, A.A. spouted:

There are souls which are incurable and lost to the rest of society. Take one means of madness away from them and they will invent ten thousand others...As long as we have been unable to take away any reason for human despair, we will never have the right to try and take away the means by which men try to cleanse themselves of despair...We must be left alone, the sick must be left alone, we ask nothing of mankind, we only ask them to alleviate our pain. We have evaluated our lives well, when confronted by others and particularly confronted by ourselves we know what restrictions they comprise. We know what willing decay, what self-denials, what paralysis of subtleness our sickness forces us to undergo every day. We won't commit suicide right away. In the meantime, leave us alone.

Reporter wrote down:

French guy babbled about something. Thought he was dead. Anyway...

Saw the first reading of the first part of Stolen Chair's latest last night, working title The Tragic Swashbuckler. Going to be great. Part three of their Cinetheatre Tetralogy, this time it's Errol Flynn meets Sophocles. So fucking funny and smart. Everyone needs to go to their big Pirate Party this weekend, Saturday the 2nd at the Underwater Lounge out in Dumbo. Nancy and I will be out on Long Island, partying like respectable people, but the rest of you can party like pirates. Live swordfighting, a Delphic oracle, DJs, all like that. Info and tickets at www.partylikepirates.com.

Now about those keycards.

What genius, I ask sincerely, decided a few years back to improve on the time-honored device of a key and a lock? Something that had worked, without any public cry or complaint for, oh, three thousand years or so? Used to be, when I was a boy, the hotel clerk would give you a key and when you got to your room, you'd unlock the door and that would be that. Used to be, when I was just a lad, that the only reason a key wouldn't work was because it was the wrong key. This new invention, this improvement, works, from my personal experience, about 35% of the time.

You stand there like an idiot, sliding the card in and out, trying to figure out the right speed or force or angle, while the little lights blink red. And then you trudge your tired ass back to the desk and say, "Didn't work." And they shrug and do some goddamned thing with it and you go back to the door of your room and it still doesn't fucking work.

Bring back the fucking key, folks. This is like improving on the plate or the table or something. It works just fine. Move on. How about using all those resources and ingenuity on renewable energy or finding a cure for Crohn's Disease? Something.

Been carrying that little rant around for awhile. I'm better now.

But seriously. Is this some money-saving initiative that the hotel lobby has foisted on us? How much could a key cost?

That's kind of funny, "hotel lobby".

And to end this strange, rambling post, a quiz.

My brother-in-law sent us about 800 songs on a CD which we downloaded onto the Ipod yesterday. Great new stuff. So, of the following bands, which one did I make up? Three of them are real and rocking, one is just a great name. Winners will get... uhhhh... winners will get... uhhhhhh...the answer right.

1. Happy Go-Lucky Nazis
2. The Icelandic Motherfuckers
3. Eelwax Jesus
4. Chickasaw Mud Puppies

Take a guess.