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Here it is: I don't trust him because I don't know him. I haven't seen him going through enough trials when he wasn't campaigning. With Clinton, I know she's dirty, and I know which way she'll jump, I think. I think her gov't will be bloated and useless, ineffective and divided... but I still have some idea what she'll do. And I don't think her Circus of Failure will totally mess up the country; it just won't do a good job of running it. But I think she'll mostly stay out of my way, and make her gov't more removed from me and from everyone else, which is something Bush has totally failed at. I can run my life better than she can, or better than Obama can. And if I can't, I need to learn from my failures, as it's my life. But with Obama, I don't know which way he'll jump--and better the devil you know. I kinda feel this was the thing with Bush: his supporters didn't realize how much he was going to fail, and neither did I.
Obama can talk, he's great. His Ethos and Pathos are strong. He sounds very sincere and caring, and what he says is often what I've felt has needed to be said, and is something I feel I can get behind. He's a modern day Cicero--and that guy was a jerk, an autocrat who made the people feel very good and pleased with themselves for doing what he wanted them to do. Or he's a modern day Saruman, to be a nerd--his logic, his policies weren't good at all, but he sounded really wise while saying it and everyone wanted to agree with it as it sounded great the way he said it.
Obama's Rhetorical style in this speech gives me pause--it gives me great pause, really. It's big on hierarchies and centralizing power into his hands. In brief: it's pretty big with Kenneth Burke's (I think) Dramaticism. That's a style that's great on Ethos and Pathos. It's a style that encourages the audience to identify with the speaker, to identify themselves (and the speaker) with his description of the current state of affairs. This description must paint the current state of affairs as flawed and troubled--but the speaker knows a way to improve the current problems and transcend the current state of affairs into an improved situation, while at the same time the speaker and the audience transcend from their current state and into an improved state--not just because they've identified with the current situation, and that situation has improved--but also through the audience's allegiance with the speaker.
Perhaps this is necessary for getting groups of people together... but it's dangerous as it throws a lot of power into the hands of the 'leader.' It's also dangerous as it causes centralization of power and 'unification' among the followers. Dramatism requires hierarchies--'you must transcend the troubled times by following me as the leader; through following me, who is one of you, we all will transcend into a better state.' And that's what's up with my concern on trusting Obama. Such charisma is not necessarily to be lauded in a leader we cannot predict, and I cannot predict him. Aside from the Rhetorical clues in his style, Obama explicitly called the present as a time for "unity," or unification. He's very much against divisive speech here.
Here are examples of why this style gives me great pause: after hearing his speech, I'm not sure why we must improve the state on Racism to improve our health-care and education systems. Or why a cultural problem like Racism is best solved through the office of President. I'm also not sure why 100% employment is a good thing (I always thought that was recognized as patently bad for any country). I'm not sure why exporting jobs to other countries is bad--I see why it's bad for those of us who work here, but I always thought that sharing resources and improving the lots of those in other countries was good. I didn't think it was 'bad' to send food to countries with famine, even if that means we would go a bit hungrier or not be so fat--I kinda see this exporting jobs thing on a similar vein. So yeah; looking for feedback on this one, if anyone's up for it.
Anonymous
March 30 2008, 11:01:59 UTC 4 years ago
i like u :)
I was saying that in Gir's voice btw.I enjoy reading your thoughts on things, even if they are often about tax laws and other things with which I have little prior knowledge. If I understand what you're saying, you want to try before you buy, or something like that - know what Obama's about and how he would affect everyday life before voting for him. That's completely understandable.
I do think that racism is an issue in our education system, and probably our health care system too, no doubt an amorphous and intangible entity but still entrenched. One thing I learned about at my teaching workshop was the idea of stereotype threat, which can cause minorities who are stereotyped to underperform to actually do worse when their race/ethnicity is perceived to be relevant (e.g. answering questions about their race on a standardized test). I think of it as a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts. And there are concrete ways in which educators can alleviate some of the stereotype threat. Just my two cents, doesn't quite address your issue of trusting Obama though.
My best suggestion to get a better sense of his direction is to look at his voting record. Is one of your concerns that he would reach out to conservatives to the point of 'messing stuff up'?
March 30 2008, 11:03:00 UTC 4 years ago
Re: i like u :)
Oops, wasn't logged in...well yes that was meMarch 31 2008, 02:54:16 UTC 4 years ago
Voting record might be a good way to go.
Yeah, maybe when it comes time for the final big push, after the primaries, I'll try to figure out the candidate's voting records. Since I'm registered Green, I can't play in your reindeer games.Is one of your concerns that he would reach out to conservatives to the point of 'messing stuff up'?
Not really, no. I'm not really big on party lines anymore, or identity politics: since political 'problems' usually stem from different view points, I think the 'solutions' ought to involve some meeting of the minds. I don't think politics work long-term if you just steamroll people, so I feel reaching out to others is great.
You're right, though: I want to try before I buy, or at least have someone who likes him tell me what they don't like about him, or what we need to watch out for. The fact that he's really charismatic kinda unsettles me, because charisma means people are more inclined to ignore his faults or gloss over bits they should focus on.
Librastorm, your two cents seem pretty reasonable, and that could be a pretty good "B" for his "A therefore C/racism is a problem therefore we must address it before we address health care or education."
More on his speech... According to K. Burke the Dramatist hierarchy uses at least three levels: a level we're at now, a level to transcend to, and a level below us we need to make sure we don't fall into. Since the speaker ties his argument in with identification, this often leads to some group becoming abject: that group's identity becomes the repository of characteristics we do not want to have and we're working against. If your arguments are tied in with identity, then you've got to be extra careful to avoid falling into a 'scapegoating' trap. In Obama's speech, he explicitly 'scapegoated' divisive speech, and called for unification, while still trying to keep identification with those speaking divisively. As 'scapegoats' go, this one seems relatively mild, and it seems he worked pretty hard to avoid the rhetorical pitfall. But I like diversity, and I like 'divisive' speech, when the situation calls for it; I mean, isn't running for president in connection to a specific party 'divisive'? Also, I'm not super big on unification, especially under a president--I'd rather not have to look to D.C. to figure out what my viewpoint should be. I'm also not big on unification: let California stay California, and Mississippi stay Mississippi (to quote Allen Ginsberg: "You were never no locomotive, Sunflower, you were a sunflower!"). I want to tell Utah to fuck off, and go live in my bubble-butted S.F. while Beverly Hills minds its own business and New York continues to be the City of the Broken Future.
All this said, I'm not saying Obama will end up a Hitler, or that he'll continue using Dramaticism. It could have been a one-off, and maybe even required: race has been attached to his identity, the speech was in response specifically to the call for him to denounce his reverend. So maybe the choice for identity arguments/politics really was just what the doctor ordered--he had to tackle that issue tied in with his identity, while still including the rest of the nation. We'll see if he keeps with this 'i.d.' thing...
March 31 2008, 02:57:55 UTC 4 years ago
btw, thanks!
I enjoy reading your thoughts on things, even if they are often about tax laws and other things with which I have little prior knowledge.Thanks for that! Reading each other's LJs is fun and worth it... I miss you.
March 31 2008, 03:31:46 UTC 4 years ago
Re: btw, thanks!
I miss you too :)You know, I haven't actually watched Obama's race speech yet...ha!
Anonymous
March 31 2008, 10:04:25 UTC 4 years ago
because i read science every day
to the "i can't trust him because i don't know him" point, there are two perspectives you could take: (1) that he is not a sufficiently seasoned politician for it to even be possible for you to make to make a determination (which is clinton's main point, and a reasonably valid one), or (2) that you could know more about him, by looking into his history, including, but not limited to his voting records, but haven't had sufficient impetus to do so because you're not voting in the primary. it seems you're open to considering (2) based on your response to librastorm, so i would definitely suggest, if you are interested in getting to know him better, that you read one of his autobiographies as a way to quickly get a better sense of what he is all about. if you are not interested in getting to know "him" but only what he is like as a politician, then stick to the voting records, but i found a lot of value in his own words, especially the first autobiography, written before he was into politics.though i can't say i can predict what he'd do as president, i do feel like reading about his story (HIS-story!), has made him see, much less of a wild card than he must to those who've only seen him speak in snippets. For instance, before he made the race speech, when he was getting into trouble because of his Reverend, I could imagine Clinton, or many other politicians, publicly renouncing him (especially with all the renouncing that seems to be going on in the race these days). However, I would have been shocked if Obama had done the same. It just didn't make sense, knowing his history with the Reverend, and his commitment to authenticity. I didn't know he was going to make a rockin' speech about race, and was pleasantly surprised by his candor, but I did guess that he would take a "love the sinner, hate the sin" approach, denouncing the words of his pastor without distancing himself from the person.
So that's a small example, and I'm pretty ign'nt about politics. He's certainly flawed. JK raised the point that his talk about trade agreements has been pretty shallow, and there seems to be some obvious pandering to out-of-work midwesterners. CBu raised the objection that its unlikely he could have achieved the prominence he did without some political favor-trading. Rush Limbaugh called him a magic negro. Dont' ask.
Many of the things I like most about him are also things that could be negatives if taken to the extreme. I do believe that his emphasis on unity is right for the times, despite being a contrarian myself, but often his talk of unity extends only to people in the U.S. So yes, he tries to include ALL Americans, and transcend the splits that make some feel like they're not valued as citizens, but the ultimate goal seems to be to create a coherent unified group of Americans, and greater identification as an American leads to lesser identification with non-Americans. Also, I think it's f'n cool that he has led his campaign in a way that promotes small donations and small scale activism among large groups of people. But the tyranny of the middle-class majority, while better than the tyranny of the few ultra-rich, is still potentially...well, tyrannical. The fact that his average supporters tend to be better off financially than the average Clinton supporters lessens some of the impressiveness of his fundraising. And his trust and optimism could turn out to be naivete. Then again, his speech on race, and his other writings, seem to demonstrate that his hopeful attitude doesn't stem from willful blindness toward harsh realities, but from a willingness to honestly look at situations as they exist, respect diverse viewpoints, and seek out paths toward resolution of problems that most others have written off as intractable.
on the other hand, if he is as cool as he seems, i'm really afraid some assmunch will shoot him.
March 31 2008, 11:14:34 UTC 4 years ago
A really long reply.
So that's a small example, and I'm pretty ign'nt about politics. He's certainly flawed. JK raised the point that his talk about trade agreements has been pretty shallow, and there seems to be some obvious pandering to out-of-work midwesterners. CBu raised the objection that its unlikely he could have achieved the prominence he did without some political favor-trading. Rush Limbaugh called him a magic negro. Dont' ask.Girl, placing that last bit after reputable sources of opinion was comedy gold. I laughed.
If he gets your primary election (you two-party whore), then I'll totally scan through his voting history. Like science, I will read some of it everyday. Then, I'll likely post a quick rundown, or a link to at least three different sites online: one presenting his votes negatively, one positively, and one that seems to be really boring with all the text of the laws given, if I can find these. I'll do the same for McCain.
I don't think reading
It takes a villagehis autobiographies will help me understand what he's like as a person, as that will just tell me about him as a writer, or him as a famous person who can pick a ghost writer. I'm more curious about how he'll act and what it's like to live with his actions, rather than how well he can describe it after the fact. I AM mildly curious about what he wrote about before he was interested in politics... is he famous for something else?But it's good that your reading him made you able to more or less predict how he'd continue speaking. And in something like politics, speech is an act, it's performative--so maybe it's worth it to read.
On second thought, I'm not so sure I want you to be doin' mine. I'm gettin' a little too old for that 'whorey' look.I'll think about it.Then again, his speech on race, and his other writings, seem to demonstrate that his hopeful attitude doesn't stem from willful blindness toward harsh realities, but from a willingness to honestly look at situations as they exist, respect diverse viewpoints, and seek out paths toward resolution of problems that most others have written off as intractable.
I don't think I conveyed it enough before, but he did a really great job in that speech. The fact that he used a speech format that normally creates a scapegoat as an answer to refusing to "construct his pastor as the Other" is amazing. Really. Good on him for having whoever did that on staff, and for going along with it. And if he wrote it, great on him. So for what it's worth, I don't think he's naive... partly because I don't really think someone who wants loyalty acting trusting and optimistic is naive, I think it's a good and savy gamble to build support. Playing your vulnerabilities is great--topping from the bottom, you know? Whether it's totally sincere or not doesn't really matter to me, as how you act with others is often a choice, and treating others better than you might naturally be inclined to treat them is usually comendable. So whether it's an act or a savy political choice or both, good on him.
May 7 2008, 03:54:58 UTC 4 years ago
Belated and beheaded, Volume I
There's a lot of good points in this, some of which really can't be countered at all. I spent a long time trying to think of a very well-organized and rational response, finally gave up on that, but then figured I should just blurt out my thoughts on the matter, so, in the words of the Satanic priest from the "Dragnet" movie: "Live from Orange County, here we go!"BTW, my comment exceeded the maximum character length, so it will appear in installments, just like a sleazy dimestore novel.
So, yeah, Obama's speaking style and general mystique does have this sort of messianic figure vibe about it, which is unsettling, but this is kind of the rule for political speech, esp. in this country, where the whole fantasy of a charismatic leader is superemphasized. I would say Hillary does, or tries to do, much the same thing, but simply comes off way more awkwardly in so doing, whether she's gonna answer that goddam phone, or she's feeling the pain of her sisters on the night shift, or something absurd like that. If anything, her gestures in that vein carry more of an assumption of authority, de-emphasizing the value of anyone else in the equation; as opposed to being at the fore of a general movement, she is the strong, wise one to whom we should just simply entrust things cuz she was married to a President and she just knows what's up. Which, again, would be less troubling if she had displayed this lengthy record of impeccable judgement, which I would contend isn't so much the case. More on that later.
At any rate, Obama hasn't been around that long or done all that much, and there really isn't any way around that unknown quantity issue. But, besides his voting record, he also did write two books, which might help a little (as I'm too lazy to have read either, I can't really say for sure). Again, I do think it is significant that he did work as a community organizer among poor and working-class Chicagolanders. First of all, I think it would be really refreshing to have a President who had spent any amount of time interacting meaningfully with real-live working-class people (especially cool Chicagoers), working with them to directly address their concerns, rather than just getting photographed eating lunch among them on even-numbered years, and thinking of them mostly as a nebulous demographic group to aim politico-marketing gimmicks at. Another important thing about that is that community organizing is kind of a bottom-up system, even if it does have that paradoxical element of the educated outsiders coming in to facilitate the process. The Clintons, on the other hand, have spent decades encased in the cockpit of their little political machine, which is thoroughly hierarchical and top-down, and while less insane and incompetent than the Bush machine, places the same high priority on abject loyalty to the patrons and their political success, which appears to be the only clear aim of the whole thing. Hence the outrage when someone who at some point derived some perk bucks the system, like when Bill Richardson was compared to Judas Iscariot (not even Pisces Iscariot, which might have been a more apt analogy) by James Carville. Speaking of which, to return to the qualified comparison to the Bush apparatus, it is a little odd how several long-time Clinton operatives, like Carville and George Stephanopodopolis, are featured as neutral "political analysts" on whatever cruddy networks they're on. Anyhoo...
TO BE CONTINUED!!!
May 7 2008, 03:57:40 UTC 4 years ago
Bed and breakfast, Volume II
I am obviously coming at this from the opposite angle, which doesn't really refute the other, that I don't especially like or trust Hillary because I do know her. I feel that after this decade and a half of being overly familiar with the Clintons, I have a pretty good grasp of their cloying personalities and their methods of acquiring and retaining political office, but I couldn't really say what they stand for, or are pursuing beyond those political offices. I mean they do possess a certain fundamental competence, which this administration has reminded us all not to ever take for granted again. But Obama is also clearly a very intelligent person, who will also have a whole group of intelligent people with more specialized knowledge to provide advice, which he would then be able to intelligently process. And this is not vastly different from how it would be with Hillary. The myth she indulges in, that she has an exquisite knowledge of every minute nut and bolt of the federal government's inner workings, I would again chalk up to dishonest self-aggrandizement. The real difference, I think, is how willing and able each is to really do anything with whatever intelligent conclusions they might come to. I like that Obama says things which the political consultant caste would never come up with as big point-winners, but he says them anyway, because they're true, and sticks with them and tries to explain them. Part of the Clinton strategy has always been this bizarre assumption that Republican spin/propaganda is completely invincible, and the only possible response is to jump quickly onboard with whatever crap they're selling, because there is no way anyone could ever offer a compelling counter-argument to it. So it was with the instant total capitulation over universal health care in the '90's, and so on down the line through voting in favor of the war in Iraq. And I must say there are few things more off-putting than hearing Ms. Clinton's convoluted explanations of why she did that, and why it shouldn't reflect badly upon her at all.This recent gas tax holiday thing has further convinced me of her skewed priorities. Not that it's anywhere near as disastrous or bloody an idea as the War, but, especially since she's been working on making it a big issue, it functions as a good example of how the Clintons generally work, and how they prioritize their own personal winning of things versus, say, anything else. To begin with, the tax is about 18 cents a gallon, I think, which is, less than like 5% of the cost? I could be wrong because I'm not patriotic enough to drive a car. Anyway, that's a very small amount of the cost incurred by those who love Christ enough to drive everywhere they go in gigantic tanks. Besides which, basically, whenever anywhere's come up with the brilliant idea of suspending the already absurdly low (for a first world country, at least) gas tax, it didn't end up reducing the cost of gas, and in some cases, by driving up demand and encouraging hoarding at times, it ended up driving up the cost. So, ultimately it serves as a transfer of money away from repairing the country's decrepit, collapsing roads, bridges, etc., and the badly needed construction jobs involved in maintaining them, to the oil companies. She's clearly smart enough to be able to figure that out, but is gung-ho for it because she has calculated that it will be a clever stunt to wheedle votes from gullible people. Kinda gross, really.
May 7 2008, 04:22:36 UTC 4 years ago
Bold and beautiful, Volume III
I guess what makes her erstwhile support of the war extra-troublesome, well, other than the whole war, is that one can't even give her credit for being smart there. She wasn't immediately up for election, her long-anticipated run for the presidency was still a few years off. So, in going along with that bullshit, she had to have actually thought that the war would turn out "well" enough to look good on her eventual resume. It's hard now to even imagine what it would be for it to have turned out well. I'm guessing some sort of quick, clean military victory, which would have played well domestically, while still being grossly immoral, and profoundly damaging to all of our foreign relations? So there we have a pretty good case where she was not only willing to do something totally, horrendously wrong for petty personal gain, but, furthermore, had a shoddy enough understanding of the rather important situation she was voting on, to think that this particular very wrong thing would even get her petty personal gain. This, again, not jibing too neatly with the image of her as the all-knowing, all-seeing phone-answering lady.It's been pointed out that Obama was opposing the war as a state legislator representing Chicago, who, therefore was totally not involved in the whole (crappy) decision-making process. True that. First of all, maybe this was shrewd political calculation re: his forthcoming campaign, but if so, he was at least smart enough to get how things were likely to go down. Second of all, maybe there's something to the fact he got elected by appealing to and representing a constituency that is overall pretty smart and pro-human-rights/anti-preemptive-war-bas
One last point, regarding the government keeping in or out of people's lives. One of the few specifically avowed policy differences between the two is on the healthcare thing, where she wants people to be mandated to purchase health insurance, and be somehow or another penalized for not doing so. I've heard some questions of the legality of a governmental order to purchase something from a private company--like you can do that with car insurance, because driving is some sort of conditional right since (theoretically, at least) no one has to drive, but requiring people to buy something as a precondition for living and working is a bit unprecedented (again, I could totally be wrong). At any rate, on that point at least, I would say Obama gets the point for keeping government out of my business more than the other candidate. Beyond which, I think the fact he focused on, and seems very interested in, constitutional law, and has brought up the Constitution's function of protecting minorities against the tyranny of the majority (again, not a big crowd-pleaser concept) helps me to trust him not to be that much of a dictator. And if he does envision government doing a bit more crashing of the ultra-wealthy's laissez-faire party, that's more than okay with me, since the current marvelous liberty of that crew has made a kind of dungeon-like existence for the rest of us. I think it's pretty clear by now that the American upper-class, freed from the shackles of New Dealish regulation, hasn't exactly wowed anyone but themselves with their humanity uplifting innovations--it seems more like they managed to take a reasonably functional country and, in the span of a few decades, run it into the ground worse than just about any other bunch of fucking dumbass inbred archdukes could have dreamt of doing.
May 7 2008, 06:01:40 UTC 4 years ago
Longest reply ever comes to an end... or does it?...???....!
So really the real last thoughts, for real this time...This isn't really politically meaningful, I guess, but I just subjectively like the exact form that Obama's smooth-talking has taken. The general consensus of American discourse makers has been that the only way of moving people is to bark at them in the shortest, simplest, most staccato fragments of emotionally resonant buzzwords as possible (ideally, for maximum effect, barking in front of a screen with some of the buzzwords printed on it as a recurring pattern). It's kind of amazing and encouraging to see that someone can still get anywhere by delivering expansive, complex, lyrical kinda 19th century oratory, and that a goodly chunk of the population, despite years of training to the contrary, can still get and react to that. I never would have guessed.
Finally, regarding the connection of racism to healthcare, etc. I think it's pretty clear that the comparatively wretched predicament of the American working class has been made possible by the ability of the kleptomaniacal elite to historically deflect large amounts of white working class anger towards various racial, ethnic, and sexual minorities. I think at this precise moment in time, overt white-on-black racism isn't so much the tool of choice, as, say, anti-Latino or anti-gay vitriol (though the whole dismantling of the social safety net spearheaded by the Republicans and rubber-stamped by Clinton I did play heavily on Reagan's Alzheimery mythology of the lazy black welfare queen), and I also admire Obama's boldness in addressing those more current scapegoating frenzies, being pretty much the first candidate to address the issue of gay rights to a non-gay crowd when campaigning among African-Americans in the South, for example. At any rate, rallying a working majority of the population around a goal of greater socioeconomic justice will require some steps back from a political discourse steeped in bigotry.
Now, I think that African-Americans were kept disproportionately poor for many, many years by all kinds of specifically race-based policies, and once those finally dissolved, they were kept poor by the general decline of social mobility, ending up in the same boat as everyone, whatever their race, who wasn't born into fabulous wealth. So, racism as it impacts them now (aside of course from bullshit like the NYPD) is largely a cultural, symbolic, but not much less damaging, affair. Again, I probably don't know what I'm talking about, but it seems like having a whole generation of civil rights leaders slaughtered in rapid succession was quite a collectively traumatic thing, and the ensuing vacuum of compelling leadership was eventually plugged, through the midwifery of sleazy media purveyors (like the BET-founding douchebag who's a big Hillary supporter) by a somewhat less articulate, less inspirational, less authentically subversive crew of media figures, who have had the added marketability bonus of appealing to half-derisively snickering white kids. Anyhow, without meaning to minimize all the very concrete, literal tasks of the Presidency, it is also an office with a big aura of symbolic figurehead-type meaning. As such, I really think that given the somewhat abstract, psychological quality of this late stage of this particular crazy racial saga, having Obama as President probably would do more good in this department than just about anything else.
Okay, I'm clearly just falling asleep and making steadily less sense. Dear God, please help me.
May 7 2008, 19:30:24 UTC 4 years ago
big and butch.
Good points in there. As to the anti-Clinton points: no, they're pretty correct. I suppose that at the end of the day she will be more or less intrusive into my life, and make some pretty lame decisions. That gas tax holiday strikes me as a waste of time. If they really wanted to get tax breaks to the consumers, just increase the personal exemption; people would then be able to have less withholdings. You're right, that removing an excise tax somewhere within the chain of supply will likely not make its way to the eventual consumer as savings.I'm not totally sure if there's been instances where the Gov't has required people to buy things to live and work. One could argue the Social Security payments are more or less exactly that, I suppose... and if the legislation were drafted in a similar way, then maybe... Also, I guess it could be made as some sort of tax...
I'll think about what you've said for the pro-Obama bits, that in so far as he has done things you can kinda get a sense of that. I'm finishing up my finals now, with my last one in two days... so I'm kinda fried on my ability to think. But I am starting to see more reasons for voting for him. It looks like it's quickly becoming moot anyway, as your party's reindeer games are seeming to be winding down.
But yes; I'll think about it. I'm more and more ... repulsed? Given cause for pause with Clinton... And I'd like her to keep her silky paws off my filthy drawers. There is something to be said about how people comport themselves during times of crisis, so in a way Obama's speech acts are pretty informative.
May 7 2008, 19:15:47 UTC 4 years ago
You had me at hello.
There's a lot of good points in this, some of which really can't be countered at all. I spent a long time trying to think of a very well-organized and rational response, finally gave up on that, but then figured I should just blurt out my thoughts on the matter, so, in the words of the Satanic priest from the "Dragnet" movie: "Live from Orange County, here we go!"BTW, my comment exceeded the maximum character length, so it will appear in installments, just like a sleazy dimestore novel.
This cracked me up. Best introduction ever--better than any 'oh muse, bless and inspire me'.