Yesterday G and I went to Disneyland to celebrate in advance our 8th anniversary. My school schedule precludes a nice dinner out on Tuesday, the actual day, so we made use of our Annual Passes to one of our most favorite and fun spots. G can't ride some of the bumpier, faster rides because of the baby, so we went on some of the more gentle ones, and she kindly waited while I partook of the Indiana Jones and Big Thunder Mountain attractions, two of my favorites. (Indy in particular is a fantastic experience. I have been on it many times and every time is as fun as the first.)

Soarin' Over California we both enjoyed, but like apparently almost everyone else in the park we were most excited to go on Haunted Mansion Holiday, a complete refit of the Haunted Mansion done each year by the Imagineers to make the Mansion a playground for Jack Skellington and his friends from The Nightmare Before Christmas. It is just fantastic, wonderfully funny and cool, a great treat and we will visit again before Christmas time.

We finished our evening with a nice meal at the steakhouse located in the Disneyland hotel, and then I laid down the seats in the Element to make a bed for G to snooze on for the quick drive home. I LOVE this car. Especially for its versatility; I can think of no other vehicle that you can turn into a bed for a quick nap -- something that comes in quite handy for those 15-hour days at school.

How about those Red Sox? (Warning: link may be too intense for younger viewers.) God, what a thrilling game on Friday! Bring on the Yankees. Not that I will be able to watch much of the games this week because of school.

Speaking of school, this week is the quiet before the storm. My schedule is very easy for the first time all year, late afternoon and evening classes only. Production on our first round of short films begins this week, which means beginning next Sunday I will be more or less sealed in the editing room for almost all of every day for about 10 days. I am REALLY looking forward to it. That said I am savoring the easy schedule this week. Last week was great. We had a visit from Frank Darabont, who brought a shiny new print of Shawshank Redemption for us to watch. Afterwards he answered our questions for 90 minutes and then he hung out outside for the better part of two hours chatting with students. A very, very nice man.

Friday's presidential debate had me in a screaming rage. Bush's cocky, swaggering frat-boy manner made me want to vomit. Strutting around like a pint-sized rooster . . . and the balls on this little peckerhead. The way he was red-faced and hollering early on, I swore he was becoming unhinged. He's back on the bottle, I'll guarantee it. The fat is in the fire. Soon the heavy coke use will begin again, if it hasn't already -- that first debate, his eyes swivelling in their sockets, the jaw spastically clenching and unclenching -- yes, all the signs of a vicious cocaine abuser were on display.

A day after a report comes out which states in black and white that Iraq essentially had no WMD program for more than ten years, and that the reason for this was that sanctions were preventing Iraq from doing so, Bush tries to turn this around and claim that even though there were no WMDs, Saddam was still an imminent threat because he was trying for 10 years to get around the sanctions. Eh, what?

And this shit about Kerry "flip-flopping" on the war makes me sick. "He saw the same intelligence I did," Bush says. Well, this is just untrue. After 9/11 the administration pushed the intelligence community for a link to Iraq because an entry point into Iraq has been on the wish list of these thieving, lying, evil bastards since at least 2000 (see this hideous document, which stresses the need for US military forces to encorach into every corner of the globe, specifically in the Middle East, and prepare for the blood-chilling assertion that it would be hard to galvanize public support for such a policy "absent some unifying event like Pearl Harbor"). The intelligence services returned with the finding that there was no credible link between 9/11 and Iraq, as is public knowledge today. But the executive branch was not satisfied and sent them back, sending the message that, in essence, they should come back when they have something to prove Iraq was involved and posed a clear and present danger to the USA. Thus, the half-baked pile of cockeyed assumptions and intelligence findings which were the basis for the vote on the use of force in Iraq were concocted at the behest of the executive branch which has repeatedly been briefed on the lack of a link between Iraq & 911 as well as the absence of WMDs. So while it is true that W and Kerry "saw the same intelligence," the president saw a lot more of it that didn't agree with the course he and his ideological puppetmasters were hell-bent on pursuing. Furthermore, the president's (I refuse to capitalize it!) assertion was that any entry into Iraq would be as a last resort after all other avenues had been pursued. Although George, Dick and Don claim they exhuasted all reasonable avenues, everyone else in the world disagrees.

And don't get me started on the VP debates. I was disappointed in Edwards, a little; I would have liked to see him be more forceful, and both he and Kerry too often resort to sloganeering when this administration is so very assailable on their crooked policies and practices.

I find Cheney nauseating, perhaps the worst public figure of my lifetime, a man who makes Nixon look like Peter Allen. He slithers out of his scum bag every few days to croak some bilious personal attacks and then back into his rancid hole he goes. During the first presidential debate, when Bush made a complete ass of himself, I had images of Cheney staggering around his living room smashing things in a rage at his sock puppet's behavior, like Orson Welles in Citizen Kane when Susan finally leaves him.

Today playing a little catch-up in the morning. Woke with very stiff feet from our long day at the parks. Just had brunch, two eggs in a little olive oil, a small portion of grits with a little parmesan cheese and a chicken sausage with coffee and juice. Now some tidying up, some planning, and then it's off to school for some lab time and an editing class.