The most recent 20 comments posted to Electrolite by Jon:

Xopher, are you disembowelling yourself?

I don't particularly think videogames are gauche. Played far too many of them to think that. No, my objection was a twofold editorial nitpick:

1) Your use of present perfect tense ("has appeared") would imply that your column appeared in the AJC and is still appearing today (or at least much more recently than four years ago). Perhaps unintentional, but a less ambiguous phrasing would've been straight-out past tense: "appeared."

2) I'd say most people who've heard of you today, particularly the ones witnessing & participating in the flamefest, would think of you as a political columnist. Fine. But by not describing your previous print columns as on videogames, you give the implication their topics were the same, roughly, as what you write about now: politics. They weren't, but you seem to want to suggest they were. And while your archives may tell all, people often don't follow the links. Best just to be up front about things.

So like I said: accurate in one sense, misleading in another. That is all. Resume your self-amusement.

Uh, Wil, the answer to this question lies at the start of the post, which has said "via World O'Crap" all along.

A sidenote: I must observe that this statement of Mr. VD's from early on in the slugfest:

Daddy doesn't own the Pioneer Press, the Boston Globe, the Atlanta Journal/Constitution or any of the fourteen other papers my column has appeared in regularly, you know.

is, while accurate in one sense, completely misleading in another. The last time Vox Day appeared in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (my hometown newspaper) was about four years ago, back at the end of 2000. It appeared there regularly for about two years, and hasn't been back since.

Furthermore, it was not a column on politics, or science, or even books. Nope. It was on video games, specifically reviewing titles for PlayStation, XBox, and the like. That seems to be what Vox Day wrote about back when he actually appeared in newspapers, as far as I can tell (and which the almighty LexisNexis confirms for me).

I realize this has little to do with this particular flamewar. I simply find it amusing.

Currently reading a free book I picked up at WFC 2004: Doctor Illuminatus: The Alchemist's Son, by Martin Booth. At the moment I would describe it as worth every penny I paid for it. At best. I'm only halfway through, tho'. We'll see.

Just before that, Deserted Cities of the Heart, by Lewis Shiner.

I attempt a comment, in the spirit of fieldtesting.

Beth, I'm not entirely sure it's optimism.

A phrase guaranteed to bring hope when all is lost, and gloom when things are going their best:

"This, too, shall pass."

Ah, nobody knows really how overseas voters will vote. For one thing, I don't believe they've ever been polled. But I have read that they are requesting absentee ballots in much larger numbers than usual.

Ginmar, how about starting a journal on another site. Blogspot, Journalscape, Blogger, etc. I know this isn't an ideal solution, but it's a possibility.

Dan, let me know if you become Ruler of the Multiverse anytime soon.

I thought the only people who used their real names around here were sad wannabe-writers shamelessly toadying to the Nielsen Haydens in the hopes of getting their bad fat fantasy novels published.

Hmm. For this strategy to work, first I would have to write said novel.

Blogs are not LiveJournal and LJ customs, like usernames, can be an uneasy fit.

I'll go along with that. I set up a livejournal simply so I could comment on some LJ's I read without having to be anonymous. Thing is, I registered it using my actual name rather than a pseudonym like Moon_cat or LibrarianBoy, and it felt very weird, even tho' I use my real name every place else online.

Read The Whole Thing.

Alternatively, Real Time Windows Target.

Ah dude, you're a generalist. Multidisciplinary and all that. Trust me, it'll be much harder for them to pin you down that way.

Have just sent you email to your panix account regarding someone who would be able to score you a couple. Not posting his ID here, as he might get swamped.

I liked this line from Electability:

The few things Americans do agree on are: (1) it's good to have a job, (2) it's good to have healthcare, (3) it's good not to have to worry about terrorism and war, (4) pass the remote control.

Yep, yep, yep, and yep.

Since US elections are on work days, I hope there is quite a large penalty for, say, employers making it hard for a citizen to get to a polling place over there, or docking their pay, etc.

I can't speak to other parts of the country, but Georgia is trying something a little new this primary: in order to make it slightly convenient for folks, they've been allowing advance voting all this week. Basically you can show up any time your county registration office is open and cast your vote, no questions asked and no need to worry about qualifying under absentee ballot rules.

This is the first time they've done this. Could be because they're nervous about the performance of the new electronic voting systems, because they're expecting a big voter turnout (tho' officially they aren't), or because they're hoping to get more people in the door. Yes, there's a bit of crossover between the last two, but I think you know what I mean.

Only tangentially related to this post, but what's with all the left-leaning bloggers starting to use Instapundit's one word comment "Indeed"? Eschaton, Yglesias, Calpundit, Kos, all these guys I've noticed doing this in the last couple weeks. I know, it's no more exclusively Insta's than Fox News claim to "Fair & Balanced," but he does use it a lot. Was there a meeting or something?

Avram, here's the AP story from the Houston Chronicle (actually 4 July 2000), courtesy all-powerful LexisNexis:

Two friends, one in Florida, remember Bush serving in Guard.

DECATUR, Ala. -- Two friends who worked with Texas Gov. George W. Bush in a U.S. Senate campaign in Alabama more than 28 years ago say they remember him serving in the Alabama Air National Guard.

"It was pretty well known that he was in the Guard while we worked on the campaign," said Morgan County resident Joe Holcombe. He is former chairman of the Morgan County Republican Party.

"I remember one weekend he was not at a campaign staff meeting, and we were told that he was pulling National Guard duty."

The question of whether Bush actually served in the Alabama National Guard has become an issue in his campaign for president as the likely Republican nominee.

Bush was a member of the Air National Guard in Texas in 1972 when he came to Alabama for more than three months to serve as campaign manager for Winton "Red" Blount's unsuccessful U.S. Senate campaign against Sen. John Sparkman.

Records show that Bush was granted permission to transfer his duties in the Texas Air National Guard to Alabama while he worked in the campaign.

Authorities said no documents exist that show he actually served on Guard duty while in Alabama.

But Holcombe and Emily Martin of Key Biscayne, Fla., said they remember Bush talking about being in the Guard.

"He told us that he was having to do his Guard duty in Alabama while he worked on the campaign," said Martin, a former Alabama resident. She said she dated Bush during the time he spent in Alabama.

"I remember he actually came back to Alabama for about a week to 10 days several weeks after the campaign was over to complete his Guard duty in the state," Martin said in a telephone interview with the Decatur Daily from her Florida home.

"We both were single at the time he was in Alabama, and we went out a lot," she said. "I have fond memories of those times. Although I never actually drove him to Guard duty, he told me that he went and there is no reason for me to believe that he did not go."

Holcombe and Martin were paid campaign workers in the 1972 election.

The issue of whether George W. Bush actually reported to duty in the Alabama Air National Guard came up when he visited Tuscaloosa last month.

"I was there on a temporary assignment and fulfilled my weekends at one time," Bush was quoted in a recent Associated Press story. "I made up some missed weekends. I can't remember what I did, but I wasn't flying because they didn't have the same airplanes. I fulfilled my obligations."

Holcombe said he came forward with his memories of Bush and the 1972 campaign after reading an Associated Press story that said Bush's campaign officials were looking for people who served with him to verify his story that he served in the Alabama Guard.

There, for what that's worth.

Also: to me (as a civilian) the discharge/separation thing is just semantics, but Jim's got me curious. An Unclesam Googling for "officer" and "honorable discharge" finds some documents that match up, some from military web sites, some from national guard web sites. For example, searching on Cammermeyer and "honorable discharge" finds the case of Col. Cammermeyer, who was honorably discharged from the Washington National Guard in 1992 for being a lesbian.

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