Coffing’s post yesterday reminded me that I chopped an old 11×17″ flyer graphic into a 1280×1024 wallpaper and forgot to publish it. You can download the thing by clicking this thumbnail, if you’re really that much of a dork:

Consider it a preview of cartoons to (maybe) come! You can even buy the full-size poster, if you trust CafePress…

If you’re sick of all the analysis and possibilities and might-have-beens about the Presidential primaries, I’d recommend reading one last thing as the next few months tear past. If you’ve not read a single thing and don’t much care to, you should read this Kurtz post anyway:

Even if Republicans can’t get an outright majority in the next congress, just staying about even with where they are now would make a huge difference. But a Democratic blowout in congress along with a Democratic president would mean the end of conservatism for the foreseeable future (maybe longer). We can prevent that, just by not staying home.

I have a sort of pattern when it comes to National Review’s The Corner. I’ll read the site heavily for awhile, get bored with it, then for some time visit only to read Mark Steyn‘s posts. I’ve been frequenting the site lately, and am reaching another boredom phase as the contributors go back and forth over and over about whether Mitt Romney still has any chance, whether he ever had a chance, the degree to which McCain would be a disaster, etc. But Kurtz states well the obvious fact: if conservatives bicker all summer and pout at home in November, the result will be a Democratic President and Congress who have no trouble concluding that if we focus on entitlement tinkering, Bush’s pretend terrorists will leave us be.

There’s a good chance we’ll get a head in the sand socialist government either way, but we’re a long way from that point.

You may not recognize me from any previous post(s), and there is a very simple reason for that…this is my first post. I am not new to the site, I have been involved – at somewhat varying levels – since its birth. I will most likely not be making many posts here, but I hope that all of you can put up with my ramblings from time to time. I do plan, however, to stay active in the background. That is all for now, I just thought I would introduce myself to everyone. Enjoy your stay at thathero.com!

Did anyone else watch the premiere of this goofy show last night?

I liked it. I hope it’s not made possible by scab writers, cause then I’d feel guilty for wishing it wasn’t over after half an hour. The whole affair made a pretty clear effort to be quirky, and the commercials gave the impression that the result would be irritating. Turns out Jeffrey Tambor is funny even when he’s not being George Bluth; Joanna Garcia is amazing; and, when I was about to say “I’ve never heard of the lead guy or anything he’s been in”… he played a stoner in Orange County. Heh, didn’t recognize him. Even the requisite idiot friend was funny.

“Welcome to The Captain” is well cast and likeable, and appears to be another show we could add to the list of enjoyable new 2007-2008 series destined for early cancellation (current members: Pushing Daisies, Reaper, Chuck). Work with your writers, stupid entertainment execs! Come on!

I couldn’t sleep much last night, having made the inexcusable mistake of eating a donut far into the fourth quarter. I got up and walked over to the kitchen table thinking, “it’s probably too late to eat this donut,” but then I did it anyway.

So, while I was trying to sleep and wrassling around with my covers instead, I was tangling also with those weird semi-conscious thoughts that seem to surface when I’m almost awake. I got thinking about a girl I had a crush on my sophomore year of high school, and I thought of a conversation I’d had earlier in the day with a friend. I wondered what, exactly, has always allowed me to torture myself over girls who will never be more than half interested in me at best. I wondered why I feel like all my time in general is wasted.

And immediately, thanks to my awesome donut-powered brain, I knew that my stubbornness was to blame. I’ve got this cloudy idea of how a girlfriend should look and behave, and when I meet a girl who seems to fit the bill I behave in ways that’d put your average romantic comedy to shame. If you’ve seen any romantic comedy ever, you know that inducing shame is no small feat. And as for my overall achievements/lack of achievements, I arbitrarily choose something that seems good and then I go for it. When I get to whatever “it” was… meh. What else is there to do?

From that little realization I bounced (again, thank you donut) to another thought: I’m a poster child for the Dr. Phil “Be true to yourself” line of feelgood mumbo-jumbo. Such a huge portion of the decisions I make I base on what I want, to the exclusion of anything else. If for a moment I feel selfish or greedy, I consider the way I’ve lived – no drugs or sex or drunken misdemeanors – as if I’ve earned something. As much as I’ve been given, it’d be hard to earn anything.

But just like junk science, junk psychology is hard to avoid and harder to get rid of. So we get talk shows and dramas and even entertainment on the less-fuzzy end of the chart offering simple truths: Believe in yourself! Be true to your heart! You’ve got to put yourself first sometimes! …What a load of yuppie crap. You could cover every point as easily by saying “don’t be a lousy fraud,” but that doesn’t sound cute. Stupid as it is, how often have I made choices this way without thinking? Even my skull is not thick enough for me to go through life immune to prevailing advice and attitudes.

I can’t help but think of the silly chorus to an old Switchfoot song:

Go, go where you are
Anchor your roots underneath
Doubt your doubts
And believe your beliefs.

As faithful a Christian as I consider myself on my most pompous days, I tend to go around believing other people’s beliefs. Jesus didn’t use his brief time in the spotlight to say “Hey, dudes, God sent me here to remind you – be, like, true to yourself, man.” He insisted that we be dead to ourselves, and though I know that’s how I should think it’s easy to be true to me instead of… well, the Truth.

It comes back around to the simplest questions – if you’re going to believe in a god, I don’t know how you’d go with any other. If you’re not, “believe in yourself” is kind of the default option, kind of the source for all my failures, and kind of useless advice.

I’ve nearly finished importing content from the old version of thathero.com (and from the version before that), which you can find under posterior or – for disjointed, individual items – in the archives. For instance, if you’re headed to college in the fall or simply dying to know what my schedule was like my freshman year, have a look – this was a feature to itself that I failed to follow through with for the rest of school. If you’re interested in random dated essays or journal posts, skim the navigation on the right.

The old dated entries are accurate to the day they were written, but not the time. Come on, even I’m not that much of a geek.

Me, 1/31/08: Hey, Yahoo! stock is under 20 bucks. Maybe I should take $1000 out of today’s paycheck and buy 50 sh- nah, where’s the upside? Everything Yahoo! does, Google does better.

Microsoft, 2/1/08: Let’s buy Yahoo! for $44 billion! Weee!

Just imagine if I could do these things on purpose.

Somehow William Jefferson Clinton remains a lefty icon; I wonder how this New York Times story will affect Democratic voters’ perception of him. In short, President Clinton made a stop on a “philanthropic tour” to meet with Nursultan A. Nazarbayev, the leader of basket-case Kazakhstan. Clinton sang the praises of Nazarbayev, whose government granted a highly lucrative contract to an acquaintance of Clinton’s a whole two days later. Within a few months, said acquaintance had donated over $30million to Clinton’s charitable foundation.

Bill Clinton, slimy narcissist that he is, showed little respect for the title of President when he was in office… so it shouldn’t be surprising that he continues dragging it through the sewers. Will Hillary’s campaign pull him back from center stage now? Or will we be expected to believe The New York Times is party to some malevolent right-wing plot?