I'm not surprised Howard Dean didn't win in Iowa. All that anger and he's negative to boot. Plus, all those Hollywood types campaigning for him and outsiders coming in to the state probably upset people.

I lived in Iowa for four years. They're country people. They don't like outsiders coming in and getting into their business. Nobody likes that kind of behaviour actually, but midwesteners hate it with a passion. Midwesteners are also common sense and pragmatic people, and Howard Dean as a presidential candidate makes no sense.

Now that John Edwards is another story. He's starting to look very interesting, and that great Vanity Fair article didn't hurt either.

On the way to the dentist today on the N Judah, I think I saw Craig from Craig's List sipping what looked like a red drink outside a coffee shop called The Beanery on 9th Avenue between Judah and Irving. The Craig's List office is right down the street so it could have been him, but who knows.

I've never actually seen the guy in person, but only catch him occassionally on TV being interviewed.

I love how people say the Inner Sunset is affordable, because it's not. My hood is way cheaper, and you get more bang for your buck out here in the fog belt even though I'm only about 10 blocks away.

Some people have said that the US went to war with Iraq because of its oil. Still others have said that the US went to war with Iraq because Sadam Hussein was asking to trade oil for euros instead of the dollar.

With the dollar's slide against all major currencies, I've begun to speculate whether the latter reason for the US war against Iraq might be just a little bit true.

And now there's this story which the American mainstream press isn't even touching, Sell oil for gold, not dollars, Mahathir tells Saudi Arabia.

What angers me sometimes about the left wing press is that they unceasingly advocate the failure of american corporate business and the dollar, without having any idea what this would mean for their own livelihoods. If american corporate businesses were to fail in large numbers and the dollar were to continue its slide, things here in the States are going to economically get really, really bad not just for the poor, but for everyone including the left wing press and media.

No one on the left seems to understand that though. When business is bad, it affects almost everyone except the very very rich. The left will not be excluded from an economic downturn. In fact, they will probably be the ones most affected as their revenue streams will the first to dry up. Except for the lucky few who are supported I suppose by businessmen like George Soros.

If oil stops being traded for dollars, and instead is traded for euros or worse gold, well, hold on to your hats beause it's going to be scary ride to economic hell.

After the art exposition, I decided to walk from the Marina to the gym on Van Ness along Polk Street. The walk was nice, and I even found a new wine merchant and bought some very expensive sauvignon blanc.

When I got to the gym, I was feeling tired again so I decided to just bike for an hour. I ended up watching some stupid show on gym TV called Mutant X. I couldn't hear anything, but I watched it anyway. It looked like such a cheesey rip off of the XMen movie and comic book series, but I couldn't stop myself from watching it.

The actors were good looking and had powers but even without sound, I could tell that their acting was really, really bad. And it wasn't just bad acting, but the plot of the episode was awful as well. The writer made the Mutant X people come off like brainless pretty dummies with powers. It took them a whole hour to figure who the bad guy was, and they didn't even kill him at the end.

At several points in the plot, I wanted to yell at TV and shout "do a search on your computer for crying out loud!" Those characters were just so, so dumb. They were all stereoptypical dumb blondes, but with super human powers. How scary is that?

Still I had to watch it so I could see how the dummy Mutant X people would figure it all out and live, because it's a TV show and characters don't die. But for awhile I was rooting for the bad guy to just kill them and let Darwin's Law take over. Of course, no death for the dummy Mutant X people and they live to torture more people working out next Saturday.

Here's the episode I watched, No Exit.