I'm off to Moonbat Central

I'm heading out to the airport in about two hours for an afternoon flight to the left coast. So if you are in an airport today and see large bands of men in pressed jeans or khakis, new sneakers, pens sticking out of the pocket, and bad comb-overs, acting like a bunch of silver back gorillas at grooming time, my best advice is run in the other direction. Lest you be subjected to forty-five minute discourses on preference falsification among pygmy shuffleboard player voters in idaho, and how it's really just awful that Smirky McChimp Hitler is just ruining Amerika's reputation in the world, evidenced by the treatment of the waiters at that little tratoria in Tuscany that was just downright rude to us, even after we apologized for all the zionist-influence in Amerikan society.......

Seriously, though, I'm looking forward to this meeting because there's a good bunch of folks who go who are interested in American political development. The Western Political Science Association meeting is fun because the environment is good for putting out new ideas and questions and getting solid feedback on your work. It's definitely casual, like the Southern PSA meeting, except unlike the Southern, the drinking doesn't begin until the evening, whereas at the Southern it starts at lunch and goes downhill from there. (It doesn't help that the Southern is usually in either New Orleans or Savannah). The Midwestern meeting is every spring in Chicago, and while Chicago is a fabulous place to visit for conventions, the meeting's culture is very cold, with folks reguarly getting into food fights at panels over whose chi-square is bigger. (Not literally food fights, a qualification one couldn't make about the Southern though). At the Western, it's hard to eat alone---people are very good about inviting folks along, which goes a long way to fostering the environment of the meeting.

I'm bringing the laptop (and the digital camera), but blogging will be non-existent (unless something huge happens, what with it being the anniversary of the war starting and my being in the mating grounds of desmoda lunaris).

So I'll leave you in Robbo's refreshed hooves, confident in the knowledge that we never asked Kathy to return the keys to the LLama Clubhouse. So you never know what will happen...