Emma Bull’s personality, singing, and high-energy stage presence always blew me away. She’s also, um, well, a bit of a hottie. Which never hurts when you’re a rock chick. I haven’t seen her for way too many years, but some things don’t change, and I’m absolutely certain that Emma is still the magical creature I knew.

She’s also the author of, among other works, ‘War for the Oaks’, which is considered a classic seminal urban fantasy.

She was in the most excellent Minneapolis band Cats Laughing.

On October 11, 1991, along with other celebrity guests, she took the stage with Los Blues Guys. She’s all over the tape I have of the event, but here’s her taking lead vocals and rockin’ hard.

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Soulful Dress

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Bradley Denton on drums, I think, though I know that Steven Brust sat in with us on at least one occasion. I’m not sure whether it was Patrick Nielsen Hayden, or Tom Maddox, or somebody else, who played guitar on this song, and would appreciate help with that. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t me, though. Whoever it was, they did good. Real good.

If you’d like some more Emma in your life, you can find more of her writing and music by reading and following the links offered on her web site and in her Wikipedia entry.

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I just now got back in from the Democratic Party caucus for Precinct 53 in Bryan, Texas. In Texas, you vote on the goddam non-paper-trail machines during the day for 126 delegates to the national convention, then the remaining 102 are determined by a byzantine process that begins with country precinct caucuses.

The caucus room was jammed full of Dems, about 100 of us, with a table separating us from the Republican meeting, which had about 15 people. Our room also included people in Precinct 15, and they ended up separating us out.

My precinct is a tiny one, so we only had 11 people. Voting is open, by writing in your candidate preference on a sheet of paper that’s passed around.

Precinct 15 is allocated 1 delegate to the state convention. The vote tally for us was 6 to 5 in favor of Barack Obama.

For the first time in my entire life, my own personal political preference counted for something real.

I’d like you to remember this when that one Obama vote swings the Texas national delegation in the direction of one more Obama rep, then the national floor fight is decided in favor of Obama by one vote. And then Obama goes on to become President in a 400-electoral-vote landslide and the face of civilization is changed for the Twenty-First Century.

That was me that caused that.

I am drunk with power and am currently eating some BlueBell Dutch Chocolate Ice Cream to celebrate my electoral victory.

This democracy thing rocks. This country should do it more.

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Has anyone but me seen Moment of Truth? I stumbled upon it the other day while channel-surfing with Sarcasm Girl, and…my God. Maybe these are the End Times, because it sure looks like one of the Four Horsemen to me.

THE MOMENT OF TRUTH will put participants to the test — the lie detector test — to reveal whether or not they are telling the truth for a chance to win half a million dollars.On THE MOMENT OF TRUTH, the challenge is simple — answer 21 increasingly personal questions honestly, as determined by a polygraph, and win up to $500,000. This is the only game show where participants know both the questions and the answers before they begin to play. Prior to playing, participants are strapped to a lie detector and asked a series of questions by a polygraph expert, who records their answers. At any time, between the polygraph and the televised game, participants can change their answers or walk away from the competition.To win $500,000 participants have to tell the truth. Of course, the questions are easier when the stakes are low – but as the prize amount increases, they will be challenged to fess up to matters they might normally lie about. The touchier questions could be especially revealing because participants reveal their answers in front of spouses, relatives and friends, hanging on every word. What deep dark secret will someone divulge for hundreds of thousands of dollars?

And what secrets they are! We came in mid-way through, so we missed the softball questions and went straight to the When-Did-You-Stop-Beating-Your- Wife stuff. “Have you gambled away your kids’ college funds?” “Have you ever fantasized about a man?” “Ever had an extramarital affair?” All this while the participants’ friends and family are sitting twenty feet away, in full view of the camera. The real peach was when they brought in a woman’s former boyfriend in as a “guest interrogator” (husband and woman’s best friend sitting nearby–husband looking unworried, best friend completely horrified because she fears what’s coming, which means we, the audience, also have a sense of what’s coming) to ask questions about their erstwhile relationship. “Did you marry the wrong guy? If I were still interested, would you leave your husband? Do you love your husband? The answers the woman gave were Yes, Yes, and (after she looked over at her spouse, now slumped over, head in hands, humiliated before millions of his countrymen) No. The lie detector announces that the last answer was False, and the woman loses all the money she’d gained. So at the end this woman has probably lost her husband, the whole world knows what’s up with her personal life, her former boyfriend has probably gone off somewhere whistling, and she doesn’t even have the $200K she’d racked up before she got caught in that lie. (And she knew all these questions going in. Did her husband? He’s the one I feel sorry for.)

This is beyond Bread and Circuses. It’s like watching a multi-vehicle collision with a studio audience. I couldn’t decide if I was watching a dramatization from a late-career Robert Heinlein novel, or the end of life as we know it.