the revolution is my boyfriend

Not that McSweeney's really needs any help promoting themselves, but their new election-year related publication looks fantastic. It's an all-star lineup of writers, musicians and artists discussing politics, language, andwhat the hell happened to America. Check out the description:

"The Future Dictionary of America is a guide to the American language sometime in the future, when all or most of our country's problems are solved and the present administration is a distant memory. The book includes contributions from almost 200 writers and artists, including Kurt Vonnegut, Art Spiegelman, Stephen King, T.C. Boyle, ZZ Packer, Michael Chabon, JeffreyEugenides, Jonathan Safran Foer, Joyce Carol Oates, Jim Shepard, Rick Moody, Sarah Vowell, Richard Powers, Chris Ware, Jonathan Ames, Gabe Hudson, JulieOrringer, and many, many more. The book also comes with a CD, compiled byBarsuk Records, featuring new songs and rarities from R.E.M., Sleater-Kinney, Elliott Smith, Tom Waits, David Byrne, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs,They Might Be Giants, Death Cab for Cutie, and many others.

This book was conceived as a way to bring almost two hundred authors and artists together to promote progressive causes in the November 2004election. The book is an imagining of what a dictionary might look like about thirty years hence, when all or most of the world's problems aresolved and our current president is a distant memory. The book is by turns funny, outraged, utopian, and dyspeptic. Every cent of the proceeds from this book will go to progressive organizations working on the 2004 election."

How could you say no to this? Maybe all the big names can get the hipsters into politics again. So many Americans get away with not paying attention to who is making decisions for them, because they are comfortable. Why can't they see that these politicians are becoming more and more extreme? This is how fascist regimes come to reign. Most people in this world don't have the luxury of ignoring who comes to office, or who is in power. If I have to hear one more person claim that they "are not interested in politics" or that "all the candidates are the same" I am defecting to an island somewhere. Preferably one that has not been colonized at some point. Are there any of those left? Or even better, I think we could send all those people to a region of the world where they have to care about who is running their country - maybe they would get along really well in Iran or Kosovo. If more Americans would bother to pay attention to the state of foreign policy in their own country, and put aside their apathy and reality TV shows for just eight months, we might actually have a revolution on our hands. Since when has "democracy" meant "permission to not pay attention"?