Only 50? Well, you can fit only so many into a manageable book, explains editor Robert Sterling, who also edits the online publication The Konformist (www.konformist.com).

Most people who’ve paid attention the last four years know there are plenty of reasons not to vote for Bush in November, from his corporate cronyism to his unprecedented tax cuts to his mismanagement of the War on Tara.
These are, of course, subjects rational people can argue over: Is Bush’s indebtedness to corporate America a liability, or business as usual? Do the tax cuts provide desperately needed economic stimulus, or simply choke the federal budget to the point of massive deficits and less help for those who need it? Is the War on Terra contiguous with the war in Iraq?

Willingness to these kinds of questions is the first step toward being an informed voter. The value of a book like 50 Reasons is not that it reveals any new information – though even a collapsed-vein political junkie like me found some new tidbits within – but that it helps lay the framework for reasonable, passionate argument. Each of the fifty reasons is a concise primer on topics such as Bush’s ideological judicial appointees, his connections to oil and energy giants who helped write our national energy policy, and his diplomatic failure in North Korea. Heavily sourced, each one offers an overview of the argument, with further investigation left to the reader.

50 Reasons is a concise handbook for those who oppose George W. Bush and what his policies have wrought in the past four years. Unfortunately, its analytical, substantive argument is no match for that most damning of retorts, “Well, OK, Bush hasn’t been the greatest leader. But why do you hate America?”

– GIDEON STARGRAVE

The Future Dictionary of America
By Various

For years conservative commentators have complained that the dictionary, like the media, has a hopeless liberal bias. “Don’t read,” says Rush Limbaugh, “that’s how they get you – with their America-hating, al Qaeda-harboring, welfare-stealing words!”

Absurd, sure. But the crew at McSweeney’s has finally made that old conservative bromide a reality with The Future Dictionary of America. Set in a future near-utopia where GWB and his neocon handlers have been cast out of power, FDofA imagines how language will have changed between now and then. For instance, the entry for “bush” now reads, “n. I. A poisonous family of shrubs, now extinct. (see bushed, bush-league, bushwa.)”

The definitions, which form the bulk of the book, range from funny to outraged to whistling-past-the-graveyard. They’re meant to be taken a few at a time, to be chuckled and pondered over. The book’s closer, an essay by Kurt Vonnegut, is an instant classic; including excerpts from The Taguba Report on the Abu Ghraib prison tortures is the kind of public service you wish more major media outlets would do.

On top of all that is a collection of cartoons from the future, a future in which robots try to eat our babies and the main dietary staples are plankton and bananas. And in the future, science has finally discovered how to see through a brick!

Included with FDofA is the Future Soundtrack of America, with tracks by Sleater-Kinney, They Might be Giants, will.i.am of the Black-Eyed Peas, and others. Most of the tracks are solid, with a couple that veer into an over-earnestness unusual for the McSweeney’s crowd. Not quite a disc to get the party started, but still worth owning.

Finally and most importantly, in addition to an excellent essay by Vonnegut, some funny entries by well- and not-so-well-known writers, cartoons and songs, FDofA offers the satisfaction of knowing that all of the proceeds – instead of going to Barnes and Noble or Amazon – will go to progressive causes such as The Sierra Club and the League of Pissed Off Votes.

– AUSTIN TASSELTEIN

Apocalypse Culture Vol. 1 & 2

Reading the Apocalypse Culture books is a bit like showing up late to a party where you don’t know anyone. They’re all drinking and talking and having a good time, while you’re forced to wander aimlessly, trying not to look desperate, shielding your beer cup every time someone walks by, eavesdropping on the interesting conversations you’re not a part of.

You catch a bit of one – “Christ the Cop is a Civilian Cop and needs a Press Card Marriage to Protect Him or Her from the Crucifixion by God the Copulator in Lust Murdering License Marriage” – and think, wow, that’d make a great bumper sticker. You turn the person speaking, one James (Anubis) Van Cleve, a schizophrenic who talks your head of with cryptic references to Christ and the Marquis de Sade, explaining that, “Sex is the gravitational bonding agent in social space working against magnetic electrocution and hanging with the point of no return and life imprisonment.” Huh, you say. I’d never thought of it that way.

Looking around, you realize this is the party at the end of the world; the guests are drawn from the most extreme, esoteric fringes of society – and some from even beyond. Your host, editor Adam Parfrey, introduces you to all of them, occasionally offering his own asides about the case for self-castration or the power of aesthetic terrorism.

Hovering next to the bean dip is Karen Greenlee, necrophiliac. After eloping with a dead man in the back of a stolen hearse, Karen was convicted of interfering with a burial and spent eleven days in jail. Since those anguished days Karen has grown more comfortable with her sexuality – she’ll patiently explain that it’s the smell of death, the eroticism of the grave, that really turns her on. It’s not something she’s looking to “cure;” it’s who she is. She laughs and mentions how men think she just needs the right living penis to “fix” her.

That’s where professional porn reviewer Christian Shapiro jumps in. Christian’s a bit jaded about sex – fast-forwarding through thousands of hours of hardcore pornography will do that to you – his new kick is daytime TV. He’s seen every act of debasement the human body can perform, and it leaves him cold.

He’s just getting to the part where all those cumshots and penetrations add up to satori when Dennis Stillings exclaims that the atom bomb is God’s proof of His existence. See, because technology and science are all we believe in anymore, right, so God programs us to build something so horrible, so overwhelming that its might can only be proof of divine intervention! Oswald Spengler counters that all technology is devilish, a product of man’s desire to become God. You’re a little too drunk and your head is spinning.
And pretty soon everyone’s yelling about God and the Devil, secret societies and global conspiracies, the invisible war and racial eugenics. Richard Green, founder and sole member of Jews for Hitler, lobs a handful of potato salad at Irv Rubin of the Jewish Defense League, a Jewish extremist group responsible for at least 37 terrorist attacks, according to the FBI. You flip over a table and lay down covering fire with a handful of salted peanuts.
Meanwhile, semi-retarded David, oblivious to the chaos, reads a story called “David and Hitler go to the planet Mars” to Ted Kaczynski. Dr. S. Epps dives behind your table and asks whether whites were made by Yacub – “a Black, god-like scientist” – as a race of devils. A NAMBLA representative yells to no one in particular.

You grab a handful of pretzels and whip them into Anton (Church of Satan) LaVey’s eyes. He bellows like a bull moose, clawing at his now-useless orbs. Thanks, you say, but you people are all crazy and I had a great time but I can only handle so much of you so don’t call me ok, I’ll call you and buh-bye! Then you leap out the door, shut the book, and are safe.

– TIM BODINE