Chicken Butt

Hoo-fucking-ray! Ding dong the witch is dead! End of an Error! etc.

Wasn't the inaugural speech awesome? While I seemed to be the only one who booed (quietly) whenever CNN showed W on screen, the sense of relief that W's time is ending seemed universal among my co-workers. I don't expect all the damage to be undone by Obama, but at least I'll be able to see and hear the president nausea.

I think the nation is giddy with relief more than filled with hope for the new administration. I hope Obama never pulls a Clinton.

Second debate is making me cranky

I skipped my OA meeting tonight so I could watch the full debate tonight. God are they annoying. Senator Obama voted to blah, blah, blah. Well actually, Senator McCain is mistaken, but look at his record, he did blah blah blah.

If McCain says, "my friends" one more time I'll be driven to drink. Or possibly log on to WoW, which I committed to not doing this week. 

There are some really tough questions coming up, but they just keep accusing each other of nasty voting records and talking points. Ooh, but Obama talking about energy and drilling is interesting. 

Hmm, McCain cannot see the lights for timing? He wants Brokaw to wave widely. 

My friends, guess who voted for a huge pork barrel spending bill? Him. (Big pointing gesture.)

Oh man, I have to stop typing. It's actually making me crazier. 

One more thing, does Obama's makeup make him look like a bad impersonator? Maybe my new 46 inch TV is too big?

This little piggy had none

I broke my toe last night, the one next to the little toe on the right foot. Ouch! I walked into a duffle bag full of books in the dark. The hallway was a terrible place to put it. I must buy two more bookshelves for my bedroom. Until I do there are bags of books everywhere. I didn't go to the doctor. There is nothing to do for a broken toe. The whole toe is bruised and swollen. I'm told it will hurt for weeks, but that after the first week it gets much better.

I finally swapped my bedroom and former library. I had intended to move the bookcases into the new craft room, but once I moved my bed I realized that there was room for the shelves to stay. I moved the shorter shelves with crafting supplies and assorted crap. One of the short shelves was crammed full of books though and there was a pile of books on the floor that had never found a home. Two more Billy bookcases from IKEA should give me room for all my books. Then I can get some deeper storage for all the art/craft crap that has been sitting on the library floor since I moved in. I have yet to swap my hanging clothing with the shelves of crap in the former library closet.

Also, World of Warcraft (WoW) is an awesome, compelling and completely addicting game. Started playing with my nephew and I'm a bit obsessed. I'm staying up way too late at night. I may need to uninstall it from my Macbook Pro for the remainder of October. It would be a shame to not finish Halloween costumes because I couldn't stop gathering herbs, making potions and killing humaniods for their loot.

Bugboy wants to be a cicada for Halloween. I will be a pirate again, but with some different accessories. I have a party to go to. Only four weekends left before Halloween. I've only started on the wings for the cicadas.

I plan to watch the VP debate tonight, or at least part of it. I have a meeting that ends at 8 so I'll miss part of it. I caught the end of the first Obama/McCain debate last Friday. I can barely stand to watch politicians these days, even ones I support. I think the expectations for Palin have been systematically set very low so that her performance tonight will cause a surge of support. Is anyone still undecided this year? The differences of policy seem so clear.

Primary vote

I voted in the primary today. I don't think I've ever voted in a primary before. I didn't know you have to declare your party. I usually consider myself independent, but if you select Nonpartisan you only get to vote for Nonpartisan candidates. Apparently the list is short. I chose Democrat so I could vote for Obama. I didn't get to vote in many other races though. My area is dominantly Republican and in many races there are no democrats running.

I decided to become an election judge. My grandparents did it until they couldn't. I asked at the poll how to sign up and the guy said they were desperate for people. It is still run mostly by senior citizens. I'll go to the county building this month to apply.

Update: Wil had me nodding along with his reasons for voting for Obama. He said it better than I could and quoted people that said it better than he felt he could.

Hackles raised, money talks

Yesterday I was happy and content. I was fewer than three miles from home after spending the weekend at an OA retreat. Then I saw a long line of protesters lining the sidewalk in front of a Catholic church. They were, of course, holding anti-abortion signs. I say of course because a new Planned Parenthood clinic recently opened four cities to the south. This new clinic has the local religious activists in a frenzy.

For the most part the signs were fine with me. There were no dead fetuses or sensational graphics. I have no problem with "Pray to stop abortion" or "Adoption the loving choice." My mom was born in a Catholic Hospital for unwed mothers. But I bristle at "Abortion hurts women" and I couldn't read the text written on the waving US flag, but it pissed me off. How does abortion hurt women? Are they talking about women's souls? Because history shows me that making abortion illegal hurts far more women.* It was the flag that made me furious. I don't even care what it says. Stop trying to legislate my reproductive rights! Believe what you want, make your own choices, privately fund organizations to promote your point of view. Stop making laws about it though. Stop forcing abstinence-only education and health care programs, it doesn't work.**

So I'm pissed, and I'm driving, and the car ahead of me keeps honking and giving the thumbs up to the protesters. I say keeps giving, because it isn't just in front of the church. The protesters line first one side, then both sides of the street all the way into town. And they brought their kids. So as the driver and passenger noisily showed their support I could only shake my head and steam. Nothing would be accomplished by acting as I felt. If I gave the finger to them I would be the asshole that proves their point. I'm a murdering asshole and something must be done. I hate seeing kids dragged into this issue. But like I said, at least this crew wasn't using their children to shock people with pictures of dead full-term babies.

These are the people who put a criminal in the white house. These are the people who do not seem to care what damage is done to our constitution, our civil liberties, our troops or the environment, as long as their own moral agenda can be legislated. I felt assaulted and battered. I turned off main street as soon as I could. I was afraid I'd so something rash. I really wanted to rear-end the guy in front of me.

It was an impressive display. I'm sure it when all through town. Today the charitable giving campaign opened at work. If Planned Parenthood had been an option, I would have donated. As it was, I went out of my way to avoid organizations with religious ties of any kind. Usually I would give to a general fund. This time I drilled down to choose the voluntary hospice that helped my Mom and Heifer Project International.*** So I guess the protest did make in impact. Maybe I'll start donating to PP again.

* No I have no studies to site. I'm too lazy to. Besides, any study I locate can be refuted by some other study. I have no desire to get in a pissing match. I won't sway anyone over to  my side and no one will move me to theirs. Yet another reason this issue annoys me.

** See *

*** It is possible Heifer Project International has religious ties. I don't know. In this case I think it is worth supporting anyway.

Vote

I voted about 11 am this morning. The guy managing the voting machines for my precinct said the turn out at that point was pretty good. Over 200 of the 800 voters in the precinct had shown up and he said they had not had time to read the paper yet.

The line was short, but very slow moving. According to the lady who gave me my receipt, old folk are afraid of the machines. I can understand that. The interface isn't very instinctive. To scroll through the choices using a dial was weird. The confirmation screens and paper ballots are nice, but there were at least three clicks to finish after I first hit the Cast Ballot button. Still, there were five machines for my precinct and the same four people were still voting at the other machines in the time it took me to complete the whole transaction.

My sister just told me that The Vise's boss was asked if he was voting Democrat or Republican by one of the poll workers. He was furious and made many calls. The police called him to see if he wanted to press charges. I didn't find out if he did cause she had to go. What kind of moron asks something like that? I would think that was the first and last instruction to the volunteers. I'm indignant just hearing about it. Even if he is just stupid, it makes me wonder if there is tampering there.

I'm just relieved all the hate commercials will go away for a while.

Tomorrow is Talk Like a Pirate Day

Don't forget to talk like a pirate tomorrow, Tuesday, September 19. It be International Talk Like a Pirate Day!

Home again

My trip to California was great. The wedding was beautiful. I’m so glad I was there to see Serena and Ed get married. Serena was beautiful.

I really liked the rabbi. It was the first Jewish wedding I’ve attended so I don’t know where traditional ceremony ended and the rabbi’s personality began. If most of it was standard then I’d like a Jewish wedding. It was so real and personal. It celebrated unity of the couple and the individual at the same time. Spiritual life and human relations shared equal time. I’ve never heard the word “lover” used so many times during a wedding.

There were four of Serena’s college friends there, plus a girlfriend from grade school. I had met them each before at some point, but we had never hung out. Serena, Shelly and I worked at the college newspaper together. I hung out with Shelly most of the day. A group of us also went out for dinner Sunday night. I had so much fun. I talked too much, but maybe not as much as I would have if I wasn’t trying to shut up. I’m still giggling over some of the conversations.

The sightseeing I did Saturday afternoon was nice. I got smashed pennies from both places. The Egyptian museum was very cheesy. The objects themselves were cool, but the displays were awful. It was like a small city historical society museum. There were typos in the display text. Many objects weren’t labeled at all and the ones that were labeled you had to walk back and forth up to ten feet to read the description for an object. I tried to stop reading because the misspellings and typos were driving me crazy, but there really was some cool stuff that I wanted to know about. I bought the museum catalog so I could read about some of the stuff. Hopefully the book is copyedited. I sent BugBoy a postcard with two cat mummies on it. They were pretty cool.

The Winchester Mystery House was really cool. I took all three tours, although the garden tour was an accident. The tour guides were fun and seemed to be enjoying themselves. On the manor tour we walked over a mile as we weaved up and down and through three floors of that crazy 160 room house. I got four different pennies there, including one design with a hard hat on it. You have to wear a hard hat for the basement part of the behind the scenes tour. I’d go back again to see it.

In October and each Friday the Thirteenth they do flashlight tours. That would be cool. Mom would have loved it. Her favorite number was thirteen too. There all many groups of thirteen within the house. The thirteenth bathroom has thirteen windows and thirteen steps leading to it. My favorite room was the daisy room. The stained glass was beautiful. The owner designed the daisy windows and Tiffany’s built them. I bought the book for the house too.

Oh, and Oakland Airport sucks. It is under construction and is more rinky-dink than Midway was before the expansion. There was one Women’s room for all 26 of Southwest’s gates. There was hardly any seating and the ground crew ran way behind with the luggage on both legs of my trip. I know they aren’t used to the volume of checked luggage, but Midway didn’t seem crippled by the load. There were two babies across the aisle from me on the trip back. One of them screamed for the whole four hours. I felt bad for the baby, but worse for the rest of us. The crowning touch was the stench of used diaper for that last hour. I’m pretty sure it originated from the toddler seated behind me.

So the trip was worth the cost and trouble, even the smell of poo. Serena is married, and the next time she comes home for a visit we plan to all meet at someone’s home so we can have more time with her and with each other.

Feeling ignorant about Net Neutrality

So yesterday I got a letter from my U.S. Representative in response to an email form I filled out asking that he support Net Neutrality and not give in to the corporate powers that want privileges and no regulation. The letter was very convincing, except I didn't really know. It was a form letter in res ponce to my form letter. It made me want to really understand what's going on there.

It felt a bit like my first inkling that I should be doing something to support the Democrats win the presidency in '04, too little too late. Once again, I'm not sure I can actually do anything about it, but I want to understand the issue, not just go along with a liberal org or swallow whole the statements in my Rep's letter. I feel the urge to figure it out and then if needed, to respond point by point to my Rep's statements. I just don't want to have the same emotions about this issue as I do when I see a Bush/Cheney '04 bumper sticker on the car in front of me. I want to ram into their fancy SUV over and over again, but just sit there filled with impotent fury.

Or I could just crawl back into my cozy nest of ignorance and denial and wait for the sky to fall.

Again.

Three unrelated thoughts

One) I just got the nicest complement from a friend at work. She said I have the prettiest hair and that if she could choose anyone's hair for herself she would choose mine. Wow! She's so sweet. I blushed terribly and may still be a bit red. She made my day.

Two) I try not to be a knee-jerk Democrat conspiracist when it comes to all things Bush, but is anyone else wondering what the media is missing while they focus on this hunting accident story? It must be something pretty big for the Veep to shoot someone, right? I mean, he used a 28-gauge that would do less damage than a 12-gauge (if I read the stories right, not claiming any gun knowledge here), obviously they couldn't foresee a heart attack because of the bird shoot. Too wag the dog-ish?

Three) I'm not enjoying my current book. It's Mr. Muo's Travelling Couch by Dai Sijie. I bought it because I loved Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress. I thought at first that it was the translator (French to English), that maybe the little seamstress had someone more enjoyable to read. But they are both translated by Ina Rilke. I've had several impulses to grab a different book to read, but I know if I don't finish it now I'll never pick it up again. I kept thinking that it would get better, but I think I dislike the main character now more than in the beginning. He's a pompous, deluded ass and possibly crazy. Some people may enjoy it, reminds me of Wooster and the protagonist from Portuguese Irregular Verbs. Both characters I found annoying and charmless. It is hard for me to put down a book unfinished, but I am sorely tempted with this one.