Whistling In The Dark

These are the twits I twitted.

• 01:02 Vehicle Voltron streamed over Netflix -- all the majesty of Voltron, but with bonus incoherence and fake Australian and Hindu accents. #

Feinstein was fine in her role as Emcee, though when she said "In a world..." I blacked out and could only hear Don LaFontaine's voice from that point forward.

Rick Warren did, in my opinion, a journeyman's job leading the invocation. It was not "non-denominational," since he is Rick Warren after all, but he spoke with conviction and spoke of hope for the coming administration, and that is a good thing. He clearly wants to be the next Billy Graham, both in terms of influence and in the perception of non-partisanship. As a result, I anticipate anti-Warren Chick Tracts by the end of the year.

I learned that two thresholds were crossed during the inauguration. First off, when Biden took the Vice-Presidential Oath, power officially transferred across the board. As of then, Bush was no longer president. That intrigues me. Does that mean Biden was the President for the next six minutes? The second threshold was Noon itself. When the clock clicked on noon, even if Biden hadn't taken the oath, power transitioned. Protocol wonk for the win.

Robert Bennett, the Republican Senator from Utah who introduced Associate Justice John Paul Stephens (who administered the Vice-Presidential Oath), looks like Alan Arkin.

"Air on Simple Gifts" was a beautiful piece, but A) it sounded in the beginning uncannily like the music for Hinterland Who's Who on CBC television ("for more information about the 44th President of the United States, why not contact the Canadian Wildlife Service, in Ottawa?") and when it segued into Simple Gifts proper I became hungry for a Turkey Dinner.

The problem with the stumbling during the Oath is there are Constitutional requirements involved, so they have to say it exactly as it is writ. So it was kind of grin-inducing.

The speech was fine, and there is some progress in the concept of agnosticism and atheism being acknowledged, but still... "we are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers." So... the choices are Abrahamic religions, Hinduism... and a blanket "non-belief?" No Buddhists? No Pagans or Neopagans? No Shintoists?

Look, don't piss off Thor, man. Seriously.

The nanosecond power transitioned, Whitehouse.gov updated. We now have a blogging administration.

Finally, there was the poem.

...look, the poem itself was bad enough. But did they need to find someone from the Enunciation School of Poetry Reading? "A WOman... and her... SON... waitforthebus." Look. You got the gig. You're reading your poem at the Presidential Inauguration. You don't need to convince us you're a Poet Reading Poetry. We know it already. You got the gig. Either read with cadence and rhythm or read with natural speech. Otherwise, you just sound simpleminded.

The Reverend Joseph E. Lowery gave the benediction, and was a thousand times more lyrical and beautiful in his words and in his imagery than poet Elizabeth Alexander. But by then only seventeen people were left watching, thanks to Alexander's terrible read.

Power has transitioned. Life goes on. We still have a boatload of troubles, but at least we have someone who can pronounce the name of the most powerful weapons on the planet correctly at the wheel now.

Tomorrow.

Tomorrow, Bush ends and Obama begins.

Like millions, I am thrilled at this prospect.

However, I know full well that twelve minutes after Obama takes the oath there are going to be a ton of his 'former supporters' who are pissed as hell, disappointed, angry, or whatnot. Hell, I know of one person (who's reading this, but I won't identify him ;) ) who actually decided that he'd already disappointed him so much he had to scrape the damn bumper sticker off his car.

But. Let's give him a good night. Let's assume that for 24 hours, everyone's happy. C'est ca.

Countdown to "oh my God how could Obama do this to me/us/the world I thought he was different" stands at 46 hours, three minutes."

(My take on this was here, following the election. Dude. He's going to break your heart. He can't help it. That's what governance is all about, Charlie Brown. With luck, he'll be a good President anyway.)

These are the twits I twitted.

• 16:14 We are at California Pizza Kitchen for the finest of all meals -- the 4 pm breakfast! #
• 20:11 We hang out in hotel room. Me. Weds. Mouse. Power! #
• 22:17 Martini done perfectly right. I can't feel my face! #
• 23:33 Gimlet. Martini. Kamakaze. Manhattan on the Charles. (It has Jack in it.) Frankly I'm lucky I can *see.* #
• 00:01 And now the peppermint mocha martini. And the best possible gossamer commons news looks a go. If I don't die of alcohol poisoning. #
• 00:12 That was the biggest bar tab of my life! #

These are the twits I twitted.

• 11:12 It's 6 degrees, wind chill to -18. There was light snowfall on top of that. How in God's name did we get *glare ice* under it? #
• 14:50 Lore Sjöberg is my personal savior. badgods.com/owlbear.html #
• 20:44 Of course Steve Jobs needs to take time off. The Lich process takes weeks to fully finish, and the Phylactery soulbind takes days to set. #

These are the twits I twitted.

• 09:37 Look, it's very simple. It can be snowy, or it can be bitterly cold. You're not allowed to be both. When overcast comes, so does 30 degrees. #
• 12:49 I consign everyone at Metrocast to the eternal fires of Hell. Everyone. Receptionists? Damned. Customers in the lobby? Damned. Everyone. #
• 17:24 Hell is too good for them. Instead, I must consign them to Hell's Hell, where the Devil fears to go. I consign Metrocast... to Orono. #

These are the twits I twitted.

• 15:41 It is a good day. A really really really good day. People should buy Wednesday drinks. #
• 15:51 Seriously. Life is so good right this second. #
• 16:57 Weds can haz green card. FLAWLESS VICTORY. #
• 18:12 Everybody dance their own, personal celebration dance! pics.livejournal.com/demiurgent/pic/0000a4tw #

Character WEDNESDAY (Blue Mage/Webdev)

LEVEL UP!

+2 Cha
+2 Mana
+1 Sta
+1 Att

YOU RECEIVE:
Green Card
Passport Stamp
Conditional Permanent Resident Status

These are the twits I twitted.

• 19:05 The unofficial live City of Heroes Mac client is now the official one. I am... content. #

These are the twits I twitted.

• 04:23 Ah insomnia, my old enemy. We meet again. But this time... this time the advantage is *mine!* #
• 12:17 I have been jabbed and my bodily fluids claimed and indexed. I am tired, but happy to have coffee once more. #
• 17:35 Man, that's a lot of coffee. I have drunk... a lot of coffee. #
• 21:03 Weirdly noise sensitive and on edge. Which might have come from the insomnia and coffee, naturally. #

These are the twits I twitted.

• 10:02 Day one of New Organizational Danceoff! Dance, white boy, dance! #
• 14:11 Mrph. 'Minimal' sleep apnea, with a strong recommendation to lose weight. Well, that's... helpful... I guess... #
• 14:13 Right. If the brainfog isn't coming from sleep apnea issues, I need to escalate finding out where it *is* coming from. #
• 15:04 "Hi! Remember when we were doing this thing in November? It didn't work for me and I need it now." "Why... didn't you tell us in *November?" #
• 15:05 Off to be shot full of allergens. #
• 22:33 And now, dutifully fasting against having blood sucked out of me, tomorrow. #

These are the twits I twitted.

• 02:56 Coupling is a good show. It's worth noting. #
• 17:46 When humans get older, they use moisturizer. get hair plugs and have things lifted to deny age. Timelords just regenerate into Matt Smith. #
• 21:45 Eddie Izzard is officially superior to other entertainers. tinyurl.com/8wdmmf #

These are the twits I twitted.

• 02:41 So. The KJV is in the public domain. Nothing stops us from 'correcting' it to include the Flying House and Superbook, if we obfuscate them. #

I have the best wife, the best parents, and the best friends on the planet.

The wife most of all, as she conspired and developed the plan. She enlisted my folks, and she enlisted LJ friends and others... and now I own an XBox 360. One of the nice ones.

I'm blown away. Merry Christmas all, and if you're one of the folks involved, I owe you so much coolness.

One of the things I hear from Christian friends -- meant entirely seriously, and I do not deride them for this -- is "hey, [x] doesn't speak for me. That kind of prejudiced garbage has nothing to do with the teachings of Christ." This is particularly something I hear from folks about the organized and intentional persecution of homosexuals.

(And yes, when the Mormon church, as an example, rallies to get something like Prop 8 passed, overwhelmingly from a different state, that there's organized persecution, and one day it will be written about in the same sympathetic tones we write about Jim Crow laws and whipping slaves. But this is not about Mormans at the moment.)

I'm generally willing to accept that. I really am. I know Fred Phelps doesn't speak for anyone but his own deranged cult made up of family members. I know that fewer and fewer evangelical Christians are willing to accept what their 'leaders' declaim in their name.

Yeah, that won't fly this time. Not for Roman Catholics. Because the Pope does speak for them. The Pope by definition speaks for them. So when the Pope uses his End of the Year Christmas Message, celebrating the birth of savior of Mankind (in their view), a time that we have been told unceasingly is a time of love, of peace, of joy, of brotherhood, of hope and of compassion, to directly attack homosexuals and transsexuals, comparing their existence to ecological disaster? He's speaking for the Catholics.

If you're a Catholic? He's speaking for you. He's speaking for you. And repudiation of that message of hate will take more than just disavowing him. You can't disavow the Pope and still take Communion next week. It doesn't work like that.

If you're a believer, and if you're a Catholic, then -- and I mean this sincerely, without irony -- God help you. Good luck with all this, because you're going to need it.

These are the twits I twitted.

• 16:54 Much of my state is without power. But the world is made of glass. #

I am not, by and large, a part of the American Liberal Cult of Canada.

You know the one. You've heard from them for years. They're the ones who hold up Canadian Health Care as the epitome of Health Care Done Right (as a side note, it's not). They speak of Canada as the land of Equal Rights, of Socialist and Liberal policies executed flawlessly. Of tolerance and warmth and friendliness and funny television mostly performed by Newfoundland natives.

And of course, no matter how bad things got here, under Bush or whoever, Canada always glowed warm on the horizon for the ALCC. As bad as things got... they could always pull up their stakes and move. They could move... to Canada.

(Show of hands -- how many of you know someone who made that assertion sometime in the last eight years? Yeah? Wow. Now, how many of you know someone who actually moved from the United States to Canada during that time? Even one? And if there is one, did he or she go out of disgust with the Bush Presidency, or for some other unrelated reason?)

The thing is? I grew up on the Border. And for a couple years I travelled up there all the time to see Weds, before she was allowed to cross over and be married and now she lives here. And I know that as nice as Canada may be, it's not perfect. Not by a long shot. They have the same liberal versus conservative pressures. They have longstanding arguments and prejudices and points of shame, along with their admitted virtues. They are, by an large, a country. And like all countries, there's stuff they do well and there's stuff they do poorly. Oh, and everything costs more and there's not as much variety. Except in snack foods. Man, do they make a lot of snack foods and put a lot of crap on their chips.

Well, they had an election just before we had ours here in the U.S.A. And Steven Harper and his Conservative party won more seats in Parliament than any other party, as they had the last time. They even closed the gap on getting an actual majority in Parliament, though they failed to do so. Which means that if you add the Opposition Parties up -- the Liberals (who are a lot like our Democrats), the New Democratic Party (who are a lot like actual Liberals), and the Bloc Québécois (which is a lot like if the Dakotas, Minnesota, Wyoming and Wisconsin all banded together, spoke mostly Norwegian, elected representatives who promoted their interests before any others, and occasionally threatened to secede) -- there were more Opposition party members than there were Conservatives.

Now, there's a crisis going on right now. It's global and it's economic. And Canada is being affected by it as well -- though perhaps not as badly as some countries (like, say, my own country). and Steven Harper and the Conservatives released an Economic Update that... well....

Well, let me put it this way. It would have looked perfectly natural coming out of the Republican National Committee's party platform committee. In 2004 or 2006.

And, what was even better, it proposed to save money by ending public financing of political parties -- which coincidentally would have eviscerated the Liberals and the N.D.P. -- and proposed to rescind the right for pubic servants being abused to strike, which is a major Bloc hot button issue.

Emotions were high. People were angry. And Steven Harper managed to achieve a rare first in Canadian Politics -- he managed to actually get the Liberals, N.D.P. and Bloc Québécois so monumentally pissed off they would actually agree to work together rather than let the Minority Government have its way. When the vote is taken on this plan, it will almost certainly fail. And as the vote has been made a Confidence Vote, it will cause the Harper government to fall. Then, the Governor-General can either dissolve Parliament and have another election... or she can allow the Opposition to form a Coalition and have that Coalition Government take power.

The Liberals, the Bloc and the N.D.P. have signed a letter of intent to do the latter, and have petitioned the Governor-General to allow them to form that Coalition Government. When they take power, the Liberals will get the Prime Minister's seat and many Cabinet posts, the N.D.P. will get several other cabinet posts near and dear to their heart, and the Bloc, while not directly participating in the government, will support the government for at least 18 months.

Harper and the Conservatives, continuing to run the pre-2008 American Republican playbook, are declaring all of this antidemocratic and the Opposition's way of subverting the will of the voters... which is patently stupid given that A) the Conservatives voted into office will keep their seats and B) the reason the Coalition can do this is because the Voters voted more of them into Parliament than they did Conservatives.

This right here is something special to watch. Honest to god Coalition governance, with N.D.P. cabinet ministers (someone no one expected in our lifetimes), and the Conservatives being invited to have some seats right there on the Back Bench, their power stripped.

What happens next? I dunno. No one does. As I said at the top, Canada's no Nirvana, no matter how much American Liberals might wish it to be. The Liberals have choked under pressure before.

On the other hand, they have also done great things under pressure before.

Regardless, this is all really cool stuff. And honestly, it couldn't have happened to a nicer censorious arts-and-culture-slashing homophobe than Steven Harper. One hopes he will enjoy his time in the Shadow Cabinet, at least until such time as the Conservatives dump him in favor of the next bright young luminary.

...to want to write a book or six detailing the adventures of the Unsmiling Bearded Men for Ron Paul?

All I'm saying is I'm pretty sure they're armed, and if Moon Men or unfrozen Nazis came at them, I'm betting on the Unsmiling Bearded Men.

Hart's Location has reported. Obama wins, with 17 votes to John McCain's 10... but the UNSMILING BEARDED MEN HAVE SPOKEN! That's right, with 2 write-in votes, RON FUCKING PAUL has entered the national landscape.

So what, you ask? Hey, there's 50 votes currently cast. Which means Ron Paul has 4% of the vote to date. All he has to do is maintain that percentage and inch it up just a touch, and he'll get matching funds! Really!

Bed now. Voting tomorrow.

Weds and I are just back from a trip to Brookline to see the kickoff of the John Hodgman More Information Than You Require book tour. Though Jonathan Coulton wings off to a European tour tomorrow, he was on hand tonight, adding some songs to the proceedings. Afterward, Weds and I had decent if not remarkable Korean barbeque, followed by a trip to Brookline Booksmith to get my copy of the book autographed. (Weds, having an Audiobook only, elected to purchase an Alison Bechdel book which she then brought to have the two sign instead. (They got a kick out of this, it's worth noting, and were quite good at drawing stories out of those getting stuff signed, learning some of our immigration woes and the various spellings of 'Eric' I've had to endure in my time.)

I'll do something for Websnark later, going into more detail, but all in all it was an excellent evening. The actual reading/etc was short but for God's sake it only cost five bucks and featured a duet on guitar and ukulele. What more could one ask for?

There must be something to the whole "mature palate" thing.

I used to hate sushi with a passion. And then one year, I tried some with Eagle and loved it. I've loved it ever since.

And, like all sane (well, young sane) people, I hated gin. Tasted like expensive paint thinner.

And now, I'm totally all about the gin.

My favorite is the well made gimlet. A well made gimlet is refreshing and good tasting and makes you feel ready to be beaten down by gangsters before you give them the business. I should mention Philip Marlow drank gimlets so you understand why.

Tonight, I gave the gin and tonic a try. The gin is Bombay Sapphire. I'm a big fan of Bombay Sapphire. That it has water from "Lake Vyrnwy" in Wales is just a bonus. And the tonic's supposedly one of the best in the world -- Q tonic, which has the tang that one expects from a tonic water made in Brooklyn.

Q Tonic also has the advantage of being sweetened with agave nectar instead of high fructose corn syrup. Agave nectar's got a much lower glycemic index than sugar (and way lower than high fructose corn syrup, which is a glycemic bomb) and so it's way less likely this refreshing drink will cause a dumping reaction.

Okay. I realize I'm using quality ingredients, but I now officially get it. The gin and tonic is a goodness. It won't displace the gimlet (and I have the makings for that too), but two parts gin to five parts tonic? Improves both.

Man, what happens next, I wonder?

It's surprisingly simple.

Neither major political party was willing to sacrifice the election to save the nation.

There is nothing more basic than that. Neither party would sacrifice personal power in order to save the economy of the United States of America.

My representative voted Nay. For the first time, I'm considering voting against her in November. I'm certainly calling her office tomorrow to express my deep disappointment in her.

For those who don't want to see the bailout of Wall street firms because gorsh, they's all rich and it's not fair? I hope you really, really enjoy the next ten years.

For those of you who braved the dumbass DRM crap and got the game anyway, feel free to Buddy me as 'demiurgent.' Let me know your names, so I can start getting preferential download treatment to your various and sundry critters.

(If the DRM is a dealbreaker for you, I fully understand. We really, really, really, really, really don't need to rehash the issue in comments. The DRM is very, very badly done, and was stupid in the first place. It is a badness. It is evil. I decided to play anyway. Life can be like that sometimes. ;) )

These are the twits I twitted.

• 17:40 Cough! #

These are the twits I twitted.

• 23:11 ...of all the things I didn't expect to see while watching Christian cartoons... a penis was close to the top of the list. #
• 23:26 The Flying House kids to Jesus, in every episode: "Heal plz. Heal plz. Heal plz." #