Speaker for the Diodes

QotD

dglenn@panix.com — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 10:25:00 GMT

"There are plenty of people in the world who deserve a punch in the nose, but punching them in the nose isn't the only way of handling them." -- touchstone, 2008-10-08

QotD

dglenn@panix.com — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 10:25:00 GMT

"I grew up outside of this country, and I watched this country when I was a kid, growing up ... America was the beacon of everything that was good. Everything that was right, everything that was aspirational to me was in America -- it's the reason that I ended up here. And I've thought that the whole time I've been here -- I've been here fourteen years -- and for a long time, I've had a hard time trying to sell that to some Americans. But I think that changed last night. I'm very proud to be an American today; I'm proud of this nation for what we did." -- Craig Ferguson, regarding the election of Barack Obama, on the CBS television program, The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson, episode aired in the wee hours of 2008-11-06 (recorded 2008-11-05)

[I'm interpreting his statement as meaning he feels extra-proud to be an American, given that he has already come across as quite proud of being an American every time the topic has come up since he got his citizenship.]

QotD

dglenn@panix.com — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 10:25:01 GMT

"Provided you use executable line counts for the density measure, the injected defect densities vary less between languages than they do between engineers by about a factor of 10." -- Les Hatton [as quoted in a footnote in Eric Raymond's The Art of Unix Programming]

QotD

dglenn@panix.com — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 10:25:01 GMT

"There's nothing unique about this; it is something which happens every twenty or thirty years, because that is about the length of the financial memory. It's about the length of time that it requires for a new set of suckers, if you will, a new set of people capable of wonderful self-delusion, to come in and imagine that they have a new and wonderful fix on the future." -- John Kenneth Galbraith, discussing the Wall Street crash of 1929, on the PBS television program, American Experience, episode "The Crash os 1929" (aired November 2008 -- in my area, on 2008-11-10)

What I've Been Up To

dglenn@panix.com — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 00:42:34 GMT

Most of my one-handed typing lately has been with my left hand. Perrine is being clingy this evening in a way that makes it hard to reach the keyboard with my left hand, so I'm discovering how much slower I am with my right hand due to lack of practice. Wow. (Somehow, two-handed typing does not seem to help keep my right hand in shape for typing one-handed.) Or maybe it's just that my right arm and hand are still sore from yesterday (I kept feeling like I was about to lose hold of the drumstick in my right hand, in the fourth verse of each take -- I use my right hand on the hi-hat and ride cymbal).

There is a curse laid upon those who deign to smite the skins. (According to legend the curse can be abated by giving money to members of an order devoted to moving other people's stuff and setting it up, an order known as the Roadies) ... in other words, my back hurts quite a lot from loading and unloading the drum kit a couple of times yesterday (and dragging it down from the third floor Saturday night). No one piece is all that bad (well okay, the Bag Of Bronze is, maybe) but it adds up even though I don't always notice the effect piece by piece. Add in my ongoing tendency not to notice that I'm over-doing until too late, and...)

Anyhow, I waded through really really nasty traffic (I do not like coming to a complete stop in the middle of the Capitol Beltway, but it does allow time to 'tweet' safely), played drums and electric guitar, wasn't really happy with how I played (but the folks whose opinions actually count were satisfied), bought a pizza on the way home 'cause I felt sufficient need for such a treat to warrant splurging so (I also drank one of the ales that's been sitting in the back of my fridge waiting for me to have a beer-mood come around again; I suspect the ale did less to help my back pain than the relaxation of allowing myself to enjoy a pizza did), and procrastinated putting away the drums and other gear properly until later (it's stacked where it's not blocking the front door; that'll do for now).

My not feeling very well at the start of the day did have an effect on my playing. :-( More on guitar than drums, I think, but my drumming doesn't take as much interference to throw me off, so ... Anyhow, I was doing well enough to get out of the house and play, though I do wish I could've managed to be having a better day and be all there for recording. (Ah, if only I could schedule in advance which days would be my good days WRT the fibromyalgia, that would make So Many things easier...)

Other than mental glitches (I still have to think a lot playing the drums[*], and although I had the complete drum part worked out in my head note by note ahead of time, there were a bunch of tricky spots where it was easy to fall off), my biggest problems were my right hand starting to lose hold of the drumstick, and late in the drum session my left leg was cramping and twitching a bit from fatigue (which, oddly enough, resulted in some double-strikes on the kick drum that I was told sounded intentional -- they weren't). Anyhow, it's done, and if my mistakes aren't audible or aren't identifiable as mistakes in the finished product, then I shouldn't moan about it, eh? I'm just a little frustrated because I know what I meant it to sound like.

At the same time as I'm complaining about not playing as well as I think I should have, I also have to feel good about a a couple of bits that had frustrated me for ages finally starting to click for me while I was practicing during the week.

Last Monday I was pretty wiped out. Tuesday I got to do something fun (I got to spend hours hanging out with xpioti, a pleasure long overdue). Of course, I got so caught up in the conversation that I (unsurprisingly) failed to notice warning signs from my body that it was time to call it a day. The next couple days were kinda rough as a result. I think it was worth it though.

So now I'm facing the weekly question: on Monday night, am I feeling well enough to carry the double bass, and alert enough to drive to College Park and play it? I think I can make it if I'm willing to take codeine for the second day in a row; I'll have a more reliable answer after standing up long enough to take a shower. (I'll be showing up about forty minutes late if I do get there.)

Saturday I felt almost well enough to go to the monthly recorder club meeting (which I've missed the past several months), and if it had started at three insteaf at one, I would have made it. Alas, it took a little too long to get to a point where I could handle going out. (*sigh*) Then again, given how marginal I was for the recording session yesterday without having used up extra spoons on Saturday, perhaps it's just as well that I missed the recorder group.

[*] I play well enough to say, "I play the drums," but not well enough to be comfortable saying, "I am a drummer," if that distinction makes sense to anybody other than myself.

QotD

dglenn@panix.com — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 10:25:01 GMT

"[...] When I was a boy I asked God please make me normal and the prayer never got answered and I realized why. Because God would've made somebody else he wouldn't have made me." -- Roman Catholic priest Geoffrey Farrow of Fresno, coming out as gay in the course of an interview 2008-10-05

QotD

dglenn@panix.com — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 10:25:01 GMT

From the Quotation of the day mailing list, 2007-01-25:

At home, in my flannel gown, like a bear to its floe,
I clambered to bed; up the globe's impossible sides
I sailed all night--till at last, with my black beard,
My furs and my dogs, I stood at the northern pole.

-- Randall Jarrell, from the poem 90 North.

(submitted to the mailing list by Mike Krawchuk)

QotD

dglenn@panix.com — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 10:25:03 GMT

"I always say beauty is only sin deep." -- Hector Hugh Munro (b. 1870-12-18, d. 1916-11-14), better known by the pen name Saki

QotD

dglenn@panix.com — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 10:25:01 GMT

"You're alive. Do something. The directive in life, the moral imperative was so uncomplicated. It could be expressed in single words, not complete sentences. It sounded like this:
Look. Listen. Choose. Act." -- Barbara Hall [thanks to blueeowyn]

QotD

dglenn@panix.com — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 10:25:00 GMT

More commentary than usual, and a longish 'twofer' QotD entry, because a passage that needed some context to to set it up, reminded me of something else I'd read months ago... Bear with me, and let me know if these look as parallel to you as they do to me.

This observation by writerpo (from 2008-08-27), specifically the paragraph I've highlighted (though I'd like to think, in light of the election results, that 'People' should be prefaced with 'Some' and 'prevailing' should be replaced with 'Republican'), brought to mind something a friend of mine had said a bit earlier:

I've spent most of this election cycle marveling at the prevailing narrative (and how I am both amazed and appalled at that election buzzword) of Obama as the arugula noshing, effete, intellectual elitist. [...] From all that I've seen and heard, the Obamas are, in fact, the embodiment of the American Dream.

[...]

The American dream is what we're told all through childhood. Work hard and you can achieve anything, including wealth, both monetary and familial. [...] Through hard work, he made the American Dream happen.

So what's the problem? Why is the Right able to spin him as the other when he epitomizes everything we all hope for?

John McCain is why. If Barack Obama represents the American Dream, then John McCain represents the American Fantasy.

Barack Obama worked hard and became rich. John McCain won the lottery.

We pay lip service to the idea of working to our riches, but when it comes right down to it, we would much rather have a sack of money fall into our laps. [...]

People can respect Obama, but they don't. Instead they want to believe the prevailing narrative because the reality shames them. It shames them because they haven't done the same. It also shames them because they know, in their heart of hearts that he has earned their respect, but their envy keeps them from giving it. The lie is poultice for a burning shame. They respect McCain because they cannot be envious of luck. Luck is ineffable. It is beyond their control.

We preach the American Dream, but when it comes right down to it, we admire the American Fantasy.

When I read that, it immediately made me think of these paragraphs from an interview with Amelia G ( amelia_g), published 2008-05-15, that I had referred to (in poor paraphrase) in recent conversations:

In DC, it turned out that being able to decorate one leather jacket with paint and rivets and being able to tell one great fantasy of an alternate life to a fuckable chick does not equal wanting an actual platform for success or recognition of any kind. I found that quite a number of my amazing and talented compatriots wanted to be able to fantasize about how cool it would be if they started a band, wrote a novel, opened a dungeon, ran a nightclub, got a short story published, deejayed a big party, designed clothing, became an international sex symbol, etc. Although I will engage in conversations about wouldn't it be cool if, I have a tendency to then go forth into the world to make it so. I think I'm wired that way naturally and my upbringing only hammered that into me more. I was both shocked and deeply hurt when I found that a lot of the DC scenesters I counted as friends were angry at someone giving them a chance. They wanted to be able to get credit for their brilliance without having to actually come through with, ya know, work. It had never occurred to me that there were people who did not want opportunity to come knocking.

So I ended up in this odd circumstance where I was getting kind words for my work on Blue Blood from people who were huge heroes of mine. Only parts of my primary support structure were just really kind of pissy. HBO would come to my house to do a special, but I couldn't get some of my supposed closest friends to stop by. William Gibson would tell me I was "courageous" and John Shirley would buy me coffee and DC scenesters who had built whole events based on Gibson and Shirley's writing would make my participation a pain for me. I didn't know the word "hater" then, but it sure would have helped if I had."

QotD

dglenn@panix.com — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 10:25:00 GMT

"Y'know, I don't know that I ever thought that I'd be able to make a career of it; I just knew I was compelled to play music. I can't imagine a day without playing a song -- I just can't imagine it. So I'm really lucky that people show up, and I can, y'know, I can actualy make a living with it -- that's kind of a surprise; it's a big shock. I feel incredibly blessed in that sense. But no, I just -- I've always wanted to just play." -- guitarist/singer/songwriter Carolyn Wonderland, at the end of the PBS television program, Austin City Limits, episode first aired 2008-11-08 (in my area, in the wee hours of 2008-11-09)

QotD

dglenn@panix.com — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 10:25:00 GMT

[From the Wikipedia article on Veterans Day (the name in the US for what is called Remembrance Day elsewhere): "An Act (52 Stat. 351; 5 U. S. Code, Sec. 87a) approved May 13, 1938, made the 11th of November in each year a legal holiday; 'a day to be dedicated to the cause of world peace and to be thereafter celebrated and known as 'Armistice Day'.'" Let us remember the dead, honour the veterans, and pray (or if you're an atheist, hope really hard) and work for peace.]

"As always, Canada will now bury its war dead, just as the rest of the world, as always, will forget its sacrifice, just as it always forgets nearly everything Canada ever does. It seems that Canada's historic mission is to come to the selfless aid both of its friends and of complete strangers, and then, once the crisis is over, to be well and truly ignored. Canada is the perpetual wallflower that stands on the edge of the hall, waiting for someone to come and ask her for a dance." -- Kevin Myers

"One day a year, we pause to remember
[...]
We remember in hope that the scars of war will fade from the Earth...
That the sins of the past will be forgiven...[...]"
-- Ed "Mr Jitters" Appleby (author of the comic strip Ed's R Us^*, 2008-11-11 (yes, today) [The whole thing is short, so it won't take long to go read it ... If any of my readers can't view the graphic containing the text, let me know. Not that I expect that problem to come up, since I think I'm the only one around here who uses Lynx all that often.]

"We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war. Raise hell. Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous. Make our troops know we're for them and trying to get them out of there." -- Molly Ivins (from her last column, January 11, 2007) (via Jone Johnson Lewis' collection of quotations on about.com)

[*] The apostrophe in the title ain't my fault; that's how it appears on the web site.

Calling it 'not a day'; and: thoughts on playing fast lead guitar parts

dglenn@panix.com — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 22:51:56 GMT

The weekend's exertions took their toll. Despite spending the last third of yesterday resting, I was in no shape to do anything this morning, so this morning's plans are pushed to tomorrow, and my making it to 3LF tonight is unlikely (though I've not ruled out the possibility, if another short nap and medication are enough to make me feel like I can move and stand upright long enough).

Listening to other guitarists, I'm often impressed by really fast passages and how much effort it's taken on the occasions when I've tried to learn somebody else's solo. So listening to a recording of myself improvising in response to instructions to play something 'bubbly', I was startled to notice that it seemed faster, more flurry-of-notes, on playback than it had felt while I was doing it. It occurs to me that what I did, more or less, was to stack a bunch of ornaments together and then ornament the ornaments. And ornaments don't feel like 'playing fast' when I play them, because they're ... well not exactly atomic, but sort of 'trigger and forget', uh, 'finger macros'. That is, while I'm playing, I don't notice an ornament as a series of notes or a sequence of techniques, any more than I think of a familiar word as a sequence of letters or phonemes even though it is so. (I'm mostly thinking of ornaments like turns and mordents and slides and grace notes, but to some extent this also applies to vibrato, bends, palm-mute, etc.)

So maybe the way I should try to learn really fast passages in the future is to try to identify the composer's vocabulary of ornaments (at least when the composer is a strings player, fretted or otherwise) and learn those ornaments well enough that they become incorporated into my own, so that I can break the passage down into something slow enough to think about consciously plus a bunch of ornamentation in that artist's style.

Or maybe not; this is a thought that I haven't followed down into the details yet. But it seems like a thread worth following to see where it takes me.

QotD

dglenn@panix.com — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 10:25:01 GMT

"We are standing at the precipice of hell. The western model of growth is inherently toxic. It's highly capital intensive, and highly resource intensive, uses a lot of materials, uses a lot of energy, and generates a lot of waste. If every Indian was to live like an American, then the planet is doomed. And the planet is doomed forever." -- Sunita Narain, in the PBS television program Frontline, episode titled "Heat", aired (in my area anyhow) 2008-10-21. (Ms. Narain appears at about the twenty-minute mark.)

Damned Plumbing

dglenn@panix.com — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 17:53:36 GMT

Oh crap. A small leak that I'd been dealing with by shutting off the upstream valve except while taking a shower, until I could muster enough spoons to deal with attempting to repair it, today turned into a gusher of the spray water on the walls and ceiling variety.

Argh.

I'll think about it tomorrow. No time today. At least I can still cut it off immediately upstream.

QotD

dglenn@panix.com — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 10:25:00 GMT

From the Quotation of the day mailing list, 2007-01-22:

"The purpose of a young writer is to write, and he shouldn't drink too much." -- William Styron, novelist, giving advice to young writers, from an interview in The Paris Review.

(submitted to the mailing list by Mike Krawchuk)

Exhausting Cuteness

dglenn@panix.com — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 08:30:09 GMT

So my Saturday didn't go quite like I'd planned or expected, and that's both good and bad.

I've been trying for about a week and a half to muster the spoons to drive out to Bowie, do laundry (my dryer died a while back), visit Mom and my youngest brother, and mooch some money from Mom for the electric bill and groceries. I finally managed to do so, getting a later start on the day, but considering that the day itself was several days late, what the heck, eh? I took along the Vaio that Does Not Talk To WiFi There (*sigh*) and my mandolin, figuring that I'd have some time to myself as well, and could work on some of my transcribing/arranging backlog.

When I got there, I found my sisters kids. And learned that my other brother and his wife and son were expected soon for a big sleep-over, and my sister was out fetching pizza. So I got to try to catch a few photos, with partial success (the problem with shooting small children is the same as the problem with shooting kittens. If they're healthy and awake, they move too quickly and too often to compose carefully.

Anyhow, sitting on a chair in the kitchen was a wee guitar. Really wee. As in: well it was bigger than a ukelele at least, but could've been mistaken for one in the fog. (I'm thinkin' maaybe 1/8 size ...?) I picked it up to see how it played, and started tuning it. One of my nephews came in and said, "Uh oh. That's Nicole's." I asked whether my niece was going to object to my playing it, and he said she probably would. Sure enough, she came in, saw me with the guitar, and held out her hands for it. So I had the (*cough*) bright idea of showing her my mandolin.

After that, she was happy to let me (and my brother) play her guitar as much as we wanted, but it wasn't clear that I was ever going to get my mandolin back. She went all over the house with it, not bumping it into too many walls, dancing like someone from The Wiggles with it. She wanted it next to her when she ate, but I took it into another room then ... and as soon as she was done eating pizza, she ran into that room and grabbed the mandolin again. I think someone retrieved it for me when she went to sleep. When I got it back it was impressively out of tune.

I have cute kin.

Anyhow, I got my laundry done, got money to pay BGE, talked politics with my youngest brother much more calmly and agreeably than before the election (though we still don't quite see eye to eye), and talked religion with my other (middle) brother, who usually keeps his beliefs close to his chest (apparently fatherhood is prompting him to verbalize more on the subject). And stayed a lot longer than I'd planned, and found the constant noise (and high voices) draining despite how cheerful and adorable and "yay family" it all was, so I'm hurtin' now (I also had to buy gas and groceries on the way home). Fortunately my Sunday appointment is here at home (I think) so I just have to be awake and dressed and somewhat competent (and dig the drum kit out from behind the stuff stacked in front of it) ... and with any luck I'll manage to recharge enough spoons in the evening to be able to do something fun planned for Monday morning.

I also came away with some homework. Mom asked me to transfer some photos of Cyprus (and relatives there) from her camera to her computer, and said some seemed to be missing. Seeing movies sprinkled among the stills, my guess is that she accidentally shot movies when trying to shoot photos again, just like she did on her previous trip. So I got my brother to copy the camera's contents to a CD, and I'm going to re-learn how to split the movies into individual frames and try to guess which scenes were what she meant to shoot (last time I also got some cool shadows she didn't mean to shoot, because the camera was running while dangling from her wrist as she walked) and extract those. I did it before, but then didn't do it again for so long that I've forgotten how I did it.

Later, if I have any spoons left after the rehearsal in the afternoon, I'll try to get around to writing up some recent thoughts about politics and philosophy. But I wanted to babble about my niece and the mandolin first.

Now to try to figure out how Perrine managed to change the colours on this SSH window just by sitting on the mouse, and how to change it back. Hmph.

QotD

dglenn@panix.com — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 10:25:03 GMT

Commander Kevyn Andreyasn: "Your trysts with sanity are brief and leave you unchanged."

Corporal Pibald: "I'm not ready to settle down, and she says she's allergic to my comic-book collection."

-- from Schlock Mercenary, by Howard Tayler (aka howardtayler), 2007-12-22

QotD

dglenn@panix.com — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 10:25:02 GMT

"In the 1970s when I was a kid, I was coming home from high school one day, and one of my buddies said, 'Hey, you know that punk rock stuff they're talking about?', and I went, 'yeah,' and he said, 'I've got a single, I've got a punk rock single, let's go and hear it.'

"So we went into his house [...] we went upstairs to his bedroom -- there was a couple of us -- and he put on a single. It was a double A-side, and 'Neat Neat Neat' was one of the songs and 'New Rose' was the other song -- and it was by a band called The Damned, who were about to get involved in -- about to start up -- a new type of music that we had never heard before, called punk rock. And I loved punk rock because it sounded like a fight [audience chuckles] and that made me feel happy.

[notices audience laughter]

"I had an interesting and tough childhood. I was like, 'Musical fighting? This is awesome!'"

-- Craig Ferguson, introducing The Damned on the CBS television program The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson, episode aired wee hours of 2008-10-31 (presumably recorded 2008-10-30)

QotD

dglenn@panix.com — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 10:25:01 GMT

"There's a war on. Either we succeed, and their world ends; or they succeed, and ours does. Does it matter that we want them to go on living in our world, that our world has room for them to build cities and parks and futures? Not really. The very act of not getting to define everything for the rest of us is the end, for them. The fact that none of them would actually die, that their children would be fine and their blood unshed, is irrelevant. We can abhor and condemn violence and torture, and this too is an act of war. We can love them depthlessly as people and wish them no harm, but we cannot avoid the implications. If we are considered equals, their world is over. Our lives are the explosives that end it.

"So, okay. Let's sit that knowledge down on our kitchen tables and give it a good look. There are two possible worlds: one where we prevail, and get to live side-by-side, and one where we do not, and are annihilated. And side-by-side looks like annihilation to the folks who have to live next door. There goes the neighborhood. We might think it's a really nice neighborhood to raise our kids; doesn't stop the neighbors from thinking their lives are over because we continue to exist yards away."

-- Little Light, 2008-09-11 [Read the rest of it. Really.]

QotD

dglenn@panix.com — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 10:25:00 GMT

[I try to schedule quotes far enough in advance that I don't need to worry about whether I've remembered to pick one for the next day. Today's, I waited until I knew the winner of yesterday's election to pick. And between finding out that answer and sitting down to edit the QotD queue, multiple worthy candidates crossed my screen. So here are three, still fresh.]

As reported by boston.com reader LynahFaithful, 2008-11-04:

"Overheard in line today in Roxbury:

Polling place volunteer, to a woman in the long line behind me: "Have you been waiting a long time?"

Woman's reply: "About 200 years."

(thanks to siderea for pointing it out)

"America, the great melting pot, where we can show both how progressive and bigoted we are in one trip to the voting booth." -- fuzcat, reacting to the election of Barack Obama on the one hand, and the passage of anti-(same-sex)marriage initiatives on the other, 2008-11-05

acroyear70 reported a conversation late on 2008-11-04:

A friend: So barring any changes due to recounts, lawsuits, etc., our next President is going to be a black man. I wonder what Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks would say about that.
Me: So barring any changes due to recounts, lawsuits, etc., our next President is going to be a person who had a mother of one "race" and a father of another. I wonder what Mildred Loving would say about that.

Ohio

dglenn@panix.com — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 03:35:47 GMT

Ohio.

Fearsome nerves give way to excitement, though I still wait to see a number ≥ 270 so I can actually relax.

Hope ... is a good thing.

Politics, a mix of hope and fear

dglenn@panix.com — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 22:22:53 GMT

I'd hoped to get out during a really low-traffic part of the day, but my body didn't cooperate, so I hit my polling place as the after-work crowd ewas starting. So I had to wait in line for ... uh ... five or six minutes, I guess, since I was out of there ten minutes after I arrived. I'm not thrilled with having a Diebold machine (with no voter-verified paper ballot), but I'm hoping that having Maryland go red would be sufficiently not-credible that they won't try to steal it here.

Every time someone wished me, "Have a good day," I found myself thinking, "This isn't a good day; this is a nervous day. It will become a good day when I hear McCain's concession speech."

Unfortunately, it's going to be a nervous time in the US for a while. I see three possibilities (in broad strokes):

McCain wins and the country shoots itself in the foot over and over while we nervously watch to see whether it's just going to eat itself or become yet another cautionary tale in the history books that nobody heeds when they need to.
Obama wins and we spend four (or better, eight) years with the spectre of assassination hanging over our heads, hoping that the Secret Service gets all the lucky breaks.
Obama wins but gets killed in office, and the US shreds itself spasmodically.

The best of these still means a nervous few years. This is a scary time.

The way I see it, for my beloved country to have a prayer of stopping its disastrous slide, Obama needs to get elected and survive at least two and a half years in office. Ideally, I want him to die of extremely advanced age after serving two terms and having a post-presidential career something like Jimmy Carter's.

I'm also thinking that if Obama serves a term or two intact, the next black president won't face an unusual degree of threat of assassination -- seeing Obama in office that long will make the idea seem less unusual, maybe even less threatening to racists (they still won't like it, but the next one won't seem like the end of the world to them if they see Obama serve out his term without the world ending.

A year or so ago I was thinking that Obama couldn't be elected because an African-American candidate would have to get all the way to the finals and lose, to pave the way for a later one to win. (I was still rooting for him in the primary race, once my first choice dropped out, because I don't believe in creating self-fulfilling prophecies by voting against what I want out of fear.)

All I can say now is: my fellow Americans, please, please prove me wrong, and elect Barack Obama today.

And while I'm spouting off about politics, let me add that I hope the folks facing questions about marriage on their ballots vote to defend marriage ... by not taking it away from folks who only got that long overdue right recently. That is what I see as the true pro-marriage, pro-family position: recognize these families. We need to be moving toward less bigotry in our laws, not more.

QotD

dglenn@panix.com — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 10:25:02 GMT

"Not-voting works only when they don't-govern in response." -- feste_sylvain, 2006-11-07

JackGerundHammer

dglenn@panix.com — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 13:12:10 GMT

Damn it. After a day of feeling cruddy followed by a long night of not quite managing to fall asleep despite a tryptophan-rich meal, I finally achieved sleep at 7:00.

And as of 7:50, there's a jackhammer chittering its way through the sidewalk outside my window. Ten minutes to fucking eight ay em.

Okay, I know that before the weekend this time would've been called ten to nine thanks to Daylight Redistribution Time, but it is still ten to eight this week, and still fifty precious minutes since I finally managed to fall asleep this morning, and still right outside my fucking bedroom window with a thrice-damned pneumatic jackhammer.

I'm feeling sore from the all over muscle clench that noise produced as it woke me.

Damn it.

(And as long as I'm bitching about stuff on my street: sometime between when I came in Hallowe'en night and the next time I looked out the window Saturday afternoon, some asshole snapped off all the trees that my next-door neighbour had planted in the until-then-empty tree-planter-boxes on the sidewalk over the summer. Broken off right about where the branching started. *grrr*)