Month: November 2008

One other thing I forgot to mention – the interest in additional footwear came from the following process. First, I put away all the specialty footwear (the dress shoes, the cowboy boots, the saddle bucks for strategic swing-dance purposes). This cut the numbers down quite a bit.
Then, I put away the Clarks muckers from last year’s Europe trip. There is something wrong with the soles – the left one pops when I walk so loudly that I can hear it over my iPhone podcasts while walking on carpet. On any surface harder than mud, the squish-squish-squish sound of air is plainly audible and incredibly annoying, and I expect to have a blowout any second. Shame, too, because they are right comfy, but they also do this weird thing that will randomly result in a massive shooting pain in one big toe or the other as I push off with that foot while walking.
Then, I put away all the Docs.
(Pick your jaw up off the floor.)
This left me with the following:
* Oxblood Bass loafers, which date back to undergrad days. I put some shoe trees in them to try to stretch them out to the point I can comfortably wear them again, as they are a bit snug and I am retaining liquor.
* Brown Ecco lace-up casuals, from the honeymoon. Again, very comfy, but they also do that weird toe-thing from time to time. They also feel like they might be just a hair too big, which may contribute to the toe thing…any podiatrists or shoe-horses want to comment?
* New Balance 680 gray athletic shoes. I think they are walking shoes, bought for the B2B one year, and I still wear them when I need the Steve Jobs look. (Or today, for instance.)
* White Adidas Stan Smith 2s, bought in a moment of madness and rarely worn because the Seinfeld is not a good look for me. It’s not 1991 any more.
* Brown Clarks loafers, bought a few years back and then largely forgotten about. In fact, I thought I had donated them, or those probably would have been the honeymoon kicks and the Eccos would never have been bought. Definitely comfortable, but also definitely banged up a little, and the combination of roundish shape and pebbly leather just doesn’t quite look right somehow.
And that’s basically it. Take the Docs off the table, and I am left with two or three not-quites and a couple of not-hardlys.
The thing is, my shoe…problem…largely stems from my time in DC, where I had to have something that would look mildly presentable (for IT, anyway), would be comfortable enough for a couple miles’ walking every day, and would stand up to rain and snow. When I got to California, the snow and walking issues went by the boards, to be replaced by the necessity of steel toes (and ideally ESD, but good luck getting all that in one shoe) for the next three years.
The point is, I am not really at a point now where I have to take the “horses for courses” approach to my footwear. All it has to do is be comfy and look good. (Not causing random inexplicable pain falls under “comfy”.)
I don’t know what the point of that is, but that’s just by way of explaining where I’m coming from with the whole “why is he taking his day off to look at shoes?” question.

Tuesday I had breakfast at Fraiche in Palo Alto, then went walking in downtown Los Altos to enjoy the fall colors, then headed for Santana Row and Valley Fair to do some looking around. For some reason, I have in mind that I need new outerwear and shoes, which if you know me at all is a completely preposterous assertion.

A lot of stuff has happened this week, mostly stuff I’d rather not publicly discuss yet – my health and my family are fine, so no panic there – but it’s been a grueling week in a lot of ways and I pulled a couple of really stupid moves that have added complication to my life. And yet, just like it feels sooooo good when you stop banging your head on the brick wall? I feel tired, depleted, exhausted – but I’m OK. I just have this quiet, diminished sort of feeling, like I need to sit down in a big leather chair with a cup of coffee and read something absorbing and just chill myself out for a while. Fortunately, circumstances are such that I can do a little bit of that right now – it’s not great, but it’s adequate for the moment.

The thing is, I caught sight of my reflection in the window on the light rail home last night, and it was a bit surprising, because I didn’t recognize myself for a bit. The same thing happened to me several years ago on another coast, about the time that I really ramped up and started what would eventually be my MVP year at my first job. Now, I’m not sure what it means, other than I’m just getting older and accustomed to the lack of hair.

Many years ago, as I was leaving the East, I said that there comes a time in everyone’s life when you have to stop trying to be the person you were and let yourself be the person you have become. I don’t think I really grasped at the time that it’s not just a one-off incident. Obviously, I’ve accepted that a lot of things I originally wanted are not going to come to pass – and don’t think for a minute that I’m not a little bit salty that a certain jug-eared beanpole from Chicago has MY CAREER PATH that I plotted out in high school and I don’t even get a story credit – but now I think that what I have to do is summon up my inner Doris Day* and say “OK, I’m done fighting it, just go along with the universe and quit trying to swim upstream for a while.”

This is not an easy thing to do, especially for an enneagram-6. You’d think that “Screw it, let go” would be the easiest thing in the world, because how hard is it not to do something? But trying to not think about the future and make sure everything is secured and the path is known, for me, is exactly like trying to hold my breath. I can do it for a little while, but eventually I turn blue and there’s gasping and shrieking.

I don’t think there’s really a point to this, but I haven’t posted since Monday and I just thought it bore writing down somewhere…

* I know what you’re thinking, dear sister, and you can keep your “It’s Raining Men” cracks to yourself.

One Velociraptor per Child (OVPC)

Already I have a major policy difference with the new President before he’s even sworn in…

Obama Wants Lieberman To Remain In Democratic Caucus: President-elect Barack Obama has informed party officials that he wants Joe Lieberman to continue caucusing with the Democrats in the 111th Congress, Senate aides tell the Huffington Post.

This is such a huge mistake I don’t even know how to describe it in words. Leaving Holy Joe in charge of the committee does two things:

1) It leaves an opening for the “death by a thousand cuts” school of sabotage. Remember Whitewater? A bunch of hearings about something that allegedly went down well before Clinton was President wound up as only the second impeachment+trial of a President in American history. I assure you that Lieberman will go on TV with his trademark grave look and say that something deserves “a full and fair hearing” and then whammo, it’s wingnuts on parade. Rezko, Ayers, hell, they may even dig up that guy who says he had gay sex with Obama while they were both coked up. And that’s not the serious problem:

2) It sends a signal that in politics, you can say anything you like, do anything you like, and when it’s over, none of it matters any more. You can say that the candidate of your own party is dangerously unprepared to be President. You can cast doubt on his patriotism. You can sign on with the lowest of talk-radio sludge – and there are no consequences. This is not going to work out. If you undermine your guy, there has to be a price. There was no price to undermining Clinton, and the results speak for themselves.

I know what Obama is trying to do here – he’s trying to be bipartisan and above the fray and let-us-now-reason-together, and God bless him – but this is one where Rahm needs to impress upon him the importance of not starting out by sending the message that there are no consequences for taking an enormous shit on your own leader. Joe Lieberman needs to be forced clean out of the caucus and made to do a deal with the GOP if he wants anything more than a visitor’s pass.

Of course, this could all be Obama’s way of wiping the fingerprints off the knife before the Dem caucus does the deed for him. In which case he is an even slicker operator than I give him credit for. That IS the Chicago way…with apologies to Eliot Ness.

* So I dunked the end of my MagSafe Power Adapter in my iced tea while watching the Vandy-Florida fiasco. It was plugged in at the time. Obviously I yanked it out right quick and unplugged it from the wall safely, but I think the power adapter itself may be cooked.

* The question is, is it worth buying a replacement adapter when, for just over double the money, I could buy a whole new netbook which will let me do 90% of what I do on my current laptop, and force me to learn Linux besides? Having not bought a computer in just over eight years, I am reluctant to shell out for one now, but my current laptop is showing the signs – despite being only two years old, it has been rode hard and put away wet and no fooling; the hard drive has been replaced twice, there’s a non-trivial crack in the case, the display has a couple of pretty good scratches and the general behavior of the system is inconsistent with confidence in its continued reliability. One thing I am definitely considering is running a full backup, formatting the drive, reinstalling the OS and migrating the data back over so as to hopefully get a clean system without compromising any of my own content…

* The thing is, I’m never going to learn anything if I don’t have to use it. The main reason I can’t program is because I have never had to. The only reason I learned Windows was because we took the Mac off my desk at work back in 1998 and forced me to do everything in NT for over a year, and as a result, I became a pretty serviceable NT software technician. That and $1.75 will get you a large coffee at Clocktower (and it’s much better than Starbucks to boot). I realize that Ubuntu Netbook Remix compares to a real Linux system the way a Peel P50 compared to a Bugatti Veyron (Top Gear FTW!!) but you have to crawl before you can fly.

* I’m a little worried about processor performance. I tried to play back a 720p trailer for the new Bond movie today – on a 1.8 Ghz G5 iMac – and got something on the order of one frame every four or five seconds. Now, plainly I don’t plan on watching a lot of HD trailers on a netbook, but the point is, you never know what’s going to be the next killer app that depends on massive cheap processing power. Then again, in the world of mobility computing, everything has to fit on a smartphone screen now…so maybe we’re headed back to a world of 640×480 computing.

* Installing Ubuntu 810 in VMWare. Just to test, you understand. Capped it at 512 MB RAM and 8 GB storage, just to see what the limitations are like.

* The 2.2 firmware for the iPhone will apparently allow OTA downloading of podcasts. If I had this, I would basically never need to take the laptop with me ever again, even when I’m going to be gone for a week. If I can add and delete podcasts remotely and buy new tracks off the iTMS, the computer basically becomes the master repository rather than the necessary daily connection. At that point, the next issue is finding new ways to max out the charge, and I’ve done just about everything I can do on that front.

* Seriously considering getting an iPod Shuffle solely for the purpose of long-haul flights so I don’t donk off my cellphone charge.

* My Buddy Vince Sez, “Nate Longshore is proof that Cal doesn’t pay its players.”

Finis.

Joe Lieberman shouldn’t be chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs. Joe Lieberman shouldn’t be chairman of anything – hell, Joe Lieberman shouldn’t be allowed to go take a piss without a hall pass. When a Senator spends literally the entire Presidential campaign trashing the nominee of his party and actively campaigning for the candidate of the other party, the proper response is to eject him from the caucus so fast that the sonic boom breaks the windows.

The Democrats have over 50 seats in the Senate, but not close enough to 60 to make it worthwhile to keep him around. This isn’t some sort of wacky liberal vindictive spirit or creeping fascism, this is common fucking sense at its finest. If your backup left tackle spent the entire game on the other team’s bench, cheering them on and talking up your team’s weaknesses, you don’t give him a spot in the rotation – you kick him off the team and give his ass a proper Irish blanket party in the locker room on the way out.

When the new Congress convenes in January, Lieberman should be read out of the Democratic Caucus and his seniority should be dead last behind every single new freshman. In fact, he should have no committee assignments at all, of any kind. And if he wants to bolt to the Republicans, the response of the Dem leadership should be to try to make sure the doorknob sticks in his ass-crack on the way out.

So long, Flavius Josephus*. Buy the ticket, take the fucking ride.

* If you understand why I chose this particular slander, you are a bright cookie indeed and I will buy you a pint.

1) He was the direct inspiration for the character of Josh Lyman in The West Wing.

2) His brother was the direct inspiration for the character of Ari Gold in Entourage.

3) He has lately been the head of the DCCC, responsible for the election and re-election of Democrats to the House of Representatives.

This pick is basically Team Obama telling Congress “The train’s leaving. Be on it or be under it.” Nancy Pelosi is still Speaker, but don’t expect her to be setting the agenda anymore, not by a long shot.

One of my best friends ever posted a very classy concession a day or two ago on behalf of the Republicans, and the son of a bitch short-circuited my planned post to the effect of “SUCK IT.” As a result, I now have to do something thoughtful on where the GOP goes from here, because it’s starting to look like the Party of Lincoln is going to spend a couple years as the Party of Rethinkin’. 1700-word claptrot follows…

Continue reading “So what happens now?”

OK, I know a lot of people in California are torn up about the results of Proposition 8. I’m not crazy about it myself, and I’m sure that a lot of people in parts East are thinking “how the hell can something like that pass in California?” Well, I’m going to spell it out for you:

1) California is the largest state in the country, with a massive population that is split in exactly the same fashion as the rest of the country in terms of culture, economics, religion and the urban/rural divide. To use the most hack cliche, there is definitely Red California and Blue California, and once you get outside the major urban centers, it turns really red – mostly because the makeup of the population is largely unchanged from the original Dust Bowl migrants who settled agricultural California during the Depression.

2) The final number looks like it’s going to be 52-48. In other words, if another bite at the apple comes round, shifting 2.5% would do the damn thing.

3) Getting to that 52% took a metric shitload of out-of-state cash and resources, mostly from rectangular states other than California.

4) Most importantly, the “No” vote didn’t jump on this early enough. The initial polling shows the proposition failing to pass by a wide margin, and I think a lot of people who didn’t have a personal interest pretty much punted on the issue – and did so largely out of fear that making a big deal out of gay marriage might worsen the prospects for the Democratic Party’s best shot at the White House in years. You can argue from dusk til dawn about whether this was correct or not, and the morality of it is a SHOW, but what’s done is done…for now.

Now, my understanding is that there’s nothing to prevent offering another proposition next year to basically overturn this one, as all you need in California is 8% on a petition and then 50%+1 in the election. I didn’t expect to find an even longer and more complicated state constitution than Alabama’s all the way out here, but there you go. But most importantly, consider the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States: “citizens of the United States and the state in which they reside.” Uncle Sam has the hydrogen bomb, and if a federal court were to get involved under the “equal protection” clause…well, let’s just say that from a contract law perspective, it may not be that difficult a case to make, especially in front of the Ninth Circuit.

Don’t forget, too – gay marriage passed in the California legislature twice, only to be vetoed both times by the Governator. Then, when the state court ruling came down, he said he wouldn’t contest it. He even had some words to say against 8, though not nearly enough to actually make a difference, but you have to wonder what he might do now if another constitutional amendment were to pass out of the legislature and go to the ballot next November.

Now, the dry political-legal analysis aside…

I come from a famously benighted state, one that had to have basic ideas about equality before the law enforced at the point of a gun for a very long time. I’ve lived in a cloud of irrational bigotry and seen the effect it has on people. I’ve seen people cut off their nose to spite their face while other people suffer as a result, and I know how discouraging and sickening it is to live with.



But that’s not all there is.

A minority, by the very definition of the word, doesn’t have 50%+1. They can’t do it alone. It takes people with nothing to gain for themselves, people who could go on with their lives unaffected and untroubled, stopping and saying “Hold. Up.”

Ken Burns did a movie about the earliest suffragette movement called “Not For Ourselves Alone.” Or in Latin, non nobis solum. That’s when the important stuff happens – when people start looking beyond themselves. When you get out there and start to push back for your family and friends and loved ones.

November 5 was always going to be the first day of the hard part. The plan is just the same as it ever was. Let’s eat enough Advil to make the throbbing stop, let’s get enough Gatorade down us to get rehydrated, and then let’s ride for our people.

I think Olbermann, for all his bombast, nailed it: it’s a man on the moon.

This is the greatest fucking country on the face of the earth and don’t you forget it.