Sorry if this seems out of context

The following was written in response to a debate between myself and PAgent over on the Portland Metroblog, about the anti-fur protesters and Schumacher Furs, and the recent developments that seem to have Schumacher Furs moving out of their downtown location - news at 11:00.

I've also jumped into the discussion at Loaded Orygun, and at The Mercury's Blogtown... though not so much over at Jack Bog's place, since he appears to see any dissent from his angry-old-man routine to be "hate speech" invoking bannination. Heh.

Here's my response to PAgent:

Thanks for the debate. I appreciate it very much and am glad for the opportunity.

That being said... This boils down to two points, as I see it. First, you seem unaware of what the publicly stated aims of the protesters are, which means you're arguing what you believe their motives are, rather than going by what they've said. And you seem intent on enforcing some code of how and where protests should be conducted - "public debate is what happens in newspapers, or in city council meetings". Luckily, free speech is more broadly protected than that.

To the first point, I'm including some links at the end of this comment. There are plenty more; this has been a widely reported topic in the local media. I'm sure I've missed some, but I'd like to draw your attention to the first link. One of the protesters, Matt Rossell, had an editorial published in the Portland Tribune back in March - have you read it? In it, and in other articles in the local media, he specifically said that the goal of his group is education; education about how the furs are obtained and from where (China, from what I understand).

He specifically denies that they are trying to "shut down" Schumacher Furs: "With protests originally scheduled to last only through Christmas, In Defense of Animals’ objective always has been to educate people about the inherent cruelty of the fur industry, not to put Schumacher out of business.
The strategy is simple: Portlanders are compassionate, and most will make humane consumer choices when given accurate information."

One thing I've learned in my reading that I will admit I didn't know before is that there have been arrests during the protests, and that there have been some vandalism. That being the case, it seems that the protesters spokesperson acknowledges that the aim is peaceful, and that those who have broken the law have had to face the consequences of their actions. That sounds about right to me, and stands in contrast to Gregg Schumacher's claim of death threats against him. If there were credible death threats, then I imagine that law enforcement has been involved. I haven't seen any reports of that.

And the claims of death threats against the business, which appear baseless, stand in contrast to the actual death threats the Schumachers' posted in their windows. How we deal with those who disagree with us is a reflection of who we are. In my view, it was not a mature response, and was actually dismissive of the protesters. It was not on the same level as the signs and protests I've seen deployed and documented in videos.

And, yes, I do consider this a public debate. In what way is it not? In fact, Rossell has said that there were steps that the Schumachers could take that would satisfy the protesters and end the demonstrations. I haven't seen what Rossell thinks those steps would be, but I'd guess that it would be some form of acknowledgment of where and how the furs are harvested - assuming that they were seeking education and not shutting down the business. I admit that this is speculation on my part, and I think I'll try to track down Rossell and put the question to him myself. I'll happily report what information I can get.

Sadly, I don't have to look very hard for bigotry, but you're right, it's everywhere. I'm sure I show evidence of it myself, which is why I'm grateful for friends (and others) who can call me on it when I show it. I welcome that kind of criticism. It doesn't appear the Schumachers share my openness to criticism.

To your last argument: even if I accept your unfounded premise that the aim of the protests was to "shut down" the Schumachers, and even if I also accept your premise that the Schumachers business may be harmed by moving to the 'burbs (if the downtown is as scary for their customers as they claim, the counter-argument could be made that the lower rents, better parking, and proximity to their customer base could actually HELP their business, not hurt it), there's still this fear underlying what you say. Is it so scary to have someone disagree with you? Even if they disagree on a weekly basis, loudly and as often as possible?

It doesn't matter if I agree with the speech of others. If their speech is hateful, I want everyone to hear it, because I think that rational people can recognize hateful speech when they see it. I don't fear the vocal minority. I want to protect it.

An example of my personal hero is Richard Dreyfuss, the actor. During the filming of "Close Encounters of the Third Kind", when it was being filmed in Mobile, Alabama, there was a group of Klansmen that wanted to march in a parade. There were many who opposed the Klansmen marching; they wanted to silence them. Mr. Dreyfuss actually demonstrated in favor of letting them march, on the same basis that I myself said: all speech is protected, and (pardon this analogy, I can't help it) give your opponents enough rope to hang themselves. If their underlying nature is bigoted, they will show that side of themselves sooner or later.

I may have the details wrong on that story; I read it long ago, and the underlying premise stuck with me. It may be a myth that I use to support my beliefs, but even if the actual story is different I think the value I got from it is a good one.

I would support the peaceful protest of any topic in the public sphere, even if I do not, myself, support their view. If someone was trying to "shut down" a business that I supported, if I wanted to take part, I would encourage communication between the two parties, and do my part to make sure both sides understand their responsibilities in engaging the public. I applauded Randy Leonard in trying to mediate in this case, and I think the evidence is clear that it was the business owners who were beyond help, not the protesters.

Abortion clinics, fur stores, gay/lesbian bookstores, whatever - none of them have a right to exist, free from criticism, regardless of whether I believe in their rightness or wrongness. Someone's always going to disagree with you. The best response is to engage them and learn from them. And if they appear to have all the power and you don't, then you might have to take the debate outside of city councils or newspaper editorial pages, places that seem stacked in favor of the ones with money and power. Especially if you're young and idealistic and don't have a lot of cash on hand.

Links mentioned above:

Matt Rossell's editorial in the Portland Tribune

The website of the Portland anti-fur protesters • 10:05 PM 3 comments

Defining "obscure"

Remember "A Scanner Darkly"?

It's OK if you remember the movie, instead of the book, because Linklater's movie adaptation was about as faithful to the Philip K. Dick novel as any movie could be.

The reason I ask, and the event I'm referencing, is when I drove up to Seattle to see the film. Longtime readers may remember this.

Not obscure enough? Well, let me get closer to the real reason I'm bringing this up. Via Boing Boing, I've learned that Jonathon Lethem, an author whose topics are very much like PKD's, is going to be doing commentary on the DVD release of "A Scanner Darkly".

Which brings me to the origin of this post: reading that Mr. Lethem is going to be offering commentary on PKD's work actually made me gasp out loud. • 12:38 PM 1 comments

Infiltration

The dream:

I'm encased in hardened battle armor, from my head to my feet, strong thick slabs of metal, and the outside is be-weaponed with lasers, slug-throwers, grapples. I'm floating just above the surface of a dead planet, shades of gray. In my sights, separated from me by the inky-black airless vacuum, is an alien, also protected by its own battle armor, also in shades of gray and black, and also studded with weapons of all kinds, low- and high-tech. The alien is a cylinder shape, no legs, tapered on the bottom, and rounded on top, with triangle-shaped eye-slits and pointy sensors on top of its rounded head. It's buzzing menacingly.

It's closing in, and I feel claustrophobic inside my armor. The alien shoots at me, a tangle-cord, and it wraps around my chest armor and squeeeeeezes me. It actually is stronger than my armor! The ropes constrict and begin crushing my armor against me. I'm trapped! I'm frantically firing off lasers, trying to cut the alien into shreds; they seem to hit, to score its armor, but the alien just laughs it off and keeps closing, reeling in the ropes and crushing me, closer, closer, can't... breathe! The buzzing gets louder and louder...

The Awakening:

Smacky is laying on top of the covers, right next to me, causing them to wrap tightly around me, pinning me under them. His face is right in front of mine. He's purring loudly, and trying to tuck his head into the nape of my neck. "Ack! Get off of me!" I cry, and I fling the covers back and grab Smacky and put him out in the hall and close my bedroom door and go back to dreamless sleep. • 10:33 AM 0 comments

Yes

Tracy asks:

"Are you ever going to blob again?"

Short answer: Yes.

Slightly less short answer: Yes, when I think of something to blob about. I did change the POTW, though. Nice, eh? • 10:30 AM 1 comments

87.34% snark-free thanks

• Thanks to my family for reminding me where I come from and for always feeling like "home".
  
• Thanks to my sister's in-laws for never even noticing that there's a distinction.
  
• Thanks to my friends for being the most honest, straight-forward, and ethical people I know. Plus, you're all hilarious. Have I mentioned that lately?
  
• Thanks to my coworkers for always trying to just fix it.
  
• Thanks to Smacky for being about as "cat" as anyone can be.
  
• Thanks to Apple for making such sexy sexy hardware and software.
  
• Thanks to my negative voice. Without you I wouldn't have a challenge to overcome.
  
• Thanks to the netroots for finally becoming a progressive, political force.
  
• Thanks to everyone who voted Democratic in the last election. I was so scared that... shudder... well, let's not think about that.
  
• Thanks to redheaded women, everywhere. Just thanks. Damn. Yes, even the crazy ones. Especially them.
  
• Thanks to Brooks running shoes for making the perfect shoes for my feet.
  
• Thanks to the framers of the Oregon Constitution for all the free speech protections. I appreciate and use them almost every day.
  
• Thanks to the New Atheists, like Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins and James Randi. It may take another 500 years but ours will be the majority view someday. Or we'll be dead and unable to care.
  
• Thanks to the Iron Horse, Maya's Tacqueria, Backspace, Twin Paradox, the Limelight, the Acropolis. It's not just the food that keeps me coming back, although that's excellent, too.
  
• Thanks to all my favorite living authors, too many to mention, but here's a few: Tim Powers, Bruce Sterling, Carl Hiaasen, Arthur Nersesian, Neil Gaiman... the list goes on and on and deserves it's own post, if not it's own site (but www.bookslut.com is already taken). You inspire me, amaze me, and fill me with envy and I would read every word you write. Fuck that - I would pay for every word you write.
  
• Thanks to God, for not existing or showing any evidence of ever having existed, in spite of everyone looking for You. You've got everyone fooled, and boy, is everyone going to feel silly when they realize You're not there. Then we'll all have a good laugh and finally get around to that whole "world peace and love" thing people have been promising for centuries.
  
• Last, but not least, thanks to each and every one of you who reads this, or anything else I've ever written. I do it for myself because I'm a selfish bastard, and I'm still amazed that anyone else even understands it, let alone enjoys it and wants more. I wouldn't stop even if I could.

...I'm sure I'm missing people. I'm sure there are people out there who would prefer a specific mention rather than being included in a broad category. I'm sure that I will think of much much better/funnier things to say immediately after clicking "Publish Post".

But I'm also sure that you'll understand. Happy Thanksgiving. • 6:09 PM 3 comments

Shifting perspective

Walking in to work one morning with Tracy, another group of employees were heading out. One of them is a lady I'll call H. H and her co-workers were in charge of a county work group - people working off minor crimes and misdemeanors through community service work. As such, H was dressed in grungy work clothes; baggy jeans, old boots, a sweater, down vest, hair tucked up under a baseball cap, everything looking worn out and dirty from use.

I'd talked to her before on a normal, "I'm here to fix your computer" basis, but before she started with the work crews, so I was used to her wearing business casual clothing, very conservative business casual clothing. In fact, H struck me as conservative in personality, friendly but mostly quiet and polite and practical.

Even that morning, seeing her in completely different clothes, after I had the shock of recognition, I didn't see her as anything other than a co-worker whose computer I'd fixed from time to time. She recognized me and said "Oh, hi, Brian" and I said good morning back to her.

Tracy asked me about her, later, and after my memory had been jogged (it was eight hours later when Tracy had asked) I told her.

Tracy mentioned that H, even in no makeup, struck her as very beautiful. Tracy mentioned a resemblance to Jennifer Garner.

I gave Tracy a look, because, as I said above, I had never seen that in H at all. H was older than Ms. Garner, for one reason, and there's a mental space that movie stars occupy that's separate from the space everyday people occupy, which is why it's difficult sometimes to recognize a star encountered unexpectedly on the street (have I ever told you the story about flirting with Heather Locklear?) As Tracy's thought percolated my mind, however, I could feel my perspective shifting a little bit. Remembering H in the previous setting and clothing I knew her from, I joked, "She could probably pull off the 'sexy librarian' look!" Tracy agreed whole-heartedly. But eventually I shrugged it off.

The next night I had a dream about H. An intimate one. It startled me. I laughed about it the next day with Tracy, who offered me a high-five in return.

"Right! ON!" she said.

Later that day, I was leaving the county motor pool and I saw H again. She was crossing the street heading in to the parking lot. She was dressed similarly (or exactly; the clothes are so generic I couldn't tell the difference). As she walked, her back to me, I noticed that her hair, even though it was pulled through the back of the baseball cap and held with a Scunci... it was very long, hanging down to her backside (hidden, dammit, in the oversized jeans). Again, I felt the contradictory mental images of her clashing, in this case several images: H in make-up and glamorous Hollywood clothes (like Jennifer Garner); H in generic business casual clothes (the librarian before she lets down her hair and takes off her jacket that hides her curves); H in glasses, a white blouse, and short skirt, hair flying wildly (sexy librarian post-revelation); and H as I saw her before me, in dirty grungy baggy work clothes, but with her hair falling down her back.

Trying to reconcile all these images, I nearly rear-ended a Porsche Boxster S. While driving a county car.

Damn.

A shifting perspective is a wonderful thing to experience. Even if nothing comes of it, I'm going to remember that moment when my consciousness changed how I looked at someone else. I live for those moments; they are as special to me as moments of epiphany are to a spiritual or religious person.

So much of what we see is filtered through our expectations. Change your expectations and you can literally change how you see the world.

In this case, you can learn to see a hidden beauty you had never before noticed. The value of that shift is incalculable. • 7:27 AM 2 comments

A private note

Dear Marlene,

Please do not ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever admit that you are wrong on anything.

Not only would doing so make you "management material" no longer, my head would asplode.

Signed,

Brian • 4:40 PM 1 comments

Windfall or stay of execution?

I sent FlexCar, the car rental service that I use instead of owning a car, an email last week. I'd noticed that somehow, my billing had changed from the Advantage 10 (base fee for 10 hours of usage in a month, gives access to cars limited to 7 or 10 hours of use per day, no charge for the hours between 11 PM and 7 AM) to the Standard plan (which charges a flat rate by the hour, does not give access to hour-limited cars, and charges for all hours of the day) without my knowing it.

I asked their billing department how that had happened. If I change my billing I get a confirmation email from FlexCar, so I'm pretty sure I didn't accidentally switch it.

That change would result in a much larger bill for me, so I was concerned.

I never got a reply to that email, but I did receive my bill this week and the bill shows no charge at all for last month's use. It also shows no actual use, even though I did, indeed, use FlexCar in the month of October.

I can't tell if they're being nice because of a billing error on their end, or if there's a problem with their billing software and I will, eventually, be charged for October's use. It kinda feels like a windfall (assuming I was on the Advantage 10 plan, as, um, planned, I would have owed $144.50) but I'm still concerned that they might charge me later.

Hello, FlexCar? Can I get a reply to my original question?

Update: I got a second bill in today's mail. It explains that there was a billing error, and that my card will be charged. They're holding off for two days for some reason - they claim it's for my convenience or something.

Good thing I didn't spend that money, huh? • 12:31 PM 0 comments

Overheard in the cafeteria

"You know, women are just like cars. They both come with strings attached." - some hairy guy in a cheap suit, to a companion.

...whaaaaaaaaaaaaa?

1. I can see that this gentleman probably has relationship issues.
   
2. What kind of car comes with a string?!
   
3. For that matter, there's a whole world of social awkwardness in considering women and strings together, but since I am a gentleman I am so not going there.
   
4. As a simile/metaphor... it doesn't even make sense!

• 11:44 AM 3 comments

The Big Apple

Generally, every Christmas season, my family (me, my sister and her husband and kids, her in-laws, and my dad and his girlfriend (my aunt - long story)) plan a trip somewhere.

Generally, we go somewhere warm - we've been to Mexico a few times, and Hawaii once. They've been to Aruba (I didn't go that year). We're not a cold-weather kind of family.

The past couple of years we haven't gone anywhere. The last trip was to Puerto Vallarta, and that was at least two Christmases ago.

So when my sister called me and left a message saying that she'd made some holiday plans, I was curious. At this late date, any trip out of the country is going to be expensive - usually we have stuff locked down by October at the latest. This year, because of a general lack of funds, I had assumed we'd just be going to the beach or something cheap.

It was a bit of a disappointment, because a good friend of mine, and my sister's brother-in-law, David, had made comments about marrying his long-time girlfriend Jackie, at Christmas, wherever we ended up. I felt a bit sad at missing that opportunity. Oh, did I explain that David lives in New York City? So he wouldn't be flying himself, Jackie, and their two kids out to Portland just to go to the beach.

When I called my sister to find out what the plans were, it's amazing, for all the above reasons, that I hadn't seen the obvious solution:

We're going to New York City for Christmas.

Staying with David and Jackie in Long Island (on Long Island? Which is correct?)

I haven't been to the Big Apple since early 2001 - pre-9/11. Um, OK, actually, that was the only time I've been to New York. At that time, David was still dating Jackie but was living in a one-bedroom, sixth-floor walk-up in Spanish Harlem, on (I believe) 102nd and 10th, with two other guys. That was a fun trip, and I would not have believed that three straight guys could share a one-bedroom apartment so easily. Not to mention having a guest for a couple of nights. But having different work schedules helps tremendously.

On that trip I went to the Museum of Natural Science and History, walked up to the top of the Statue of Liberty, and walked around Times Square. This was all pre-digital cameras, at least for me, so I don't have pictures online. But it was a great trip.

I'm really looking forward to going back to New York. Christmas, my birthday (my 42nd, actually), and, if I can stretch it out, New Year's Eve.

I know I've said this before, but I personally believe that the most romance-filled night of the year is New Year's Eve. When did Harry meet Sally when they finally got together? New Year's Eve. Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan in "Sleepless in Seattle"? New Year's Eve.

I could go on and on. And it's my blog - it's not like anyone's going to stop me. But for now I'm just going to sit here and ponder all the really cool things to do in New York City during Christmas...

Feel free to leave suggestions in the comments... • 10:13 AM 2 comments

Cure

Randy Milholland, creator of online comic Something Positive, claims that a Google search for "baby penguins" can cure a bad mood.

I'm just passing that along. No linkie - you'll have to do the hard work yourself. • 11:38 AM 0 comments

Numbers

My weekend, in numbers:

• 3 day weekend (thanks, Veterans!)
  
• 4 - surprises for the author in my NaNovel
  
• 10 - miles run on Sunday
  
• 12.75 - dollars spent on food at Sunday's Blazer game (thanks, Gina!)
  
• 97 - points scored by the Blazers on Sunday(no chalupa)
  
• 103 - points scored by the Dallas Mavericks (which brings their record to 2-4)
  
• 6,293 - seconds it took me to run the above-mentioned 10 miles
  
• 6,992 - words written on my NaNovel. A marathon!
  
• 7504 - calories eaten (not so good)
  
• 20,333 - total words written on my NaNovel

• 10:15 AM 2 comments

Sweet suite

Ken and I are going to the Blazer game tonight. A friend of Tracy's was generous enough to gift me with an invitation to join her in a suite at the Rose Garden. I've never been in one before; I'm assuming it's a nice way to catch a game.

They're playing Dallas tonight. I know very little about the team this year, having given up hope for the Blazers two seasons ago. But I guess they've been winning some tough games, and not giving up, and showing heart and all those sports metaphors.

Should be fun... I'll report back about how it turned out. • 5:10 PM 1 comments

Dad dream

Dear Dad:

I had the strangest dream yesterday. You were driving along, staring straight ahead at the road, not looking left or right. You were going along just over the speed limit, not enough to get busted, though. You were on SR 14 in Washington, just on the other side of the river from Oregon.

I was in a car, with my friend Ken, in his little red Corolla, and we were on SR 14 in Washington, too.

And you glanced at your fingernails, as if checking out a manicure or somethin', and you slowly pulled away from us. All without looking over.

It was a funny dream.

...or was it? • 5:33 PM 2 comments

Doin' the Snoopy dance, too

Today's musical accompaniment has been "Future Soundtrack For America", which was great in 2004, then became almost too painful to listen to, but is great again; and Green Day's "American Idiot", which is has a whole new, less bitter, meaning for me today.

Over and over and over again.

And I'm dancing a lot.

I guess I'll have to re-start my political blog again. Turns out winning is energizing and anti-demoralizing. Who knew? Now I've got lots to say again that isn't angry! • 4:43 PM 1 comments

Whoa, whoa, whoa!

Want to know just how different the 110th Congress is going to be?

Introducing the first-ever Muslim Congressman, Representative Keith Ellison, from the great state of Minnesota.

It should surprise no one that he ran, and won, as a member of the Democratic Party. Y'know, the party of inclusion.

Hey, maybe we can all get along. • 11:48 AM 1 comments

Laissez les bons temps rouler!

Bye, Rumsfeld!

The Donald becomes the first recipient of Lunar Obverse's "Yellow Undies" award. I hope (oh, how I hope!) that there will be many, many more.

Don't let an IED hit your ass on the way out!

And, sadly, Bush had to reverse himself, after defending Rumsfeld time and again. But when the Army Times, Navy Times, Marine Times and Air Force Times newspapers all join in calling for the Defense Secretary's resignation, truly... it's time to go.

Wait, did I say "sadly"? Sorry, it's hard to read what I'm saying while I'm wearing this huge grin on my face.

I hope our president likes the taste of crow...

Good news comes in threes, they say. But I've lost count of all the good news for our country that I've heard in the last 24 hours. Still, if there's more to come, I'm so ready for it.

Truly, this is the best day of my political life. • 11:35 AM 0 comments

Size 10

This month's Wired Magazine deals with The New Atheism, and includes this telling quote from the author, Gary Wolf:

I RETURN FROM OXFORD enthusiastic for argument. I immediately begin trying out Dawkins' appeal in polite company. At dinner parties or over drinks, I ask people to declare themselves. "Who here is an atheist?" I ask.

Usually, the first response is silence, accompanied by glances all around in the hope that somebody else will speak first. Then, after a moment, somebody does, almost always a man, almost always with a defiant smile and a tone of enthusiasm. He says happily, "I am!"

But it is the next comment that is telling. Somebody turns to him and says: "You would be."

"Why?"

"Because you enjoy pissing people off."

"Well, that's true."

This type of conversation takes place not in central Ohio, where I was born, or in Utah, where I was a teenager, but on the West Coast, among technical and scientific people, possibly the social group that is least likely among all Americans to be religious. Most of these people call themselves agnostic, but they don't harbor much suspicion that God is real. They tell me they reject atheism not out of piety but out of politeness. As one said, "Atheism is like telling somebody, 'The very thing you hinge your life on, I totally dismiss.'" This is the type of statement she would never want to make.

This is the statement the New Atheists believe must be made – loudly, clearly, and before it's too late. I continue to invite my friends for a nice, invigorating stroll down Logic Lane. For the most part, they just laugh and wave me on.

If we, as a society, don't offer respect to those who believe in a real Easter Bunny, or laugh at the followers of Marshall Applewhite (nervously, because they're all dead now), why is belief in the God of Abraham accorded more respect?

Since the central tenet of Christianity is that only by accepting Jesus Christ as one's "personal savior" can one enter Heaven, it's apparent that Christianity is unable to co-exist with religious beliefs that counter that idea. People who claim belief in Christianity but pretend to tolerance are, in the view of the New Atheists, and in my own view, fence-sitters. Toss in the other things that Christianity requires one to believe, like the Virgin Birth, or global floods, or multiple forms of immortality and resurrection, ideas incompatible with the evidence that surrounds us today, and the practice, let alone the idea, of tolerance is pushed to its limit.

Post-9/11 (and 3/11, and 7/7, not to mention the Iraq Occupation and the rude introduction of the various Islamic sects like the Sunni and Shia), Americans can no longer ignore the fact that there are other religions than Christianity in the world, and that those religions are just as fundamentalist as Christianity can be.

The irony is that making a case for the natural world view, one that rejects supernaturalism, is seen as evangelical. It creates embarrassment, not only for those listening to the arguments but those making the arguments, also. When I, myself, bring up the topic I chuckle nervously and call it "evangelical atheism".

But I think that the embarrassment stems from the deep, irrational taboo we have against contradicting others' god-belief, unless we are promoting an alternative god-belief. I think that this taboo is no more rational than the belief that someone with chocolate-colored skin is somehow a "lesser" human than one with pinkish skin.

And I believe that this taboo can be overcome. What bothers me is that it may not be overcome - and I fear the consequences of that.

And it bothers me not a bit that I now borrow a phrase from a radical religious leader to draw my intellectual line:

"Here I stand. I can do no other." - Martin Luther

• 6:59 AM 3 comments

I can't believe it

Democratically-controlled House of Representatives, led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

I like it. Got a nice ring to it. Say it with me:

Subpoena power.

There's gotta be some urine-soaked tighty-whities in the White House tonight.

In other news, the bOregonian is calling Measures 39 (prohibiting public transfer of property to private hands) and 44 (expanding prescription drugs under the Oregon Health Plan) as passing - both of those got my vote, too. Everything else is failing, which is also how I voted.

Sadly, Connecticut (and the world) appears to be still stuck with Joe "Joe for Joe's sake" Lieberman. Wanker. That's my only major disappointment tonight, though.

In other news, I haven't felt this good on Election Night since... since... um, ever. (In '92, I voted for Perot - don't be mad, I was a crazy Libertarian) • 10:15 PM 2 comments

Bump

I must have felt last night's earthquake last night.

But at the time I just thought it was the neighbors upstairs falling down on the floor.

I should have known something was up when Smacky came running in from the bedroom. • 7:07 AM 0 comments

Skills

I slipped into the bus shelter behind the old man, where it was dry. I bit into my apple, a juicy delicious Honeycrisp, sweet and mixed red and green in color. The old man, tall, white hair cut into near-invisibility in a buzz, barrel-chested and skinny-legged, looked like a football coach, his back to me as he watched for the bus. He jumped at the sound of my apple bite and looked over his shoulder.

"Oh, sorry," he said. "I didn't hear ya sneak up on me." His voice was kind and a bit sad, not accusing me so much as he was wistful. He picked up his bag, which had been sitting on the bench.

"No problem," I said. I was content to stand and try to finish my apple before the bus showed up.

He turned completely around. "You know," he said, "30 years ago, you wouldn't have been able to do that." He had a slight lisp, and it looked like his nose had been broken and reset oddly. His lip half-curled. "I've lost some skills since then." His eyes lowered and he stuffed his hands into his jacket pockets.

I wondered what he was remembering. Did he serve in the military? Or just have to spend a lot of time in places where one doesn't let their guard down? I smiled around a mouthful of apple. "I'm sure that you've gained some skills in that time, though, too."

"Oh, maybe so, maybe so," he conceded. "It's hard to know whether the gain has been worth it, though." He turned and looked down the street. "The bus'll be here in, oh, about two minutes."

"How true. We take what we get and do what we can with it." In the span of just a few minutes, I'd come to like this guy. I silently wished him luck.

It's an odd feeling, liking strangers. I'm not used to it, yet. And it may only be for today. • 12:33 PM 0 comments

META NaNoWriMo - Day 3

It's taken me three days to start to get a rhythm. At first, I was going nuts with over-thinking my first line. I wanted it to be good. I wanted it to be perfect. I had spent some time on outlines, and character sketches, and writing down bits of dialogue or scenes I wanted to include, through the latter half of October, but I was still faced with the question of where to start, and whose voice was going to tell the story. Big Important Questions, questions I could Ponder Endlessly.

Sadly, the pressure of getting something, anything, committed to the big white blank window forced me to just start writing. I realized that I didn't have to be perfect. I just have to be version 1.0.

Besides, in the past, when I wrote longer stories, the first stuff I wrote didn't turn out to be the beginning of the story. It took me a bit to find the characters and the voice. It's not that what was first was junk - it was more like clearing my throat, or warming up.

Once the logjam was broken, the story just took on a life of its own. I'm on a roll, now.

If you want to see the very first words that flowed from my brain and came out of my fingers onto the screen, this is where I started. Go easy on me.

Remember that the motto of NaNoWriMo is "Quantity, not quality"... • 9:42 PM 0 comments

Yes, I voted

Yay! I voted. I voted "Democratic" on all the people, I voted "Yes" to the library measure and the schools, and I voted "No" on all the other measures except for Measure 39 and Measure 44.

Oh, and I didn't vote at all for all the judges, or anyone running unopposed. And I honestly can't remember what I voted on the Metro bond measure. I hate Metro as an example of an unaccountable quasi-public agency (an example of Portland's governmental corruption - handing money out to favored parties) but they're asking for money for what they were originally created to do (preserve greenspaces and parks and stuff) so it seemed like a good thing.

Remember, as Gov. Howard Dean said, "YEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAARGGGGGGGGGGGGH!".

Oh, and also, he said, but I can't find a link anywhere, so you're just going to have to trust me, he said, "If all you do is vote, you barely get a passing grade in citizenship."

On that basis, yay! I'm (barely) passing! • 6:29 AM 0 comments

Don't forget

Don't forget that this month is National Novel Writing Month and that I'll be working feverishly trying to crank out my 1667 words a day (on average) and posting some of the results over here.

So posting here might be spotty until midnight, 30 November, 2006. Maybe earlier if I get a burst of speed and finish early.

Thanks. To the (on average) 214 people who visit me daily, I don't want to lose your visits. It means a lot to me. • 6:29 AM 1 comments