My car smelled of smoke yesterday.  Note the word choice - "like smoke" suggests someone has been puffing up in the back, while "of smoke" should imply that part of the car itself has taken on that particular smell, perhaps because it was freakin' on fire.  I cannot begin to describe how disappointed I am in this car; it's a Honda Civic that I bought brand-spanking new in 2003 with the purpose of driving it into the ground, or until we gave a well-used but safe-and-functional car to a relative graduating from college.  I've kept this thing impeccably maintained.  Not just routine oil changes but the service packages they recommend for every blah-miles.  And, like a really crappy sitcom plot, it hit 90k miles and began to fall apart like a leper on a roller coaster. 

Until roaring flames prove otherwise, I'm assuming that I just drove past a(n invisible) brushfire yesterday and the smell lingered in the car, because I've poked around under the hood and all the bits look unmelty.  So far its other problems don't seem to pose a safety hazard: the dead automatic door lock is an inconvenience; the window stays in place thanks to cardboard wrapped in silicon, the air compressor that screeches and sucks power from the engine isn't an issue now that summer is coming to a close and the window shoots down faster than it ever did on its little motor once I've plucked out the silicon. 

Fire, though.

The cost of repairs is estimated at $2.5k including labor.  The tires will need to be replaced in a year for $400.  And none of this factors in some motherfreakin' fire.

The Kelly Bluebook value of the car is about $4k, and thanks to the crappy economy I can get $4k for it without needing to make the repairs (although ... um... wonder what they'll say when I mention the smoke...).  I trade in the car, I don't have to make those repairs I know about and whatever else might need to be done to the Lepermobile as its parts gradually get flung to the side of the road like confetti.  Although, I trade in the car, I start making car payments again...

It would be cheaper to make the repairs.  Short-term and long-term, maintaining the car I have is more cost-effective than buying a new one.  But this is a Honda Civic with under 100,000k miles on it and I'm exceptionally grumpy that I can no longer trust it for anything more than running local errands.  Ya know, because of the fire.  Brown and I have been planning to buy a four-door car as our next vehicle and I am sorely tempted to cut my losses and move our timetable up by two years.  And it doesn't help that we rented a Toyota Rav4 when we went out of town last weekend: it had 27k miles on it but drove like it came new off of the lot, had one of the nicest consoles I've seen, and got an average of 26.5mpg. On highways it was punching 32mpg in the face and loving it.  The Lepermobile - again,  this is a Honda Civic built for longevity and fuel economy - gets 21mpg in spite of a brand-new oxygen filter and regular maintenance.  When exactly did some SUVs stop becoming gas-sucking blights on the planet?  Those things better require the soul of a freshly clubbed baby seal to make, or I'm going to have to rearrange some mental furniture. 

Bah, I say.  Bah.

Brown doesn't understand why I love fish, adore sharks, and my favorite movie used to be Deep Blue Sea,* but I don't like the Discovery Channel's Shark Week.  Well...

--- SCENE: Murky footage of the sky, shot just beneath the water level of the ocean.
--- NARRATOR: Blah blah blah, unchanged for millions of years, blah blah, perfect predator.
--- TITLE: Silhouette of a shark glides past the camera; opening title fades into view.  Note: Title must always be slightly contradictory such as " Misunderstood Monsters," "Blood in the Water: Since It's Your Blood It's All Your Fault," or "Tiger Sharks: Deadly Seakittens."
--- NARRATOR: Blah blah blah, sharks live their own lives, fulfill a valuable role in the ecosystem, blah blah blah.
--- SCENE: Footage of sharks doing shark stuff.  This includes, coincidentally, sharks devouring everything they can.
--- NARRATOR: Sharks are an apex predator, blah blah blah, highly-evolved sense of smell, blah.
--- SCENE: More footage of sharks eating. 
Cuts to scene of SPECIALIST.  Note: Specialist will either sitting in his laboratory with the jaw of a shark and plastic model shark parts strewn out over the table, or, if he/she is a particularly rugged specialist, will be sitting on the prow of a ship.
--- SPECIALIST:  Details about sharks and shark history, blah blah, why some sharks are different from others, blah.
--- SCENE: Sharks swimming, SPECIALTIST continues to discuss the habits of sharks.
--- NARRATOR: Blah blah, beautiful but misunderstood animals, blah blah, perfect killing machines with only one natural enemy.
--- SCENE: Mild graphic shark death, such as American fishermen hauling sharks out of the water for sport.
--- NARRATOR: Description of shark losses and effect of losses on the shark population and the ecosystem of the sea.
--- SCENE: Moderate graphic shark death, such as sharks caught on commercial fishing lines or bludgeoned on docks.
--- NARRATOR: Elaborate description of why sharks are necessary and why man is the real monster.
--- SPECIALIST: Supporting statements for what the narrator just said; details about general shark population crashes and specific crashes within certain species of sharks.  Emphasis on slow gestation times, lack of real information on how sharks breed or mature, etc. 
--- SCENE: Severe graphic shark death, usually on a Southeast Asian fishing boat.  Closeup on sharks being definned and the rest of the body thrown back into the water.
--- SPECIALIST: Shark fin soup. 
--- SCENE: Living, unthreatened sharks minding their own business.  Note: No more footage of them eating as that would be the wrong message at this point in the documentary.
--- SPECIALIST: Possible extinction of certain species of sharks in X-number of years. 
--- NARRATOR: Revisits the plight of the shark and how we need to study, not destroy, these noble creatures.
--- END TITLE: Same as in opening, as shark swims over the camera and away into the dark, dark sea...

Internet disclaimer: This shouldn't be read as me not liking sharks (I love them) or that there aren't one or two interesting documentaries on Shark Week (I liked the one where they followed around the pregnant Great White as she traveled across two oceans, for example).  This repetitive formula is just why I don't particularly think Shark Week is worth my time.

* Too much Jesus.

ME: what the hell is star wars day?
BROWN: May the Fourth be with you?
BROWN: yep... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_Day
ME: ah, yes.  forgot where I put my keys to the Wikipediamobile
BROWN: it's ok. they're in the dish next to the once well-used but completely forgotten lycos/hotbot mints.

Earth Day is ridiculous.  I have a whole list of reasons why I feel the basic underlying principle is flawed, and recently I'm pretty much furious that it's used as a license for people to gut their houses, throw out the contents, and buy brand-new "green" products to replace items and cleaners that were in perfectly good condition.  But I'm busy today so let's do the simple one-sentence version:


And yeah, you could argue that Earth Day is the beginning of the widespread systematic social, cultural, political, and economic change that has to take place on a global level (and twenty years ago), but if you try to pull that one on me without (a) reeking of patchouli; (b) breaking down in tears halfway through; or (c) being the owner of a company that caters to the new Green movement, you'll be hard-pressed to convince me that you are being sincere.   

EDIT: Traditional "cover-the-basis" statement - Please separate being anti-Earth Day from being anti-environment.  I am quite in favor of having our various ecosystems returning to a state where they are as healthy and self-sustaining as possible.

Once upon a time when the automobile was new, the Master of Evil gathered his minions together...

( Wait, I should probably put this behind a cut. )

Yesterday, as I'm standing in ankle-deep water and bent fully in half because the best angle to apply the power drill is when I'm looking at it upside down and using it two inches from my nose, I realized I was either writing my obituary or an episode of House.

As I've mentioned, my father is in London working on contract for AIG.  Our weekly phone calls aren't as fun as they used to be... he's under a lot of stress.  It's becoming obvious that AIG has emerged as the global whipping boy for the current financial crisis because - and let's make this extremely clear - AIG neither started these practices nor was the single largest offender.   If AIG had been allowed to dissolve and Lehman Brothers was shored up with taxpayer money, you'd most likely be hearing these same arguments with the names reversed. 

Strip away the drama and at its core AIG is still a rock-solid insurance company.  Its financial division (its LONDON financial division - the majority of this shit didn't even happen in the 'States) was responsible for sinking its reputation.  I've been following the reactions fairly closely, especially the grassroots protests and villain-mongering in the news and online.*  The grassroots stuff is both sad and funny to begin with, as protesters picketed the homes of executives who were probably overseas or in the office, trying to keep the company alive.  The real tragedy of this is that people who don't deserve to be punished are going through hell right now, personally and professionally, because the world needs someone to blame, and the handful of assholes who did start this mess have walked away from these companies with fat wallets and without a single indictment. 

Where are the lawyers, that's what I want to know!  Every single one of the companies out there (and, by offering the stimulus, the U.S. government) has legal standing to go after the people that brought them down.  They have the names.  They have contracts that state the employees' terms of performance.  I'm sure that in these contracts there is at least a mention of "brand name image" or "responsibility to the company" or whatever other phrase can be used to explain why an employee who caused lasting damage to an organization's professional standing can be brought up on charges. 

Stop scapegoating.  Start thinking.  And leave the people who are trying to repair the damage caused by known offenders alone.

* Oh, and the fight with the clerk in the UPS store who said anyone who worked with AIG needed to be beaten or killed.

We have a family of woodpeckers in a still-standing dead tree in our backyard that ursulav has tentatively identified sight-unseen as red-bellied woodpeckers, and I've been keeping my grandfather's old binoculars by the window to watch the male flitter around.  I saw a flash of movement in the underbrush and...

ME: "Hey Brown, come quick.  There's a coyote."
HIM (watches): "That looks like a wolf."

It vanished into the woods, so off to the Internet!  I am familiar with New England coyotes, a thin, straggly, and bitchy affair that is altogether devoid of elegance.  This was larger and shaped differently, and as I haven't seen a North Carolina coyote I automatically assumed... come on, we all know there are no more wild wolves, right?  Especially in the suburbs?  Well...

I'm still not going to go with "wolf," I'm going to go with "coyote whose grandfather was something huge," but I love the idea of it. 

Also: new fish tank blog.  Figured it's best to keep that madness separate.

What a bummer of a way to wake up.  I went to feed the fish and found Floyd, my beloved flame hawkfish, pinned between the filter and the wall of the tank.  I don't know how it happened. I stripped and cleaned the filter a week ago but it hasn't been moved from its usual spot, and there's not enough space for a fish to slip back there, let alone think it's a good idea to even try to slip back there.  Maybe he was sleeping against the intake valve and got dragged into a spot where he couldn't move, I don't know.  Brown gave him to me for Valentine's Day last year and it broke my heart a bit to flush him.

In more favorable Trapped Fish news. Mister Smithers appears to be making a full recovery.  He's still convalescing in a large shell and refuses to leave it, but he's now taking food from my hand and he's eating like a pig.  I figure in a few weeks he'll be up and swimming around - if I haven't replaced Floyd by then I might move him into the 30G reef, but I'll probably wait until I get the new 65G set up (I only have four tanks and I'm getting rid of the Biocube as soon as Smithers has a good home.  I am not a crazy fish lady.  I am not a crazy fish lady.  I am not a crazy... okay, at least I smell like vanilla and mandarin orange instead of cat pee.).

Very bummed.  Sad emoticon, music: Madonna vs. Fergie mashup.

In all honesty, I thought Mister Smithers had died and been eaten weeks ago.  I've been fighting a sudden algae bloom in his tank and was sure that he (technically, his decomposing corpse) was the source, although I was never able to find his body.  This morning, I started to break down the tank* and moved the cleanup crew to my large reef, then took Mister Burns back to the fish store.

This evening, Brown and I got home from dinner and it was by pure luck I looked in a tiny - TINY - crack between two pieces of rock.  For those unfamiliar with the odd habits of fish, some blennies like to hide in tiny niches and only come out to eat and exercise.  I knew Mister Smithers had hosted in those rocks in the past but... is that a head? 

Brown held the flashlight while I wedged the rocks apart with a screwdriver, and an emaciated Mister Smithers fell to the bottom of the tank.  I can only guess that he got stuck or the rocks shifted while he was inside - he was trapped for almost a full month.  I don't know if he'll make it but with no cleanup crew or other fish to bother him, he's got a pretty good chance.  Right now he's still on the sand but he's no longer lying flat on his side, and he moves to hide when I come close to the tank.  Must stop checking on him...

*I hate this tank.  Everyone else in the world loves Biocubes but I've had nothing but problems with this damned thing.

Curse you, Obama, and your message of hope and optimism!  I have to keep reminding myself that I'm a mean, vicious, cold, cynical bitch.  I mean, take a look at the list!

How is it that a year ago I was actually considering voting for McCain because he was the candidate that recognized our national infastructure is a dangerous embarassment and today that list has about a zillion things on it that make me happy?  Well, not the tax cuts thing - I'd like to keep my own money, no question, but this is sink-or-swim time and I readlly don't think I can swim for 36 months.  And yes, the whole "go green" movement is a ludicrous cultural phenomenon generated by scare tactics and commercialism, but fuck me sideways if I won't jump wholeheartedly into a ludicrous cultural phenomenon generated by scare tactics and commercialism that has direct repercussions for American workers* and gets carcinogens and outdated appliances out of the home.  I knew there was a reason I had held off on replacing our 22-year-old refrigerator. 

After watching the inaugural speech yesterday (the flub at the beginning is Roberts' fault, stop saying Obama blew it - Obama made that brief oath his proper little bitch weeks ago), I went back and watched a whole bunch of other speeches by other presidents. Including Kennedy's famous "ask not what your country can do for you..." speech.  I think Obama's was better.  Fewer notable sound bites (did Kennedy's generation think in terms of sound bites?) and a harsh tone overall, but both men thought they were accepting the presidency at a critical time in the nation's history and demanded public service from all citizens.** In my opinion, Obama made that case better than Kennedy, and considering that I grew up with that particular Kennedy speech singled out as one of the hallmarks of modern public address, that is pretty darned significant.

I cannot believe that we have a president with a vocabulary.  I'm currently unable to think about having a president with a global vision - one of his first moves this morning was to address the condition of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay - maybe when he starts screwing up I'll be better able to get past the aura of Dude we Desperately Need.


* Barbara Boxer quote we will all get sick of very, very soon - "You can't outsource installation of a solar roof on your house to another country."
** Does entertaining people for free three times a week count as public service?  I don't really have time to go clean up a highway but I don't think it does.

Every so often I get a very strange request from a client.  A while back, a minister asked me to ghostwrite a 120-page self-help reference manual based on a religion-centered therapy program he designed himself... unfortunately, he didn't have anything written up on how this program actually functioned except for a website done in... you guessed it ... Powerpoint.  That one was a bit tricky and I filled in the blanks with variations of "Jesus loves you, and He wants you to love yourself, but He has nothing wrong with you getting professional help if you need it."

Well, he's back.  Now he wants 10,000 words on a conceptual management strategy that he designed himself.  He's kind of vague on the fundamentals but he did give me one page of an unfinished Powerpoint presentation to use as a reference guide.  By tomorrow.

Off to check the DOW to remind myself that any work is good work.

Rules: This is not a pity party.  All of these gripes are temporary and will pass as soon as the sun comes out but until then we need an outlet to bitch.  Show commiseration but not sympathy, pile the complaints of the tribe on the goat and we will let them starve to death in the wilderness.

I hate this time of year.  The only time I get to go anywhere is the hour a day I run errands.

I hate this time of year.  The only time I get to spend time in the garden is when I'm hosing down a dog's feet and junk after he ran through the mud.

I hate this time of year.  I have no appetite except an insatiable craving for fast food.

I hate this time of year.  Water evaporates from my aquariums like they are on fire.

I hate this time of year.  Something expensive always breaks - this year I'm watching both the water heater and the heating unit, neither of which we could (sensibly) do without and procrastinate on replacing.

I hate this time of year.  Movies go from suck to blow and then back again.

I hate this time of year.  Editing work always dries up after December 31st, and with the recession I'm terrified it might not go back to normal in mid-February. 

I hate this time of year.  I feel that I'm pouring countless hours' worth of time and effort into a career and a hobby that have less of a future than working the night shift at a gas station.

Now I feel better.

Hey-o, fellow font junkies.  Comicraft is having a $20.09 font sale.  Check and buy now as it ends at midnight!

I'm reading a lot of things by Amelia Earhart these days to try and get a feel for what she was like as a person.  It's not easy - I still need to get my hands on a copy of The Fun of It, but I think she was the sort of person who sparkled more in action than in writing.* But there is one quote attributed to her that keeps running around and around in my head ... "The more one does and sees and feels, the more one is able to do, and the more genuine may be one's appreciation of fundamental things like home, and love, and understanding companionship."

I haven't found the source so thus far it's out of context, but right now it seems an extremely important idea, but it's an untrue idea, at least respect to the sense of persons who were responsible for the mess we're in right now.  See, we're all pissed off about the economy.  Furious, frustrated, pissed-off because we keep getting screwed, over and over and over again, by people who should have known better.  And I don't know about you, but I clearly remember an entire cadre of economists issuing warnings over the housing bubble since 2005-2006, and even more were warning about the easy access to credit cards and personal loans at least five years before that.  And then I saw this newsblurb today and I can't get over the notion that it is impossible that this single economist and his math buddy were the only ones to put those figures to paper and tell the SEC that this shit don't add up. 

The last five years or so seems to be nothing but economists and scholars warning about impending economic doom.  Maybe it's always like this - hell, I'm not all that old and might just be too inexperienced to recognize these particular patterns - but from what I've read, every single bit of this was predicted.  And not predicted by run-of-the-mill yahoos but Nobel Prize-winning economists with a large audience (re: Paul Krugman).

It's driving me nuts, especially when almost everyone I know finds themselves participating in an economic domino effect that is almost completely beyond their control - moreover, the areas they can control do nothing but make the situation worse.  We see the news reports, we see the homes on the block go up as foreclosures, we begin to see changes in the workplace as our bosses tighten down and frieze the budget.  So we do the only thing that makes sense to us, which is to prepare for the worst - stop spending and start saving.  And we all know this only throws fuel on the fire, but what can we do?  Our government can't tell us to go buy a toaster - that's so 1930s.  These days, every family in America would probably have to go buy a Ford just to jumpstart things again.

(Tangent - here's a math problem for a supergeek.  Take the money thus far spent on the finance bailout and the proposed auto industry bailout, then see if that would be worth more or less than handing a car worth $25,000 to every taxpaying American?  Don't forget to take into account the costs of distribution and cleanup and potential secondary profits, such as disposal of older cars by shipping them overseas and so on.  Because so far I haven't seen shit or shinola from the bailout and I think that since bribery is the only way many Americans would drive anything from General Motors, it's something to consider.). 

But the thing that really, really gets me is the waste.  The whole thing is senseless - greed for greed's sake with nothing coming out of it of value.  I don't have to travel past my own street to see this.  Greensboro is a segmented city with extremely poor urban planning.  Right now, our part of town is in a building phase where everything that isn't commercial property or high-density housing is bulldozed to the ground and turned into something that has a higher tax value.  There was this one house, a cottage, really, that was almost obscured behind a beautiful weeping willow, and every spring the place lit up with a myriad collection of flowers and blooming trees.  It was the type of place that took half a lifetime to cultivate.  Now it's gone, and in its place is a shopping plaza with a boutique and a pizzaria, the rest of the stores left vacant because they can't find anyone to fill the space.

Back to Ms. Earhart's quote, where she says "The more one does and sees and feels, the more one is able to do, and the more genuine may be one's appreciation of fundamental things like home, and love, and understanding companionship."  The people responsible for the current economic climate were arguably the last economic class left that has the unfettered ability to do and see and feel without any repercussions whatsoever.  These days, the rest of us are earthbound - I enjoyed the hell out of my recent travels to Europe since I'm pretty much resigned to never, ever going over there again in my life**  - and, yes, I have a greater appreciation for my home, for love, and for understanding companionship.  But the guys who sunk the economy ... those guys had the resources to do whatever they wanted, travel wherever they wanted, and engage in the experiences that the rest of us only know from very bad television.  It seems that in doing so, they became so jaded that the "fundamental things" lost their value. 

I don't even have a decent closing paragraph for this.  You know what I'm saying.  We're all angry, we're all changing our lives, each of us is seeing what the economy is doing to our friends, family, and neighbors, because those persons who didn't take the time to appreciate what they had burned it down and built something worthless on top of it, just for the sake of doing it.  I don't even want to consider what was lost over the last 5 years, and that it probably could have all been saved or spared with just a little more planning.

*Favorite quote thus far? "One of my favorite phobias is that girls, especially those whose tastes aren't routine, often don't get a fair break.... It has come down through the generations, an inheritance of age-old customs which produced the corollary that women are bred to timidity."

** And will never forgive the Louvre for closing on Tuesdays, since my window to Paris is gone.

I had an extremely elaborate and detailed dream this morning in which my subconscious laid out a highly profitable plan for writing anime-themed prose pornography.  My sister had come for a visit and we had done a few sisterly things, like shopping and swimming and dining out, then we went to a book store.  In the store was a tasteful arrangement of pornography, and whoever was doing the buying for the store was incredible as it ranged from video to haiku.  But... all of it was anime.* 

The section that drew my attention was the flatscreen computer they had set up in the middle of the room.  You could purchase twenty pages of a story for $20, and the complete text was a hundred pages.    At this point my brain gave me a detailed interactive tutorial of how this could be profitable for me, and I mean down to the last detail where it showed me how to organize the online shopping cart while still encouraging shoppers to add more items.  It even compared the copyright advantages of image-sourced versus text-sourced file distribution.  Meanwhile my sister is standing behind me, saying "This is gross, I want to go.  Why aren't you listening to me?!?"

By the end of the dream I had taken notes on the entire process and was all set to start my own competing business.  And I was chuckling about how I'd corner the market because the original company had priced themselves out of the game... I mean, who wants to pay $100 for a single  digital book, even if it's really good porn? 

*I am really over anime.  Big eyes, fragile breakable men, plot holes big enough to suck planets into the great black Unknown.  Ew ew EW!

I'm assuming there are some hardcore pet lovers reading this, and if you're anything like me you enjoy buying them something nice every once and a while.  For Christmas each year, I get The Boyz their annual vet checkup, a new bed, and a treat.  Not so big into giving them the presents on Christmas, however, as they (1) are dogs; (2) really don't care about holidays; and (3) someone's sneaking them pieces of turkey on the 25th anyhow.

As I'm writing this, Cutter John is playing with his new extra-large Everlasting Beanie Ball.  It's a semi-pliable bright purple plastic object about the size of a grapefruit that's wrapped around a hard chew treat, and he's been working that thing like a streetcorner on Saturday night.  Every few minutes he looks up at me, panting from exhaustion, and then goes back to the toy.  So far it's functioning exactly as promised... he can't remove the treat by destroying the plastic, so he's spinning it around and around in his paws and testing every single angle, just like the dude at the pet store promised.

The Filthspigot, on the other hand...

One would think, given his clinically insane obsession with balls, that this would be the ideal toy for him because he could play with a ball and not die from starvation.  Instead, I put the toy on the ground in front of him and he looked at it.  Then started barking at it.  After five minutes of this, I stopped that noise to show him that it was a ball with food in it.  This disturbed him on such as profound level that I caught him trying to bury the toy in the middle of the living room.

The Everlasting Beanie Ball?  Not idiot-dog friendly.

Gah, it's a rough time to do a webcomic, or probably any other hobby.*  Since the economy has decided to go from Worrisome to Terrifying, I'm picking up as much extra work as I can and am just getting run down.  This is either going to cumulate in a hiatus (no! bad!), the flu with hiatus (no!  bad!  bad!), or finally going to find a suitable clocktower (bad! bad! bad! but nowhere near there yet).

( Anyhow, Brown sent me a link to how a certain con job operates, so let me share a quick story of our recent trip to Paris. )


*(All of you who picked up on the Goldendoodle post are aware I do a webcomic, yes?  Free to read, art starts off shoot-me-in-the-face horrible and gradually gets better, back-pat back-pat, and is the story of our civil liberties in today's America as told by a cyborg, the ghost of Benjamin Franklin, a superintelligent koala, and a female martial artist.  http://www.agirlandherfed.com/   ).
**Apologies to David Cross

Re: Goldendoodles.

Yeah, it's another one of "those posts." I think everyone was so invested in the election that we have to get it out of our systems in one massive day of Internet purging.

A few thoughts on what was learned from the election:

- Campaigns dominated by a theme of fear and hate-mongering are less successful than they were four years ago, which is a very, very good and valuable thing. We can't know if there's any permanency to this; perhaps it's just because September 11th was many years ago and its influence is becoming slippery in our minds. But maybe - hopefully, ideally - more than half of the country has moved past the idea that fear should define our decisions. The number of Republicans who supported Obama because they believed in a hopeful tomorrow is an amazing thing.

- Similarly, there may not have been a Bradley Effect but Obama were a white man I believe that McCain's campaign would have been far less hateful and there would have been increased public pressure on them to fact-check themselves during speeches. Last night was an amazing step forward for everyone, but the process to get there still shows that we have a long way to go.

- They booed Obama at McCain's concession speech but they cheered McCain at Obama's victory speech. This might be sour grapes (I heard they were preparing for riots in Chicago if McCain won) but I'll take graciousness however it comes.

- I think we still need the electoral college. Damn it.

- Obama is still emailing me and asking for money. If he does a good job over the next 3 years (and baring financial catastrophe in our own home, knock on wood), I hereby pledge to donate $250 to his re-election campaign on November 5th, 2011. If he's done a spectacular job, I'll double that. It's a promise. But until then, sir, do your job and leave me alone.

- At the time of writing my state of residence, North Carolina, still has not called for Obama, who has a slim 12,000 vote lead over McCain with all precincts reporting. I really want us to go blue, although I'm very surprised that Charlotte went to Obama.

- James Carville should never be mugged in a dark alley, as he will then shed his skin and reveal the hideous alien dwelling within.

- Finally, two doors down from us is a family who feels as strongly about McCain as I do about Obama, and it is likely that they believe that Obama's victory is the worst thing that could possibly happen to the country. He has four years to prove them wrong, and I hope he does so.

Our toast last night - May Obama's term in office show wisdom, compassion, and heal the damage of the last eight years, may Palin crawl back under her flat rock and vanish from the face of the earth forever, and may the Secret Service be exceptionally good at their jobs.