Catchy Name Needed

There was an article once, about a political campaign event. This was in 1984. I think the article was in The Austin Chronicle, but I'm not sure about that, it was too long ago. (I might even have a copy of it somewhere, but I haven't looked for it.) The tone of the article was slightly mocking. It wasn't a very exciting event, that's for sure. Among other things it says that there was music. "Five people dance, " it said. You may have guessed by now that I was there. I was one of the five people who danced. I remember reading the article and saying, "Look, y'all, that's us!" and everybody else looked and laughed and agreed that, yeah, it definitely was. We were the only ones who danced.

In 1984 I was out of school and working at the libraries at UT. I would have been 23-going-on-24. Most of my friends were a little younger than me, some in grad school and some undergrads who were just dawdling - it wasn't at all uncommon to take 5 or even 6 years to finish your undergrad degree, if you had parents who would cooperate with that. If you've been reading here in past Decembers, you've seen me talk about going to concerts a lot - this was the period of my life when that most of that happened. I had a little group of friends I hung around with and we did a lot of going to concerts and going to clubs and eating out, the usual stuff for single people in their twenties. (And, if you're wondering about the five people dancing thing, we tended to dance as a group. We were mixed sexes and nobody was a couple. There wasn't always five of us, but when we went where there was dancing, we just all got up and danced without worrying about pairing off.) (I don't think that's unusual nowadays but thirty-odd years ago it still was.)

And we worked on Gary Hart's campaign in 1984. We didn't work on it very hard, mind you - we had jobs and school and all that. We weren't real campaign workers who were there all the time. Some of my friends may have been more involved, but I only remember doing two things - one of which was going to this event, which was at one of the big hotels down on Riverside Drive, and was on a weekend (at least I think it was a weekend) when Gary Hart was actually in Austin. He didn't come to the reception that I talked about above. I don't think we saw him talk or anything, either, because I think I would remember that, if it happened. But we did see him - we were on one walkway in the hotel and he was down below us. We waved and he waved back. That was it.

The other thing was that we gave out flyers or something on the day of the primary. I didn't enjoy that - I'm not good at talking to strangers, generally, much less accosting them with political stuff. Between that, and the way that Hart imploded later on (that happened in 1988, but I had to look it up because I had forgotten), I've never worked on a campaign again. I'm kind of a political junkie - I follow politics closely, and I donate money to various campaigns, but I've never quite been able to bring myself to volunteer again. These days I'm embarrassed to admit that, but it's true. Part of it is a deep-seated conviction that you can't trust individual politicians that came largely from having hitched my wagon to the Gary Hart train long ago.

(I don't know if I'll go see The Front Runner, the movie about Gary Hart. The reviews aren't that great, and I doubt that Rob would be thrilled to go. But it was because of the existence of the movie that it occurred to me to talk about this.)

Do the Republicans really think that what Harry Reid said is equivalent to what Trent Lott said back in the day, or are they just grabbing at straws? I mean, clearly what Reid said was tactless, but that it's the same as making pro-segregationist remarks? Are they really that stupid, that they don't see the difference? or are they just trying to make trouble? They're so crazy these days that I honestly don't know.


I was going on about Devil Wears Prada and stuff yesterday, and I completely forgot to say that we went to see Zombieland at the Dollar Cinema yesterday. (Which is actually $1.50 nowadays, even for a matinee. I hadn't been there in ages.) Rob had convinced me that I would like it, and I did. Apparently I only like zombie movies when they're comedies. It wasn't as good as Shawn of the Dead, but it was good. Bit gross in places, but not too bad, considering.

And I'm beginning to think that I am going to have to reconsider hating Woody Harrelson. It's very disconcerting, really, suddenly finding somebody you've hated for years turn tolerable.


It's finally getting warmer here. We've had freezing temps at night for days and days, which is very unusual for us. I've had a sheet over my plants all weekend. (It was the Norfolk pine I was mostly worried about.) I think I can go take it off tomorrow, because apparently it's not actually freezing tonight, although it's still pretty chilly.

Good lord, it's 2:00 already. I gotta go get some studying done before bedtime.

Funny for today: Ricky Gervais singing a lullaby to Elmo:

[That link is bad, but try here. Or just google it!]


(That is Elmo, right? You can tell I don't have kids.) (Found on The Daily Dish.)

Also from the Daily Dish, the crazies are out and they're all running for public office:

(That's not the first example of this I've seen. There was also the guy who said we ought to be more worried about Democrats than about terrorists - I think that one is running for Congress.)


I've been reading yuki_onna 's The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making - it's very entertaining. It's a long YA story (in 24 chapters) which is entirely up online. (There's even audio!)


Added: I dug further down the Daily Dish website and found the other quote I was talking about:

"Walz" is the poor schmuck this fundamentalist is running against.

I have C-SPAN on (which, for all my interest in politics, I only very rarely watch) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is currently enumerating the "faults" of the healthcare bill. I see plenty of faults in it but I don't think most of the ones he sees are the same ones I see. In any case, I have been saying for a while that some sort of healthcare bill is going to pass because the Democratic Party knows it's screwed if it doesn't - I could still be proven wrong when it comes down to the conference committee but I gather the Senate is supposed to have the votes to pass this tonight.

I have been trying to figure out all day what to say about Avatar, and I can't say my thoughts are too coherent about it, still, so here are my rather disjointed ones. I did enjoy it quite a lot, but I think its mindblowing effects are overstated, on the whole. (Or at least, it failed to blow mine too thoroughly.) I did not particularly see it as racist - see here if you're not already aware of that debate. I felt like Cameron thought that the Na'vi, the blue-skinned natives, were superior to the humans not because they were noble savages or anything like that but more because of the way they were connected with nature. I think this movie is to a great degree a treatise on the "rape of the land" and concepts like that, and how many people are going to disagree with that? And I rather agree with cleolinda  that its attitude towards the disabled bothered me as much as the other stuff (although I apparently liked it considerably more than she did, overall). It was certainly a pretty thing to look at - and I also have to admit that I continue to think Sam Worthington is really pretty to look at, just as I did in Terminator: Salvation. I suspect there are technical ways, if nothing else, in which this movie will genuinely be groundbreaking, but comparing it with Star Wars as a game-changer? Not hardly.

Ooh, they are voting on cloture. This seems like a pretty big moment.

I have a jewelry class tomorrow night - columbina  take note. I keep forgetting about it. I signed up for it about a month ago and promptly forgot all about it. It's a good thing I wrote it down in the datebook I keep in my purse. And the girl who signed me up for it wrote my name and address down on a loose piece of paper, so I hope it got written down somewhere more permanent because I doubt that I know where my receipt from a month ago is.

Cloture passes, 60-40. And huh, they are now having a roll-call. Is somebody missing, is that what that's about? I saw them wheel Byrd in at the beginning so I know he's there. Interesting.

I better go get some beads together for this class. I know me, I'll be running late tomorrow. And if I walk in that store without a pretty good selection I'll end up buying a whole lot of stuff. Happens every time.

(The Senate just adjourned; I'm still not sure what that roll-call business was. The ways of the Senate seem to be exceedingly mysterious.)

There was a high-school kid in Starbucks earnestly explaining to the girl with him that the Bush administration wasn't as bad as their reputation, because, you see, the Democrats controlled Congress and all those bad bills that got passed during the Bush administration were all their fault. I really had to bite my lip. Of course the problems with this are numerous - I suppose the kid's probably not even old enough to remember the first SIX YEARS of the Bush administration during which the Democrats did NOT control Congress in any way, shape or form. And I don't really think controlling half of Congress during the last two count, either, do you? (Hmm, I think it's possible I am a little tetchy on the subject of Congress right now, anyway. They all need to get lumps of coal for Christmas. Whether they celebrate Christmas or not.)

Dick Cheney is apparently supporting Kay Bailey Hutchison (the current Senator and challenger to Rick Perry, Mr. Secession's-Not-So-Bad) in the Texas governor's race next spring. Sarah Palin is said to be supporting Perry. I still think Perry's going to win, unless something changes more radically than just this, but this ought to make things a bit more interesting, at least.

Random "town-hall" type on TV:
"Obama is a radical communist who's going to take over and turn us into communists like Hitler did in Germany."

Gawd. There are no words.

James Baker is on CNN (it's a repeat from earlier, I'm sure) saying he agrees with a lot of what Obama is doing about foreign policy. I always have thought - or, well, I've thought for a number of years, anyway - that Baker is generally a pretty reasonable guy, which probably makes him one of those moderates that the Republicans have famously been trying to drive out of the party, doesn't it? Bill Bennett was also on; he did not have as many nice things to say, unsurprisingly. I am almost to the point of having to turn the channel when Bennett comes on, because he's so smug it makes me want to scream. And it seems like he's always on, on one news channel or another.

I know "Bill Bennett is smug" is not exactly news. I think the point may be more that I'm in news overload, really. Except that I'm enjoying a lot of it. I am on an MSNBC tear lately, and am watching less CNN, generally. Politics interests me more than murders and much, much more than celebrity news, which makes MSNBC a much better fit for me. Especially at this moment in history, with the Republican Party pretty much in free-fall, MSNBC is a lot of fun to watch, since they are not at all shy about the mocking - in fact they tend sometimes to go overboard with the mockery, even for my taste. At least Keith Olbermann has recently given up doing his "funny" Sean Hannity voice, which was a relief, since I really like the guy otherwise. (Olbermann, I mean, not Hannity.)

I do most of my news-watching after Rob goes to bed. Before that we mostly watch baseball, this time of year. I've been watching Anderson Cooper for a while and then switching over to MSNBC when I get tired of that. Both networks fill most of the night on weeknights by repeating their prime-time shows. At 4am my time MSNBC switches back over to live news, and I think CNN does so around that same time, too - 5am Eastern is when people start getting up again, I guess. (CNN finally repeats Lou Dobbs' show at 3am, which I can't watch, thus I am unsure about what comes on after it!) I really haven't been going to bed before 4 at all lately, and often it's later than that. Everybody keeps telling me that I'm going to have trouble going back to a "normal" schedule when I get a job again, but my past history is that I slide right back to it pretty easily when I have to. But I am absolutely a natural night person, as you can tell!

I am watching CNN right now instead of MSNBC because the latter changes their late-night programming on the weekends and runs things like "Lockup" and various shows about murders. I can watch a certain amount of that but I definitely don't have the almost-endless taste for it that I do for politics. (One weekend I did get really interested in a series where they were following real-life forensic pathologists around, though.)

Bill Bennett is back on, and I just turned the TV off. I think I have a podcast of last night's "Countdown" I can watch.

I just got my "old" computer set up, finally - I was missing a keyboard, that was the hold-up there - and it's working, yay! But it's also totally freaking me out because the screen is so. fucking. gigantic. After a month of using laptops exclusively, it just seems wrong. And also, I've forgotten where the keys are on a normal keyboard. (We are using laptops at work, too, have I said that?) "Home" and "End" and "Delete" and so forth are all in different places and so I am off-kilter.

(I also think that I am coming down with something, maybe. I kinda feel like crap.)

The WoW patch is downloading, and taking forever, really. I swear it went faster on the wireless. But the wireless computer has moved  into its new home in the bedroom, where it is working fine. It should, really, but I'm still happy that everything is working as advertised.

My computer table at the moment is a little folding thing, and while I wouldn't quite go so far as to call it "rickety", it's not quite as steady as I would like. I have pushed it up against the wall so I won't be having nightmares about it falling over in the night. I definitely need to buy a computer desk soon. (Maybe I will use the gift card that an online friend so kindly sent - I won't name names but it was very appreciated, let me tell you!)


I don't think I can talk about the debates in the state of mind I'm in right now.  On CNN they are showing McCain talking about "one of the greatest frauds in voter history" - ACORN? really?? I dunno, somehow I would put the hanging chad and all of that chaos in Florida higher, myself. I mean, the whole ACORN thing is highly embarrassing, yes, but - well, that's just McCain putting spin on it and I shouldn't pay attention, should I?


Former presidents Bush and Clinton were in Galveston yesterday - they are doing the fundraising thing again. Which is good, I think we need the publicity. We got pushed out of the news by the economic meltdown and I've only seen us hit the national news as sort of an afterthought since.