Nothing Like the Sun

I didn't expect Bill Maher's Religulous to be much more than a surly, occasionally funny rant, given the comedian's usually scathing, satirical approach to every kind of subject. I didn't feel a burning need to see the film during its theatrical run, and only rented the video out of extreme boredom, a few weeks ago.

( satirical low-hanging fruit, quixotic goals )

The libertarian habit of seeming to claim a monopoly on "reason" or "rationality" can be irritating. But one supposes that heightened self-confidence represents a sort of prerequisite for playing on that team ...

• 12:58 Brunch: Couple @ next table arguing re palatability of pork #
• 13:02 He: pork "objectively" better than chkn, bf. #
• 13:04 She: "have 2 disagree." #
• 13:09 Me 2 her (when he steps out 4 cig): my sympathies. #
• 13:11 Her (laughing): seems 2 mean a lot 2 him. #
• 13:13 Me: Evidently. #

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• 04:19 Got up freakishly early (stress). #
• 05:30 Up, ready, may as well go 2 work. #
• 05:34 Sleepless in ... Gah! #
• 05:38 Eerily quiet, few lights, lil traffic, no other pedestrians #
• 06:22 Brkfst @ taco truck ... Different. #
• 15:27 Leaving work "early" 9.5 hrs later ... #
• 17:13 Called my fav niece, caught up on diaz gossip. #
• 18:36 Hon-bau ... Mmm ... #
• 18:59 Friday night excitement: me, book, bed. #

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Ironically, despite dramatic Republican defeats in two consecutive Congressional elections, the party's loss of the White House, and its current minority status both in and out of government, a trio of Republican senators have emerged as the 111th Congress' key power brokers: Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe, and Arlen Specter. For the foreseeable future, the fortunes of both the Obama Administration and Congress' Democratic majority are going to be tied to their ability to woo members of this troika.

( Polarization, the Filibuster, and the Power of the Swing Vote )

Happily, last fall's election ceded the Obama Administration and Congressional Democrats the initiative, empowering them to shape the agenda for the U.S. government for the coming years. But three Republican senators will serve as gatekeepers, checking Democratic initiatives and defining the limits of what they can do--at least until the 2010 Congressional elections, at which point that balance of power may shift, again (if, for example, retiring Sen. Judd Gregg's seat is claimed by a Democrat). Of course, there's no guarantee that it will, or that the shift will be in Democrats' favor.

So for every really significant change the Administration seeks, the question becomes, which Republican senator can be persuaded to defect and support it? And which parts of Obama's legislative agenda will get past the Senate's new gatekeepers--i.e., Collins, Snowe, and Specter? In civil rights, energy/the environment, health care policy, national security, etc?

• 18:14 Listening 2 social distortion @ cafe mecca. #

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I've just finished brewing the seasons' first batch of coquito. I decided to vary the recipe a little bit, using coconut rum instead of the usual white (sugarcane and molasses) variety. I then also added generous portions of vanilla extract, cloves, and nutmeg. I was thinking that the overall effect would be to make the alcohol content subtler, sneakier. But when I sampled the mixture, it seemed to lack an edge. So I threw in some white rum on top of the coconut stuff. That seems to be working pretty nicely.

The finished product is now cooling in the fridge.

In late December 2008, Seattle experienced an unaccustomed outbreak of actual winter. Panic ensued: school closures, bus & flight cancellations, some scary accidents.

There was also a lot of urban tobogganing and cross-country skiing.

( It looked like this )

• 14:00 Freak winter weather has stranded in seattle 4 holidays. #
• 14:04 Im about ready 2 give up on loudtwitter. #

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People in the Puget Sound area aren't accustomed to what others in the Northern U.S. would consider routine winter weather--i.e., temperatures that hover below freezing for weeks on end, snow that actually accumulates on the ground and stays there for more than a few hours, icy roadways. Longtime area residents tell me that they haven't seen this kind of weather since before their grown kids were born. And the city of Seattle in particular doesn't seem well-situated to cope with such conditions: much of Seattle proper is spread out over steep hills, and the city understandably lacks the snow- and ice-removal infrastructure of a predictably wintry Boston or Chicago.
( Inside the Emerald City Snow Globe )
( No Exit )
( Breaking the Bad News )

Meanwhile, I'm stranded here in this snow-globe of a city with the week off and no firm plans. For those of you who may be similarly situated, do you think you'd be up for a little "Stranded in Seattle" holiday get-together? Possibly with my homemade coquito (basically, Puerto Rican eggnog) on the menu? My place is small, but I might be able to put together something. Alternatively, I could bring a very large thermos of coquito to your holiday event ...

Also: I'm always up for trips to the movie theater (assuming they're open ...), might be into some sort outdoor winter activity ...

Courtesy of cakeface:

These are the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded. Bold the ones you've read, underline the ones you've read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish.

( My Read & Unread )

And that's all I've got to say about that.

Happy Birthday, dlasky!

Be sure to raise a glass sometime today (if you may safely do so ...) to the 1933 ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment, which repealed Prohibition.

My favorite meme is going around again. It's been awhile, and I really enjoy this one, so let's give it another whirl:

If you read this, if your eyes are passing over this right now, (even if we don't speak often or ever) please post a comment with a COMPLETELY MADE UP AND FICTIONAL memory of you and me.

It can be anything you want - good or bad - BUT IT HAS TO BE FAKE.

When you're finished, post this little paragraph in your LJ and see what your friends come up with.

I find that my head is crowded with images of Mumbai, today, culled not so much from the past few days' news footage of gunmen and burning luxury hotels as from Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire, which I finally got around to seeing last night:

Boyle's camera drinks in Mumbai's cityscape, panning across sprawling shantytowns and up the scaffolds of burgeoning skyscrapers, racing down crowded streets and alleyways after subjects who are constantly on the run, scrambling to survive. As the film's title suggests, scenes of unimaginable deprivation are juxtaposed with sudden boomtown wealth, horrific brutality with unexpected triumphs. Throughout, Boyle's storyline is animated by a Dickensian redemptive morality, and an exuberance that nods ever so slightly in the direction of Bollywood--the city's native cinematic style.

Slumdog Millionaire has to be the most exhilerating experience I've had at the movies in a long, long while. There are elements especially early in the film that require a strong stomach, but the film's emotional payoff is more than worth it.

I keep thinking about how this week's terrorist assaults on Mumbai seemed to sum up and build upon the global jihadist movement's grievances, targets, and methods. Real care seems to have been taken to hit all of the movement's "Great Satans", to inflict spectacular violence in new ways, and attract more prolonged international attention: ( Mass Murder, Publicity, and Provocation )

So I took that Civic Literacy Quiz that's been going around.

Reportedly, a random sample of 2,500+ Americans positively bombed this test, managing an average score of 49%. The average for those with a high school diploma was 44%. The average score for those with a bachelor's degree was 57%, still essentially a "failing grade." We can argue about sampling methods (self-selected respondents on the Web are doing a ways better, averaging scores in the seventies). But this is the real killer stat: elected officials actually performed at about the same level as high school graduates, averaging 44%. (I'm tempted to think that Sarah Palin was disproportionately represented ...)

Looking over these questions, I just have trouble ... well ... believing the reported results. I mean, I went to what I considered a so-so public high school in the 1980s, and I think that we covered pretty much all of the material in the quiz's civics and history sections. Moreover, these strike me as the kind of quotes and factoids you see cited more or less constantly in political news stories, TV documentaries, etc.

Most people don't find high school history all that interesting, I'll grant you. And I'm probably the most jonesin' political junkie you're likely to know: My unhealthy NPR and New York Times fixations have no doubt helped keep it all fresh in my head for the past 20 years.

But, seriously, I thought most of us had the basic civics and U.S. history stuff--who can declare war, who controls government spending, oft-quoted phrases from the Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg Address--down before we learned how to drive ...?

Then there are those economics questions: I didn't take any economics classes in high school or college. But, you know, there are circumstances where the process of elimination can take you pretty far ...

I scored 96.97 %--literally just getting one question wrong (an economic one, natch)--which I realize now that I misread.

Then again, there has to be some explanation for George W. Bush's enduring popularity in some quarters, to say nothing of the burgeoning Palin fan club, right?

Over four and a half years ago, I created this journal as an outlet for (among other things) ranting about the 1,001 ways in which the world at the time seemed to have gone nuts. I christened the journal "Kingdom of the Wicked" as a comment on the hubris, hypocrisy, and venality of American politics in the Bush era. And as I noted on my profile page, I subtitled it "res publica conquassata!” because that’s what Cicero wrote despairingly as his country was about to undergo a Ceasarian section.

( Change Happens ... )

Video of Tuesday night's celebrations in Seattle (all over the world, for that matter) is already up on YouTube and lots of other places. But even though it's a few days late, I just have to post a few of these--some of the best footage of that night's celebrations in Seattle was recorded in my neighborhood, on the block of Broadway between Pike and Pine Streets. Just in case you've seen them before and are over it already, though, I've placed the footage behind an LJ cut, below.

( Capitol Hill Hipsters Break Out into National Anthem, Dance Night Away--Click Here for Video )How many kinds of awesome is that?

What follows behind the cut is my photographic record of election night, 2008, as it unfolded in the streets of Seattle, more or less illustrating the merry ramblings of my last journal entry:

( Seattle Rejoins the United States--Click Here for Photos )