I Am Much Mocked

‘salright. All those birds will have the off-season to recuperate.

@nabisco: The Jets fired a coach with head coaching experience and today hired a D-coordinator with no head coaching experience. Sound familiar? Sigh …

@nabisco:
BTW, what happened to the Black and Yellow? I figured you would be using that one to the (Redacted) Bowl *. Now we’re back to the “Classic” Nabisco gravatar.

* assholes at Bud claim to have exclusive rights to use the words Super and Bowl together in Canada City.

@ManchuCandidate: Just add one little letter: Super Bowel. Fixed.

@blogenfreude: Sounds like Mike Tomlin, soon to be youngest coach to win the Bowel (nice one, Cyn).

@Manchu: I’ll bring Hines back, but I wanted to Hopify my Che-Elvis gravatar for the holidays. (Did anyone actually ever get that as a Che/Elvis mash-up?)

I’m still rockin the Black ‘n Gold on FB. And my boy’s pinewood derby car is a Steeler-mobile replete with Polamalu dreads. He may win style points but not the race which is overrun with hypercompetitive parents anyway.

@nabisco: I knew Che didn’t look quite right, but I didn’t see Elvis until the Hopification. Now he just leaps out at me.

Hey, ya’ll, help me out here. I am feeling very strange. I am feeling hopeyness. I have the Obama fever, I think. I have been hearing these reports from SFL, I am watching this cable news coverage, and there is not a dissenting voice in America, it seems, tonight, There is an excitement about tomorrow that seems real, it seems to be touching even republicans and those who did not support Obama, even those who hate him.

Someone tell me I have not gone off the rails and become some kind of Obamatard. someone tell me that you too, feel something, a major, real shift in the zeitgeist, a tipping point in history, am I insane to think this?

I think tomorrow is going to be one of the most momentous moments in history. Bigger than VJ day, bigger than the Berlin Wall coming down, I really cannot think of a parallel. We can all think of moments of tragedy that are momentous, but how many mass, shared, universal moments of happiness and hope can you think of? I think those who saw the end of WWII had a moment like that. But our generation, have we ever had a huge, shared moment of happiness, good, celebration, hope? I do not think we have one. We remember assasinations, JFK, RFK, MLK, we remember 9-11, a Bush disaster, we remember what that is positive?

Nothing.

This is unprecedented in my life.

Am I alone here?

There are deep empotional impacts, this election of a black man as President of the US is causing, its having a tremendous impact all over the world. They are celebrating in Ireland, because Barack is 1/4th Irish, can you imagine what the people of Kenya are feeling, all the people of Africa, and also, just as much, all the people around the world who had lost faith in America, lost faith in our morality as a nation.

This is a moment that can alter the history of the world in the way few moments in history ever have.

I envy those in DC, living history, remember, take it in and give us the stories so we can share too.

Someone tell me I am not nuts.

@Promnight: You are not nuts. Lots of people are thinking this is the break with the past they’ve been longing for.

I also ask that everyone look at the video I put up in the last post. Sick.

@Promnight:

It’s not nuts, it’s inspiring. It’s how people should feel about our country.

@blogenfreude: Is it sick that its necessary? Yes. The video seems to glorify it, like most gun-porn, just on the grounds its deadly, and like all gun porn, its sick on that level too.

But I am glad its there, and I have no doubts as to the loyalty of the people in charge of it.

Because I know that there are crazed pigfuckers in the tens of thousands who think this, Obama’s election, is an abomination, and would gladly give their lives in a suicide mission to end it. I am glad that most of them are dumb or insane or both, of course. But this is a good thing, should any of them be high-functioning enough to bring about something which requires this response.

Sick, yes, but comforting, to me.

@Promnight: I simply could not believe the speed with which those shells fell out of the gun. When Bush was at the Waldorf a few months ago I saw the hardware, the federal and state kill teams. Obama’s is a step up. So be it.

Guess I’ll be the contrarian. I feel Relief, but not Hope. I’m happy for the symbolism and historical significance — which we exhaustively celebrated at the nomination and election — but Shrub has done such a thorough job fucking up the country and the world, it’s going to take a very long time to clean up the mess.

Obama appears to be practical-minded, and that’s good for the task at hand, but today’s problems will be with us next week, next month, and very likely next year. The best we can hope for right now is mitigation, and I’m not in the mood to get more excited than that.

Or maybe I’m still pissed at Rick Double-Wide.

@nojo: the problems Bush created will take 5 years just to find, 10 years to begin to address, and 20 years to solve if they even can be. The government has been hollowed out and destroyed, and the military is broken. Quite literally, Bush broke the world.

@blogenfreude: On the other hand, Pepsi’s got a new logo!

@blogenfreude: Its a gattling gun and looks like a mini-phalanx-type gun. The phalanx is god’s own machine gun, it puts out huge depleted uranium bullets in such enormous profusion that the cloud of metal they put in the air is the navy’s primary defense against incoming missiles, Exocet missiles, specifically.

God knows what those bullets are in this thing, but it sure puts out volume. Machine guns are horrific weapons, people seem to forget that, tanks were designed and exist only because they are a reponse to machine guns, in WWI, machine guns were the cause of the carnage into the millions.

Its fuckng sick we need this, but its also fucking sick that they killed JFK and RFK and MLK, and I think these deaths were all the work of those same people who are W’s “puppeteers,” and that Obama needs every protection possible.

My wife and I were being pessimistic as usual and she said “they could still get him tomorrow,” and I found myself wondering, what would happen, if that happened? And I think, that that would cause a revolution, I think that us pacifist and nonviolent types would finally have had enough.

@blogenfreude: There really is such a thing as inspiration-driven achievement.

TJ: This is beautiful, the woman who beat Palin and became Miss Alaska, a black woman, is going to be performing at two of the inaugural balls! Ha! http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/barack_obama/2009/01/19/2009-01-19_maryline_blackburn_woman_who_beat_sarah_.html

@Promnight: Don’t forget those close family friends, the Hinckleys and the Bushes.

@nojo: Was it Jeb, or Neil, who was actually supposed to be at a dinner at the Hinckley’s home the night Lennon was shot?

Oh, fuck, I am always whacky when Mrs. Prom is away, she goes away on business once a month for 2 or 3 days, and I am a wreck. OK, I get to eat scallops and octopus and asparagus, thins she will not suffer to be in the same dwelling with her, thats nice. But, she makes me to go to bed at a decent hour, and clothes the child and makes sure he meets the bus. Damn.

@Promnight: AP, 3/31/81 (via Wikipedia, presuming nobody faked the text):

“The family of the man charged with trying to assassinate President Reagan is acquainted with the family of Vice-President George Bush and had made large contributions to his political campaign…

Scott Hinckley, brother of John W. Hinckley Jr. was to have dined tonight in Denver at the home of Neil Bush, one of the Vice-President’s sons…

The Houston Post said it was unable to reach Scott Hinckley, vice-president of his father’s Denver-based firm, Vanderbilt Energy Corporation, for comment. Neil Bush lives in Denver, where he works for Standard Oil Company of Indiana.

In 1978, Neil Bush served as campaign manager for his brother, George W. Bush, the Vice-President’s eldest son, who made an unsuccessful bid for Congress. Neil lived in Lubbock, Texas, throughout much of 1978, where John Hinckley lived from 1974 through 1980.”

@Promnight:
I have a pretty good idea why she was voted Miss Alaska and Simple Sarah won 2nd.

@Promnight:
Goddamn Obamatard.

OK, I am feeling it, too. I think it’s the break we wanted, I just hope he’s the right guy to pull it off. 1968 seared itself into my psyche so deeply that I cannot yet fully accept that the curse might be lifted from the amerikan soul.

@Promnight: The Dillon mini-gun uses the NATO version of the .308 Winchester, the 7.62 x 51, 4,000 rounds a minute.

http://www.mindfully.org/Technology/2006/M134-Gatling-Livermore3feb06.htm

@redmanlaw: Years ago when I was a field tech I would sometimes service printers and PCs at Livermore Lab. It was very creepy because you could see from the off-limits empty areas right near buildings just how sloppy they had been about hazmat handling in the early days. I always wished I had a lead cup to wear whenever I went there. That, and having to service the stuff at the women’s federal prison nearby in Dublin, CA. Those were some of the things that convinced me to get out of the field and become a manager.

@Ewalda: I drive right right through Los Alamos National Laboratories when I go fishing in the Jemez mountains. Gotta pull up at the guard shack and show my face. Still, a couple of Chinese diplomats were able to get up to the a building in a “technical area” a couple of years ago and shoot some pictures before getting chased away.

@redmanlaw: The long stares from the women at the prison was unnerving. What was even more unsettling were the times when I would find razor blades taped to the bottoms of keyboards.

TJ/ RML’s Elk Stew – Browned about a pound of the cubed stew meat I cut up last night and onions in a stew pot. Added salt, pepper, and potatoes, celery, carrots and a couple of handfuls of dried colored sweet corn. Just left it alone simmering on the stove top for about five hours except to add water. The flavor was rich, velvety, non-gamey and uplifting. The elk was a young bull and probably ate mostly grass, judging by the taste. My cousin’s son shot it about four days ago and hung it to age. We finished it off tonight between four of us.

My goal for tomorrow is to get a good photo of Cheney in a wheelchair.

@redmanlaw: Elk is so delicious.
I just had baked cod filets, lightly rubbed with powdered garlic, onion, dill, tarragon, pepper, paprika, and fennel, then baked with olive oil, lemon juice, and butter. On the side were baked acorn squash with cranberry mustard, and a mixture of brown and red rice with pearled barley and rye, cooked in chix broth and then mixed into sauteed mushrooms, garlic, and onion. I’m learning to live more frugally than before.

@SanFranLefty:
My goal for tomorrow is to get a good photo of shot at Cheney in a wheelchair
Fixed.

@nojo:
You call that contrarian??? I see I am needed here. But… not now.

This is not the outcome I wanted, but if he can undo just some of the Cheney/Bush executive power expansion of the last eight years, we’ll get what we need out of Barry – just like Mick Jagger promised.

Of course there is a worrisome fly in the ointment. On the only two real decisions that Obama has made to date regarding the unitary executive – 1) Whether to permit Congress to assert authority over the executive on how the second tranche of TARP bailout money is spent, and 2) Whether to limit the executives ability to spy on Americans… Obama has decided in both cases to stay the course with the Bush/Cheney imperial executive model, just saying “trust me”

Nevermind. Time enough.

Happy inauguration everyone.

Yours in Hope – mw / sbt

@String Bikini Theory: Barry caved on (2) wayyyyyy back last summer, and we’ll see how (1) goes. We know he triangulates under the rubric of “inclusiveness”, and appears to regard fundamental civil rights as a topic upon which reasonable people can disagree.

Still, he hasn’t done anything yet, other than nominating a bunch of folks who also haven’t done anything yet. Come noon, we’ll start seeing what he’s up to.

Just a little bit of social trivia…

Being the inauguration is on at about 3:30am Australian Eastern Summer Time, some folks are having “Obama Pyjama Parties” so they can stay up and watcht he swearing in of the 44th President.

@CheapBoy: I think that’s about the time anyone who cared on the West Coast had to watch Princess Di’s wedding.

Or, if you prefer less-musty references, you can tell when it’s World Cup season because everyone at the English pub down the street is shouting at dawn.

@Ewalda: “1968 seared itself into my psyche so deeply that I cannot yet fully accept that the curse might be lifted from the amerikan soul.”

Me too. But I’m up at 3 AM local time because I’m too excited to sleep.

Is watching GMA… *sigh*

@CheapBoy: ABC has a deal with ABC?