Archive for October, 2008
I don’t have to approve
Posted by smokingpen in Politics, religion on October 30, 2008
I found a second blog I was reading that I will no longer be following. This makes two in just under a year where the author moved sufficiently (and consistently) away from the reasons I would read their blogs into areas that I don’t agree, feel that the individual is wrong, and where the individual has chosen to take a “high road” approach to the argument, when in reality they are taking a standard and rather low approach to their argument.
Case in point: Marriage in California. I am to believe, by reading different blogs, that marriage should be extended to everyone regardless of personal choice. The wording used is bigotry. Went to the OED and this is the definition:
A. n.
1. A religious hypocrite; (also) a superstitious adherent of religion. Obs.
2. a. A person considered to adhere unreasonably or obstinately to a particular religious belief, practice, etc.
b. In extended use: a fanatical adherent or believer; a person characterized by obstinate, intolerant, or strongly partisan beliefs.
B. adj. (attrib.). Of or characteristic of a bigot; bigoted. Also fig. Now rare.
A bigot, and I like this, is someone who works in opposition to stated religious beliefs. In the case of same-sex marriage, a rather large percentage of the population believe that marriage is between a man and a woman. As a result, the bigot is literally the individual who states that belief and then doesn’t act according to that stated belief. Unfortunately, a person who adheres too strictly to stated beliefs is also a bigot. There is a pattern here: don’t act the hypocrit and don’t act the fanatic. The final definition (2b) states: a person characterized by obstinate, intolerant, or strongly partisan beliefs. From here we can get the argument people use for bigot.
Whether or not California or any other state legally define marriage as anything other than between that of a man and woman isn’t the issue. What is the issue is that people use language of intolerance to define people whom they consider intolerant. In the case of this argument, the writer whose blog I will no longer read, decided to describe anyone who disagrees with him as a bigot and that in time those bigots will see the error of their ways and come to his point-of-view. The outcome of this is that he is invariably expecting to be right and does not allow for any faults in his argument, which are actually easy to break. For this author (who is heterosexual), the same-sex marriage issue has only one answer and there is no gray space in the argument.
The reason this is an argument is because of religious beliefs. Now, I don’t care what his religious beliefs are. I don’t care what brought him to the point in opinion where the only right answer is that one-half of the population and their religious beliefs are wrong. More, I don’t care how one can ignore that all of the major religions of the world with hundreds to thousands of years of experience and history are suddenly wrong and by extension how billions of people should have dictated to them that thousands and (potentially) millions of people are more correct in such a short span of time.
What gets me is that he does the same thing that other’s do. He has attribute the speech of hate to those who oppose him. He might as well play from the Republican playbook (he is not a Republican) because his opinion and his approach mirror what the RNC have been doing for a lot of years. It mirrors what both sides of the abortion argument have been doing since 1973. His words mirror the negative arguments shot out by any piece of legislation or ammendment or anything else where the different sides are polar opposites.
Here’s what’s sad to me, neither this author nor I live in California. Granted, there may come a time when I have to decide whether to move to California as a result of the decisions being made by the people. This is an emotional argument. This is something that matters to a lot of people. This is both religious and political and even though we tend to try and tell people that we separate church from state, we don’t. Not sufficiently. And having billions of people be opposed to something that affects thousands of people directly and tell them they are wrong and apply the lexicon of hate to that group is, inherently, wrong.
As a result, do I care what happens in California? Yes. I hope proposition 8 passes. Why? Because the California Supreme Court created legislation and I don’t believe they have that right. Because the people in California have already said through a passed law that they want marriage to be defined as only between a man and a woman. Because I personally believe the object of marriage is offspring and if you cannot naturally produce offspring between the genders of both parties you negate the purpose of marriage. Because I believe that the LDS Proclamation to the World is revelation because I believe that there is a prophet who lives, who guides us, and who had the foresight to release the official statement of what marriage is more than a decade before this question came up. And I believe what is in that document.
Call me what you will. That’s fine. What I really am, though, is someone who realizes that the case in California is much larger than just the definition of marriage and someone who doesn’t care for the beliefs and opinions of a majority of people and who choose to call me something simply because they feel that they are more right than everyone else.
John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West
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Security
Posted by smokingpen in Politics on October 30, 2008
Senator John McCain has decided to change tactics in the final days and hours before election day. Most recently, it is that Obama has done nothing to show that he can “protect the nation from grave threats.” Unfortuantely for Mr. McCain, he has actually done nothing that shows the American people he can “protect the nation from grave threats,” either. Unfortunately for Mr. McCain, he is in the same boat as Mr. Obama and that is that he was a cog in a machine and not the programmer or director of how the machine works. In McCain’s situation, he will pull out his military experience, and he has more than 20 years, and tell the world that this qualifies him to keep the country safe. Only that it doesn’t. Nor does a single individual make all of the choices or decisions that have to be made in situations where national security is even in question.
We as a nation have lived under the misapprehension that those men and women who have served in the military are the best qualified individuals to lead the country. Unfortunately, when the founding fathers set up the presidency, through the constitution, the idea of the military leading the country was abhorrent and, instead, they wanted the military to be led by a civilian. As a result, the President of the United States is the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, but he does not hold a military rank. With that said, many president’s have served in the military and in the 20th century it seems that the only president, so far, that did not serve in the military (and the majority during World War II) was Bill Clinton. In fact, prior to Harry S. Truman, presidents Taft, Wilson, Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, and Roosevelt had no military experience to speak of. Though there is a history of presidents having served in the armed forces, there is a nearly equally important history of presidents who have not served in the armed forces.
The unfortunate thing for many is not that we have presidents who also have served in the military, but that we have men who have the ability to determine a proper course of action and then follow that course. Some will say that G.W. has done that. History may be more kind to him about Iraq and his lack of leadership in Afghanistan than I am now; but no one has the necessary experience, and no, serving in the military does not make one more capable of leading the country, before serving in the office. Nor does prior military experience denote or even suggest ability to make the hard decisions. In Mr. McCain’s case, his entire political career, current hypocritical comments about Senator Ted Stevens, and his choice of running mate indicate (at least to me) that he has a history of poor choices and poor execution.
John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West
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Body Image
Posted by smokingpen in Personal Entries on October 29, 2008
I think when the words body and image are put together, one immediately jumps to the image of a woman fretting over the possibility of gaining a little weight, or one of those sticks that are on TV that we are told are very attractive but would fly away in a light, nearly non-existent, breeze.
That’s not what I am talking about, today. Rather, I am talking about me. Go figure.
My personal body image is actually rather odd. Not odd so much as I have a different image in my head than what actually exists when I look in the mirror or have to go out and purchase new clothes. More specifically, when I met Erin I was able to wear collars that were about 15 to 15 1/2 inches around. By the time we were married the collars were somewhere between 16 and 16 1/2 inches. Today, when we went to purchase me a few new dress shirts so I have dress shirts I can wear, we ended up having to purchase a 17 1/2 shirt. The problem with buying a shirt that fits in the collar (for men) is that the length of sleeve and the body of the shirt are much larger in relation to the collar. My sleeve length, for those that care, is 32 inches. Therefore, buying the right collar and right sleeve length is actually rather important. The problem with 17 1/2 inch necks is that shirts come with 34 to 35 inch sleeves. Without thinking about it, I grabbed a 17 1/2 inch thinking that I’d seen a 32 33 inch sleeve coupled with a fitted shirt. I didn’t, but we tried looking for 32 33 and asking for help only to have a rather incompetent woman tell us she would look into it and then make comments on odd body shape sizes and then to tell us that we had no right to be bringing out too little baby with us shopping. Even though we ended up purchasing me a couple pair of slacks and four shirts and a replacement belt for dressing up, the adventure was less than desirable.
However, for a lot of years I wore a 30 or 32 inch waist. The length hasn’t changed. My chest we about 36 inches around. And my neck was 15 or 15 1/2 inches. My chest is now significantly larger.
The reason this is important, if it is, is not that it stops me from doing things, but that I wake up and expect to put on pants that are about as big around (the waist) as they are long. That has not been the case in a couple of years. I would like to be able to go into my closet and pull out a collar that still fits around my neck. These things are no longer the case. I don’t fit the clothes that I owned (before today). Though, truth told, we have been buying clothes and sweaters and coats that fit me, a part of me wants that guy who was struggling to weigh (consistently) 120 pounds, was happy to hit 130, and ecstatic when I was 150 and (more or less) stable at that desirable weight. I am not around 200 pounds and it feels weird to be carrying around this much weight, to know it, and to know that when I work out and am a lot more active all I really do is maintain the weight.
When I moved back to Utah it was weird and fun to see people I’d not seen in a while and have them look at me, take a moment, do a double take, and then realize here’s the guy they knew and he looks different. More full. An adult.
John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West
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All About the Politics
Posted by smokingpen in Politics on October 29, 2008
A couple of days ago I noted that I believe we are in need of a new constitutional ammendment. Nothing has changed and I still think we need to properly define what the role of the courts in the United States are and what the various justices can do when determining whether or not a law passed by the legislature is constitutional or unconstituional. This becomes more pertinent when a justice decides to strike down a law and by extension makes the thing the law was trying to define very legal. There are plenty of examples of this. As a result of the ease of going through the courts, the voice of the people has become muted and we no longer protest as much or as loudly to our elected leaders.
According to one of the local channels this morning, a poll taken in a first grade class in Sandy, Utah ended with the majority of children picking Obama for president. On the surface, and especially since first graders cannot vote, this may seem like one of those polls (or mock elections) that don’t mean anything; however, traditionally, when polled, grade school children are often rather accurate in picking who the next president is going to be. What makes this even more interesting is that this was done in a rather conservative, Republican leaning state. Heck, Erin and I live in (allegedly) the most conservative and Republican place on the planet and Obama is gaining quite a bit of ground. Sure, Utah is no battleground state and I would probably pass a brick if, on election day, the outcome was that he’d taken Utah. What is interesting is a) children are picking him which means their parents are speaking positively about him; and b) this happened in Utah where the current president and McCain are actually very strongly supported.
On a slightly positive note, President Bush has told the banks that the condition of them getting government capital has been to use that for loans to other institutions and individuals. Apparently, banks are getting money and are still being stodgy with the purse strings. What gets me about this (now and before the bailout) isn’t that the banks have been the bastion of prudence in lending, but that they choose now to be sensitive and elective in who they loan money too. The result isn’t that they are or are not loaning money, but that they didn’t want to fail and as a result wanted the deep pockets of government to give them sufficient capital to keep them from imploding. What this suggests is that banks didn’t need the money to lend, they needed the money for other reasons and as a result, the build-up and arguments about the efficacy of adding liquid capital to the market was a load of manure.
John McCain has decided that if the Democrats gain control of the White House and the Congress the United States is in a heap of trouble. This is a load of crap. What McCain is doing is telling you what to be afraid of and who is the cause of that fear. In this case, if the major U.S. party that is not currently in the White House gets into the White House and a sufficient number of members of the Congress are fired and the majority is transfered to a specific party, this is not a bad thing. When President Bush came into office he entered with a majority from his party in the Congress. When President Clinton entered office he started with a majority of his party in the Congress. Traditionally, though, having a majority in the Congress and a president from the same party often leads to bigger and tougher roadblocks to getting things done.
And, since I don’t like him, McCain has also continued to attack Obama on experience. The problem is that McCain is sitting on the wrong end of the age-experience arch and lacks flexibility. We can see this first in his choice of Sarah Palin as a running mate. This was not a smart or wise or well-thought-out and tells the voter that the only person they are really voting for is McCain. In short, McCain is running alone. This is not unheard of: John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, and Chester Arthur (according to: http://www.presidentsusa.net/presvplist.html). McCain running with no one would be unheard of today, and he would guarantee a loss without a running mate, but it is not unheard of. In this case, might as well be running without a running mate. Though, if McCain were to die, and this is also not unheard of as eight presidents have died while in office which means that eight vice-presidents have taken over the office of president. Ronald Reagan was nearly 70 when he entered office (like, half a month from it) and nearly 80 when he left office. The average life-span of a 72 year old man is an additional 12.01 years (according to: http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/STATS/table4c6.html). McCain is 72 and that means he is more likely to succumb to age. The expectancy is an average. And that average states that for a perfectly healthy individual they will last 12 or so years, and McCain is admittedly not even close to perfectly healthy.
Apparently there are undecided votes out there, in the world. I was listening to NPR about Undecided Voters. Ezra Klein writes an article on how people who claim to be undecided are actually lying and by extension contemptible. And I tend to agree with him as you have either decided who you are going to vote for and are now milking the notion of being undecided, or you don’t plan to vote. At this point, I am pretty certain that if a person is honest about being undecided that same person is also not planning on voting. As a result, this is the group of people that should be ignored. There is nothing that is going to make someone who doesn’t feel comfortable with McCain to suddenly wake up and decide to vote for him, at the same time, people who don’t want to vote for Obama aren’t going to suddenly wake up with an epiphany and vote for him. Undecided voters are literally people who are already leaning toward a candidate but don’t want to be on record with the proclivities.
John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West
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Walking … After Midnight
Posted by smokingpen in Erin, On Writing, codename: CAMPER, entertainment, family, observations, walking on October 28, 2008
Once upon a time I really enjoyed listening to Country music. Of course, that was before I went to a giant country music festival and sat, for an entire day and well into the evening, surrounded by people I probably wouldn’t associate with if I had free time and the desire to associate with people (it was the George Strait Country Music Festival) and as a result realized that the directions I imagined my life going, at the time, were not in line with the lifestyles I could clearly see around me and as a result of that I decided that country music, though tame (which was the reason I started listening to it in the first place) was no longer the kind of music that matched my interests and I (rather quickly) started listening to other things. Today, chances are better than even I am listening to Katy Perry, Natasha Bedingfield, Sarah McLachlan, or one of a few other artists that are mostly female, mostly pop, mostly NOT the pop-tarts out in the world, and mostly sing in a way that suggests angy and chick and music. Some people might suggest that this is a retraction of advancement in the complexity and taste in music; and I might not disagree with people, though, keeping in mind the reason I started listening to country music was because I started only hearing noise in the Alternative Music movement that was happening on the radio and very few artists seemed to create music back then that ecclipsed into actual music for me, the outcome is that I find musical tastes that are, in equal parts, whimsical, easy to listen to, non-offensive (to me), and ignorable. When country music stopped being many of those things, in part because I did not relate to people who lost their dogs, trucks, horses, wives, alcohol, and on and on, I stopped really listening to the genre of music regularly. Of course, I do have several CD’s from the artists I really enjoyed, Garth Brooks and George Strait are the two I recognize as still owning, and have considered purchasing the Darius Rucker‘s country album (of Hootie and the Blowfish fame) because there is nothing more interesting than a black man singing in a predominantly white genre. That and I really liked listening to Hootie and the Blowfish back in the day.
With all of that out of the way, the title of the post is pulled from Patsy Cline‘s, Walking After Midnight, of which Garth Brooks did a cover on his The Chase album
Last night I was awakened a lot earlier than I thought I would. Honestly, though, I went to bed and didn’t set an alarm (Tuesday/Thursday alarm time is 0800). Instead of getting up and going back to bed I got up and sent Erin to bed and then shut the doors between our bedroom and codename: CAMPER‘s. Normally the only door that is shut is the one leading into our bedroom. The reason for this is because we want noise to travel between rooms and codename: CAMPER, when he cries, even with the monitor on, is hearable so long as both doors are open. Amazingly enough, when both doors are closed the kid can scream his head off and you do not (necessarily) hear it in our bedroom. Especially if you are asleep. I didn’t expect codename: CAMPER to start screaming, but then I also didn’t expect to be awake and needing to shelter Erin from additional cries and the maternal need to make sure he is okay.
I checked on codename: CAMPER, he was fine, looked at the twin bed that Lisa bought when she was in town, and the duvet on top of it, and then dived under the covers. This didn’t last all that long as codename: CAMPER complained about his pacifier falling out. The result of which was me getting up, putting it back in, batting away his little hands, watching as he fell asleep, and then going back to bed myself. The outcome was, honestly, a series of awake and asleep moments, the longest of which was about one hour, where he would complain and I would give him back the pacifier or would give it back, wait for him to stop suckling on it, take it away, wait for him to start fussing, give it back, wait for the suckling to stop, take it away, wait for the fussing, give it back, repeat until he stopped fussing and started sleeping. This was, as one might or might-not guess, was somewhat successful as I believe the longest periods of sleep came as a result of this, but even then it did not last in the tune of hours.
However, when I woke up and then tried to comfort Erin, and then tried to go back to sleep, then realized there was a reason I needed to be awake and made my way around the apartment looking for Erin, and then comforting and putting her to bed, I considered bundling codename: CAMPER up and doing one of two things:
One: go for a long walk and clear my head and focus; or,
Two: put codename: CAMPER in his car seat and drive somewhere.
Unfortunately, neither option was overwhelmingly ideal or desirable which is why I ended up jumping into bed, shutting doors, and trying to get as much sleep as a fussy baby who, we believe, may be hurting and, at the very least, suffering from a cold that can cause body aches and fussiness in adults and this is a baby who is almost six weeks old and as a result would be even more fussy given the body aches and struggle to breathe, and as a result I ended up, at times, hoping that the micro-naps I was catching would do what a sub-thirty-five minute nap during the day does, which is to trick the body into being more refreshed than it really was. By eight in the morning, codename: CAMPER decided to really scream, which Erin would’ve missed because it was separated by a couple of doors which in turn caused me to feed codename: CAMPER who ate insanely fast. In fact, Erin txt-ed me to let me know he ate that fast again a few hours later.
Before midnight, however, we did go out and ended up driving around the much-greater Orem area. We ended up on the other side of I-15 and into a subdivision that had roads built into it but no houses. In fact, I believe had the markets not started the successive crashes we would’ve seen a very different site last night than what we say (lots of empty lots), and instead, people realize that this is a bad time to start building because the cost of building exceeds the value of what is being built and as a result (this is called stickiness in case anyone cares) it doesn’t make sense to build if you can buy new, relatively new, or old for a lot less than it costs to have brand new built.
One of the pleasant side effects of having a new baby has been spending late nights driving around. This is an excuse, for me, to just go. Granted, I don’t always get to think about the cornucopia of things I would like to, or need to, or that just come when I used to drive for long, long hours all by myself or the only one awake and where those thoughts would take me on journies to places that I never really considered before getting behind the wheel. There is something, for me, about that journey (not the actual driving) that is only possible as a result of being able to focus in certain ways and allow the extra-gray matter to focus in a different direction.
With all of that said, Annie Dillard wrote Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
As a result of those connective thoughts and that many authors, the one I use as an example is Charles Dickens as well as Henry David Thoreau and others who then take their wanderings and observations and musings and in the process of all of that also go on a mythical quest where the outcome is, quite literally, a journey that brings the individual writer back a changed person. Whether that change is good or bad is not the question; but that the journey exists and change happens and as a result of both that the literary qualities of those changes are then transcribed into a meaningful work of some form.
Interestingly enough, it is through this walking process that I’ve come up with some of the focusses that I am planning to follow as a student and graduate student in the future. And it is through this process that I found myself thinking about Erin, a lot, and ending up marrying her. It is through the process that I discovered some of the writing focuses that exist (though, admittedly, at least one of them came into being as a result of a multi-day drive across the country that needed some form of outlet and is still being worked on). It is through this that I find personal focus and I feel better and I feel as though I can handle some of the things that, occasionally, I don’t honestly feel like I can handle. The process, of walking, and walking after midnight, is complex; and at the same time, I think I wouldn’t exchange the walks with anything else.
The outcome of my personal focusses in life is that I find connections with things that spark interesting chords, it is through this long-running process that I move forward with my semester and work and focus.
John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West
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Diaspora of Thoughts
Posted by smokingpen in Erin, Frank Herbert, Robert Jordan, Tony Hillerman, Ursula K. Le Guin, V.C. Andrews, codename: CAMPER, family, religion, school on October 27, 2008
According to this article Tony Hillerman died. Hillerman is the writer of a bunch of mystery books set on the Native American reservations. My parents really liked reading him, especially since they moved to southwestern Colorado near the Ute Reservation and working on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona with the LDS church. On the sad side, no more Hillerman. On the plus side, there is a very real possibility that his estate will be more willing to see his material used in movies, television, for republication and for other uses (as well as hiring writers to continue any books or series that Hillerman started and didn’t finish). That’s the sad part about people dying. Robert Jordan‘s (pen name of James Oliver Rigney) widow has talked about the options on movies about The Wheel of Time series and the more real possibility of it becoming movies. Not guaranteed, but a more real possibility. Note that nothing happened with the Lord of the Rings, in a very real way, until after J.R.R. Tolkein‘s death and until after his son Christopher started working with his dad’s material. Frank Herbert‘s son Brian with a co-writer (Tolkein’s son also may have used a co-author) expanded on Frank Herbert’s vision of Dune. More than that, the estate of V.C. Andrews took her copious notes and had a ghost writer write novels in her name, posthumously, becoming one of the more proliferate horror and thriller writers on the planet.
I’ve decided that we, the people of the United States, should write a new Amendment to the Constitution that further defines the legal bounds of the courts. Specifically, to restrict the courts from legislating across the bench. The amendment should dictate that the court’s role is to determine the constitutional nature of a law and not to interpret the lack of constitutionality as a measure for then telling the people that if a law is unconstitutional then by definition the law that is unconstitutional must therefore be constitutional. As a result of changes in our laws enacted through the Supreme Court, supreme courts of the states, and various other federal and state courts, it is necessary to dictate what is and is not appropriate for the justices to do. Specifically, when groups decide that it is too hard to pass legislation they start lawsuits that are designed to change the laws through the courts. Rather, if a law is deemed unconstitutional it should be returned to the legislature for changes with notes on what can be changed.
On the positive side of stuff, Erin got a check in the mail today. This was unexpected and wasn’t very much money, probably enough to buy a couple of shirts. Since she started her blog she is a part of a network of bloggers called Blogher. This was exciting. It is far more money than I’ve ever seen for blogging. And I’ve been doing it for a lot longer. Since she’s a part of a network, this means Blogher will actually send people her way. And since she’s writing more about being a mommy and does so in a very open way, her blog has also been getting hit by people who are (literally) interested in the new mommy experience. Congrats Erin.
Which returns me to my parents who are in a place called Inscription House. They’ve been there for about a week. Have already taught some lessons. Sounds like a load of fun.
On the other side of things, neither Erin nor I have been to church in about five weeks… or is that six Sunday’s? Regardless, it’s interesting to note that between sleep and no sleep I’ve found myself (as has Erin) just trying to make it through the days let alone get to church. Our hometeachers showed up yesterday for a couple of seconds, on top of which I received a whole series of calls from a California number I didn’t recognize and didn’t feel like answering and since the individual calling did so relatively quickly after church and didn’t leave a message… well, I have spent more time on that than I intended to.
As for baby, codename: CAMPER (registration required) is doing well. We think he is not feeling well as he’s moved from sleeping and being a somewhat independent baby to needing lots of holding and cuddling. Erin is pretty convinced he’s not feeling well. Which very well may be the case, but he’s not been running a fever. On the sad part of everything, he’s also been a little stuffy which has also caused Erin to try to figure out ways to get the mucous out of his nose. There have been suggestions as well as my boycotting several of the more hair brained plans since she does not like boogers.
On a semi-related, but almost completely unrelated, topic… we are now in need of more Kleenex as we are nearly out around the house. I’m just saying. Get me blowing my nose eight-hundred-thousand-million times a day and then don’t supply me with the (comfortable) means of getting rid of the crusty hard boogers. Of course, I discovered one of those (very uncomfortable) in class today and then had to wait until I got out of class before I could go and try to remove it; and even then, it took a while because it was both hard and attached to the side of my nose up high. Gross.
Since today is Monday, and Monday means going back to school and completing a thousand different assignments (I have a one-page precis and a review of something cowboy like a book or movie and a reformatted journal into MLA, which seems weird to me since it’s a personal journal and was never announced as needing appropriate formatting) all due tomorrow. Which would’ve been nice to have remembered over the weekend… oh wait!!! I did and didn’t feel up to working on them over the weekend.
I did go to Locus Online as a result of being directed there by an interview on Ursula K. Le Guin and stumbled across the Links Portal that lists all sorts of science fiction publications for short fiction and links to websites and more. I can’t wait to go over what is there.
John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West
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Off Saturday
Posted by smokingpen in family on October 25, 2008
It is Saturday night. I went to bed at something like 3:30 a.m. Erin tells me she woke me up at 7-something this morning. I stayed mostly awake with codename: CAMPER until 11:30 a.m. Erin woke up at 11:00 a.m. and took over in part because she had some friends coming over. I got to sleep until around 3:00. At the moment codename: CAMPER is snoozing the night away. One of the real blessings that comes from having a baby are the momens when said baby is asleep and both mom and dad can get three seconds of breathing. Of course, as he gets older and settles more into different patterns, this will happen more; but sometimes, it seems like this imposisbly large Wall of China kind of obstacle that we have to get through. And last night, codename: CAMPER decided he wasn’t all that interested in sleep and was interested in spending time with Erin or I. This results in neither of us getting much sleep.
John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West
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Endorses Obama
Posted by smokingpen in Movie Reviews, Politics on October 24, 2008
Another of President Bush’s ex-official‘s have decided to endorse Obama. This is interesting. It is actually rather uncommon for party members, and high ranking ones at that, to endorse someone other than the candidate from their own party. In this case, Scott McClellan has joined Colin Powell in endorsing Obama. Truth told, when I listened to Powell’s reasons they seemed, almost point for point, to mirror my own; and I am not swayed by Scott McClellan‘s endorsement. In fact, since he decided to write a book that, pretty universally, was shot down as unoriginal and lacking any real analysis of his time as Press Secretary. There is little to nothing interesting about McClellan or his endorsement other than he is breaking with his party and after Colin Powell broke ground by voicing his opinion, it makes it easier for other disatisfied individuals with the president and the Republican Party and those who are just hangers-on and I would suggest that Scott McClellan is just a hanger-on. He has already stated his dissatisfaction and it is no doubt not satisfied with a candidate who is on record as adopting and planning to continue the current president’s policies. The outcome is that his endorsement, though probably appreciated, is really a null value and does nothing to help garner Obama further support from the right.
John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West
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