President-Elect Obama

Woo-hoo! I was so relieved that he won, and by such a large margin. The celebrations since Tuesday have been very moving, and it is indeed a wonderful milestone. Some day in the future I hope we will pass other milestones, like the first female president, the first Native American president, the first gay president, the first athiest president, the first Muslim president, the first disabled president who openly admits it unlike FDR, etc. But only if those people are the right candidates for their time, of course. They must be qualified first, and then I must agree with their policies too, before I'd vote for them. Like, no way would I blindly vote for Kay Bailey Hutchinson or Condoleezza Rice, just 'cause I'm a woman. And we must all remember that we didn't elect Obama just to have a national feel-good moment to "erase" slavery. We're still in deep trouble, and we still need to stay very involved in government; apathy and inattention will get us nowhere in overcoming our multiple crises.

Joe the Plumber is no Bud Johnson

I don't get Joe the Plumber. Sometimes he campaigns for McCain; sometimes he doesn't show up. Sometimes he admits that his taxes would be lower under Obama; sometimes he attacks Obama's patriotism. Sometimes he says he doesn't want to be in the spotlight, but then he hires a publicist to get some kind of book or music record deal. He's almost as erratic as McCain's campaign. Why does he think we're interested in him? Why do the Republican base get excited about pushing his supposed "everyman" "small business guy" narrative? To me, the whole Wurzelbacher saga is like a manufactured and botched attempt at creating a real life Bud Johnson.

Who's Bud Johnson? He's the swing voter in the movie Swing Vote. Spoilers for the movie below.

Yay for Apple!

I'm glad that Apple came out against Prop 8 this week, and donated $100,000 to the No on 8 campaign. I've already seen some Mac customers claim that it's inappropriate for the company to get involved in the issue on some Mac-related websites, but I don't agree. It's no more than what companies like Google have done. Apple is in California, and they have gay employees, so it is their business. Certainly Apple is not perfect. No company is. But this certainly is principled and admirable behavior.

I voted at last

I went in during early voting, and finally got it done, though I'm always a little suspicious of those voting machines with no paper trail. When's somebody gonna standardize voting procedures across the country, huh? But I'm glad I did my part, and can't wait for the final results on Nov. 4. Texas probably can't turn blue this year, but maybe it'll come close, and I hope we can at least get in Rick Noriega for Senator. Because my company cut back our work hours lately, I've been short of cash to contribute to campaigns, but I will try to do it with my next paycheck.

Robert Downey Jr. as Holmes

Whoa, I just saw this article about the new Sherlock Holmes movie.

I have not followed RDJ's career for very long, but I am aware of his reputation and I do see his talent. I have certainly enjoyed a number of his recent movies like Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, and Iron Man, and I feel pleased about his successes. Watching Tropic Thunder, I even felt very very shallow for noticing how smoking HOT he looked in the few scenes where he was blonde and blue-eyed. So I definitely am very excited about him playing Holmes. He would probably make a good Holmes, even if it's based on a comic book rather than on the original canon (Doyle's stories).

George Michael/Maeby consummation scene

Sorry about the delay in posting any fic, let alone anything else. I got caught up in the bizarre political dramas of the past month, as well as my own job worries about a potential layoff. I kept trying to finish a new chapter to post, but kept getting distracted easily. So I think I really need to get a laptop, because I can never seem to write at my desktop computer. Thoughts only come to me when I'm in bed, it seems.

But I did at last write something new, for my AD fic "Far From Over." I'll post this scene here, but nowhere else, since it's not a complete chapter. After this I'll try to start archiving old fics and stuff. I'll tag them with "old" or "new", "complete" or not, and categorize them by fandom and ratings too. And of course I hope to continue writing, despite my current lack of a laptop.

Still a misfit after all these years

My defunct Geocities website mentioned that I am a social misfit, and I guess I still am. I don't fit neatly into any categories.

I have no religion, yet I do believe in a soul, because I feel it in me and other people every day. I'm an outsider, fascinated by people who do have faith and conviction, even when others regard them as crazy or foolish, like Arthur Conan Doyle and Margery Kempe. It's sort of like Alanis Morissette's line in "All I Really Want": "I am fascinated by the spiritual man/I'm humbled by his humble nature." It may be why I was initially drawn to stories matching up Sherlock Holmes with religious women, such as Laurie R. King's Beekeeper stories, and why I wrote Helen Stoner as a deeply Christian woman in my fanfic novel (still unfinished).

This is what they call controversy?!

At my job, the cafeteria has two TVs showing cable news all day. It is our misfortune that we employees don't get to choose the channel, and so we get the godawful CNN Headline News full of Nancy Grace and freaking Glenn Beck.

So yesterday, I was watching the news and they were reporting about pictures of Spain's basketball team using their hands to slant their eyes, like Chinese, and people were talking about the outrage from a Chinese American group. The host/news person was on the phone with some Spanish official and trying to goad him into saying that now that he'd heard of the outrage, now he could look at the picture and realize that it must in fact be offensive. The Spanish official merely repeated that the picture had caused no controversy in his own country and he did not see the offense. Fine. I'm an Asian American myself, and while I find the idea of the photo dumb, and wonder what the Asian population of Spain is, I'm not going to say that we are in a position to judge what another country finds offensive, as I'm aware that our own innocent gestures can be taken as insults in other countries.

But really, my point is, this slant-eyes photo, and the lip-synching Chinese girl are played up in the media as "controversies", instead of real controversies, like China's human rights abuse. Like Tibet or Darfur, or even all the lead toys from China. If they need debate, why not talk instead about the Chinese revoking Joey Cheek's visa, and the American athletes choosing Lopez Lomong as the flag bearer? So for some reason they don't want to talk politics, but they still want to make some kind of mild, watered down version of controversy? Stupid news media.