Housecleaning

Oh yeah... this page is still in an embryonic state, so don't be alarmed if it looks different from day-to-day or ceases to work entirely, at times.

And comments/suggestions/personal remarks are all welcome.

Inauguration

I've decided to move my blog from facespace because I'm jealous of those real blogs out there.

And what could be more fitting an inauguration than to post pictures of me washing the skunk stink from my dumb-ass dog? Again. Will it never stop?

And, no, I'm not wearing pants. But neither is she, dammit.

In other news... Sean and I saw Salman Rushdie the other night in San Francisco, an event that is part of the City Arts and Lectures series - the same wonderful organization through which we've seen Art Spiegelman and Barbara Ehrenreich. Rushdie was endearing - funny, cocky, lewd - he told a great story about playing ping-pong with Charlotte Johansson during which she expressed repulsion over the idea of him licking her face.

I don't know. I'd let him lick my face, I mean, how many people have experienced that?

And, oh yeah, Happy Summer Solstice! If I were in Fairbanks tonight would the night with pretty much zero darkness, although the whole summer is void of a night sky. I miss that - it never stopped me from sleeping, but was really handy if you had to pull an all-nighter doing something interesting, like killing chickens and whatnot.

The weather has been great here - sunny, mild and breezy with spectacular sunsets. The fog has been minimal, instead we have clouds, that's a rarity.

Work is great, too - our 2007-2008 batch of fellows has mostly departed, so the office is empty and our one problem employee has been in Israel for the last week; tender is the workday. Sean and I have no summer travel plans, just hopefully a couple trips to our favorite nude beach and maybe some hikes, should we ever feel motivated enough to leave the house some weekend. We do, however, have some travel coming up this fall. We're heading to Hawai'i with my mom over Thanksgiving and will be spending winter break in Palm Spring with Sean's parents. Best of all, we're going to venture eastward at the end of January to see Barack Obama's Inauguration.

I know, aren't we counting chickens before they hatch?

I say no. Considering that McCain's latest defense strategies have been to call Obama's policies "pre-9/11" (a lame-ass move from the Bush League play book) and say he's untruthful because he decided not to use public funding for his campaign (Is not using public funds really a bad thing? Is that the best attack you can muster?), they're already at crisis point. It ain't getting better from here for McBushinstein's feeble little campaign.

So, we're pretty excited to see a brother in the White House! Which also leads us to wonder, who will speak at the inauguration? JFK had Robert Frost and Clinton had Maya Angelou. Frost is dead and Maya is a Hillary supporter and, well... we really can't think of any other living figure who lives up the task. Thurgood Marshall is dead; ditto MLK Jr; ditto, um, Lincoln. The only person who springs to mind is Nelson Mandela, but he's not American,
so probably not quite
appropriate (though awe-inspiring, nonetheless).

The best speaker, most properly "larger-than-life" pubic figure
I can think of is Obama himself. What a great fucking quandary! Well, no matter who speaks, I plan on being there, this is a moment I don't want to miss.

Stephen Colbert, maybe? Jon Stewart?

And thus ends my first blog - or, as Nixon ended his resignation speech: "In leaving it, I do so with this prayer: May God's grace be with you."

Or as Pynchon says in Gravity's Rainbow:

"What?" - Richard Nixon