We interrupt this blog for something NOT about WoW . . .

Namely Prop 16, on Tuesday's CA statewide ballot.

Every day, Jameece and I get some kind of mailing form the PG&E front group behind this latest perversion of the initiative system by wealthy interests. PG&E is apparently feeling the heat over how localities are forming power agencies to get away from PG&E. A couple of years ago, PG&E went to the mat to stop West Sacramento and parts of Yolo County from joining the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, and succeeded by the slimmest of margins at the polls.

Now PG&E wants to load the electoral dice by requiring a 2/3rds super majority on any such vote to form a public power entity. Cloaking its naked greed in the language of anti-tax and anti-government populism like a sheepskin over a ravenous wolf, PG&E is hoping that "conservative" voters -- those who might be receptive to anti-tax, anti-government arguments -- will turn out in droves and gives the greedbags at PG&E what they want.

The problem with this plan is that voters can see right through a campaign of lies and distortions. And this plan is being sold with more lies than a used car.

Personally, I think public power is the way to go. I've lived in three public-power towns -- Sacramento, Lodi and Idaho Falls, ID -- and electricity rates were damned reasonable and service was top-notch. Whenever I've had to live in PG&E territory -- 2004-5 and since moving to Fresno this winter -- rates are astronomical and service is abysmal to indifferent.

Why deny the boon of Public Power to other communities by rigging the game in favor of the only other player at the table? If there was ever a special interest proposition, this is it.

If you vote in California, I urge not only a NO vote on Prop 16, but a HELL NO! vote.

Okay, folks . . .

1. Now that the Teabaggers have finally figured out what the term really means . . . they say it is a slur! I refer them to the phrase "hoist by one's own petard."

2. I love how the local Republican political vermin are crawling into the light of day . . . and nary can the term "Republican" be seen! They're all "conservatives" now. Like that carpet-bagging fetid pile of dingo's kidneys asshat Richard Pombo, who mis-represented my old congressional district a decade ago before getting punted like a demented gnome in 2008. I guess it takes more than a wee dram of, you know, political courage, to run on the brand so soiled and defiled by Shrub the Younger.

I guess he was a Rethug before being a Rethug was un-cool, right? As though filing the serial number off a gun changes its ability to kill . . . .

3. Second ICC 10 run yesterday for Tyrantos. Nice belt and bracers for his Enhancement spec dropped but nothing for his healbot set that he did not already have. Raid is going "Splat" on Rotface. Just need better execution on this guy. Still 5/12 ICC-10 Regular. Hope to Odin I can make the 25 on Sunday-day-day. Doing Mom's day stuffs tonight with Jameece, her mom and a friend.

4. Been watching some TV on DVD -- to wit: Babylon 5, Season 2. Two episodes to go, and it is as awesome now as it was when I first saw it in reruns on SciFi (the current designator for the network, "SciFy" makes me sick, BTW) almost a decade ago. It's a LotR-class epic space opera, the best damn SF show made in the 1990s, and outside of Star Trek TOS, is the best-of-all-time SF TV series not created by Joss Wheadon. Firefly is just as good or better in terms of acting, writing and effects; it takes the honors for the decade just passed with only token competition from Stargate . . . but Firefly never got the chance to tell this kind of story . . . if that was ever Joss' intent.

Thank Odin for Hulu.com and the WB's streaming of all five seasons.

(Quasi) Daily Bloggery 2009-04-16: Of teabaggery and untrasound

1. Health: SGL (109), feeling pretty good at the moment.

2. Family: Called my daughter last night. She had some ultrasound-sourced news: Baby Kanenwisher is a grandson. Her and Sam have picked a name for the little guy, which will be announced when he makes his debut in August.

3. Politics: There has been a big stink on certain cable news channels -- mostly one named for a certain fur-bearing animal -- about "tax protests" over President Obama's budget proposals. To symbolize their protest in a manner unmistakable to any American who is aware of his heritage, they've adopted the Boston Tea Party model, and are calling it "teabagging the President."

Guys, "teabagging" has a whole 'nother meaning in the here-and-now. In gaming, it refers to fragging your opponent and executing the maneuver described in the UD link with your foe's virtual corpse.

Of course, these protests -- basically corporate astroturf in action -- ignore the objective reality that the US has among the lowest taxes in the world, and has over the last, oh, thirty or so years, a lot less progressive while income distribution has skewed upward.

Gwenny referred to it as "insanitea."

4. Gwenny: I'm going to see her this weekend. It's been two weeks and I miss her badly.

5. WoW: Patch 3.1 landed on Tuesday, and it was a mighty thing indeed. Neat new content in Northrend, a big bad new raid instance I'm not anywhere near ready for . . . just grinding cash for Marty's epic flying skill and mount. Gwenny, through the lovely Paharita, donated 1k gold to the cause. I'm bringing over another 3k on another toon, which should be Just About Enough.

Daily Bloggery and Linky-linky: 2009-03-11

1. SotR: I'm kind of tired due to sleep dep. Kind of like that pushcart in Monty Python and the Holy Grail with the guy yelling "Bring Out Your Dead!" However, the lack of sleep has been in a very good cause. OMG what a cause . . . I'm not going to /disclose more just yet, except for the fact that I'm in a very good place. SGLs continue to be Green. YAY ME.

2. Baycon has gone from "definite maybe" to "I'm going. Period." Yes, this is related to item 1.

3. Effective immediately: Chuck Norris is no joke. I'm gonna utterly PWN the next WoW loudmouth who starts with the CN jokes.

4. Tech Republic needs to STFU with the FUD.

5. New talking iPod. Nice.

Memes and Themes, the LARP

Work has been full of the latter lately.

1. We had a diversity fair the other day. There are company sanctioned affinity groups for AAs, Hispanic-Americans, Asian-Americans, women, Christians and LGBT folk. I was going to ask, but was afraid of being accused of bigotry, the following question: Where's the affinity group for "None of the Above"?

2. Next week is an awards meeting. Too many people and too much noise in too little space . . . and it is nominally compulsory, except in the case of medical stuff.
My doc rocks. Appointments anytime I need them. Sorry I missed the awards ceremony again . . . pesky heaslth issues.
Anyway, the manual for events here stipulates that THERE MUST BE A THEME! Usually the theme reeks of TV sports . . . but this time the theme is "50s Pop Cultcha." Of course, I refuse to be amused. The Fifties were "happy days" at the expense of too many others.
SCREW the sock hops, Mel's Diner, etc. The Fifties were NOT all "Happy Days" and Teh Fonze.
I suggested our team do the Army-McCarthy Hearings with a Bill Gates look-alike playing Tail Gunner Joe, the excreseance from Wisconsin. "Have you no sense of decency left, Sir?"
They shot the idea down in flames, naturally.

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Now playing: Babylon 5 - Voices of Authority
via FoxyTunes

Assorted, various and sundry.

Political: "Bipartisanship, my ass!" To the Rethuglicans, the term means "getting my way, no matter what." I think it's time for the 'thugs to learn a life lesson: that Karma, aka Blessed Momma K, is the most pitiless bitch in the whole universe. How well we remember getting W's agenda shoved down our throats until we choked on it. Now the show is on the other foot! In the House, the Democrats don't need 'thug votes to pass the Obama agenda; With the Senate Dems just shy of a filibuster-proof majority, teh Prez still needs to trade horses with teh 'thugs. The problem is that you just don't trade with thieves.

Health: Serum glucose has been under good control, with only one spike over 200 in the last month and readings averaging right around 110. I'm battling a bit of a winter cold at the moment, feeling not so good.

Family: I'M GONNA BE A GRANDPA in August. My daughter's gonna be a mom. She will be a good one.

WoW: Doing the reputation grind thing and gearing for a 80 repec to Resto for raiding.



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Now playing: Jon Bon Jovi - Dead or Alive
via FoxyTunes

Tis a very good day . . .

1. I found out yesterday that I'm gonna be a grampa in August. My daughter tells me that her pregnancy has been easy so far. Looks like I'll be taking time for a real vacation this summer . . . she'll be a good mom; of course their apartment may be a bit small for "baby makes three," Dertails, details.

2. Barack Obama is inaugurated as the 44th POTUS tomorrow.



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Listening to: R.E.M. - Walk Unafraid (Live)
via FoxyTunes

The Van-Breaking-Down-Seven-Phone-Agents-two-tow-trucks-Two-oops-THREE-Fuel-Pumps-Fail-outta-teh-box-six-hundred-bux-but-the-shop-has-free-wifi Blues

Good Points: free wifi, accessible from here. I can forgive a lot for free wifi.
Bad Points: TV in waiting room tuned to Fox News. That's what iTunes and WoW were made for.

Foxaganda Trails:
"Obama's Gonna Close Gitmo and release the terrists, we're all gonna die!!!"
Where the fsck does FNC get all those idiots?
Calling Ann Coulter a "cvnt" is an insult to vaginas.
Bill O'Reilly wears a tie to keep his foreskin from rolling up his neck. Fsck BillO and the phone sex falafel sandwich he rode in on.
Calling Sean Hannity a "retard" insults the mentally ill.
Meat Loaf on Hannity; time to delete Bat Out Of Hell from the HD

This siege of semi-forced TV reminded me of why I don't own a set. I turned up the music, risking hearing loss to keep the IQ points from leaking out my ears.

THREE fuel pumps out of the box . . . but now they know WHY: the shop's been ordering the WRONG ONES!!

During my vehicle-less stretch this week, I downloaded more ebooks for my reading pleasure. Or so I hoped. I'm a very big fan of Eric Flint's 1632 series. If you were to design in a lab a sf series to appeal strictly to me, the premise of "Have a cosmic accident drop a small West Virginia town into Thurungia at the height of the Thirty Years' War. Watch hilarity ensue." is a at the top of the list. The original 1632 is a classic on the same plane as H. Beam Piper's Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen (premise: "Pennsylvania State Trooper stumbles upon a transport device of the Time Patrol, winds up in a parallel universe where North America was originally settled by Aryan migration across the Pacific Ocean ("Aryan Transpacific"), with early 1600s tech and a church that deems gunpowder(!) a religious sacrament . . ."). Another good comparison volume of course is S.M. Stirling's Dies the Fire (Premise: "Alien Space Bats An Unknown Force shut down all electronic and high explosive / high combustion technologies, reducing the world to pre-1100 tech; SCAdians and Pagans war over the ruins . . . Oh, and Nantucket is missing."

Anyway, 1632 spawned numerous sequalae: 1633 (co-written with David Weber), 1634: The Baltic War (also co-written with DW), numerous "Grantville Gazette" volumes of vignettes and short stoies, and at least three other "163x" volumes. The first two volumes in this list are both awesome. Weber and Flint collaborated earlier on an awesome book set in Weber's Honorverse, Crown of Slaves, so I knew the first two sequals would rock. They did.

This brings us to 1634: The Bravarian Crisis. The book is not exactly a contunuation of 1634:TBW, it focuses on our favorite medieval / early modern royal dynasty: those lovable Hapsburgs! The co-author knows her 17th-century Germany. I learned more about the Hapsburgs in reading this book than I ever knew before I picked it up. Yes, the plot was okay . . . but it was BORING as all hell. Okay, 1634: TBC was really about "soft power." Building things like modern schools, while avoiding enemies like the Inquisition, the Society of Jesus and the French. Not to mention what happens when the Holy Roman Emperor (talk about 'three lies for the price of one') loses the will to live. Too much touchy-feely, not enough "Let's show them the meaning of Rate of Fire!"

Perhaps that's coming in future books . . . but this one struggled to hold my interest. At least it was better than Orson Scott Card's magnum opiate, Empire. I may give 1635: The Cannon Law a chance. Or not. Two months till Storm from the Shadows . . . hopefully eight - ten till Torch of Freedom (aka Crown of Slaves II) and Mission of Honor next year.

Once I get the car back, methinks I will see Gran Torino. You simply cannot go wrong with Clint Eastwood, marauding gangbangers and a M1 Garand. Also Defiance.
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Listening to: R.E.M. - Imitation of Life (Live)
via FoxyTunes

As usual, The Onion NAILS IT

Indeed

Some politicians kiss babies . . .

see more politics and fun!

Senator Kennedy

Reuters reported today that US Senator Edward "Ted" Kennedy suffered from seizures this weekend that doctors are blaming on a brain tumor.

The good Senator has been called "The Lion of the Senate" for his tireless struggle on behalf of working men and women, the poor and minorities for fifty years as Senator from Massachusetts. I know Senator Kennedy will face this latest challenge with the determination and courage that marked all the scions of the Kennedy clan.

Best wishes for a speedy recovery can be delivered here.

That horrid ripping sound you're hearing . . .

. . . is Kieth Olberman tearing GWB a brand-new asshole.

The Great Respec, SotR, Mayoral Racism

If it's the middle 60s in WoW, it's time to look forward to what they call "end game." Endgame is where the best loot and toughest challenges lie in WoW.

My Alliance Shaman is about to hit level 66, and at the level 65 midpoint, I took the plunge and "respeced" -- picked a new talent mix. The talent mix plays a very big role in how a WoW character performs; Dakatirr was originally speced in the "Enhancement" tree as a pure elemental-based damage dealer. Now he is a healer -- in groups I stand back and make sure the damage dealers stay healthy.

Before the respec, I could not buy an invite into a group for love or gold. The reason for this is that most players prefer to be damage dealers and there are a lot of them. This is understandable because of the Player-vs-Player element of the game. Better damage dealing = more kills in PvP = more honor earned. Healers in PvP also get honor, but few really enjoy that role. Most characters are damage-dealers -- Hunters (most popular class), Warlocks (close second) Mages and Rogues. Shamen are the least popular class next to warriors and priests. Now I am the Shammy in demand. Now I get whispers all the time: "Need healz for Ramps/BF/whatever... wanna come?"

Now if only loot for a resto shammy would drop in the instances I'm running . . .

As for me: I'm doing OK. The shift to weekends off is going to be hard to hang onto for more than one shift bid cycle; I got it in a trade.

On to the local mayor's race (you will see how appropriate that line is in a second). Yesterday this mailer landed atop my mail pile. I expect political campaigns to include some rather, shall we say, strong charges of mud to be hurled. However, it was not the charges against one of the mayoral candidates that caught my attention (nothing short of "Candidate X eats babies!" will do that), it was the photograph of the candidate being attacked. He happens to be African American, and the photo of this particular candidate made him look utterly menacing -- the kind of guy who might indeed dine on one's children.
If I recall correctly, the same stunt was pulled on another upstanding candidate (and, I hope, next President of the US).
Now, I understand political opponents under no obligation to present the opposing candidate in a flattering golden glow of angelic light. However, there is routine political vilification and there is "dog-whistle" racism. This mailer crossed the damned line, and I'll be damned if I vote for the people behind this scurrilous racist crap.

The perfect memorial for teh Shrub . . .

. . . in, of course, San Francisco: renaming a sewage treatment plant after GWB

"Waste not, want not!"

Tasty think-piece . . .

This is the kind of article I read all too seldom; one with historical analysis that is utterly dead-on and fascinating to this history geek/nerd/wonk.

The money quotes:

The clue to the US electoral map lies in ethnography. As the historian David Hackett Fischer and the commentator Kevin Phillips (among others) have demonstrated, ideology and region are surrogates for race and ethnicity in the US. American politics is, and always has been, a struggle for power between two coalitions of tribes. Two coalitions, instead of three or four, because the US inherited the "plurality" or first-past-the-post voting system from early modern Britain. Plurality systems ensure that third-party votes are wasted and so give countries relatively stable two-party democracy.

In most periods from 1789 to the present, the US has had two dominant national parties competing to control government: Federalists vs Republicans (1790s-1810s), National Republicans vs Democratic Republicans (1810s-1830s), Whigs vs Democrats (1830s-1850s), Republicans vs Democrats (1850s-present). Despite the changing names, the underlying coalitions have been remarkably stable. In effect, there have been only two main parties in American history: the northern party and the southern party.

The core of the northern party (originally Federalists, Whigs and Republicans, and now Democrats) has been citizens of New England and the "greater New England" region settled by the descendants of colonial-era New Englanders, an enormous area which includes the great lakes, the upper prairie and the Pacific north-west. The culture of these "Yankees" originated in 17th-century English Puritanism. Its legacy remains in a distinct New England Yankee culture which values moral rectitude and social reform.

The historic rivals to the greater New England Yankees in US politics have been the coastal southerners of Virginia, South Carolina, and the Gulf coast region, which they settled from the Florida panhandle to east Texas. Royalist refugees from Cromwell's Puritan dictatorship--the so-called "Cavaliers"--created a hierarchical, traditional, aristocratic society based on a plantation economy. They have always dominated the southern party (originally Jeffersonian Republicans, then Jacksonian and Rooseveltian Democrats, and now Republicans).

On opposite sides in the English civil war, and then in the US civil war, the Yankees and Cavaliers have always been on opposite sides in US politics. For generations, the moralism of Protestants in New England, such as Cotton Mather and John Adams, has clashed with the worldly honour code of renaissance country gentlemen in the south, such as Thomas Jefferson and Robert E Lee. In New England, the politics of reform was organised around the town meeting; in the coastal south, the politics of deference and patronage was based on the courthouse gang. "Good government" is a New England idea. So is the idea of American exceptionalism, of an American mission to set an example to the world, or to save it. The ancestors of the New England Yankees emigrated to the American colonies in order to found a perfect Calvinist commonwealth. By contrast, the ancestors of the southern elite emigrated to the colonies in order to get rich quick by lording it over Indians, blacks, and poor whites. For New England, the US is--or should be--a New Jerusalem. For the south, the US is simply the successor to the British empire. The southern oligarchs, like their cousins who once ran imperial Britain, think in terms of profit, not providence.

In other words, the roots of our politics are rooted in the 17th-century English Civil War. Royalist "cavaliers," exiled by Cromwell's Protectorate who settled in Virginia and American south; Puritan exiles in the North.

This explains far too much.

OSC-noxious Book

Standard conversation with friends (edited for simplicity). It happened twice this weekend.

SF- reading friends: "You've never read (fill in the blank author, book, series, etc)??"

Me: "That's right, I haven't read it."

SF-rf: "Oh come on! (fill in the blank author, book, series, etc) is so classic! How can you call yourself a sf fan?"

Me: (pause) "So. Think 4th Edition D&D will be worth the switch?"

Over the years, a lot of my friends have thrown books at me to read. I usually make an honest effort to read them. However, with a small number of exceptions, I've hated the book / author / series. The exceptions (Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar, Harry Potter, The Mists of Avalon, Harry Dresden) are vastly outnumbered by such as Xanth, Discworld, The Wheel of Fscking Time, Belgariad, DragonLance, the entire Forgotten Realms cycle, virtually all Vampire: The Masquerade novels, Fred Saberhagen's Berserker novels . . . .

The point is, once again I listened to a friend's recommendation about an author to try. I even selected a book set in contemporary America as opposed to one set in his peculiar worlds. And, once again, I was disappointed.

Orson Scott Card's Empire has an interesting premise: that the US is so divided between "Red" and "Blue" states, regions, etc. that there can be no compromise. It's a 21st century Second Civil War with hovercycles, 'mechs and EMP death rays . . . nice premise for a book I'd like, and at first OSC seemed to live up to all my friends' hype about what a great author he was.

He wrote about military culture and hardware as though he lived it without sounding trite. He created a wonderful protagonist, a truly sympathetic character with a lovely family right down to the nerdy loner kid who wandered off alone to read Discworkd and Xanth novels . . . Tight plotting, great dialog and some very well drawn characters . . . an enjoyable read until the very sympathetic protagonist is scragged like a dog halfway through the book, at about the point you find out it's evil libruls who are the rebels.

Part of me wanted to scream and another part of me wanted to throw the book at the nearest wolf. I stayed up till 0230, losing sleep but having fun reading this, only to be played like a violin by this asshat of an author! Yes, as Katherine Kurtz once semi-famously said, "Sometimes the hero has to die" Kurtz once killed off nearly a generation's worth of beloved characters (Camber The Heretic, anyone?) over four books, usually heroically (Kai Descantor, Elaine Thuryn) and sometimes not (Rhys Thuryn), but she did it with style.

Between watching the protagonist die from a .22 pistol round fired by his secretary through the eye at arm's reach range while his hands were both full and the extant to which liberals were being demonized for opposing the conservative policies of a president who makes Dick Cheney look like Ghandi, I'm ready to puke. I know, Empire is NOT Ender's Game. I know judging OSC's entire body of work based on this book is dangerous.

Perhaps fscking with the reader is a trademark of his. I haven't finished the book; I don't know if I ever will now. Up till the hero died, Empire rocked.



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Listening to: Leslie Fish - Bring it Down
via FoxyTunes

Interesting new SF billboards

Love them!

What next?

OK, this is more than enough!

What "this" is, is that a state legislator in Mississippi has introduced a bill to forbid serving overweight people in restaurants with more than five seats.

No, this is NOT a joke! I guess since discrimination against people with dark skins is out, these assholes have to have someone to discriminate against. Or maybe this is a way to accomplish the same goal (since people of color are also very often overweight).

Overweight people are a class of people it's OK to hate. Perhaps the only one left in the US anymore. We get stares . . . we get sneers . . . we get criticism disguised as unwanted medical advice from EVERYONE, because everyone is a weight loss authority. The last thing overweight people need is shame; most of us have enough other issues with our relationshio to food as matters stand!

At least some medical people are starting to understand that strident advice / shaming people to lose weight is counterproductive.

Political This 'n' That

1. Even though I'm a political junkie, I'll be ignoring Shrubby's final State of the Onion speech tonight. My one word SotU: FUBAR. The best thing I can say to him and his henchmen are the words Oliver Cromwell spoke to the Long Parliament:

You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go.

2. This is the level to which reporting on certain presidential campaigns has sunk. Sic transit gloria mundi.

3. On the Dem side, interesting shift in momentum toward Barack Obama from his rather big win in the South Carolina primary this weekend. The more I look at Barack Obama, the more I like him. Even more interesting is the sheer vote totals. More people voted there for Obama than for all the Rs combined.

Consider how significant this is to me as a political and history junkie: An African American candidate (not the first one, but the first to have such a high chance of winning a major-party nomination), a man of my generation (he's two years younger than I am . . . our first post-Viernam / late Boomer / ur-GenX candidate in a field full of Cold Warriors and Viernam era 60-something Boomers), won a resounding victory in a Democratic primary in a state notorious for neo-Confederate revanchism -- and the state where the American Civil War started with the shelling of Fort Sumter in 1861.

4. In other Obamania news: The Democratic side of the Kennedy clan has endorsed Obama. Senator Ted and neice Caroline Kennedy have issued ringing endorsements of Obama that invoke the memories of President John Jennedy and Senator Robert Kennedy.

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Listening to: The Elders - Turning Point
via FoxyTunes

An double IV drip of "Irony"

Another factoid in the current debate on domestic spying:

The US Attorney General has a portrait of Grorge Orwell in his ofice.

He says he admires Orwell's style and clarity as a writer. Yea, and I used to read Playboy for the articles, too.

/bangs head on desk to dull the pain . . .

359 days until those people (to use a favorite phrase of Gen. Robert E. Lee) are outta there and our long long national nightmare ends.

His other office portrait, of Supreme Court Justice, US Attorney General and Nuremburg prosecutor Robert Jackson, is likewise ironic. But not in the way he might think it is.

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Listening to: Green Day - American Idiot
via FoxyTunes