I’m in the middle of a pickle and won’t be able to easily post any sort of update for a while. My beloved PowerBook is showing signs of a catastrophic hard disk failure. I’m trying to get the user files off with SuperDuper! but it’s not going well. I’m getting I/O consistently.

So, despite not really having the moneys for it, it looks like I will be buying a new MacBook very soon. The ol’ PowerBook is too long in the tooth and has far too many other errors to attempt to repair. I’d march down to the Apple Store right now and pick up a new one but the rumors seem to be building that a line refresh is due on the 14th of this month. It would just kill me if I bought this week only to see an entirely new model come out the next, even with the issues that tend to accompany the first revision of an Apple line.

On top of that, the external drive I own has problems on one of its partitions. As both of our computers are somewhat old and having smallish hard disks I took the 320GB drive I bought when last the PowerBook needed to go in for repair to the Apple Store and split it three ways. Two partitions are for SuperDuper! backups of the iMac and PowerBook hard disks. The third is for storage of things that just aren’t needed all the time and take up a bunch of space: movies, roms, music, etc. Today I’ve found this partition refuses to mount and Disk Utility tells me it has an “Invalid B-Tree Node” which seems to be pretty damned bad. I just can’t justify the purchase of Disk Warrior, no matter how awesome it might be, for these files but as they represent many years worth of acquisition I can’t just leave them either.

Oh, balls!

Yesterday at work I was described as “disgusting.” The quality of my upbringing was also called into question. I am having considerable difficulty in shaking off these criticisms.

What happened was I went to someone for a printout. Certain people in the lab are responsible for nearly all of the written works we use in day-to-day laboratory work. Things such as worksheets and procedures and charts and tables and all manner of assorted paper bric-a-brac that makes it easier to remember exactly what is going on. So, in order to attain spare copies of such things we need to find these certain persons and request their assistance. I got the worksheet I needed, and I also got a two to three minute lecture on just how rude I am.

Admittedly, my personality tends towards withdrawn. Some might describe me as taciturn or shy. I don’t open up particularly quickly, nor do I presume to be allowed to speak casually with just anyone. It would be falsehood to describe me as a “people person.”

Does that make me rude? I would be inclined to disagree. Some of the examples of my rudeness were my disinclination toward saying “good morning” and “good afternoon.” I didn’t realize that was essential. Lots of folks don’t greet everyone they meet every time they meet them, right?

In any case, angrily lecturing me is hardly the best tactic if your desired result is for me to be friendlier to you. In fact, I think that might be exactly the opposite result. I’m doubly glad I had the day off now. Some cool down time might be precisely what I need.

Ick. It’s cold and wet and gray here in central VA. I woke up to a few little flurries of snow that quickly turned to slushy sprinkles and then to a generalized dampness. It’s like a swamp, only colder. In other words, the perfect day to go to Short Pump without running into so many annoying West End soccer moms as to feel the need to stab someone in the eye. They have an Apple Store up there, and I love to go there, but really wish I didn’t have to drive so far into such terror to do so.

Okay, so I’m exaggerating. A little.

I tried once again to purchase tickets to see Death Cab for Cutie up in DC in April. I didn’t do so well. I’ve gone through two different presales without much luck. I didn’t have a whole lot of hope for the official sale date, even though I’m starting to come to the conclusion that presales are for chumps.

For whatever reason there was a presale through some ticket seller I’d never heard of on February 14th. I made myself as prepared as could be, knowing that the presale would be over quickly (They’re on tour with Franz Ferdinand and I’m wondering which is proving to be the bigger draw.). I signed up for an account. I made certain I had all the passwords and other nonsense I needed. I set an alarm on my phone and waited. I refreshed the page repeatedly until a buy link appeared. I breathed a premature sigh of relief, having gotten in and to a seating plan which I began to study.

Study too long, I did. For when I clicked the “find tickets” button in exasperation with the seating plan that seemed wholly unclickable I was rewarded with a terse little “tickets not available” page. I looked at the clock. Less than 2 minutes had elapsed on the presale.

The next day the 9:30 Club sent Staci a link about another presale opportunity. This was through Ticketmaster, unlike the first. I went through the same pregame procedure as before. I was logged in and ready to go as soon as my alarm went off.

“No hesitations,” I said to myself, “do not be distracted by seating charts. Act speedily and decisively.”

I refreshed the page until the sale started (behind schedule, I might add). Immediately I selected 2 tickets, and “best available” seating. I typed in their stupid distorted word thingy. I waited. And. . . I got a terse “tickets unavailable” message.

“Bullshit!” I thought, “The sale has been on for about 10 seconds now. There are no tickets at all?”

I backed out and tried again. Same result. I tried 1 ticket. I found a seat. I tried 2 tickets again. Nothing. I tried 1 ticket. I found another seat. Knowing I was losing valuable time I went ahead and bought it, thinking maybe something could be worked out. I tried 1 ticket yet again. I found another seat but on the other side of the venue. Then it was entirely sold out.

My experience today with the real sale went just about as well. I found single tickets in three different sections (including one really amazing one) but I didn’t want a single ticket. I wanted a pair. I could not find a pair of tickets anywhere. How in the fucking hell did this happen? Why is it impossible to find two goddamn seats next to each other?

Fuck them and their fucking major label. I hope you’re happy Death Cab. The fans that have stuck with you for years now can’t see you live because it’s now profitable for scalpers to buy your tickets.

Oh yeah, and (almost) all of y’all can eat a dick.

Yes, we’ve lost again. We’ve lost the presidency. The House and the Senate are still out of our control. It seems quite apparent we are bound to lose more ground in the Supreme Court as well.

No one said we had to take it lying down.

This is a time for introspection. A familiar litany of proposed solutions to recapturing the favor of the voting populace has already begun: “Democrats need to find religion,” “Democrats need to move further toward the center,” “Democrats just need to sit tight and wait for the center to move back toward them.” While it may be easy to draw these sorts of conclusions from the election results and exit polls they really don’t get to the meat of the issue.

No, what the Democrats need is to get some balls.

Time and time again you hear those highly-courted swing voters say they voted for Bush because no matter how right or wrong he is on the issues (emphasis on wrong) the American people trust him to follow through. They know where he stands, even when they don’t always agree on him. He isn’t a “flip-flopper.” He isn’t a suck-up to opinion polls. He doesn’t necessarily care what you think about abortion, gay rights, the environment, combatting terrorism, or appealing to the rest of the world. He doesn’t talk about plans, he talks about visions.

Democrats could take a page from that book. Just because you don’t want to agree with the President doesn’t mean you have to sound so wishy-washy. That “global test?” Now that sounds wishy-washy, cowardly, irresolute. Yes, it is a good idea. Hell, it’s a fucking great idea. Terrorism is only going to increase in the United States as long as we continue to piss off the rest of the world by ignoring their protests. For the life of me I still cannot fucking understand how anyone could possibly believe that the world is safer now that Saddam Hussein, a man who attacked us unprovoked never, is no longer in power.

Democrats, you are allowed to dislike things! You can stand up and say “I think terrorism is bad!” You can express distaste at the violence and sexuality on mass media that so offends by-and-large honest, non-Bible thumping, hard-working American families. “B-b-but, free speech!” you cry, “That sounds like censorship! Censorship is bad!” Having an opinion is not censorship. Legislation and bullying are censorship. Shaking your head in dismay is not. Millions of Americans out there, the vast majority, are guided by morals that do not necessarily come straight out of two-thousand-year-old books of fables and allegories. Yes, there are a great deal of religious folk out there in between those amber waves of grain and those purple mountains majesty, and their faith is the largest decider of their system of morals and values. But I still think that a good portion of them respect that faith is a private thing, and doesn’t need to be beaten over their heads. You can have moral outrage without necessarily quoting scripture.

You do not need to move towards the center. Need me to repeat that? Democrats, you do not need to move towards the center. Yes, you will hear folks say “I couldn’t vote for John Kerry because he’s too liberal.” That is just the campaign ads talking. If they thought about it a bit longer or had a better description of liberal they’d probably start to question that decision. Americans are far more liberal than they realize. When it comes down to the real issues they tend to swing more left than you might think from the popular vote last Tuesday. They’ve been fed this image of the liberal as loose-spending, permissive, and largely amoral person. Liberals, they’ll say, are the sort of folk who allow folks to shit in public and call it art. Liberals want to take all of your money and give it to nihilistic Satanists whose only pleasure is to slaughter babies in their bizarre coked-up rituals.

I’m sorry to say that liberals deserve some of that. We come across as soft. We come across as indecisive. For chrissakes, some people are still calling us “politically correct!”

We do not need to abandon some of our most important beliefs in order to court the American people. We do not need to abandon abortion rights, gay rights, separation of church and state, welfare, universal health care, or any of the other tenets of our platform. What we need to do is to frame them in a moral context, just like the Republicans do. It is morally wrong to discriminate against another human being on account of he (or she) likes boys (or girls) instead of the other way around. Just don’t take it too far. Don’t cowtow to anyone who suggests that if homosexuality is okay, then surely bestiality is okay too. Excerise your morality here. Some things are right, and some things just ain’t. It is morally wrong to enforce a particular religion on schoolchildren, employees, or citizens for the same reason as above. Once again, don’t go too far. Don’t insist on the removal of holidays or words from the pledge (I know, they bother me too. If you really can’t bear it, just let your kids mouth the words. No one will notice and it doesn’t hurt you in the slightest.) as that sort of shit bothers folks and becomes fodder for talk radio blowhards.

What we need to do is pick our battles, but once we do we need to not let up until they’re won. Pick one or two issues, not twelve, and really bare down on them. Folks get all mixed up when you try too much at once. I’m not saying they’re dumb, it’s just hard to deal with too many promises and plans and problems all in the same 90 minute debate. Keep it simple, and keep it tied to the same moral framework. Don’t be afraid to call a spade a spade.

Oh yeah, and please don’t blame your guy again. John Kerry is not entirely at fault. Yes, he lost the election. That doesn’t mean he lost it alone. I honestly believe that he honestly believed in his message, he just didn’t sell it hard enough. I get the feeling he listened to his campaign advisers more than necessary and tried to be too much to too many different groups of people. The American people don’t want a suck-up. They want a leader. That’s why we lost, again. Our guys want to be everyone’s best friend. They want to be that kid at school who invited you over to play with his expensive new toys that you secretly hated.