news of the day

Went to Union Square yesterday on the way home from work. While I did see the t-shirt vendor mentioned here, I did not actually catch the incident described: http://www.livejournal.com/users/starkyld/379038.html Are we pissed off yet? By the way, if you've not been following along, the electoral map was looking insanely grim the other day, but has improved slightly: http://www.electoral-vote.com Also scroll down for the news on the voting situation in Florida. The New York Times is calling for the abolition of the Electoral College: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/29/opinion/29sun1.html?hp which is interesting as I view the EC as a bit of a sacred cow amongst many intellectuals in the US as a quirk of our history that's sort of cute. Well, it ain't cute anymore, and people are finally starting to say so.

Union Square is a hotbed of all sorts of political stuff right now. Aside from the t-shirt vendor in the link above, there was a guy with great ironic t-shirts that I was hesistant to buy because I live in increasing terror of people not getting it. "Everything is under control, just keep shopping," being one of them. Also "groupthink kills" and some iconic ones about chruch and state. My favourite was the least political but most relevant to me, "there are no ordinary moments." There never have been, and everyone it seems just noticed.

Also at Union Square was a wide variety of protests and whatever. There's an ongoing protest there against Israel's policies in Palestine, which I agree with in principal (that's a qualified statement in that the entire Mideast situation is a nest of vipers and I don't have an answer cogent enough to take a strong stand on here). That said, I hate these people, who stand there decrying "the Jews, the Jews from Brooklyn destroying Palestine." Yes, I know to what the refer (there is a massive amount of ultra-conservative Jewish migration from the US into disputed territories in the Israel/Palestine mess). But please, be specific. Decry militant Zionism. Hell, decry Zionism. But spitting the word "Jews," makes me really uncomfortable, _as it should_.

Not far from that was a bright yellow tent set up by the Scientologists to celebrate the ministering they did to people at Ground Zero in the wake of 9/11. There were lots of preteens running about in bright yellow scientology t-shirts, and most people who walked by sort of eyed the whole thing with bemused incredulity.

There were eight billion people on the streets there, and fleets of cops on motorocycles kept driving around and making the dangerous traffic and pedestrian situation there even worse. Came home to revel in Netflix.

Disc 5 of HH was almost unwatchable for me. I think I should not be surprised, but it underlined something that annoys me about myself that I've always suspected -- I pretty much can't stand to watch things where people are being bullied. I shift in my seat, I get snacks from the kitchen, I do everything I can not to be in front of the screen. It's happened to me with lots of other things (Welcome to the Dollhouse as an example), and I do always fight through it if whatever I am watching is worth a damn, but it surprised me (and not) how bad it was last night.

I said to someone the other day that I don't believe we ever get over anything, jsut that we get used to its coloration in our lives, but this bit of coloration is something I don't ever really get used to, I don't think. Certainly, I'm still angry every time my parents screen the calls when I call them, and it drives me insane that the idiocies of my childhood can make me have problems watching a movie. Movies are both too important and too trivial for that to happen.

At any rate, got through it and was then flipping channels and stumbled on the Gregory Peck movie, which I watched about ten minutes of before going to bed. Also have ascertained there are two more discs in the series (including one in which Horatio gets married, which has to explain why no one fannish I know has seen it) that Netflix doesn't have, so while it's annoying Netflix doesn't have them, I'm happy I'm three discs from the end and not one.

Today I have to go help my father set up his new computer. Of course, he's already done 90% of it (or rather he "paid a smart boy who works in the building" to do it), but he wants me to come by to make sure it's all good and complain to me about the size of the screen. He will, I am quite certain, sit over my shoulder and make me miserable. Additionally, I will have to exercise stunning self discipline and not do anything personal from his computer, because I remember, ever so vividly, what happened the one time he found my LJ.

Laura Brannigan died (the things I find out from the friends list of knightgasm). That's just.... blah.... my 80s childhood. Sad.

And don't forget, I'm on American Candidate tonight! Showtime, 9pm.

(no subject)

My parents live by the East River, and sitting in my old room, helping my father with his computer and listening to him tell me how my mother wants me to clear the last of my things out, we watch the helicopters (there's a pad near here) -- two big military transports, followed by fleets of the regular type.

I thought there couldn't be a sound more annoying than the helicopters, but I was wrong. The blimps are quieter, but there's a sharp, high pitched whine to their whir, and it's maddening.

I went up to Union Square before coming up town, and was amazed to see two hours after the start of the march people still lining up to get into the feeder marches. The New York Times notes that hundreds of thousands of people protested, and that it was the biggest protest at a political convention ever. Things are mostly peaceful, and everything, really is extraordinary.

I sat in the grass and read the first HH book, and tried to ignore the three idiots with the signs that said "Oppose the protestor agenda." I should note that they had originally mispelled agenda, and had not been sensible enough to buy new board to write their signs on, merely correcting what they had, and making it clear that they were sort of foolish.

I saw the police arrest someone, and that situation seemed insane enough that I don't really have any opionions on it, and lots of Falun Gong people were around demanding attention to their issues (fair enough, but geez, I'm not sure something could me more tangental to the current state of affairs here).

The subway was innocuous, and the Upper East Side was, as ever, it's own amazing little vortex. Much like after 9/11, when you couldn't smell it here, or hear the wailing, the neighborhood seems immune, and clearly many people have fled. While I often feel uncomfortably at home here, because it is where I grew up, I feel less so this time, just because all my supposedly fine manners and British spellings aside, it's just... it's not a very relevant place, to anything really.

Anyway, more later, still at the parental manse (hah). And yes, I found a way not to get busted for LJ this time.