For the next couple of days, I’ll have hot sweaty construction workers climbing all over my house, for today the siding project begins.

And it’s about time, too, as I’ve been hanging on waiting for this to get scheduled for a while now, as I booked the job and paid the deposit quite a long time ago. Yeah, I know, there’s time built in for paperwork, and ordering the materials and all that, but the sitting around and waiting for it to happen was a constant low-level stressor that I didn’t particularly need.

But, it’s over now, or will be, in the next couple of days. They’re scheduled to start Monday morning. It really got started Thursday around lunchtime, when the truck came by to drop off a couple of thousand square feet of vinyl siding, trim, and insulation. That stuff’s been sitting in my driveway dwarfing my car all weekend, but it’s here, and serves as a tangible reminder that progress is being made. I also appear to have some small measure of dominion over the weather, as I made sure to cover the stuff securely with very large tarpaulins; a ritual that seems to have diverted the effects of Hurricane Arthur – my neighborhood remained blissfully(?) dry all weekend while many other places did not.

We did a little bit of prep work over the weekend; my wife and daughter repainted our exterior doors a clean, bright white to match the trim that will be going up, and since we took stuff off anyway, we replaced the front door knocker and kickplate with shiny new hardware that actually matches the doorknob. I also ventured out and bought a twelve-foot pruning thing (one of those big sawblades on a telescoping stick) and engaged in some long overdue trimming of the limbs that hung a bit too close to the house. Things are much cleaner in that regard now (except for the one limb which currently has baby robins residing on it; that one can wait a while), which should make the newly sided house look a bit more attractive, and leave the construction zone largely obstruction-free.

Otherwise, we played it a bit low-key for the Independence Day weekend; getting together with friends for a backyard barbeque on Friday, followed by a few hours hanging out along the James River near their house, enjoying the pleasant weather. The rest of the weekend was taking care of normal weekend stuff (plus the above activites) and an evening hanging otu with friends for a pleasant evening of making each other laugh and getting totally trounced by a first-timer playing Ticket To Ride Europe.

I’m hoping this week is, aside from the obvious, relatively quiet and uneventful. Other than the usual stuff and some music-making (which probably counts as usual), I could use a break before all the travelling various bits of us have scheduled in the coming week or two.

So, anyway…busy, but still pretty pedestrian, which is a pretty good definition of life most of the time, come to think of it.

Because I haven’t in a while, let’s talk politics!

I’ve been following this Hobby Lobby thing, like most people. It was a really weird, narrow ruling (which is not particularly uncommon for this court), which, for the life of me, looks an awful lot like the court saying that certain religious traditions have special status over others – by saying that this ruling applies specifically to this case, and to religious objections to abortion/birth control (and specifically denying it applies to things like blood transfusions that other religious traditions object to) in employer-provided health insurance plans. This is really murky, troubling law, leaving aside the fact that it seems to favor the rights of convenient legal fictions like corporations over the rights of flesh and blood individuals, which it totally does.

The one bright light in all of this was Kennedy’s suggestion in his concurring opionion that the government could cover the cost of birth control in the cases where Hobby Lobby wouldn’t. This is, of course, essentially advocacy for Single Payer health care, which is what many of us on the left really wanted all along, rather than the hodge-podge of corporate health insurance that Obamacare eventually became because conservative elements in the legislative branch wouldn’t even entertain the idea of to begin with. This decision is bad law, but if it eventually leads to a single payer system down the road, bringing the US in line with the rest of the civilized world in terms of health care, it might, eventually, in some distant optimistic future, not be total crap (which, until that bright shining future happens, this decision totally is).

Iraq…yeah. That’s a mess. It’s not going to get better right away – I kind of think the end state here, eventually, is that the old, post-WWI political divisions break down, and “Iraq” and “Syria” and all that fade, and new countries rise from the ashes, for better or worse, along ethnic and religious lines. Kurdistan is there in all but name anyway, and this whole Caliphate thing that ISIS (who are get closer to sounding like a real-world analogue to HYDRA, SPECTRE, or COBRA the more I hear about them) is trying to make happen could gain some traction, though honestly, claiming to be “THE” Islamic state with worldwide authority isn’t doing them any favors (especially given the fact that Islam is quite variable, and hardly monolithic, same as the rest of Abrhamic faiths. Think of it this way: can you point to a universally recognized spiritual and political leader for *all* the varied denominations and sects of Christianity? I didn’t think so. That’s who these guys are trying to be), nor is issuing statments that read like they were delivered by Doctor Doom after a bender. If such a state eventually gets a real political foothold, I can’t imagine it being a particularly influential one on the world stage. Stay tuned on that one…all I know is that I don’t really want US boots on the ground again over there if we can help it. Land wars in Asia (especially asymmetrical ones) never really work out, as the last however many years have shown.

Otherwise…we haven’t even gotten mid-terms out of the way, and the media’s already starting to try and spin up a horse race for the 2016 Presidential election. Right now, they seem to be focused solely on Hillary Clinton (who’s got the ambition, but hasn’t actually said she’ll run) at the expense of anything else. It’s not really a story yet, as much as they’d like to make it one. Other names floating around include (my personal favorite so far) Elizabeth Warren (imagine, an actual liberal progressive politician – I’m actually swooning), and a few rumblings from my former Senator Jim Webb, who would be far from awful.

That said, it’s pretty much lots of talk about Hillary Clinton, because there’s nobody else out there; the GOP doesn’t have a clear consensus (the last I heard, there was a movement toward running Romney again; they’re more focused on the poorly-handled internal struggle between establishment corporatists and the Tea Party and the fallout resulting from it. But as I said, it’s early; the power dynamics are shifting with the run-up to the mid-terms, and likely whoever ends up with the high ground after that will dictate the future course.

That’s politics and current events, at least the most obvious stuff on my radar. I’m honestly focusing more on internal stuff right now; job, home improvements, summer schedules, learning a stack of new songs…I get my twice-daily news injection from NPR on my commute, but otherwise, I’m not over-indulging.

Why should we, when the best news over the last couple of weeks has been the announcement of the impending release of Mandatory Fun, the new record from “Weird” Al Yankovic. We need to focus on the REALLY IMPORTANT STUFF, after all.

This weekend, the BBC the premiere date for the new season of Doctor Who. The new series will transmit, with new Doctor Peter Capaldi, on my birthday. Not an awful present, really.

I’m looking forward to the new guy; I like the actor, and I like the idea of an older actor in the role again, after a stretch of unconventionally handsome skinny fellows. The wailing and gnashing of teeth of the hormonal teenage fangirls has been lots of fun to watch as well.

Plus, it opens up the possibilities of all sorts of humor, considering some of Capaldi’s past work. The remix videos will be brilliant, I think. So far, though, my favorite is this, riffing on the popular T-shirt image you see all the cool kids wearing:

I’ll just let Capaldi’s line speak for itself to end this.

Some of you out there might be aware of the latest bit of Second Amendment shenanigans out there; these “Open Carry” idiots who decide to “raise awareness” by parading around Target and Chipotle with AR-15s and such slung over their shoulders because the law doesn’t actively prohibit it; you know, those guys so out there that The NRA told them to tone it down because they were making the other gun nuts look bad.

Luckily, I’ve not actually encountered any of these morons, other than the one fat guy who likes to lean against the trash can outside the local WaWa drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes with his buddies while wearing a holstered revolver on his hip on the weekend. It’s a little disconcerting, yes, but it’s just the one guy, not a gaggle of dudes in tactical gear brandishing rifles. Maybe he’s a bail bondsman or something; I’ve never asked, just noticed. However, there have been several events organized locally.

You can probably tell that I think these open carry folks are basically idiot attention whores; I’ve no particular problem with reasonable, responsible gun ownership; however, these guys are being neither reasonable nor responsible – they’re out there actively and intentionally making people uncomfortable, and potentially raising tension where none needs to be raised. One of these days, somebody’s going to get careless, and a situation’s going to get ugly and perhaps deadly.

It’s not a good thing.

However, recently, I’ve encountered a reaction to these things that I find absolutely brilliant: the Open Carry Guitar Movement.

In Dallas TX, musician Barry Kooda came up with the idea after seeing all the recent coverage of this open carry business, and having pretty much the same reaction as most of us (see above). Unlike the rest of us, though, he came up with a great response:

“I figured that guitars would be a better choice to carry in public and somewhat less dangerous,” Kooda said. “Why not poke a little fun and make a little sense at the same time?”

So, on July 4th in Dallas, a bunch of folks will get together publicly and compare their toys; only these toys are much less dangerous, even if they make noise. If you’re interested and in the area, here’s the facebook event listing. There are rumblings (including mine) that other events might crop up elsewhere in the country.

I say we do it.

And I really want the image above on a t-shirt – if you do too, put in a reservation to get the campaign relaunched!

.

We build excitement…

….and single-handedly support the hair-spray and smoke machine industry for a good couple of months.

The Freedom of Information Act is a wonderful thing, allowing any private citizen or group to request and usually receive (except in the case of sensitive or classified info) copies of government documents relating to any and all manner of things, as the business of government is, by design in our representative republic, the people’s business.

FOIA can occasionally be tricky; actually getting the thing you want isn’t always simple – you have to know the right questions to ask and the right information to request. It’s not as simple as saying “please provide all the documentation related to $subject”; your best tactic for success is having a very specific request (and have a pretty good idea that the document actually exists) For a number of reasons, a narrow interpretation of FOIA requests is the norm (chief among these reasons is the fact that fulfilling FOIA requests is a pain in the ass for government employees who already have plenty to do, and denying something because it’s not specific enough is technically correct, and clears the tasking with minimal fuss). So, if you ever want something via a FOIA request, do your research to know what kind of documentation is available, and ask for that stuff as specifically as possible.

Now that the public service portion of this post is out of the way…

FOIA requests can also sometimes be pretty entertaining. For example, yesterday, the WaPo pointed toward collaborative news site MuckRock’s request for information on ” all records or documentation available to FBI agents or other FBI personnel or contractors which provides information on how to interpret or understand so-called ‘leetspeak’.” The request returned an 83 page glossary of internet slang titled “Twitter Shorthand“, which, according to the document’s author, federal law enforcement personnel “should find useful in your work or for keeping up with your children and/or grandchildren.”

Not surprisingly, it’s amusingly out of date (FBI agents trying to decipher chat logs of facebook posts are probably better served by a simple google search or by perusing urban dictionary), but is probably minimally useful for someone, as much of it harkens back to the days when people used to use pager code (convenient example expressed on Angelfire, like all good early 90s references should be).

It also contains some entertaining and/or boneheaded entries that almost no one has ever used (unless they were trying to make “Fetch” happen), and perhaps a few trollish suggestions from the inside. to wit:

• PMT: pre menstrual tension
• KMT: kiss my teeth
• SHCOON: shoot hot coffee out my nose
• UDI: unidentified drinking injury
• ALOTHSOL: always look on the bright side of life
• BOGSAT: bunch of guys sitting around talking
• BTWITHIAMLWU: by the way, I think I’m in love with you
• DITYID: did I tell you I’m depressed?
• IITYWTMWYBMAD: if I tell you what this means will you buy me a drink?
• MSR: Mulder/Scully romance
• PDBAZ: please don’t be a zombie
• ROTFLMAOWPIMP: rolling on the floor laughing my a** off (while) peeing (in) my pants
• RICE: race inspired cosmetic enhancements (parts put on cars to make them appear fast but don’t actually contribute to speed)
• TANSTAAFL: there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch (wasn’t that Heinlein?)
• WAPCE: women are pure concentrated evil
• XYZ: examine your zipper
• ZOMG: emphasized OMG

Anyway; it’s about as useful as you’d expect. Honestly, it reads a lot like one of those documents we used to find along with purity tests via gopher search on vax terminals back in ancient times.

It could be worse; at least it’s not this:

_____________________

* – your tax dollars at work

For friends who saw me this weekend, I may have appeared to be a bit more of a sad sack than usual. This wasn’t an illusion, I really was, and still kind of am. At the best of times, I recognize that I’m basically a sarcastically amusing Eyeore. When things get a little overwhelming, as they have been the last couple of weeks, I tend to lose the “amusing” part, and people occasionally start to look on in worry.

Rest assured, you don’t really need to. I’ll come out of it naturally.

The last couple of weeks have been a bit on the overwhelming side. I tend to get kind of down this time of year anyway, culminating around Father’s Day (as most you know); that, combined with the extra load dropped on me at work recently (which I’m nailing, but it’s still more than I’m used to here), a certain home improvement project that will be a consistent low-level stressor until it actually gets scheduled and completed (very soon now, if projected schedules are to be believed), the budgetary fallout from that project (again, theoretical until I actually start managing it) and your basic end-of-school year flurry of activity and various other life crap, I’m just wrung out and tired; physically and (especially) mentally and emotionally. That’s all, really.

Well, the fact that this morning is kind of a special case of the universe taunting me doesn’t exactly help – I still got to wake up before dawn like usual, but beginning today, everyone else in my house is free of the opression of alarm clocks for a couple of months, and regardless of actual circumstances, it just feels unfair, you know?

But otherwise, I’m fine. I just have to tend to my inner turmoil for a bit, which means the walls I put up are a little thicker than usual. It’s cyclical, and the cycle is swinging back, I promise.

To my friends next door in Virginia’s 7th congressional district, I offer qualified congratulations for your district’s defeat of Majority Leader Eric Cantor in yesterday’s Republican primary. Rep. Cantor wasn’t particularly good the country, or for his district, and thanks to the results of this election, Mr. Cantor’s ambition of one day becoming Speaker of the House was soundly put to bed.

That he was defeated by a Tea Party-backed candidate challenging him from the right is troubling, though not surprising, given the large number of homemade yellow plywood signs dotting the landscape on that side of town, many proclaiming Cantor’s “liberalism” (which goes to show exactly how far to the right the Overton Window has shifted around here). The 7th, largely thanks to gerrymandering, is pretty safely conservative, though this historic election result (Cantor is, as far as I can tell, the first Majority Leader ever defeated in a primary election while holding the position) just might put the seat in a position for a Democratic pick-up, depending on how things play out from here.

Dave Brat, the newly-crowned Republican nominee, is pretty darned conservative, and appears to be much more of a true believer than Cantor ever was (Cantor’s allegiance is mostly to whatever increases Cantor’s profile – he’s always been much more focused on his national standing and chances at Speaker than to his district), which plays to Tea Party sensibilities, and will play well with the kinds of conservatives who tend to vote in primaries. However, overall turnout was light, which doesn’t give much insight into how the rank-and-file, non-Gasden Flag flying moderate Republicans will go in the general; Brat may indeed be too theocratically minded (he’s got some troubling associations in that direction) for the garden variety establishment Republican you find in the well-to-do suburbs of the 7th.

How Brat actually does in November depends both on a couple of things: how he comports himself with his base, whether Cantor decides to go on as a write-in (unlikely, in my opinion), and the quality of the campaign run by Democratic challenger Jack Trammell (in particular, how much support the state and national parties throw behind him). Brat’s victory at all probably has at least a little bit to do with Trammell’s supporters: Virginia is an open primary state, meaning that anybody can vote in any primary. More than a few of my liberal friends held their nose to vote for Brat in the primary in hopes of unseating Cantor and throwing the race in the 7th into disarray, perhaps at the suggestion by former congressman (and “Dukes of Hazard” actor) Ben “Cooter” Jones, who has publically suggested exactly that sort of Cooter d’Etat (I wish I came up with that term). Despite this sort of electoral ratf**kery, though, I’m relatively sure that this result has more to do with general Cantor Fatigue and low turnout from the rank-and-file.

We’ll see how things shake out in November. This result is probably a good one overall; even if Brat, whose positions are much more troubling than Cantor, wins the election, he’ll be advocating his troubling positions from much less advantageous position; without seniority or a leadership position, he won’t have any of the influence that Cantor had over national policy. If Trammell wins, it’s another vote in the Democratic column the party toward a majority, and one the party didn’t necessarily anticipate, which is good news all around, at least from where I’m sitting.

Where I am sitting, here in the Virginia 4th district (right on the edge of the border with the 7th), things are less encouraging, though that’s pretty much the standard. For the first time in three or four cycles, the Democratic party isn’t fieldind a challenger to Randy Forbes, although the last two challengers broke 40 percent, which isn’t as far off as one would expect, given that the 4th is probably more conservative than the 7th, being a weirdly-shaped conglomeration of rural enclaves and military bases. Rep. Forbes, of course, is much less influential than Cantor ever was (Forbes seemed to vote however Cantor told him to, and spends most of the rest of the time on the House Prayer Caucus and calling for the Navy to build more ships it hasn’t asked for), and thus, pretty harmless, if frustrating to those of us in his district of a more progressive bent.

The November ballot for the 4th has Forbes facing a Libertarian challenger, Bo Brown, an accountant lacking a campaign web page who has “interesting” ideas on tax policy, few other positions to speak of (though he does advocate for marriage equity from a “government has no business there” perspective), and a really troublesome hairstyle that won’t do him any favors. I’ve no idea who I’ll be voting for. I’ve cast write-in votes for my wife in the past; so far, that’s the position that’s winning out.

Comics, everybody!

Over the past couple of weeks, the buzz around Edgar Wright leaving the production of Ant-Man, surely Marvel’s most risky film project yet, after being with the project since 2006 over what appear to be creative differences over the direction the studio wanted to take the story, has been interesting, yet still pretty discouraging, because so many of us geeky types have been really interested to see what Wright (known for small-scale classics such as Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World) could bring to this C-list Marvel mainstay, who is, admittedly, a rather ridiculous concept.

Not having any sort of insider knowledge, I can kind of imagine the issues here; Wright’s definitely a visionary guy; his work has a distinctive style, which could definitely benefit a relatively obscure character like this, and that was probably a big selling point back when he championed the project. In the meantime, though, Marvel Films has become larger than the individual projects – a quirky Wright Ant-Man might no longer fit with the interconnected world they’ve managed to grow since. It might be the best move, it might not. I’d still love to see a Wright version of the project, but I could understand there being concerns. Many are still pretty worried about switching direction so radically so late in the development process (the film’s already been storyboarded and cast, it’s set to go in front of cameras in the next couple of weeks), and rightfully so.

Anyway – Saturday brought news that a new director has been appointed after a couple of uncharacteristically public misfires. That choice? Peyton Reed, who has produced many well done (if somewhat workmanlike) films, including Down With Love and one of my personal guilty pleasures, Bring it On. He was also originally in the running to do a 60s-based Fantastic Four film, which was a great idea, though got sidelined when the rather lackluster films from a couple of years ago got made instead.

I’m actually kind of okay with Reed at the helm – he does good work which would fit with an existing “house style”, can handle comedic material (which this movie almost certainly involves, given it’s history with Wright, and the involvement of Adam McKay being teased), and he’s enough of a seasoned professional to shoot this thing quickly and efficiently enough to make the 2015 release date and still produce a quality product (if not the auteur film Wright would have made), which I think is what Marvel’s really looking for.

All that said, I really kind of like the quickie plot summary Marvel recently released:

Armed with the astonishing ability to shrink in scale but increase in strength, con-man Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) must embrace his inner-hero and help his mentor, Dr. Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), protect the secret behind his spectacular Ant-Man suit from a new generation of towering threats. Against seemingly insurmountable obstacles, Pym and Lang must plan and pull off a heist that will save the world.

It’s not totally in line with established comics history, but it hits a lot of the rightnotes with Scott Lang’s (the second canonical Ant-Man) traditional story arc. Plus, I’m a sucker for a well-made heist movie, so call me cautiously optimistic on this one.

Last week was pretty much the week from hell. Among other things, I was saddled with leading a work project I wasn’t expecting when I came in Monday morning, though I’ve been kicking the project’s ass, and been granted the auspicious (and somewhat questionable) title of Test Commander. Sadly, I haven’t been issued a badge or anything, but I did make this one for myself:

The weekend, however, was somewhat better. I got a chance to rest a little bit on Friday, which I needed desperately, and spent the day Saturday on top of a mountain with a bunch of friends, for this summer’s first expedition into the Blue Ridge to hike a bit of the Appalachian Trail.

Here we are before setting off. See how fresh-faced and energetic we seem so early on a Saturday morning!

I’d done this particular section before (Thornton Gap to the Byrd’s Nest shelter and back, with a stop off at Mary’s Rock), though it’s been a while since I did the Mary’s Rock ascent, which is about a mile and a half straight up. Sadly, I set the pace for our group – slow and steady on the ascent – as a favored the ankle I twisted a while back taking a bad step around a pile of toner cartridges in the office (First World Problems), and also because I’m a little fat, old, and slow at the moment.

In any case we survived the roughly eight mile round trip (with an almost 2000 foot elevation change each way) with minimal difficulty, engaging in enjoyable (and occasionally ribald) banter for the duration, and encountering one vicious, bloodthirsty snake (which may be a slight exaggeration), eventually celebrating our success with libations and cheese at The Culpeper Cheese Company, which has become our traditional post-expeditionary rally point. Highlights this time were The Drunken Goat (cheese) and Apocalypse Ale Works’ Lustful Maiden (not cheese).

All was well and good, except for the aches of age I’m still feeling in my calves two days later. I’m doing my best to fight off the unstoppable force of aging, but I’m slowly losing ground. I was in worse shape (and at least 20 pounds heavier) when I last tackled this particular ascent (and there were four inches of snow on the ground at the time), but adding another couple of years of wear and tear on the body is feeling pretty damned apparent right now.

Sunday I spent a little time playing some country music, backing up my buddy Steve Wyse for a couple of tunes along with another ephemeral version of the Down Home Dharma band, getting chance to stretch my lead guitar skills a bit (luckily, the solo breaks didn’t extend past my 45 seconds or so of competency, so I didn’t embarass myself too much), and having a good time doing it. If you get the chance, I highly recommend checking out Steve’s current band, Cha Cha’s Cadillac, for some great country-punk rockabilly music.

So yeah, that’s what I’ve been doing lately. I’m hoping this week is quiet, unless the noise involves guys tacking up vinyl siding on my house, since order ought to be getting in from the factory soon. I’m actually pretty impatient for this business to be over with.