May The Fourth Be With You!

It’s time to party like only an intergalactic assassin droid can. Happy Star Wars Day!

Found out on Tuesday that for the rest of this week, I am the team lead/coordinator for two different integrated project teams on two different projects, thanks to a quirk confluence of annual leave.

So, I get to be the boss of two disparate things, with all the attendant rights and responsibilities (but not the pay), while still trying to get all my other stuff done. Huzzah.

I’m going to need this weekend; which looks to be full of all sorts of fun things: JoCo! Paul and Storm! The Virginia Ren Festival! A birthday party! Thor!…

I hope I can keep up.

I also FINALLY caught the new Doctor Who from the weekend, “Day of the Moon” (note, LOTS of spoilers in that link); and I need to say a couple of things:

First, Uh, wow. I really want to see where this is going. Lots of great stuff here, and plenty of seeds to set up the overarching story line, and make some last season episodes (most significantly “The Lodger”) very significant in hindsight.

Second, loving the X-Files vibe of the opening two-parter, not just the deeper “mytharc” stuff, but the atmospheric way the whole thing is shot; beautiful, dark, and affecting.

And Thirdly, Why the hell isn’t Mark Sheppard the biggest damned TV star in the world. Seriously, this guy is awesome.

Next week? Pirates!

Unlike the rest of the country who seemed to be up and around watching baseball, I was asleep when the news came to light originally, and didn’t find out until the dulcet tones of the NPR newsreader woke me from the speaker of my alarm clock.

The story I heard first upon waking at 5am this morning was primarily dealing with the spontaneous celebrations at significant locations around the country; gatherings at the WTC plaza and outside the White House. I heard the sounds of the revelers, and that probably colored my first impression a bit, at least initially.

What I heard on the radio this morning honestly put me off a little bit. Not that the man’s gone; I’m not going to mourn him. Though the the thought of spontaneous rallies featuring crowd surfing and beach balls bouncing about arising at the news of somebody being dead just leaves a bad taste in my mouth, even if the dead guy was a criminal asshole responsible, directly or indirectly, for the deaths of hundreds of thousands.

It’s just really ugly, even if it’s sort of understandable. Does anyone else out there have these sort of conflicted feelings?

Anyway, putting that aside, I will say that it’s generally a good thing that this particular “mission” was finally “accomplished” so to speak, and that it was accomplished, by all accounts, with no particular loss of American or uninvolved civilian lives. For our side, anyway, it was the best resolution to the culmination of a generally unpleasant situation all around, and those involved in the operational planning and deployment should be commended for a job well done.

Besides the symbolic significance, though, I don’t expect a whole lot to change; it’s not like Bin Laden’s death will bring Al Queda crashing to insignificance; he started the organization, but it’s really a franchise operation. Just as killing the CEO of the McDonalds corporation won’t immediately shut down the network of independently owned McDonalds restaurants, knocking off Bin Laden won’t shut down all the various Al Queda branches across the world. Doesn’t mean it’s not a victory, but the various wars and military misadventures in the Middle East aren’t going to end any time soon.

In any case, though, it DOES have symbolic significance, and symbols have their own kind of power. I’m not sure what’s going to happen next as events continue from here, but I’m going to hope that clear, rational, and most of all, peaceful heads are the ones who win out in guiding the way.

________________

Of course, politically, this will likely lead to generally good things for the current administration, I hope. It’s certainly going to be a hard thing for the opposition to turn around into something bad for the President. Again, I hope it leads to positive, rational things instead of more fearmongering and time wasting.

One has to admit that this picture really is pretty funny, though.

Happy First of May, my squirrel and chipmunk friends!

What you and that tan shar pei do together is your own business, thank you very much!

This is what you get when your three-year old crawls under the kitchen table with a cheap digital camera on a random Saturday morning

Moved into a new office this week; while the situation, overall, is a positive one, it still totally blew my routine, which, when such things happen to me, manifest themselves physically. So yeah, I didn’t feel all that great most of the week.

Still, the week’s over now, so I am planning to enjoy my weekend by not deviating too terribly far from what I do most of the time. So there.

Tunes:

1. “Sweet Child O’ Mine” – Sheryl Crow
2. “Perfectly Happy” – The Ataris
3. “Don’t Have Time” – Liz Phair
4. “You Stand By Me” – The Clash
5. “Hello City (live)” – Barenaked Ladies
6. “Tremendous Brunettes” – Mike Doughty
7. “Melt With You” – Modern English
8. “Flower” – Moby
9. “I’ll Give You My Skin” – Indigo Girls
10. “Purpose” – Avenue Q OBC

Aren’t you all supposed to be young, hip, internet-saavy social networking types who were suprised to find upon moving into the west wing that government technology infrastructure was stodgy and behind the times?

Assuming this is the case, I’d think that you’d be aware of one of the cardinal rules of online behavior:

Really, by releasing the birth certificate on the white house web site, having a press conference about it, or pretty much acknowledging the whole “birther” thing at all, that’s really all you’re doing.

Sure, it may feel like giving these folks exactly what they’re asking for in order to satisfy them and “put this business behind us” is the rational thing to do, but you know, it’s really not.

Want to know why? Because by acknowledging this kind of behavior in the first place, you’re encouraging it; it’s not like putting this out there will actually convince any one of them to change their belief that the President is illegitimate. It’ll just make them louder, and of course, the media, seeking ratings and advertizing dollars, will spend the next week covering the supposed controversy with all kinds of bloviating about “inconsistencies” and “kerning” and “pixels” or whatever, instead of all those other “important things” we both believe should be part of the national conversation, like responsible government policies to address unemployment and crumbling infrastructure and and making sure the congressional hurdles which legally allow the government to not default on it’s loans are dealt with.

Really, if you’re going to spend time addressing the fallacies put forth by the right wing, spending some time defining what the debt ceiling actually is, and how it differs from the representation certain Republican congresspeople are offering would be time better spent. By addressing totally unrealistic claims by fringe conspiracy theorists with delusions of relevance, you’re just offering them evidence that they’re really on to something.

Responding to arguments rationally is only workable when the party you’re in conflict with is also a rational actor. Otherwise, you’re just feeding the trolls.

deadmalls dot com.

Remember, in the flurry of youth, when the mall was someplace you actually wanted to go to? Seems no one else can either.

Intellectually, I can remember twice weekly worship sessions at these air-conditioned, brown-and-orange tiled temples of commerce attended by roving bands of Aqua-Netted, denim clad youth, but I can’t remember the last time I was actually in one when I didn’t feel just a little bit unclean.

Oh well, I’m still kind of glad that someone out there is filling a necessary anthropological void by chronicling the lumbering decline of this former American institution. It’s a worthy and interesting discussion of suburban decay.

Also, I’ve actually been to more of the properties listed than I necessarily care to admit.

Today’s xkcd is just really rubbing our faces in it now by pointing out the theatrical release of The Little Mermaid is chronologically closer to the original moon landings than it is to the present day.

I don’t even want to contemplate The Goonies right now.

There’s a pretty interesting discussion over at slacktivist regarding the escalation of the “saving oneself for marriage” phenomenon in evangelical culture to include avoidance of sullying oneself through kissing (or increasingly, any physical contact more involved than hand-holding), typified by a certain pastor preaching on the regret he feels for his having kissed three other women before he married (and presumably kissed) his wife.

You know, I don’t get that. I’ll be the first to admit that I wasn’t the most worldly fellow before I managed to become involved with my beloved spouse, but I had a few dalliances that could reasonably be called “relationships” that,in the end, didn’t work out. Sure, the end of some of those relationships were painful, and there might be a few things I wished I didn’t do, but I wouldn’t say I regret any of them; they provided valuable life experience that has come to shape the person I am today.

There ought to be a maxim out there something like “wisdom is found in the comments.” In this case, I’m just going to echo commenter semperfiona:

I wish there were more cultural space for “the people I loved before helped make me who I am, and who I am loves you; the people you loved before made you who you are. ain’t it great that we found each other?”

This is a great little bit of wisdom, though it’s far from the only worthy piece in the whole discussion linked above; plus, it’s got some great references to the phenomenon of the “Christian side hug”, which never fails to amuse me.