Not a bad day here, overall. Snow’s just started falling, though the meteorologist guys say that it’s not going to be the huge storm they were threatening last week.

I sit typing at my keyboard with the dulcet tones (or not) of the eldest’s rock tumbler rolling away polishing some semi-precious stones. At the other end of the house, the kids are beating each other up (mostly) virtually with the pretty new Playstation Move controllers while the wife sits knitting something with the new raw materials she received this morning.

Things have been otherwise peaceful overall, except for when the kitten took down the Christmas tree about an hour ago. Hopefully she won’t try that again.

Anyway, Happy Christmas, everybody within view of these words.

Later.

Happy Solstice, everyone.

Extra neat this year, given the total lunar eclipse last night. The view was quite good from my driveway between 2 and 3am last night, though you’d never know it from the photo above. The kids made it about fifteen minutes before deciding they were too cold.

The youngster decided that this was worth sharing with the world at large. Note that this video does not include her commentary:

Really, everyone loves a good silly baby animal video, especially when they’re done working for the calendar year.

While I don’t have much to say on the explicit topic at hand in this post from slacktivist, I can say that every time I’ve ever found myself in a similar position than Fred describes, I felt at least, if not more (given the fact that I didn’t grow up in the Evangelical subculture) uncomfortable.

What I really want to point out from the piece is the paragraph quoted below, which really gets to the heart of the worldview of a lot of people my age and a little bit older:

And that’s when it hit me. Unlike everyone else in that room, I really was having the ultimate Gen-X worship experience. I had become a detached observer — standing apart from the others, from the music, even from myself. What could be more of a Gen-X experience than being self-conciously aware of your self-consciousness about your self-consciousness?

That’s really so much of the experience of being of a certain generation (though most of us aren’t comfortable with the labels so much anymore). Not everyone, of course, but a lot of us.

I could go into a deep, involved socio-historical explanation of where that cynical, introspective detachment comes from (and believe me, I really, really could), but really, it’s one of those things that if you’re going to get it, that statement is enough, and if you’re not going to understand, all the explanation in the world isn’t going to help.

Senate Passes “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” Repeal.

It’s long past time we got rid of the whole “gay people can’t serve” business, even if it is the “well, you can serve, as long as you never ever talk about it” variety. I, for one, am glad to see the United States take one step closer to catching up with the rest of the world in terms of equal rights for GLBT folks.

My personal argument against this kind of policy has always been tied solely to the most mundane of interactions. Here it is in a nutshell:

Lt. Heterosexual: “…had a great weekend, my wife and I had a great time out for dinner and a movie…” PERFECTLY OKAY AND ALLOWED.

Lt. Homosexual: “…had a great weekend, my partner and I had a great time out for dinner and a movie…” ILLEGAL, GROUNDS FOR DISCHARGE.

Really, it’s not about showers or lodging or combat morale or whatever excuses people have been making for the last however many years – the DoD survey pretty much proved that such things aren’t an issue, except for a handful of bigots who think about those things way more than is probably healthy, and for some reason figure that if nobody mentions anything, they can pretend that there aren’t thousands of gays and lesbians serving with honor and competence today, thus preserving their fragile, bigoted worldview.

In the end, it’s about a whole subset of Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines being unable to talk about the totally banal bullshit we all talk about with our co-workers during down time without fear of losing their job.

That’s why the policy was wrong, and why I’m so glad this measure passed both houses of Congress. A lot of people got a really great Christmas present this year.

As I was clearing up the remnants of hotel taco night, I came to the realisation that tonight will be my last night in a hotel for the year, and will get to spend the rest of 2010 sleeping in my own bed.

I like that.

Sure, I’ll be living out of a suitcase again come January, but for now, I’m just going to pack my bag, settle down on the weird couch and watch one final bad movie on hotel cable, rejoicing a little bit in the fact that I won’t have to leave home for a while.

That, and not think about how much traffic’s going to suck tomorrow on the interstate, what with the snow coming and all.

I wish to take this moment in this space to add my voice to the teeming multitudes along the eastern seaboard, and say, with dramatic effect…

Damn, it’s cold outside. Seriously, bitterly windy and cold. Makes the bones ache and the skin sting. Yeah, it’s pretty much unpleasant all around.

But really, it’s December 14, it’s kind of supposed to be cold out, at least in the northern hemisphere. It’s not like this change in the climate is particularly unexpected.

Oh well. I’ve made my comment. From now on, I’m going to try to steer my little corner of the national conversation to other topics. It’s for the best, really.

It’s a Monday on the road, and as is my custom, I ventured out to the local Trader Joe’s for my bag of organic apples and bread-product-to-be-determined-by-price-and-impulse (since I head off to work before this hotel usually puts out it’s breakfast spread), and finally succumbed to temptation and bought a bottle of the infamous Two Buck Chuck, which in Virginia, sells for a slightly inflated $3.49, rather than the eponymous $1.99.

Getting in touch with my inner middle-aged housewife, I picked up the White Zinfandel. Go ahead, you may laugh. I was in the mood for something slightly sweet.

I can tell you, from experience, that the wine, known for it’s “extreme value,” is actually pretty good, especially for the money. I’ll probably stop again this week and take a couple of bottles (perhaps of other varieties) home for the holidays. If you have the means (and I’m guessing you probably do), it’s probably worth the effort to track down a bottle or three.

Also, I totally destroyed the cork on the bottle while opening it, and thus, am forced to drink the entire bottle this evening rather than let this tasty beverage go to waste. Oops.

While I love the convenience and crowd-avoidance benefits of shopping online, I am somewhat annoyed with certain vendors’ shipping practices. Not necessarily the shipping times; all the stuff I’ve ordered in the last month or so has arrived quickly, often more quickly than the promised delivery date.

No, what annoys me is the fact that certain vendors will ship the ordered articles to my home in cartons that clearly advertise what’s inside; sometimes with glossy color photographs. When these packages arrive on my front porch like this when I am not home, which is often, it destroys even any pretense of mystery about what sort of holiday gifts certain individuals might receive, especially when those certain individuals are the individuals who answer the door to receive the package.

But, you may be asking: “Don’t you dislike the holiday season?” The answer might surprise you – No. I dislike all of the artificial cheeriness and sanctimonious goodwill everyone puts on for one month out of the year then goes back to being thoughtless assholes for the other eleven. I dislike many of the pointless rituals, and the fact that the ones I do like had the point drained out of them centuries ago. I hate the iconography used for advertising and marketing purposes. However, I actually quite like the practice of seeking out gifts for loved ones that those loved ones would particularly enjoy, and I enjoy watching the moment of discovery.

When that discovery happens the second week of December at the hands of the FedEx guy, it kind of ruins the moment.

Today’s shuffle derives from the act of delving into old hard drives recovered from the now deceased old Pentium 4 laptop, thanks to a couple of external IDE drive enclosures I can access via USB cables, since my new desktop machine only supports SATA drives.

New technology that allows me to prolong the life of outdated technology is cool.

1. “Hello City (live)” – Barenaked Ladies
2. “Luther’s Windows (live)” – The Badlees
3. “Say So” – Innocence Mission
4. “Action! Not Words” – Def Leppard
5. “Castlevania 3 (live)” – The Minibosses
6. “This Ape’s For You” – TMBG
7. “Fire and Ice” – Pat Benatar
8. “Empty Spaces” – Pink Floyd
9. “I Wanna Be A Unibomber” – The Donnas
10. “Heavy Metal Drummer” – Wilco