This is Poison for Your Brain, and not something serious like, uhh... something... else... so I'm just going to up & say that this guy's showing more ego defenses than Jessica Rabbit shows leg. (Pro Tip: that would be, like, all of them.) Can we go through the list? I think we can!
We've got delusional projection, denial, distortion, maybe splitting (that one's a bit more of a stretch); the whole article is a case in acting out, there's clearly some fantasy at work, I'll give him a free pass on idealization and passive aggression (since I took splitting and I'm already a little stretched); actual projection, and this is not a joke, we can see the jealousy and injustice collecting common to any martyr complex and/or motivated troll; I'll give him another pass on projective identification and somatization because I don't care to play doctor that seriously with him; OK, I guess that's it, actually. The neurotic defenses are missing, as far as I can tell, and the mature defenses are also completely absent.
Seriously, take a look at the Cliff's Notes. This guy needs to see a shrink before he offs somebody. This is just stupid. And all over a fuckin' internet poll, for crying out loud.
What the fuck?!
In other news, neocons apparently think that theories of truth are a big fuckin' secret. (Also via PZ.) Seriously, these people need to take into account that Wikipedia exists (how about libraries?), or... or... or I don't know what. Fuck, who am I kidding, the shit either works or it doesn't. It all depends on whether the masses are idiots or educated enough to see through the bullshit. Whoops, I think my cynicism is showing!
You need to watch this video. You also need to record your reaction to it on a video of your own and upload that to YouTube, because I am a schadenfreude junkie and I want to see your brain break. OK, that won't happen, but you still need to watch this video:I don't think I can stress enough that this is not a joke. In a world where we are fighting over women's rights to reproduce or not, where relatively harmless cannabinoids are outlawed while addictive carcinogens are perfectly legal*, where you have to play primitive and silly social games to get laid because you can't just go out and pay someone to fuck you however you like, where legal contracts for domestic partnerships are only legal in certain places if the parties' plumbing matches in a certain way, where the same label of "militancy" is used to describe tactics of public debate and tactics of delusion-based violence alike - in such a world, there are people who are worried about the propriety of hugs. "Full-frontal hugs," that is. Side hugs, apparently, are OK. So is being a rough rider, I guess.
I feel the need to point out that I am not making this up. My friend Jack, who told me about this last night, said that he had to look up over a dozen internet articles before he was convinced that this is not a Poe. I only needed three, but then again, I've been to an Acquire the Fire concert. I've seen this shit in action firsthand.
These lunatics (and I mean that literally, these people are actually crazy in an important way) really believe that the mere chance of your groin coming into contact with the groin of another person, in a way that might possibly somehow be stimulating (if you've never actually had sex, that is), merits the overhauling of a nearly universal display of familiar affection. Double-you tee fuck. The killer, for me, is that even if you do their whole side-hug bullshit like you're posing for a photo, you still have to watch your hands, or you might inadvertently brush up against a nipple!
In a way, though, I find this almost poetic. Here is yet another religious warping of a perfectly natural part of being human, engineered to protect against imaginary harm in an impotent display of piety, to separate them from the unwashed masses in their minds while not actually accomplishing anything of substance at all. Really, it's religion in a nutshell.
* - For clarity, I think they should all be legal and the answer to abuse and addiction, like so many things, is therapy and education.
This is tough. This is real tough. Stephen Paul Wolf, a 51-year-old Oklahoman doctor, stabbed his son to death this past Monday morning in their home. His wife called the police and they subdued him, but he kept trying to stab his son even more. He told the officer restraining him, over and over again, "He's got the Devil in him and you know it."
Doctor Wolf, apparently, had a great many problems. Regardless of whether he could have done otherwise at any step in the process, the fact remains that he did not resolve these problems, and they have now had an irreparable impact upon the lives of Wolf's wife and son - ruining her life and ending his. However Stephen is dealt with, whatever becomes of his life, the damage is done and cannot be undone.
Wolf's insistence that his son housed the Goddamned Devil is a symptom of other, deeper problems. What I'd like to focus on here is that there is a particular kind of crazy evident in his words: not seeing the Devil in his son per se, but seeing the Devil at all. The idea that there is a malicious, implacable, intelligent, and covert agency at work in the world, an eternal and irredeemable force for corruption. Where you see the Goddamned Devil doesn't matter; thinking that the Goddamned Devil is real is just plain nuts.
As I said, this is itself a symptom, the particular way that some deeper problem has manifested. But we can see the crazy in it, just the same. There's no getting to that conclusion without some manner of crazy being involved at some step of the process. Whether Dr. Wolf can ever be free of his problems remains to be seen - the murder of his son will doubtless cause additional complications - but my heart goes out to his wife, to him, and everyone who has been touched by this tragedy, regardless of their metaphysical convictions. This is just too much.
My friend Craig, the Lead Cultist of Nyarlathotep, showed me something of a response to that image (backup here in case that ever goes down). Ia! Ia! Cthulhu ftaghn!
OK, so I was listening to Chariots of Iron before work this morning, and I just heard this story from June (local news, ALA follow-up). Short version: some douchebags claim that being "exposed" to a book in the library has harmed them in a way that only a hundred and twenty grand can cure. These folks also want to be able to burn the library's copy of the book (because that will totally accomplish anything at all) and reorganize the library's classification system specifically to restrict access to young adult books by young adult readers.
That's right: when you're going through puberty and feel awkward and isolated and need to hear a sympathetic voice the most in your life, the very parents who won't explain all this stuff to you want to make sure that you can't even read about it, either.
This is so stupid, it hurts my brain. Really, I'm having brain pain thinking about what these yahoos have to be going through. Look, it's like this: even if the ideas they wanted to censor are "bad," censorship won't fix it. You know why? Because bad ideas are easy to come up with. You can't kill an idea. Even ideas like censorship and book-burning (you know, actually bad ideas) can't be killed because some cock-pouch with shit for brains will always be able to come up with these leotarded ideas all on his own. It ain't hard.
The only way you can fight against bad ideas is with better ideas. Period. But these people have no better ideas - more to the point, their ideas about censorship and book-burning are the bad ones - so the only thing they can think to do is to shut up the "source" of those ideas. Well, sorry, the source of homosexuality is the world, not the goddamned Devil. The source of sex is the world, not the goddamned Devil. The source of racism is the world, not the goddamned Devil. As a matter of fact, the source of all the people, events, and ideas from which these insular fuckwits want to "protect" their children is the world. So in effect, what these people want to do is shut up the world, shut out reality, and live in a...
...right. They want to live in a pretend fantasy world. Y'know, with angels and Jesus and fluffy-clouded Heaven. Duh. I forgot all about that part.
There's no time to debunk this! I have to cram in all the sinning I possibly can before... before... whenever it's supposed to happen, doesn't matter!
So, let's recap my day so far: I had a good night's sleep, I had a productive day at the office, one of my heroes added me to his blogroll (glee!), the roasted corn salsa I made yesterday turned out awesome, ODST drops tonight at midnight, I have tomorrow off, and all the Christians are getting raptured away, too?!
This is too good to be true. Literally. That last clause breaks, like, my entire conjunction! Still, just in case, I hope all the true believers have registered at Eternal Earth-Bound Pets. Y'know, for the pets' sake. That's just the responsible thing to do, if they truly believe and if they care about their pets in a post-Rapture world.
I guess I can't really blame them for what amounts to "accepting free money." I mean, I'd do the same thing. I just wish these stupid advertising gimmicks didn't work.
That's a gross oversimplification, to be sure. But... look, I can't really do it justice. You should read it. The Good Doctor is eloquent in his scathing diatribe, and I should be so lucky as to inspire a tenth of the passion in my own readers as he inspired in me.
I will share a couple of choice comments, though. Barnacle Man wrote:
[Curious persons] take no heed of the warnings issued in Marlowe's "Dr. Faustus," Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein," H.G. Wells' "The Island of Dr. Moreau" and Robert Louis Stevenson's "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" (not to mention the myth of Pandora and the Incredible Hulk).
As a side note, Fish's fictional examples leave something to be desired: Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein": The true "sin" was Frankenstein rejecting and abandoning his creature. H.G. Wells' "The Island of Dr. Moreau": Despite what your English teacher told you, this is really a parable about God creating bestial but thinking beings, and oppressing them with a simplistic Law that denies their bestial nature. Robert Louis Stevenson's "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde": The "serum" is merely a MacGuffin to explore a concept, that man has cruel and bestial urges restrained by reason and social pressure. Pandora: Like the rest of the Prometheus myth, the real point of this story is that the gods are jerks. Incredible Hulk: In canon, Bruce Banner's had his accident while trying to save a hapless youth who wandered into the test area. Also, the Hulk's real problem is anger management, not to mention an army of idiots who don't realize hurting him makes him stronger. (I haven't read "Dr. Faustus", so I've no idea if Marlowe's text supports an interpretation aside from the superficial.)
I find it tremendously ironic that Barnacle Man cites Marlowe's version of the Goethe play. You see, my last name is Faust, so I take this sort of thing kinda seriously (but I also realize that this is viciously arbitrary on my part). I own three copies of the Goethe play, and my favorite translation (Kaufmann's parallel) opens with: I have, alas, studied philosophy Jurisprudence and medicine, too And worst of all, theology With keen endeavor, through and through And here I am, for all my lore The wretched fool I was before. I don't want to go on at too much length, but Goethe's play is complex and lends itself to layers and layers of interpretation. By stark contrast, it will suffice to say that Marlowe's play came to be presented as a comedic farce. It was a laughably unworthy abuse of the source material - much as our Barnacle Man poetically abuses the luxuries of his station to denounce the principles responsible for bringing him those luxuries.
This is a microcosm of how things are going over there. If this struck you as interesting in any way, then by all means, just go read it!
Well, OK, maybe not. But today's Google doodle is on crop circles:
This reminds me of a dude who... well... look, I'm ashamed to say I know this guy:
Yeah. I don't like him, he's just been... around at some of the campus stuff I've attended. I see him all the time.
Listen, folks. It's like this: get a sheet of plywood and some rope, carry it vertically out into the field, steam the bases of the plants, and then you can make whatever kind of crop circle you like. They did it for Signs, and creative country bumpkins with too much time on their hands have apparently done it for years before. People even do this for money, apparently.
"The controlling of medical costs in countries such as Britain through rationing, and the health consequences thereof, are legendary," read a recent editorial from the paper. "The stories of people dying on a waiting list or being denied altogether read like a horror script...
"People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn't have a chance in the UK, where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless."
The paper has since been notified that Hawking is both British and still among the living. And it has edited the editorial, acknowledging that the original version incorrectly represented the whereabouts of perhaps the world's most famous scientific mind. But it has not acknowledged that its mention of Hawking misrepresented the NHS as well.
"I wouldn’t be here today if it were not for the NHS," Hawking told The Guardian. "I have received a large amount of high-quality treatment without which I would not have survived."
Well, that's a pretty clear conditional statement from the IBD: "If Stephen Hawking were British and therefore subject to the NHS, then Stephen Hawking would be dead." Guess what? Stephen Hawking is British and therefore subject to the NHS, and Stephen Hawking is not dead; the conditional statement is false, and the argument which the point is supposed to support is therefore stupid. OK, fine, flawed. But still.
I will never understand how such out-and-out lying passes muster in the American populace. Sure, sure, Investor's Business Dailymay have made a merely-ironic-but-honest mistake... but seriously, nobody over there knew that Stephen Hawking is British? And nobody thought to check before going to print?
What are you, new?!
This isn't funny any more. "Atheists have no morals" is funny. "Obama wasn't born in the USA" is funny. "Stephen Hawking died for lack of health care" is funny. But these are all funny because they're manifestly false and relatively harmless in my day-to-day life. "Baseline nationalized health care dedicated to raising the minimum standard of living will result in mandatory euthanasia and no children getting any health care at all" is not funny; it's obviously false and stupid, stupid, stupid. It's a kind of stupid that is downright dangerous, if you ask me, since the other lies from the Right are matters of empirical fact which can be disproven with even passing knowledge of... well, anything. This, right here, is not that. This is something else.
This is different because it's screwy logic that preys on a clear and obvious misunderstanding of the pitch: if you listened to Obama at all, you'd have to know that what he says is not matching up with what is said about that. So the citizens on the Right who buy this horseshit are in the unenviable position of either A) thinking themselves informed for listening to the commentary on an issue alone (and buying it despite its obvious insanity), without actually paying any attention to the issue itself, or B) hearing the commentary and being informed on the issue and still going with the commentary, in flagrant defiance of all logic.
I don't know which is worse.
Le sigh. Look, it's like this: everyone is afraid that, should shit hit the fan, someone I care about might not have access to health care. That's a rational fear, and I get it. However, if you live in America, that's a rational fear in the current situation. It's been a rational fear for... forever. The people you love will die, and some of them will die for stupid reasons you don't like. That's how it goes, man. Obama's proposed changes are aimed at minimizing the extent to which this happens, and that means putting a price tag on human life just like we do now. You know why we put a price tag on human life? Because sustaining human life has a cost. Who's gonna pay yours? You do! Well, more accurately, you pick up where your parents left off as soon as you enter the work force and file independent on your tax returns. You make money, and you use some of that to sustain your life, and you do what you like with the rest. And right there, whatever it is that you spend before you get into your disposable income, that's the cost of your own personal Human Life, plain as day in beautiful green dollars and cents. Hooray!
But what if shit happens and you don't have enough? Well, that's what insurance is for, and insurance isn't going away - it's being supplemented. It's getting better. The uninsurable have a baseline below which the government won't let them fall, and while the quality of that thing will vary with the costs of doing that thing, the private sector will now have an objective goal: do it better than the government. If you think you can get something better from the private sector, fucking go for it! More power to ya! (Just be prepared to pay!) If you can't, or don't want to, then Obama's changes are for you, and suck though they may compared to something you can't afford anyway, it's better than nothing at all which is where things are right now. And if you've got the money to afford health care on your own, then nothing will be able to get in the way because you can afford it.
Fuckin' Hell, what is so hard to understand about this?
Since this is Poison for Your Brain and not a rigorous philosophical paper, I'm just going to come out and say that this is nothing more and nothing less than hazing. Yes, it's a well-known phenomenon in psychology that an investment of time, money, effort, or pain will tend to cause the object of that investment to be perceived as more valuable. It doesn't matter if you're beating in a gang member, paddling the ass of a frat boy, embarrassing the shit out of a new sorority girl, or screaming in pain during childbirth. Leaving aside (for the moment) the fact that this is extremely sexist because there's no analogue for men (how should two male parents achieve such a bond with their adopted child?), he also commits the naturalistic fallacy: this is how something is, therefore it is good that it is that way, and doing it differently is bad.
Horseshit.
We humans need our pelvises to be a certain way - or, more accurately, within a small range of possibilities relative to all of the options available - in order to be able to walk upright as we do. We also need large skulls to house our prodigious brains. Being placental mammals as we are, these two biological necessities are at odds with one another, which puts humans in a fairly unique position when it comes to how our young are brought into the world. An equally valid interpretation is that human births are unnaturally painful and so should be heavily medicated in order to avoid a whole bunch of unnecessary pain that only the mother will experience for no good reason.
If a woman wants to go through childbirth totally sober for any reason (or even none at all), that is her prerogative and unwanted medications should not be forced upon her. This is already an option, and it's also not what Doctor Douchebag is proposing: he's saying that all women ought to be this way, ought to have these certain values, and ought to do things his way. Getting back to the sexism alluded to above, this entails that men do not need to form a bond in such a way. Why not? Well, either they don't need to be that connected to their children, or they can establish an equally valuable connection by other means. And corollary to that is the idea that mothers, for whatever reason he'd care to dream up, need to have this connection which men don't, or can't get it by that other means (otherwise he'd have no cause to say that the connection should be strengthened in this way specifically). Because this is based on differences between the sexes, this position is sexist insofar as it treats women one way because they're women and treats men a different way because they're men. And because what he is advocating is pain for women (whether they are OK with that pain or not, which some-but-not-all clearly are), it is also misogynistic.
What an insufferable fuckwit.
BONUS! I texted the following to my roommate:
Doctor, to Women: you shouldn't use painkillers during childbirth, because labor pain will make you more attached to your child. My comment: like hazing?
My roommate's response:
Sure! Just like if he got a root canal he should do that without painkillers, so he will appreciate having teeth more.
On Wednesday, the California Supreme Court decided that the citezenry's passage of Proposition 8 was a legal maneuver. Fair play to them - the challenge was based on whether or not such a change to the state's constitution could be made by a general vote, or whether it had to be done by the legislature, so we kind of have to give it to them. I need to stress here that the judges were not voting on whether or not Prop 8 was good, but whether its enactment was done in proper legal fashion. Proposition 8's supporters - or, if we wish not to mince words, anti-gay bigots - had a few choice words to say about it. There is so much that is horribly wrong with this:
At 1:22 in the above video, one Nadia Chayka said, "I want my children to know that there is a mom - a woman - and there is a man - a father - and that's where children come from, from that union. And I don't want them to be confused about where children come from." That's right: this dumb shit is glad that the rights of millions are being held back so that her children can learn a biology lesson.
Shame on you, Nadia. You have missed the point entirely. You simpleton. You fool. You loathsome, disgraceful, unthinking twit. I don't care what your IQ or level of education is, you are an idiot for being unable to see past your own prejudice on such a clear-cut moral issue, and for allowing such thin rationalizations to gain any foothold upon your mind.
First of all, if this is what Nadia wants her kids to think, then she can damn well explain it to them. You don't need the state to uphold your prejudice in order for your children to learn about the birds and the bees. Additionally, if what she means is that she wants to pass on her bigotry to her kids, then that's an entirely different matter and her children are quite frankly able to make up their own minds on that.
Furthermore, the lumping together of these two things, marriage and sexuality, is nothing but an artifact of the lingering confusion that marriage is "about" hetero sex or "about" making babies. Marriage isn't about sex any more than a cell phone contract is about talking to your friends. Sure, it's something you do within the scope of the contract, but lots of people were doing it before they signed their contracts and that's OK, too. I don't even understand why religious ideas are even brought to the table here, because marriage isn't even a religious practice! Sure, plenty of religions have marriage rituals, but that doesn't make marriage into a religious issue any more than books are religious just because religions have those. And if marriage were about children, as it's been said countless times before, then infertile persons would not be allowed to marry, either. They clearly can, so it's clearly not.
And don't even bother trying to tell me that sterile couples are capable of having children in principle - I know that, and you know that, and we both also know that for the "in principle" to become "in reality," you'd have to mess about with the plumbing of at least one of those persons. But any two persons could reproduce sexually if you only messed about with their plumbing, so this distinction is meaningless, as there's no principled way of deciding upon a privileged method of messing about with a hetero couple's plumbing that could not also be applied to homo couples for the same results. (Pro tip: it's because excluding homosexual couples is always an arbitrary choice, since you must rely at some level on personal, cultural, or religious prejudice in order to have any reason to do so in the first place.)
This is kind of a weird thing to say, maybe, so I want to offer a proof of concept: imagine a woman who, for whatever reason you like, has had her uterus and ovaries compromised; her entire reproductive tract is shot and needs to be wholly replaced to restore her fertility. Maybe she was born that way, maybe she developed cancer at a young age and had the organs in question removed. In order to become a good Christian baby factory, all she needs is a set of functioning organs, right? Except there's an immune complication - she can't accept transplants. Again, the specific reason is unimportant, but the result is that all potential donor organs will certainly be rejected. She cannot be made fertile due to contingent circumstances, though she could be in principle. If she can marry a man (and good luck finding someone to say she couldn't - she's still a woman), then so can any man, and here's why. If you could somehow get a functioning set of organs inside her body, then she could bear children; and the same goes for every male on the planet. Men wouldn't even need a birth canal, since in vitro fertilization and caesarean sections are common procedures. Therefore, all men are capable of reproducing in principle in exactly the same way as our hypothetical woman who would be allowed to marry men, too. Therefore, because infertile couples are allowed to marry and some infertile couples could only be fertile in principle by means which could also make homosexual couples capable of reproduction, marriage being "about" reproduction completely and utterly fails to exclude homosexuals, except on the basis of preexisting irrational prejudice. I win!
Prohibiting same-sex marriage is legalized bigotry, plain and simple. Every argument against gay marriage that holds any logical water is dependent upon unfair prejudice to do so, and therefore inadmissible in our theoretically egalitarian society. The End. Now grow the fuck up and come join us in the twenty-first century - the mere fact of other people doing the things you do in ways that you personally don't like to do them in no way prevents you from continuing to do them the way you've always done. Homosexuals have become the Trix rabbit - yearning so desperately for such a simple thing, but denied it at every turn by childish reactionaries who take that very same thing for granted and continue to withhold it for no good goddamned reason.
Imagine any other social privilege, and any other demographic ("children" don't count, because everyone starts out that way and grows out of it in the exact same sixteen, eighteen, or twenty-one years, depending on the privilege in question), and see how abjectly horrifying these statements are: [Group X] can't do [activity Y], because [activity Y] is about [non-group X] getting [benefit Z which has nothing to do with whether you're a part of X or Y]. Blacks can't drive, because driving is about white people going places. Jews can't live in apartments, because apartments are about gentiles finding affordable rental properties. Women can't watch porn, because porn is about men getting their rocks off. Six-fingered people can't be taught to read, since literacy is about five-fingered people learning things. Atheists can't hold public office, because public offices are about pandering to the masses. Oh, wait, that last one's actually true (in the USA, anyway). But now see that the statement, "Gays can't marry, because marriage is about straights contractualizing their love or whatever," and somehow people aren't as shocked and revolted as they would be by the other statements.
Why? Why?! I can't understand this for the life of me. Are "normal" people so impervious to cognitive dissonance that they can truly hold in the same frame of mind the two thoughts, "I oppose gays being able to marry," and, "I am a decent human being?" Or do they just not think, not even consider the ramifications of their ideas, not even doubt the justice of their actions, before trampling so deliberately and callously over the dreams of other human beings? And which of the two alternatives is worse?
The point, Nadia, is not that these specific statements are discriminatory and obviously awful, but that this entire class of statements should be seen as equally disgusting and barbaric and backwards and just plain wrong. So fuck you, and fuck anyone who thinks like you, you atavistic inhuman slime.
So there's this doll that Fisher Price makes, and it "talks" - in the sense that "gibberish" can be considered "words." Actually, in this case, that's exactly the problem: a bunch of people are mistaking gibberish for words. The same has happened with a videogame on the DS.
As the gentlemen at Penny Arcade were kind enough to point out yesterday in comic strip form, this is just crazy. First off, it's gibberish. You have to want to hear something to make words out of it. Second, so what? So what if it says, "Islam is the light?" Do people honestly think that the mere pronouncement of a viewpoint by a doll or video game will cause some manner of harm to their children?
Apparently so. This reminds me of that asinine prop 8 ad where the mother was shocked to find out her daughter had learned of the existence of homosexuals - not anything about them, just the fact that they're in the world. It also reminds me of this other comic, which is also about the mythical power contained in children's toys (actually, that whole series is pretty good, and only 16 strips long). As much as the term "Islamophobia" is bandied about as a buzzword by hypersensitive hypocrites, I think it really applies here: what else could explain the reaction to the mere (and merely alleged) statement of a viewpoint, except a phobia of that viewpoint itself? Pat Condell has a pretty good bit on Islamophobia, but I have one rhetorical quibble with him: it's clear from his preamble that he doesn't fear Muslims themselves, but only the most fanatical of their number, and only because of their fanaticism. Religious extremism of any flavor is harmful, to be sure, but this ridiculous "controversy" over so much nonsense is a pareidolian (pareidolic? Pareidoliac? How about apophenic?) knee-jerk reaction to the simple suggestion of the legitimacy of some religion. Does it get any crazier?
While attempting to find news coverage of Gene Robinson's Sunday speech, and failing to do so, I came across a video cleverly disguised as NPR coverage. Have a look for yourself:
I listened with intense interest as I wrote in another tab, and was caught off-guard when the music kicked in. I went back into the tab and was stunned to see one of the most divisive messages I've seen in a while. Apparently, the author of this nasty little nugget of demagoguery thinks that inclusion is the work of Satan.
It should be remembered that, despite the shrieks and howls of protest issued forth by the likes of Bill Donohue and this other asshole, Rick Warren managed to find something nice to say last Wednesday about Obama's choice to invite Robinson to give a prayer at the inauguration kickoff this past Sunday. Perhaps it was only due to his being shoved into the public light that he felt compelled to say anything at all, let alone something nice, but I still think that's something. Looking around, Warren seems to be standing out among his peers as calling for unity when so many others are still preaching division.
A quote comes to mind: "A house divided against itself cannot stand." Abraham Lincoln said that; so does the Bible.
Today is the inauguration; I am working and donating plasma afterward, so I'll have to catch up later on the internets. I can't wait!
