Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in The Almanac's LiveJournal:

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Wednesday, July 1st, 2009
11:12 pm	Those Dreams Have Remained and They've Turned Around Having spent the past couple of Canada Days dwelling on fictional Canadian pop stars and Heritage Minutes, I find myself thinking more this year about the vagaries of Winnipeg's specific identity... ( Life in a Northern Town ) I'm from here and I have no idea what the answers are, as I struggle with all of these issues myself on a personal level--the lack of anonymity, the inability to get away from your past, the concern that your ambitions can only be fulfilled by moving away, the knowledge that you'll eventually run into your ex at the worst possible moment because there are only ever two degrees of separation around here. Obviously, I'm one of the many people willing to bitch and moan and sing the praises of Winnipeg, all at the same time. I know that Winnipeg will always be a part of me, but is that really all there is to this city? Current Mood: inconclusive Current Music: The Weakerthans - "One Great City!" (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, June 26th, 2009
12:57 pm	It's Time to Play the Music When I woke up today and saw that the nonstop news coverage was still on, I realised it had actually happened. Michael Jackson died. He was the first musician I can remember really being a fan of who wasn't specifically making children's music. It was all mixed together in my young mind at the time, of course--original artists and Mini Pops covers held about the same status on my record shelf--but listening to Thriller on vinyl and cassette tape, I managed to make the distinction, because I could tell that Michael Jackson was a Big Deal. That was also when I started to watch music videos (probably on Video Hits) and truly understand what a music video was. Once again, the videos for songs like "Billie Jean" and the all-time classic "Thriller" (a video so long it has end credits!) are what made that clear to me. Say what you like about that album and that video, but their enduring influence cannot be overstated. So many of my earliest memories of pop music and popular culture in general are tied to Michael Jackson that it's hard for me to think of one without associating the other. There've been so many iconic figures lost just in the last little while (Bea Arthur, David Carradine, Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett), but Jackson has already drowned them all out, the only one who could slow down the entire Internet. I imagine this will be another Princess Diana moment, where this is the main event any of us remember about this month in the future--yet another legendary entertainer gone too soon. For all of the excesses and general weirdness that Michael Jackson became known for over the years (Is it too early to make an Elvis comparison?), my main inclination last night and this morning has been to just listen to his songs, concentrating on that golden period from Off the Wall to Dangerous when (in the realm of song and dance, anyway) it seemed like he could do no wrong. That's how I choose to remember him. Current Mood: mourning Current Music: Anything by Michael Jackson (Comment on this)
Saturday, June 20th, 2009
2:18 am	The Man, He Ain't So Hard to Understand I'm not exactly a fan of slash fiction (that's a longer discussion for another day), but in the midst of rewatching Season One of Star Trek: The Original Series--with its euphemistic talk of "thinking with your glands" and "unusually strong female drives"--I couldn't help but notice that certain pieces of dialogue seemed closer to homoerotic innuendo than I had previously remembered. That may just be Pride Month talking, but either way, I give you: Top Ten Unusual Slashy Lines (TOS Season One Edition) [N.B. For the purposes of this list, "unusual" means that I didn't include any Kirk/Spock lines in the mix.] 10) Kirk/Christopher: "Feel free to look around, Captain. Don't touch anything, but I think you'll find it interesting." 9) Kirk/McCoy: "He's all yours, plum." 8) Kirk/McCoy: "Sometimes, pain can drive a man harder than pleasure. I'm sure you know that, Doctor." 7) McCoy/Kirk: "That's a boy, keep it up. Work up a little sweat, it'll do you good." 6) Kirk/Kirk: "I have to take him back inside myself." 5) Spock/McCoy: "I had a very strong reaction. My first sight was the face of Doctor McCoy bending over me." 4) Scott/Kirk: "Any way we do it, it means a mighty rough ride." 3) Kirk/McCoy: "He wants to get me down there, afraid I won't swallow it." 2) Cogley/Kirk: "I could get you off." followed by "You can pull out if you want to." ...and the most unusual slashy line of the season: 1) Landru/Kirk: "Landru is gentle. You will come." This may yet become a (semi-)regular feature, depending on what Season Two has to offer... Current Mood: suggestive (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, June 16th, 2009
2:04 pm	There Is Lots to Doodle-Do When you visit The History of Things That Never Were, you'll find a set of anchor links at the top of the page allowing you to jump to one of the site's timeline sections, which are divided by medium (Television, Movies, Books, Games, and Comics). After mentioning in my ruminations on the first season of Star Trek: The Original Series that I was rearranging the Star Trek chronology work, though, I realised I never really highlighted the fact that each of the sub-sections under those media has an anchor, too. At the risk of blatant Google-baiting, here are all the specific sub-sections on the site, in order of appearance: Star Trek Timelines Doctor Who Timelines Highlander Timelines Battlestar Galactica Timelines Robotech Timelines Gundam Timelines Star Wars Timelines The Lord of the Rings Timelines The Wheel of Time Timelines Cthulhu Mythos Timelines Wold Newton Timelines Dungeons & Dragons Timelines DC Comics Timelines Marvel Comics Timelines I've managed to do some tweaking here and there on the site lately, but there is a great deal of work left to be done to bring it up to a level I'd find satisfactory at this point... Tracking down dead links alone is starting to take up a lot of my time devoted to the site--and between the shutdown of AOL Hometown late last year and the impending demise of GeoCities, this problem is only getting worse. (Timelines hosted at GeoCities make up over 10% of the total links on the site.) It's always sad to see a good timeline disappear, but checking links and thus updating the site properly is a normal part of site maintenance--which in this case means acknowledging how the Web has changed, and having to let go of certain sites which no longer exist. :/ After all, it's counterproductive to have dead links just sitting there, as it undermines the reliability of the site itself. (Ironically, there are probably just as many dead links to the site out there now as there are dead links on the page itself, since previous URL redirects no longer work...even though it's been at its current URL for the past seven years, or the majority of its existence.) Certain people have also told me I should "build the brand" by incorporating some sort of social-networking component into the site (or at least its visitors), such as a dedicated blog, but I have my doubts that I'd be able to sustain a dual blogging effort on top of everything else, so I've even (*shudder*) thought about using Twitter for people to follow site updates more closely. Whatever I decide in this regard, it would be nice to find a way for the site to keep up with the times, Web-wise, and eventually move away from that lovely 1997 design aesthetic. (A long time ago, lampbane came up with a really nice potential redesign which I still have, so I may yet use that as a launching point.) Then again, there's something fitting about an "historical" website that evokes the online past... Current Mood: geeky (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, June 15th, 2009
1:54 pm	Happy and Gay Like You Wouldn't Believe I did indeed make it to Winnipeg's Pride March on Sunday (as promised earlier), and I'm glad I went, on what turned out to be the first weekend of the year for completely decent-without-qualifiers weather. :) I'm actually pleased to have some sunburn on my neck and shoulders, because it means this "summer" thing everyone talks about is more than just a rumour... Given the warm, sunny weather, the turnout was great, and I saw a number of people I knew along the way--but fewer than I expected. :/ I'm not sure what's up with that. Most of my marching time was spent seeking out a float with decent music to walk beside, and it was a decidedly mixed bag until I found a winner in the "Adam and Steve" float. ;) After that, it was just a matter of hanging around Memorial Park, watching some of the requisite song-and-dance acts, and checking out the display booths before heading home... Speaking of which, you know the demographics have shifted at an event like this when companies like Investors Group and Sears Portrait Studio make an official appearance. :} Current Mood: bemused (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, June 11th, 2009
2:02 pm	I Grab My Books and I Give Myself a Look Before I completely neglect to mention it, Zack Morris made an appearance on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon this week to update us all on what he's been up to since his days at Bayside: I was surprised at the attention to continuity in his interview, referencing everything from Zack's (impossible) SAT score to his Wedding in Las Vegas--even addressing the retcon of Good Morning, Miss Bliss (the precursor to Saved by the Bell where some of its characters debuted), which was set in Indiana--and I have to say that The Roots can rock out that theme music rather well. :) It's also a little disturbing how easy it is to make Mark-Paul Gosselaar look the part again... I'm glad to see Zack's kept his brick of a mobile phone (no text messaging, alas), but sad to learn of his divorce from Kelly Kapowski...although of course, that all depends on whether this appearance could be considered canon. ;) Current Mood: preppy Current Music: Zack Attack - "Friends Forever" (8 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, June 10th, 2009
10:24 am	Straight Ahead and On the Track Now Having missed out on Winnipeg's Pride March over the past couple of years (for a number of reasons), I want to be doubly sure I make it this Sunday... In the meantime, the status of various GLBT issues in North America is the same mixed bag as it was at this time last year. One (pleasantly) shocking turn of events was discovering that President Obama actually proclaimed June as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month: I call upon the people of the United States to turn back discrimination and prejudice everywhere it exists. I couldn't have said it better myself. There are plenty of places in the States where discrimination and prejudice in this area need to be turned back, too. While same-sex couples there are still struggling to get the same immigration rights and adoption rights as their heterosexual counterparts, and some public schools are blocking pro-GLBT websites, marriage rights continue to be a primary battleground--with the good news out of New Hampshire seemingly cancelled out by the upholding of the same-sex marriage ban in California (and you all know how I feel about that). Lest we Canadians look upon those problems and pat ourselves on the back for being so much more enlightened, I would remind you that Alberta just passed a law allowing parents to pull their children out of class when lessons on sexual orientation are being taught. Things might be all right where I'm sitting, but they continue to be worse elsewhere--for our neighbours to the south as well as so many other parts of the world. And that's why I need to show my support at Pride this year. Current Mood: discontent (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, June 5th, 2009
6:32 am	They've Given You a Number and Taken Away Your Name When I got home last night, I had exactly one message on my answering machine. The male voice was unidentified. Here it is, in its entirety: Don't drink, don't smoke... [muffled response] Yeah, no, she wants to but she will hate it. Close, close up. If she had one shot, I guarantee you, half of it and her head would be going. I'm bugging you, because she's never drank, if she took a shot-- [muffled response] No, if she ever took something that was very strong to drink, half the drink and her head would start to go. And you've never drank before? [muffled response] Evil, evil spirits, we call it. Alcohol. [chuckling to himself] [click] So...did someone seriously just accidentally drunk-dial me and proceed to describe how someone else couldn't handle their liquor without losing it? Current Mood: amused but confused (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, May 30th, 2009
3:36 pm	No One's Gonna Bend or Break Me Someone on the TrekBBS forum recently resurrected the thread devoted to Strange New Worlds 10, which I hadn't seen in quite a while, in order to offer up a story-by-story review of the anthology. I appreciated that--so many people who review collections never bother to cover every story therein--even though that person gave "You Are Not in Space" a middle-of-the-road assessment: Good, readable Hoshi story. I was kind of hoping for a more rousing conclusion. On a related note, I had written letters to each of the book retailers in Winnipeg before the new movie came out to let them know about the existence of SNW 10, basically working the "local author does good" angle in connection to the Star Trek franchise and hoping they might stock up on it again. Over a month has passed since I mailed those off, so I decided to start looking into how effective my (small) efforts at marketing had been...and while I haven't been able to check everywhere yet (both McNally Robinson locations will need a visit, for starters), Chapters and its affiliated bookstores allow you to search for titles at all locations in a given area, so I know that as of this week, there were seven new copies of Strange New Worlds 10 available in the system. :) I'm not saying this would work for every market or every Star Trek tie-in writer, and some authors have been luckier than others (daytonward, for example, had a lot of support from Paramount's Kansas City publicity machine), but with a lot of debate right now about what Pocket Books could or couldn't have done to promote the line in the wake of the film, I felt I should take matters into my own hands. Amazon.com Sales Rank: #220 646 in Books "Only 4 left in stock--order soon (more on the way)." Amazon Kindle Sales Rank: #42 662 in Kindle Store Amazon.ca Sales Rank: #193 725 in Books "Only 3 left in stock--order soon (more on the way)." Current Mood: productive (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, May 16th, 2009
6:05 pm	Every Day Is a Different Trial I'm sure you're all eager to read my copious thoughts on Star Trek (well, maybe not everyone), but because of a number of upheavals in my personal life this week, I'm not really feeling up to it. With luck, I'll endeavour to get back up to speed so I can post something about it in the next week or two. Current Mood: distraught Current Music: Infant Sorrow - "We've Got to Do Something" (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, May 1st, 2009
12:47 pm	Baby, Remember My Name The most commonly reported statistic on Star Trek tie-in fiction is that its readership is generally about 1-2% of the larger audience for the franchise as a whole. In the hope that a rising tide raises all boats, and a larger audience for the new movie equals a larger audience for the tie-ins, let's move some paper and list the most recent Star Trek outings by the people on my friendslist: Emily P. Bloch (deltagrl) most recently contributed to the Star Trek literary universe with the short story "Shadowed Allies" in Strange New Worlds 9, edited by Dean Wesley Smith with Elisa J. Kassin and Paula M. Block. Marc Carlson (marccarlson) most recently contributed the short story "The Immortality Blues" in Strange New Worlds 9. Keith R.A. DeCandido (kradical) most recently contributed A Singular Destiny, the first followup to the Star Trek: Destiny crossover trilogy. He also edited Mere Anarchy, which collects the six-eBook miniseries "covering 30 years of TOS history" as a trade paperback, and wrote the short story "Family Matters," which appears in Shards and Shadows, a Mirror Universe anthology edited by Margaret Clark and Marco Palmieri. Allyn Gibson (tiggerallyn) most recently contributed the short story "Make-Believe" in Constellations, an anthology edited by Marco Palmieri which celebrates the fortieth anniversary of the original Star Trek. Jim Johnson (ineti)--who was cool enough to pick me up an autographed copy of an entirely different media tie-in anthology, Doctor Who: The Quality of Leadership, at last year's Shore Leave--most recently contributed the short story "A Terrible Beauty" in Shards and Shadows. Gerri Leen (gerrileen) most recently contributed the short story "The Smell of Dead Roses" in Strange New Worlds 10, edited by Dean Wesley Smith with Paula M. Block. David Mack (infinitydog) wrote the epic Destiny trilogy (consisting of Gods of Night, Mere Mortals, and Lost Souls), which really shook up the Star Trek universe in print. He also wrote the short story "For Want of a Nail" in Shards and Shadows, and his next Star Trek novel will be Precipice, part of the Star Trek: Vanguard series he co-created with Marco Palmieri, which occurs concurrently with The Original Series. Steve Mollmann (steve_mollmann) most recently contributed the bookend short stories "Meet with Triumph and Disaster" and "Trust Yourself When All Men Doubt You," both with Michael Schuster (michaelschuster), in The Sky's the Limit, an anthology edited by Marco Palmieri which celebrates the twentieth anniversary of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Scott Pearson (scottpearson), who gave me a really cool shout-out last week, most recently contributed the short story "Among the Clouds" in The Sky's the Limit. Amy Sisson (amysisson) most recently contributed the short story "'Twould Ring the Bells of Heaven" in The Sky's the Limit. Paul C. Tseng (exculpatory) most recently contributed the short story "A Dish Served Cold" in Strange New Worlds 10. Dayton Ward (daytonward) last contributed Open Secrets (whose story was co-created with Kevin Dilmore), the most recent novel in the Vanguard series. They also wrote the short story "Ill Winds" in Shards and Shadows and Things Fall Apart, the first story in Mere Anarchy. ...and of course, my last appearance was "You Are Not in Space" in Strange New Worlds 10. All of the titles I just listed are also available in paperless formats such as Amazon Kindle, so let's move some electrons as well. ;) I know some upcoming Star Trek books have been pushed back to 2010, friendslist, but have I missed any of your items coming out in 2009...? Amazon.com Sales Rank: #65 208 in Books "Only 2 left in stock--order soon (more on the way)." Amazon Kindle Sales Rank: #17 876 in Kindle Store Amazon.ca Sales Rank: #187 130 in Books Current Mood: promotional Current Music: Moxy Früvous - "My Baby Loves a Bunch of Authors" (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, April 30th, 2009
2:48 pm	An Earthling's a Creature as Plain as Can Be I've been getting more and more wrapped up in anticipation for Star Trek over the past few weeks, reading or watching everything I can connected to the movie (while, paradoxically, trying to keep myself from being completely spoiled)--whether that means the official clips released so far; Countdown, the official comic prequel to the film, and the also-connected comic "When Worlds Collide" in Wired magazine; or even following the really elaborate international Alternate Reality Game created for viral marketing purposes. I've also been trying to figure out how I might rearrange the Star Trek Timelines at The History of Things That Never Were before the film comes out next week... All this is, of course, in the knowledge that I'll probably need some sort of online blackout at the end of next week to safely avoid those spoilers. Besides all that, I've been getting thoroughly into that old-school frame of mind by rewatching The Original Series (in production order, natch). I seriously doubt I'll make it through the whole thing in the next eight days, but I've already managed to finish off Season One, and some stuff jumped out at me this time around. First off, despite the show's "seek out new life" mandate, many episodes deal with either completely human antagonists ("Mudd's Women," "Dagger of the Mind," "The Conscience of the King," "Court Martial," even "Space Seed"), essentially human antagonists ("The Return of the Archons," "A Taste of Armageddon"), or non-speaking phenomena ("The Naked Time," "This Side of Paradise"). There are very few episodes which feature "new civilisations" at all, and even the new species we do meet are usually represented by only one of its members ("The Man Trap," "The Squire of Gothos," "Arena," "The Devil in the Dark") for most or all of the episode in question. I realise the real-world production reasons for all this, but it's still striking to see these patterns all at once. It's also worth noting, given how much continuity has accumulated in the franchise over the years, that there are some things in this very first season of Star Trek which have huge implications (the First Federation, the Shore Leave Planet, even the famous Guardian of Forever), but are never so much as mentioned again in any live-action series. In fact, most of these episodes don't even have indirect sequels in subsequent seasons/series, so it's surprising that the franchise is often accused of constantly rehashing past plot points... Current Mood: nostalgic (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, April 10th, 2009
3:37 pm	We Won't Get by with Those Same Old Ways One of the great drawbacks of the Star Trek franchise over the years has been its failure to acknowledge that GLBT identities were a part of its utopian future... At first, that didn't make it terribly different from the rest of the television landscape, but as time went on and this reality was incorporated into other series--not just shows with a GLBT focus like Queer as Folk, but a lot of mainstream fare and even other genre shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Doctor Who--without society falling apart, Star Trek started to seem overly conservative compared to its franchise neighbours, ignoring such expressions of equality when it could've been a trailblazer. In a week when the good news out of Vermont can be mixed with this sort of continued idiocy, it would be nice to be able to point to some fictional examples from filmed Star Trek of GLBT humans (as opposed to some of the SF-analogy species they have shown) existing in the next few centuries...but thus far, there aren't any. :/ For many people, this seems to go against the series' portrayal of and advocacy for a better, united future for humanity as a whole. Fortunately, the world of licenced Star Trek fiction has done quite a bit to make up for this shortcoming. A discussion on the TrekBBS forum about former franchise head honcho Rick Berman writing a memoir, and whether he might've been the cause of this lack of inclusion, led to this very cool thread about GLBT characters in Star Trek tie-ins. :) If you're one of those people who wonder why you should bother reading the novels/comics when you could just be watching the episodes themselves, this is one of the more important reasons, from my perspective...sometimes, an official tie-in can provide what the official episodes lack. Current Mood: IDIC (Comment on this)
Saturday, March 28th, 2009
6:29 pm	Who Knows What Happens After Here? Since this year's edition of the limerick challenge seems to have interested absolutely no one, perhaps I should just change the subject. :/ I know I've had past issues with the Canadian treatment of the Doctor Who franchise, but all things considered, the CBC used to treat the show really well, especially back in the halcyon days of its first new series. ( Canada Loves/Hates The Doctor ) If you're not completely sick of me talking about this franchise, you should take a look at "Music of the Spheres," a special mini-episode from last year (presumably set between "Journey's End" and "The Next Doctor") which tied into The Proms at the Royal Albert Hall: I watched "Voyage of the Damned" on YouTube shortly after it aired in the UK--which proved to be a very good idea, in retrospect--but I hope that with its new precedent, Space might now continue to air future specials (and perhaps the next series proper) on Canadian television, without the cuts the CBC was becoming well-known for making prior to broadcast... Otherwise, this might be the only option left for Canadians to keep up with The Doctor's travels. Current Mood: Grateful to Space, Not to CBC (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, March 17th, 2009
2:10 am	Tales of Derring-Do, Bad and Good Luck Tales I couldn't begin the holiday without first deferring to a trio of performers who truly understand its spirit: In honour of the day, I'll also offer up the same challenge I offered last year for anyone reading this... Comment here with a topic, and I will write a limerick about it for you. Please keep it to one topic per comment, though you can comment more than once, and there's no deadline for submitting topics. As with the last edition of this challenge, I'll do my best to be as prompt as possible on replies. Current Mood: anapaestic (Comment on this)
Thursday, March 12th, 2009
1:26 pm	Let It Flow, It Floats Back to You As I continue my surprisingly difficult hunt for a copy of The Lonely Island's Incredibad, I keep going back to "I'm On a Boat," their utterly-ridiculous-but-all-too-accurate take on the seabound grandiosity in a lot of hip-hop videos: Even though the album includes a DVD with their other music videos, this one's not on it, so your best chance to watch it is online... Just keep in mind that the lyrics are as NSFW as most hip-hop and you'll be fine. :) Current Mood: nautical (Comment on this)
Wednesday, March 11th, 2009
12:42 pm	Taking a Break from All Your Worries Sure Would Help a Lot Hoping for a better result than my attempt last year, I emailed an übergroup invitation for Star Trek yesterday, in an effort to capitalise on the timing of the new trailer for the movie in front of Watchmen to get people interested. (Naturally, I did not get to see the trailer on the big screen when I went to Watchmen with twinkiegirl on Sunday, even though it was "definitely" supposed to be there...I didn't get the last trailer in front of Quantum of Solace, either, so I think I just have really bad luck with them. :/) The list of people invited was a hybrid of some of the usual suspects from back in the day and some newer suspects--which several of you on my friendslist will already know, since you were included. ;) If you weren't included but would like to be, leave a comment here with your email address (or just send me an email directly), and I'll make sure to add you to the next missive. For now, it's just a matter of seeing how this first step turns out... Current Mood: cautiously optimistic (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, February 25th, 2009
11:29 am	You Better Promise Me I'll Be Back in Time Because I have no willpower when it comes to this sort of thing (and because I had an HMV gift card to spend), I picked up a new two-disc DVD release of Back to the Future on Monday, in a 2/$30 deal with the three-disc Collector's Edition of Forgetting Sarah Marshall which ended up costing me less than twenty bucks. :) All three movies in the trilogy have been re-released individually, but only the first has a second disc of new bonus features which weren't included in the previous box set--something I had to explain to the cashier when she pointed out that set to me and I sheepishly explained that I already owned it. ;) I'm not a big fan of studios double-dipping like this (or triple-, quadruple-, or quintuple-dipping, for that matter...I'm looking at you, Army of Darkness), but damn it if they didn't suck me in anyway. The new features include all of the footage from Back to the Future: The Ride, which (as I've mentioned before) I haven't experienced in person, so it'll be nice not to have to rely on sketchy YouTube footage for that; and "Back to the Future Night," an NBC special hosted by Leslie Nielsen from 1989 which tied into the theatrical release of Back to the Future Part II. (I have a now-ancient contemporaneous VHS copy of those three hours of movie-plus-special...I can only imagine what sort of shape it's in these days.) That special is the source of the infamous "hoverboards are real, but parents' groups have kept them off the market" quote from Robert Zemeckis which led to years of persistent rumours and pining from those (like my young and impressionable self) who simply took him at his word. There's no word, one way or the other, on whether the "retrospective documentary" might include footage of Eric Stoltz as Marty McFly (which I'd love seeing, just for the comparison), but I doubt any of it will explain why Marty only gave himself ten minutes to save Doc's life... Current Mood: OUTATIME (8 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, January 20th, 2009
2:11 pm	All the World's Waiting for You and the Power You Possess With apologies to Gerald Ford, our long international nightmare is over. Barack Hussein Obama is now the 44th President of the United States of America. I've been saying that to myself over and over, just as a reminder that it's actually, really true now. There were a few moments I really liked in the inaugural address, including his reaffirmation that "all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness," and this: ...we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself... I couldn't think of any statement more different from the philosophy and viewpoint of his predecessor. President Obama, you're right that we in the rest of the world are watching (we in Canada, particularly, are also looking forward to your upcoming visit), and though we realise that mistakes will be made along the way, I think we all hope that America can be a friend again. Break's over. Current Mood: hopeful Current Music: James Sanderson - "Hail to the Chief" (7 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, December 24th, 2008
7:38 am	Send a Joyous Shout Throughout the Land Given that last year's earnest, all-inclusive holiday post was met with a deafening silence matched only by that in the vacuum of space surrounding Apollo 8 itself, I'm getting a little more specific this time, courtesy of D.L. Hughley and Jeff Marx, co-creator of Avenue Q: (Trust me, you'll be humming it later...) I, of course, will be honouring my own heritage by leaving a stick of butter for Pai Natal tonight (lest he steal one of my toes), but either way, the earnest, all-inclusive sentiments of the season remain. Happy Holidays! Current Mood: dreaming (Comment on this)