Oh my.

Today, after banging out an assignment, I went down to Chinatown with my friend A_____ to go to this awesome dumpling place that she had been hankering for. Well, it was quite delicious. I ate so much that I could barely walk afterwards, which was a bad thing because I had to go around and collect groceries for dinner this evening.

Then, shortly after arriving back home, I got an email from B___ that said, "Is this the restaurant you went to today?"

Yes. Yes, it is. Please note the date on that story, folks. Today. Meaning, it got closed right after we left.

I am feeling fine. Frankly, I'm not too worried about plague or anything, but I guess it's an amazing coincidence. Or something.

In honor of this turn of events, we watched Ratatoille tonight after dinner. It was a cute movie, and cleared up a lot of things up for me.

Hi everybody!

Well, we're officially landed immigrants of Canada now, having crashed through the red tape yesterday without too much trouble at all. This morning we went and got our SINs (Social Insurance Numbers, basically the Canadian equivalent of the SSN) and ran home to meet the Rogers guy, who kindly hooked up our Internet, phone, and cable (hence, this post).

I have lots to talk about from our road trip, but not much time right now. Our stuff isn't going to get here until Friday, so we're basically camping in the house right now, with a few amenities like laptops and DSes. Having no stuff at least gives us a chance to clean up the house really well, and the are cefrtain parts that need it. Well, one part in particular: the basement. We're talking about a Lovecraftian level of untidiness here: squamous mounds of indescribable offal, eldritch vapours, and potentially even madly-gibbering-mouthed myconids. I swear to god they have a priesthood down there.

It falls to me to take the first stab at rooting out the evil that lies beneath our house. Mainly, because I was able to bargain my way out of cleaning the rest of the house if I did that, but also because any Southern-born man of even a little character would NOT want his best girl going down there. I've been to the hardware store and got gloves and respirator masks. I've steeled myself, and stocked the liquor cabinet for my hopeful return trip, to drink away the thousands of voices and the horrible memories of down there....

Wish me luck, gentle reader.

I remain,

Steve

Matt Taibbi is one of the best, most vitriolic fact-based writers I've ever read. He used to write for eXile, an alternative Russian newspaper that's a really interesting read (see: their current article about Russian Jews, and the recent piece about American chicken exports, which I've been quoting to anybody who will listen.) Now he writes for Rolling Stone, every edgy journalist's wet dream, and maybe some other places too.

Anyway, reddit just linked to this article about why you should be scared shitless of Giuliani. Read it now, you know you don't do shit on Fridays anyway.

I, um, apologize for the long silence. We've been out of town visiting family, which I promise I will write about soon (complete with pictures), I'm finishing up work, we're selling our house, and I'm trying to get everything squared away for school. It's been busy.

My beloved econ_queen hipped me to this article over at Bitch, PhD which expresses very well part of what I feel about the Democratic party at this point. The other part of how I feel bears a striking similarity to lysteria poisoning.

I think it's absolutlely ridiculous that the Dems can't seem to come up with any platform to run on, either here in California or at the national level, that isn't basically just, "Let's defeat Arnie/Bush." OK, hi folks, it's great for people who don't want to think about stuff like, oh say, ISSUES and just want to vote down party lines, but believe it or not there are still some of us out here who basically don't give a shit about party affiliation and actually want to vote for someone who will do something we agree with. Angelides, you might be the greatest guy in the world, and you're going to shit gold directly into the treasury and make manna fall from the sky, but I really can't tell because I DON'T KNOW WHAT YOUR GOD DAMN PLATFORM IS! I sure fucking know that you don't agree with Arnold Schwarzenegger though. Thanks for clearing that up, by the way, because I never could have fucking guessed that one!

The thing that is worse about party politics like this is that they re-enforce this false dichotomy between the two political parties, when the reality of the matter is that they are pretty much the same god-damn thing. The real problem with our government is that we have a legalized system of paying our congressmen to vote the way we want them to, and somehow we don't call it bribery. You want to start making our political system work for the people again? Start by passing some serious campaign finance and lobbying reform. And by reform, I mean toss the fuckers in jail. Better yet, maybe we should go to a system of being ruled by philosopher-kings, who as a caste are not allowed to own any property. Now there's a party I can get behind.

Of course, I'm still going to vote, because as Californians we all have to do our part to try and stifle the insanity of the proposition system. But when it comes time to vote for governor, will I throw my vote away self-righteously by voting for some oddball candidate, or will I throw my vote away realistically by just abstaining? Until Phil Angelides comes into my house via his commercials that I always see when I'm watching Jeopardy and actually tells me what he plans to do, I'm sure as hell not voting for him.