Fans unhappy with the superhero-y tone of RTD's "Doctor Who" epics might hate it, but I did love the requisite cliffhanger/"Oh shit!" ending. So far I like it quite a bit better than "The Sound of Drums"/"The Last of the Time Lords" and "The Stolen Earth"/"Journey's End" (but here's hoping RTD doesn't write himself into a corner...yet again).

I'm looking forward to the holidays. I'm looking forward to spending time with my family, and enjoying some quietude.

This Friday -- Christmas Day -- will be my first day off work in a month. I can't wait; I'm getting burnt out. I've had some down time, but not any days entirely free. If my numbers are correct, this Thursday I will have put in 280 work hours over the past month. Yeow. I don't know how people regularly do this!

But I'm oh so grateful to have employment.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to finish my dinner before going back to work this evening.

Yours,
--B.

Anyone who knows me well knows I can't stand most Christmas music, in no small part because of how omnipresent the "classics" are in our culture. But there are a few Christmas songs even I enjoy and like to listen to this time of year.

( This will probably be my only Christmas-themed post this year... )

I gotta tell you, right now I hate men as much as Valerie Solanas ever did.

Note to all eligible gay men: at least give me an excuse to get a nice meal or at least a latte before you inexplicably break off all contact with me.

Something else to be weakly waved away by the Obama apologists, I suppose.

A recent report that Citigroup and Goldman Sachs may have received preferential treatment getting doses of the swine flu vaccine was enough to give Ebenezer Scrooge the yips. Then came news that in order for us to get back the taxpayer bailout money we loaned it, Citigroup is receiving billions of dollars in tax breaks from the IRS.

And there's a new study this week, "Rewarding Failure," from the public interest group Public Citizen, revealing that in the years leading up to the financial meltdown, the CEOs of the 10 Wall Street giants that either collapsed or got huge amounts of TARP money were paid an average of $28.9 million dollars a year.

In 2007, that amounted to 575 times the median income of an American family. Now, thanks in part to the banks' monumental malfeasance that led to our economic swan dive, food stamps are now being used to feed one in eight Americans and a quarter of all the kids in this country. A new poll from the New York Times and CBS News reports that more than half of our unemployed have borrowed money from friends and relatives and have cut back on medical treatments. The Times wrote, "Joblessness has wreaked financial and emotional havoc on the lives of many of those out of work ... causing major life changes, mental health issues and trouble maintaining even basic necessities."

All I want for Christmas is a revolution, preferably à la française.

I've been sitting on writing a bit about distracted drivers for quite some time, in large part because it's a subject about which I feel strongly. This morning was kind of a tipping point.

I take driving pretty seriously. On a motorcycle I'm significantly more vulnerable to distracted, inattentive or otherwise impaired drivers than are people in enclosed vehicles. I've had god only knows how many close encounters with snowbirds making abrupt turns and jackasses on cell phones drifting across lanes. This always infuriates me. I firmly believe that people have become far too complacent with the act of driving: The forces involved with automobiles are tremendous, and driving has become such a part of culture and daily life that folks don't recognize this.

Let's say you're driving a (just for a thought experiment) later-model Toyota Corolla at 60mph (27 meters per second). Curb weight is about 2,400lb.; add a driver and miscellaneous crap and you're looking at roughly 3,000lb. (we'll call it 1,360kg). Kinetic energy can be calculated at .5*(weight in kg)*(speed squared). In this hypothetical scenario, the Toyota is carrying a whopping 495,720 joules of kinetic energy.

To put that in perspective, the Economic Community of Europe is considered the world's toughest certifying body for motorcycle helmets. Their hardest test is the drop test, in which a helmet must absorb a certain amount of energy in order to be certified as safe according to (current) ECE 22.05 regulations. This amount of energy? 185 joules. That means that if the entire KE of the Toyota were to impact a helmet, it would be 2,680 times what the helmet is built to absorb.

Please pay attention to driving. Every time you get behind the wheel, you're piloting a massive potential weapon at amazing speeds and many lives depend on your attention.

I've mentioned to Terri that if I should ever be struck and killed by an inattentive driver, I would want Terri to make an example of that person. Sue the person and their family for every cent they're worth. Sue their insurance company for insuring a poor driver. Ruin the life of the driver for taking the responsibility of driving so capriciously.

This morning I was riding to the gym before work. At a stoplight I found myself behind a guy in a Toyota Corolla. He was sending text messages while stopped. Irritating (because often folks who do this aren't watching the light and tend to hold up traffic) but non-critical. However, when the light turned green he continued to text -- with both hands, no less -- on his cell phone. I pulled up next to him and saw that he had a Bluetooth gizmo in his ear and was chatting on the phone, too (this second phone attached to a cradle on the dash). The driver wasn't paying any attention at all to the road or traffic. Astonished, I watched him then pull out a legal pad and begin writing notes on the pad while driving down a surface street (speed limit 45) at 60mph.

I waved, honked and yelled furiously at the driver trying to get his attention to ask him to please focus on driving. He was entirely oblivious to me, regardless of whether I was behind, beside or in front of him. Nothing -- the only thing this guy was focused on was his goddamn gizmos and gadgets.

Then I watched him turn onto the freeway.

I pulled off the road and took out my own phone. I looked up the number for the city police department and gave them a ring. Since this guy was on city streets and highways, it became a matter of city and state DPS worry. I told the cops what was going on, where I was and where this guy was headed, and relayed a description of the driver and car along with the license plate (276 ZNY, if you're wondering). DPS informed me that they were alerting dispatch.

I hope this guy doesn't cause any accidents or kill any people. I hope that a cop found him and pulled him over and at the very least put the fear of the law into him.

Folks, when you're driving you're not just conveying yourself from one place to another. The roads are not any one person's alone; we must share them. Please be cognizant of your surroundings and understand that when driving, the act of piloting a vehicle should command your attention first and foremost. If you really take this issue seriously, keep handy the local police non-emergency number so you can (pull over and) phone in complaints of distracted drivers. In my experience, people yammering on phones and texting (!!) while driving are just as bad -- if not worse -- than drunk drivers and should be punished as such.

--B.

Americans, especially in the media and in politics, who have actual principles, not a Party-approved list of talking points, are a dying breed, aren't they>

Oh my God, I can't get this awful potential health care "reform" out of my mind. Not since the PATRIOT Act have I been so simultaneously enraged and baffled by my government.. If you want a nerdy visual representation, here it is. Now I may not be literally vomiting blood, but I am certainly doing so on a profound level that transcends mere reality. Of course, reading missives from people like Glenn Greenwald (posted recently) does help soothe the righteous rage, but then I'll come across something like the shrill yapping of well-trained, broken-in, and principle-clean Village idiots like Ezra Klein and the anger burns again, brighter and hotter than before.

I'll admit it, I voted for Obama and I did so knowing damn well that he would just turn out to be yet another Clinton-esque "centrist." But I honestly didn't expect this, a bill so openly pro-plutocratic it may as well have been drafted in the lounge of the Cato Institute; so bluntly contemptuous of the wishes of a majority of American people and so oblivious to their best interests it almost, in of itself, justifies any conspiracy theory about the government being infiltrated by a neo-Communist cabal trying to prod even the lazy, sheep-like American people into spectacularly bloody revolution; and so plainly shaped by free market ideology historians may one day mark its passage as presaging the long-anticipated birth of "state capitalism" or the "dictatorship of the capitalists." Hell, if anything ought to spark violent, destructive riots across the country, it's this atrocity of a "reform" (can't the French loan the US some of their riot potential? Lord knows they have that in excess...).

Anyway, before I go try to cool myself off, let me quote friend sirlarkins: "To paraphrase Lincoln, it's getting to where I'd like to move someplace like Russia, for instance, where corporate despotism can be taken pure, without the base alloy of hypocrisy."

Hot damn, I love Glenn Greenwald.

As was painfully predictable all along, the final bill will not have any form of public option, nor will it include the wildly popular expansion of Medicare coverage. Obama supporters are eager to depict the White House as nothing more than a helpless victim in all of this -- the President so deeply wanted a more progressive bill but was sadly thwarted in his noble efforts by those inhumane, corrupt Congressional "centrists." Right. The evidence was overwhelming from the start that the White House was not only indifferent, but opposed, to the provisions most important to progressives.

[...]

In an ideal world, Congress would be -- and should be -- an autonomous branch of government, exercising judgment independent of the White House's influence, but that's not the world we live in. Does anyone actually believe that Rahm Emanuel (who built his career on industry support for the Party and jamming "centrist" bills through Congress with the support of Blue Dogs) and Barack Obama (who attached himself to Joe Lieberman when arriving in the Senate, repeatedly proved himself receptive to "centrist" compromises, had a campaign funded by corporate interests, and is now the leader of a vast funding and political infrastructure) were the helpless victims of those same forces? Engineering these sorts of "centrist," industry-serving compromises has been the modus operandi of both Obama and, especially, Emanuel.

Indeed, we've seen before what the White House can do -- and does do -- when they actually care about pressuring members of Congress to support something they genuinely want passed.

[...]

In essence, this reinforces all of the worst dynamics of Washington. The insurance industry gets the biggest bonanza imaginable in the form of tens of millions of coerced new customers without any competition or other price controls. Progressive opinion-makers, as always, signaled that they can and should be ignored (don't worry about us -- we're announcing in advance that we'll support whatever you feed us no matter how little it contains of what we want and will never exercise raw political power to get what we want; make sure those other people are happy but ignore us). Most of this was negotiated and effectuated in complete secrecy, in the sleazy sewers populated by lobbyists, industry insiders, and their wholly-owned pawns in the Congress. And highly unpopular, industry-serving legislation is passed off as "centrist," the noblest Beltway value.

Of course, it doesn't make me feel any better about the atrocity that is the health care "reform." But somehow just knowing that there's someone like Glenn Greenwald out there makes me feel a little better about the United States in general, since it means our culture can at least produce principled people capable of speaking passionately yet intelligently about politics. It's just that very few if any of those people are in any positions of national power (and, yes, just in case it isn't clear, I sure as hell don't think Obama qualifies).

There are things about the winter months that bring out certain musical tastes in me. Maybe it's the cooler weather (hey, even here in the valley it gets chilly at night); maybe it's the shorter days. In any case, the post-equinoctal months bring forth tendencies for me to listen to slower music.

Back in Korea I would return home late from work and frozen from the moto ride home. I reveled in turning on the ondol (floor heating), extinguishing the lights, putting on some Low and relaxing supine on the floor. Silver Rider is one of those songs that immediately brings something to mind and to eye; "nobody dreamed you'd save the world."

Recently I stumbled across the music of Jesu. Though texturally different, this music lends itself to the soundtracks of December. Weightless & Horizontal seems poignantly appropriate.

Somehow in the near past I discovered the genre of "drone doom." At first I expected mostly senseless noise, but as it turns out there are surprising layers of complexity in this otherwise dark genre. I've found myself listening to Sunn O))) while preparing dinner. Their tune (it's not really so much a "song") Big Church (megszentségteleníthetetlenségeskedéseitekért) is dark and heavy, but oddly meditative and listenable (and a mouthful). I can't quite put my finger on why I find it appealing, but I do.

Winter music. In my few moments of home-time these days I browse through thousands of songs just to revisit old favorites. This evening started out with John Coltrane's album "Stardust" and has wound its way through various genres and songs such as Cue the Strings, In These Hills, and (currently) Greatest You Can Find by Keren Ann (who is herself reminiscent of Azure Ray and The Softies).

Music for weightlifting may be fast and aggressive, but music for the nights at the tail end of the year is good when it is slow but thoughtful and complex, and is best enjoyed with the lights off.

--B.

Gay marriage might still be an ongoing war, but I bet you don't know that there has been a gay rights victory that, personally speaking given my track record with lovin', is even more important. See, a trite technicality in Nevada's health code regulations kept brothels from hiring men, but now that's no longer the case! As the article shows, even that was being contested by the Homophobe Brigade (who apparently couldn't even conceptualize that straight women might want to avail Nevada's brothels of their new services or remembered that lesbians can already find sex workers willing to cater to them), but I suppose there's still some sanity left in the United States of America because the technicality was lifted unanimously.

What can I say but...

HELL YEAH!!!!!

Incidentally, I went to the website of the brothel mentioned in the article and they're already advertising for some guys:

The Shady Lady Ranch is Looking for a few good men.

Between 21 and 40.
Have a Good Work Ethic.
Must be Service Oriented. !!!!!
Have a Willingness to Please.
Have a Positive Attitude.

If you think you have what it takes, please send pictures
(head shot and body shot, no nudes)
and a short Bio to
ShadyLadyRanch
The Madam will contact those whom she feels will do the best.

Just letting you all now in case you need a change in career...