The Mental Masturbator

I just got back from a 10 minute walk around the corporate campus, which is something I’ve been doing with increasing frequency as of late.  Today as I reentered the building, the contrast between the natural beauty of the outdoors (even the limited natural beauty of a corporate campus), and the drab dull soulless interior of corporation land was espcially stark.  It took quite a bit of will power to make it back to my desk, and I realized that one of the many consequences of society is to make the world more like this building and less like the beautiful outdoors.  Why?  What is wrong with people?  I think humanity has a few screws loose.  Personally, I don’t think I can stay at this job much longer.

Though it’s been a forgone conclusion for months, Obama finally made if official and won the Democratic nomination this week. And despite all the obvious liberal-greatness that Obama is bringing to this country, I think one of the most profound and subtle effects of his candidacy will be on the mindset of young African-Americans. Keli Goff phrases it nicely in the Huffington Post:

That today in the classroom of some inner city school there is a black boy who now believes that there is another career goal for him to aspire to when he grows up besides rapper, athlete or inmate: president.

The black community in America has been struggling for some time now, not really their fault, but they have been. Hope is a powerful thing, and now they have new hope. He has shown that the highest office in the land is not out of reach, and that’s a powerful psychological barrier to be broken.

Aside: don’t worry women, your time will come.

-A

No, not the new M. Night Shamalon movie, Hillary admitting defeat!  There are good odds it’s gonna happen tonight.  Under the headline “Clinton not Ready Concede Race” (stay with me) CNN tells us that Terry McAuliffe said today:

Obama “doesn’t have the numbers today, and until someone has the numbers the race goes on,” McAuliffe told CNN.

So presumably that means, she will quit if he gets the numbers.  Well Obama has gotten about 10 supers in the past few hours, and currently he’s 31.5 away from “the numbers.”  He’s probably gonna win 15-20 tonight so Terry better hope Obama doesn’t get 10 more supers today because if he does she’s done!  Anyway, despite this weird statement all signs point to Clinton dropping out:  she’s having a big rally in New York, and we all know what an important general election state that is, yesterday bill said “this may be my last day working on a campaign like this,” oh and also, according to AP, Obama has  already won:

WASHINGTON — Barack Obama effectively clinched the Democratic presidential nomination Tuesday after a grueling marathon, based on an Associated Press tally of convention delegates, becoming the first black candidate ever to lead his party into a fall campaign for the White House.

Booyah

That favicon up there may look like a yin-yang but it’s not.  It is in fact the sacred chao, the holy symbol of the Discordian religion.  Here’s the full sized image:

It doesn’t come across so well in the favicon does it?  Maybe I can get a better one.  Anyway, that apple with the K is the apple of discord, thrown by the goddess Eris (aka Discordia) into a party of gods to which she was not invited…no one like chaotic guests.  The K stands for kallisti which means “to the prettiest” or “to the fairest” and arguing over who’s apple it was sparked tensions among the gods that ultimately lead to the Trojan war.  The pentagon is a sacred symbol of Discorianism because it is a five sided figure…it’s a long story.

Anyway, “Andrew why do you have a discoridan symbol on your blog, are you a discordian?”  Good question Andrew, I suppose I am somewhat of one yes.  “But why worship a religion based on chaos?” I wouldn’t say I worship it, but to sum up a complex thing in as few words as possible lets just say this:

Chaos created everything in the universe.  It created the sun, the earth, human life, and it created order.  So you tell me, who or what is god?

As always, there are spoilers below

Wow what a good episode. This may have been my favorite of the season so far. It was so well paced, it had really good editing. Especially the end, but we’ll get to that later. It’s been almost 2 weeks so I’m trying to remember what happened.

Natalie’s comment about Hera to Athena in the beginning was pretty creepy and probably cost her her life. Still, Athena shouldn’t have been too surprised Nat knew her name, she knows Hera spent a while being raised by the Cylons.

The Demitrious failing to jump was a little contrived, but the scene it created was really good anyway. Epcially, obviously, Tigh yelling “weapons hold!” That was kind of weird, or was it? Human intuition could explain how he knew what to do, and maybe his Cylon transformation has just made him more confident in his instincts (though you would think it should do the opposite).

What else, Gaeta’s leg getting sawed off was an intense scene. As for the singing, a lot of people hate it, I’m mostly indifferent. At least he knows how to sing. But why all this focus on Gaeta anyway, possible Cylon or just another example of human tragedy?

The Hub concept is pretty cool. But if they destroy it can’t the Cylons rebuild? They built it once right? Certainly making them even temporarily immortal would be a huge coup for the humans, kind of like when they destroyed the first resurrection ship and the Cylons backed off for a while. You know, if I were generally immortal, even spending a few minutes in mortality would probably be terrifying, yet humans do it every minute of every day. Having no choice helps make it easier, but it’s still something to think about.

Natalie’s speech on death to the quorum was pretty weak imho, but I guess it was ok for a child-like ex-demigod who just discovered mortality. I hope she still felt the same as Athena shot her.

The end of this episode was fantastic. First of all, Hera drawing’s of Six were totally creepy. They make me wonder if Hera has been seeing a Six in her head her entire life, preparing her for gods know what. And Athena has, I supposed understandably, lost it. I mean, she of all people should know that the different Cylon models are different. That’s, like, her whole thing. “I didn’t shoot you Adama it was the other Sharon!” etc etc. And then the Hybrid yelling “jump” with every fiber of her being and kidnapping the President, Baltar, Helo, and half the pilots and vipers was entirely surprising and entirely awesome. That Hybrid knew what it was doing. Unfortunately, I don’t know what it was doing, and that sucks.

Next weeks should be pretty crazy, the President has just disappeared without warning. Who knows what’s going to happen in that power vacuum. Doesn’t this technically make Zarek the president until Laura gets back? I don’t think Adama will accept that, but then again what was he planning to do when cancer took her away? Guess I’ll find out soon.

-A

Today in Kentucky, HillRod said something that I found quite interesting:

“I’m going to make my case and I’m going to make it until I’m the nominee and we’re not going to have one today and we’re not going to have one tomorrow and we’re not going to have one the next day,” she said. “And if Kentucky turns out tomorrow, I will be closer to that nomination.” [nyt]

You’re going to make your case until you’re the nominee?  I guess we’ll be hearing her make her case for a long, looong time.  But wait, that sentence doesn’t even make much sense.  May I suggest that the scripted line she was supposed to read probably said something like:

“I’m going to make my case and I’m going to make it until there is a nominee and we’re not going to have one today and we’re not going to have one tomorrow and we’re not going to have one the next day,”

Now there’s a sentence that makes sense.  In the first sentence the “we’re not going to have one” part just doesn’t match up with “until I’m the nominee.”  Clearly she was supposed to say “until there is a nominee” but she is in such a deep state of denial that she actually still thinks she’s going to win.  If she really still thinks she’s going to win, we might be in a lot of trouble.  God help us, I hope her psychosis doesn’t wind up hurting the country…more so.