the browniest

the charlie brown christmas song has started up in my head and it is playing without cease. i guess this means christmas time is here. happiness and cheer.

another sign that makes me sure that tis the season: there is a giant tree with lights and decorations in the lobby of my building. i love it. also starbucks has christmas cups, but they've had them since october, which is just ridiculously early... and it stinks of holiday profiteering. good grief.

man island

there are moments of painful clarity in life. as i go along and somewhere take a wrong turn or a few missteps, i will suddenly find myself outside of the bubble that encompasses the rest of the world--the happy delusion that life is meaningful and that people are significant. ignorance is bliss. but strangely enough, as i stand on the slick exterior, i haven't the slightest fear of losing my balance. there's only a remote sense of sadness that even here, at the lonely edge of the earth, i could be so utterly apathetic.

@imaginationland.com

it's beautifully chilly out today. i hope those damn mosquitoes are dropping like... flies... ?

anyway, so someone asked me for my email address the other day, and when i gave it he scoffed. Scoffed. he asked if this was the email address i used on applications and at work. now obviously i have a separate work email, but yes, this was the email i used to apply for it. as a matter of fact, i made it specifically for applications and other grown-uppish things of that nature. for reassurance, i told my friend what happened, and she also scoffed. rejected again. apparently my email address is not grown up enough, but quite frankly in comparison to my other emails it's as good as it gets. i remember when i applied to colleges, i didn't bother changing my email address, and wrote in holyfriggencow@hotmail.com on every application. a few days after i got my acceptance letter to uc berkeley, someone from the admissions department called to confirm my contact info. he confirmed the spelling of my name, and then read my phone number and address out loud. when he got around to my email address, he paused for a long time. i couldn't save him the trouble and say it because i was trying not to laugh. finally he just started spelling it out: "h... o... l...". i was amused. since then i've had several different email addresses-- ileenios, stellar.iam, moosesrmeese, etc.-- but they all seem to elicit the same scoffs. well you know what? i think my emails are imaginative and i love them. and if you have a problem with that, say it to my face! you can reach me at terriblepterodactyl@dinomyte.com.


yea i wish.

smile

there are times when life is beautiful. sometimes life is shitty. it can take unexpected turns, encounter strange twists of fate, or challenge you to learn and grow. and then there are times life is just plain fun. and while these moments might not be the most profound or memorable or even important in the long run, i have to say they make living worthwhile.

it always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres

you say love and family are sacred and yet you subject them to your own failures to be faithful, your ever-rising divorce rates, hateful protests and rants, blatant discrimination, fear mongering, and spirit-crushing trial after trial after trial. you call marriage a sacred institution, and then subject it to dirty politics. hypocrites. you vile, spiteful, hate-filled hypocrites.

christians using the Lord's name in vain. how tragic. may God forgive you.

gambling is fun

during the last few months of election season, i developed a new obsession: intrade. somehow regular polls in all different media outlets were showing a tight race, which to me was pretty damn depressing. how could this race be so close? were americans really that stupid? but as we learned last night with obama's landslide victory, the polls were wrong. idiots are not the majority. my faith in america remains intact. intrade, before election night, a week, even a month before, was predicting this landslide. for weeks the possibility of an obama win crept closer to $100, while mccain was at $6 the last time i checked before switching on msnbc. i think there's a level of cynicism or jadedness revealed in my deep faith in the intrade polls. people really like money. they'll do a whole damn lot to get it. a huff post article summed it up nicely:

Polls can be inaccurate. People may say what is politically correct, the questions may be leading, the pollsters may be biased. A pollster can still bill for an inaccurate poll. Bookmakers must make an accurate line or they lose -- period.

today is such an exciting day. after such a long time of anxiety and nerve-wracking pessimism, it's finally over. i doubt i could have made it without the intrade polls. thank you, intrade. my fingernails are forever indebted to your service.

obama

obama 333 at 11:15pm. that's called an ass-kicking. i knew america would prove herself. i'm so fucking proud i can't even articulate it.


barack obama, 44th president of the united states of america. my heart is full of hope.

<3

change

my voting center was located two blocks down the street from my apartment, and i didn't want to wait in an enormously long line so planned to go at 6am, right when they opened. in the morning, i changed my mind because i was grumpy and i needed to go for a run. i ended up getting to the voting center at 7:30. i didn't see a line around the block. i got all the way to the door, and still didn't see a line. i walked in, went down the stairs, and entered the auditorium full of 7 people. seriously. 7.

i had some voter issues because murphy's law governs my life, so i ended up staying there for an hour. by then the lines had grown substantially, and there was a good amount of excitement in the air, but i still left feeling a little unsettled. why weren't there more people out? there was a line of voters at midnight in dixville notch, nh. my girls at the huff po complained of long lines at 6am in virginia. people are eager to vote today. today is our historic opportunity for change. and honestly, i expected east harlem to be one of the busiest sites in new york. why? well... it's the first time we can vote for not a white guy. yea, i went there. but seriously. for the first time in years we have a candidate who isn't from the cookie cutter of the uber-wealthy white male elite. we have a candidate who understands how it feels to grow up as a minority in this country, and who respects the different cultures of the world that also make up our population. he has the kind of respect and understanding that can only come from personifying these differences and experiencing first-hand alienation, culture shock, and identity crises. race relations is not a class he took in college, or something he observes through the media. issues of race are a fundamental part of his life. the mccain campaign has shamelessly used this against obama, the fact that he has been forced to search for his identity, that he is different from the face the right-wing likes to pretend we all see in the mirror. but obama inspires me because i've endured the same crises, the same tension between love for my country and pride in my cultural heritage. and ultimately i've succeeded in becoming who i am now, with solid beliefs and achievements. i laughed when joe the plumber accused obama of destroying the american dream. i laughed because he was just a self-entitled piece of crap trying to weasel out of paying taxes. obama has achieved the american dream. he proved to me and all the other jaded X-Americans out there that this dream is not a myth and that ceilings can be broken. how long have we been calling ourselves a melting pot? when have we ever really believed that? it's not 1950 anymore, the face of america has changed. it's time for our government and the faces who represent us to the world to follow.