nurblog

Merry Christmas, everybody.

Somehow I got roped into making a family photo album for the girlfriend, so now I'm spending a lovely Christmas evening in bed with a pair of laptops learning Movable Type on the fly and trying to figure out why we can't just use flickr like everybody else.

Oh, and if you've never tried to upload data at a respectable speed from a Marriott outside Orlando, don't. I'm getting about 100k/s, which is only slightly faster than writing it on a napkin and mailing it to the hosting provider.

Just came back from a dinner party at which I served an objectively awesome tray of Mac 'n' Cheese. I have to say, and this is not ego talking, I did everything right, starting with lowering expectations by announcing weeks ago that I don't really cook, which is technically true, but ignores the fact that when I do decide to make my own food, I tend to go for broke. I don't re-heat. I don't do frozen or powdered. I cook as if Tom Colicchio will be judging not just the result, but the process.

That's not to say that I cook well, I don't. Fuckups are frequent, and this is why I solicited advice, scoured the internet, and actually practiced the recipe earlier in the week before deploying it on my friends.

Most of the recipe is from this site, helpfully titled "the Worlds Best Mac and Cheese". I like it not just because it's based on a recipe from James Beard, or because it involves a roux, which I'd never done before but might be the secret to deliciousness in all things, but because it's by someone named Patrick Fitzgerald, and I can pretend that in between indicting Scooter Libby and Rob Blagojevich, Fitz took a moment to do some chefery.

Interesting. Oil is back down to $45 a barrel. Weird.

I'd assumed that there had been a drop, but I had no idea it was that sharp or deep. The repercussions of such a drop-off are also surprising. Suck it, Iran.

So this is fun. I sent my laptop in to be cured of a known issue with its graphics card, and doing so left me computerless for just slightly more than a week. Curiously, when I got it back (just now), not only was it shiny and clean, and seemingly fixed, it also felt the need to re-send every iCal reminder message I'd ever set. I deleted a bunch of the text messages from my phone, and have just gotten 11 more. It's helpfully blooping away next to me right now, at a rate of about one a minute, reminding me that Gilles Peterson is playing sometime in 2006, or that I have a job interview on Sept 1, 2004.

Weird.

I think I speak for all Democrats when I say that Joe Lieberman can go fuck himself.

Well, we're down to like 12 hours before the polls open, and it's honestly like the night before Christmas. I'm getting kind of giddy with excitement.

Not that things can't go wrong, Democrats have a long history of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory [oops, got that backwards at first], but there seems to be a lot of reason for confidence, and there's certainly a lot of reason for excitement. The mere possibility of an Obama victory is enough to fill even the most jaded political heart with a bit of song.

I've been listening to people debate the relative incompetence of the American people for the better part of eight years now, and I'm getting tired of defending them. I truly do not believe that Americans are, as a whole, stupid people. Shortsighted? Easily frightened? Generally disinterested in the nitty gritty of politics and world affairs? Sure. But when a case is presented to them, they will make a rational conclusion, and this is a case where I think that conclusion will be the right one.

Kerry made his case poorly in 2004. Al Gore won in 2000. We have a better candidate now than we did either time (Al Gore has since gotten better and Kerry, thank god, has virtually disappeared), and that candidate has run a remarkably tight, intelligent, positive campaign. Meanwhile, McCain has run a surprisingly incoherent and despicable campaign, so the wind is really at Obama's back coming into the finish.

Very exciting times. It needs to end soon, though, 'cause it's getting hard to work with my fingers crossed all the time.

Awesome costume ideas I won't be able to act upon since I've been stuck at fucking work for the last week:

1) Whole Foods MILF

2) Creepy American Apparel-clad hipster (with short short gym shorts AND Members Only jacket)

3) Hunter S. Thompson

4) Phil Akka, a dude I work with. I actually considered shaving my head just to make this happen, since the rest of the costume is just Tevas and an Equinox shirt.

oh well. Maybe next year.

From Time's Karen Tumulty:

But here's a tantalyzing possibility: If Stevens were somehow to squeak through this election, and then be forced to resign after exhausting his appeals, might Sarah Palin decide to appoint ... Sarah Palin?

You know, I wouldn't be surprised, and that depresses me.