I went to St. Louis for Thanksgiving, to spend some time with my family and friends there. I made my usual roasted turkey, which turned out well. I had to use my mom's odd cookware, so I had to roast it in this very deep roasting pan. It was deep because it comes with a cover, and I guess people covered their roasts back in whatever era this roaster came from. It was made out of a strange material, a dull black speckled with white dots. I'm still puzzling over what material this is, no one else I talked to seems to know, although the usual reaction to my queries was "Hey, my mom has a roaster like that too!"
I went with my parents, sister, and nephew and niece to the City Museum, which was very fun. I did quite a bit of crawling through tunnels, crawling on top of barrels, squeezing through caves, etc. And this museum stays open until 1 AM! What a great place.
At night I went over to my friends Brian and Amanda's house off of Grand. They are currently complaining about how ridiculous housing prices have gotten there. The prices are even approaching $200K! Actually, I was amazed it was that low. Although with neighborhood features like the two big Rottweilers I saw running madly down Grand, perhaps I overestimate the broad appeal of the neighborhood. My friend Greg has moved into an apartment downtown, and has a million dollar view of downtown St. Louis, the Arch, and the Mississippi River. I hung out with Brian, Amanda, and Greg one night, and we had a nice, free, meal (Amanda got a gift certificate), and later hung out at a bar and watched a band called Diesel Engine (I think), which was several members of the Bottle Rockets, and a few other musicians playing covers of country-rock songs. Not my usual thing to listen to, but it was interesting, and the music was great.
Pictures of my weekend with my family are here. Hopefully it won't be too long until I can come back.
While lying around sick yesterday, I did some reading. I re-read one of the great classic sci-fi books, The Space Merchants. I have an old, beat up copy of this book, from the first printing of the paperback edition in 1953. At the time, it cost $0.35. The hardbound edition? $1.50. Amazing.
At any rate, it had been a while since I read it, and I'm just amazed at how dead-on of a satire it still is. For example, in the future of the book, there are no longer senators from states. That is an outdated concept. Instead, each corporation has a senator that will represent their interests. Compare that to today, where it seems that everyone knows who the "Senator from Disney" is.
The narrator, Mitch Courtenay, is a star-class copyright exec, one of the most important men at the most important advertising agency. He falls victim to what appears to be several conspiracies mixed into one, and ends up shanghied into a low-class labor contract in Costa Rica. The system there is expoitative, and is only a slight exaggeration of what happens in overseas sweatshops. He's paid a small amount of money, and has to pay for factory-supplied refreshments, which of course one needs when doing back-breaking labor. Mitch finds he racks up debt faster than he is earning money.
Mitch returns only by joining his old enemies, the conservationists (consies, for short). When he gets back, he discovers how no one is prepared to see how exploitative the system is, so no one believes his story.
My story was blasphemy against the god of Sales. He wouldn't believe it, and he couldn't believe that I - the real I - believed it. How could Mitchell Courtenay, copysmith, be sitting there and telling him such frightful things as:
The interests of the producers and consumers are not identical;
Most of the world is unhappy;
Workmen don't automatically find the job they do best;
Entrepreneurs don't play a hard, fair game by the rules;
The Consies are sane, intelligent, and well organized.
Great book, as is the sequel, The Merchant's War. Of all the distopian futures, this one is the closest to actually being reality, and it's getting closer to reality all the time, as a story today illustrates. The whole thing reminds me of this Futurama quote, after Fry gets an ad in his dream:
Leela: Didn't you have ads in the 21st century?
Fry: Well sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio, and in magazines, and movies, and at ball games... and on buses and milk cartons and t-shirts, and bananas and written on the sky. But not in dreams, no siree.
I found an interesting site today about the origins of monotheism. I don't want to turn my blog into a link blog, but this is particularly good. Also, I haven't posted in a while, and I'm sick and need something to do, yet I have nothing particularly interesting to write about.
I just made an account on del.icio.us, a social bookmark service that's been around for a year or so, but is still under development. I've noticed it for a while, but a Jon Udell column recently caught my eye, and convinced me to try it. Even the basic no-frills site they have now is quite useful as a bookmark repository. Bookmarking sites are easy, and since it is external, you can share between multiple computers. This is very useful to me. Not only that, but the real power behind this is the ability to look at who else shares your links, and see what else they have. You can quickly find all the interesting links of a particular topic. This is basically a much better way to get Yahoo-style categorization of internet. You can also subscribe to other people's bookmarks, or other people's categories, or a general categories bookmarks.
Feel free to check out my list of bookmarks. If the service is slow, or down... well it is like that sometimes.
I've been read a lot and thinking a lot about the future of the Democratic party. So I'm going to write a summary of what I think should be the strategy for the next Presidential election.
First, I think it's clear that we lost big in rural America. We need to do better. I remember when Clinton was first in the White House, everyone kind of thought he was a country hick. We need another country hick, preferably a very religious one. If there was a white Rev. Al Sharpton out there, that would be perfect. I really respect Sharpton, but he has too much baggage from his activist past. I know a lot of people want Hillary to run, but she is totally wrong for this, and conservatives, and even many liberals dislike her.
Second, I think we need to be more socially conservative. Much as I hate to say it, and much as I think most social conservatism is just a more socially acceptable kind of bigotry or misogyny. However, I think it is clear that gay marriage is a dead issue. The most we can hope for is to not have a constitutional amendment. Against the advice of Clinton, Kerry didn't back local bans on gay marriage. One thing is for sure, Kerry's principled stand didn't matter much to gays - while 25% backed Bush in 2000, still 23% backed him in 2004.
Similarly, I think we can make some compromises on abortion. If the country gets more liberal in the future, we can always have gay marriage and partial-birth abortions later. But that probably won't happen. Although some say that the younger generation is less socially conservative, I think this will be balanced out by increased Hispanic immigration. Plus, there's no guarantee that young people will stay socially liberal as they get older. If they do, then great, we just move back over to the left.
One of the books I heard about before the election, but pooh-poohed, was What's the matter with Kansas? by Thomas Frank. It's a book about how Kansas was once one of the most radical, left-wing places in the country, but the GOP co-opted the populist message, and turned Kansas against the "liberal elites". The GOP, who of course are nothing but elites themselves, thereby kept persuading Kansas to vote for things that are not in the people's interest. It is something the left has always wondered, how the GOP manages to persuade poor rural people to vote for things like tax breaks to rich businessmen. The argument seemed unconvincing to me, but after the election it is obvious he was right on target. I haven't read the book yet, but I mean to.
Yet another in a long series of disappointments. Technically, the election isn't over, though. From the trend I see, I would be extremely surprised if Kerry won. And the popular vote makes clear that Bush is preferred. Maybe not by a landslide, but by a very comfortable margin. I really don't get it. Somehow the Democrats screwed up. And they screwed up something that was almost a sure thing. The President is obviously incompetent, the economy is poor, the debates were a victory for Democrats. But it all didn't matter somehow.
What amazes me is how wrong everything was. The youth turnout was supposed to be huge. Everyone reported it. Evidently, it didn't happen. The undecideds were supposed to break for the challenger, but this time they broke for the incumbent. It was supposed to be at least a close race, and it really wasn't. I'm not sure what to think of all this. I'd love to see an analysis of how we lost so badly.
So the country continues its conservative trend. I thought it would rebound a bit from 2002, but boy was I wrong. I'm not sure what the Democrats could possibly do to combat this.
The only upside: now Bush has to clean up his own mess in Iraq. It will be amusing to see him fail.
I'm a bit nervous about the election. My instinct is that Kerry will win. Not only because I want him to win, but I think he has a good shot. The polls are dead even, however the common wisdom is that undecided break for the challenger. I also think that minorities, incensed at the continuous efforts of Republicans to exclude them from the election in 2000, and the ongoing efforts to exclude them now, will turn out in large numbers. If Kerry doesn't pull ahead, I think it is going to be so close that there will be vote-counting lawsuits in several states, and we won't know who won until December at least.
I have a lot emotionally vested in this election. With the scandal-ridden 2000 election, the Republican victories in 2002, the California recall, and the gay-marriage amendments, it's been four years of political humiliation for me. If Kerry wins I'll be dancing in the streets, and if he loses I'll bury my woes in beer. This is better than sports.