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Holy crap it's cold outside! I briefly regretted not having an ice scraper for my car this morning, but thankfully my defrosters work beautifully and only take about 5 minutes to do a pretty thorough job. I'm also wishing I'd spent more time looking for my gloves this weekend *shiver*

Finally figured out what went wrong with my post yesterday, a missing set of quote marks. D'oh! Couldn't figure it out to save my life yesterday, but today it was disturbingly obvious. Sometimes I hate HTML.

Got loads done yesterday so I feel all accomplished. I now have the gifts for the troupe so I can pass some of them out this weekend at M-'s party. I'll be missing class all of next week I think due to meetings, but the week after I should be back to deliver the rest. In the meantime my kitchen smells divine.

Of course I was so preoccupied with that that when cyranocyrano came over to drop some stuff off for bonniebluebitch's holiday box, I totally forgot to give him the stuff I'd arranged neatly on my computer desk for him. *headdesk*

I also may have created the ultimate Harry and the Potters mix, but I need Aelf's feedback before I can be sure.

Tonight I face the evils of the post office. Pray for me.

(no subject)

( Well I was hoping for Severus, but... )

Required reading

Start with James Wolcott's "Intelligent Design: Opiate of the Dummies":

On a more vulgar level, I think the same dynamic is at play in the entire "War on Christmas" sham perpetrated by Fox News and rightwing talkshow hosts. They rant on and on about how Christianity is the kick-toy of the Hollywood left and snobby liberals and the ACLU, how Nativity displays are being vandalized by Nation readers disguised as wild raccoons, pound the anchor desk to demand prayer be restored to public schools. And yet how religiously observant are most of these blowhards? How often does Rush Limbaugh attend services? Or does he spend every Sunday on the golf course? Would John Gibson or O'Reilly mouth off to any of their Jewish friends (assuming they've accumulated some over the years), "Look, pal, I have no problem with Hanukah, just remember this is a Christian country, we're the majority, the majority makes the rules, what we say goes, so don't get bent out of shape when someone wishes you a Merry Christmas--and tell George Soros that goes double for him"? It's easy to swagger in front of a microphone, and I suspect most conservative demagogues practice a strange form of hypocrisy: talking shit in public that they would be wary to do in private. (Most hypocrites do the opposite, talking trash one on one that they would never say over the sanctity of the airwaves.)

Mind you, I have no proof, but I imagine that the Fox Newsers, like Kristol and co., profess and promote religious faith must more than they practice it. They caricature liberal elites for "looking down" on religion while they themselves only pretend to look up to it, like Noel Coward imagining himself a nun. They approve of religion in part because, you know, it gives the little people something to do and makes them more manageable.

And speaking of the "War on Christmas", I point you to Brad R.'s "The Fucktardification of the American Mind":

Yes, it's elitists like me, who work part-time for a cool $12 an hour while going to school full time, that are trying to ruin Christmas for the poor underprivledged conservative Christians who control all three branches of the government. Woe be to them.

OK, so I've just ably demonstrated how completely mindless and divorced from reality our public discourse has become. Now, I'd like to know why this has happened. I honestly don't remember it being this bad even three years ago- what the hell is going on?

I'd have to go with the bait and switch theory myself (Republicans: "Let's talk about the war on terr- oh, wait, no. How about how great our economy...wait, no that won't work. And for fuck's sake we need to change the topic from GOP legal problems. The whole gay marriage thing is so last week...hmmm. Wait, I got it, the simultaneous victimization and ascendency of the Christian majority!"), but I'm open to other ideas.

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This article on TV Boyfriends kicks ass:

Real boyfriends have annoying little quirks and disturbing physical imperfections that inevitably leave me disgruntled and disillusioned, wondering what I ever saw in them in the first place. TV Boyfriends, on the other hand, are consistently appealing. They're invariably good looking, even the worst villains don't make any serious demands, and when you get bored with one of them you can just change the channel and find another to suit your particular mood: Feeling a little devious? It must be a Ryan O'Reily day! Picked on at work? No problem – Detective Elliot Stabler is waiting in the wings to mete out a well-deserved perp-smack or two to the offending party.

Yep, when push comes to shove, the TV Boyfriend has it all over the real one.

Of course, there are fictional TV boyfriends and non-fictional TV boyfriends, and, up until about a week ago I always came down firmly on the side of the fictional ones. It's a lot less messy.

[...]

So, although I'll admit to getting a bit wobbly-kneed over Anderson Cooper's choked-up Katrina reporting, I really don't have that much use for the living. Besides, I like my TV Boyfriends to have a little edge to them. I mean, really - if you're already living on the other side of reality, you might as well go for broke, right?

But a few weeks ago all that changed when my dark and mysterious fictional felons were swept aside by the blazing glory of the Ultimate Good Guy TV Boyfriend: Special Prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald.

[...]

Clean-cut, articulate, and unabashedly principled, "Fitz," as he is referred to on progressive blogs, laid out his case against Scooter Libby with devastating precision while I hurriedly ticked off china patterns in my Williams-Sonoma catalogue. By the time he got to the reporters' questions, I was already filling out a registration form at BabiesRUs.com, even as the corroded gears of my rusted-out biological clock slowly began creaking to life.

Read the rest, it's well worth it.