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Finished at last

So, some news. I finished Winter Republik a few weeks ago, the book I've been writing for the last many years. 127,000 words, 219 single spaced letter-size pages. The size of the thing is the least important thing about it, but still. Writing the final pages, printing the thing out and holding it gave me a feeling of satisfaction and ecstasy that I'm not sure I've felt before. Looking for an editor and publisher now, though I know this process will take many months. I can be patient.

My only regret is that I didn't finish it a few years ago. There's a political riff in it that would only make sense during the Bush years. I compromised by setting the book in 2007 rather than "the present day," but it loses some immediacy by doing that. I didn't have a choice.

It's funny though, now I'm sat on an airliner between Chicago and Boston. It's the first flight I've taken since I finished the book. I've done all the work I feel like doing for the moment, and here is where I would usually pull the book up and start writing (about a third of the thing was written on airplanes over the years). But now it's complete. I can relax. But I don't know how.

I worked so hard on the thing and now I have withdrawal symptoms. Sitting here on the plane or when I hear certain music... Joy Division and Velvet Underground for the gritty, realistic scenes. Alsace Lorraine and Vitesse for the love scenes. And Jessica Bailiff and Boards of Canada for the stranger, esoteric bits.

New Year and New Hope

The year of the Ox is beginning tomorrow, and this past week has just been a crazy emotional cap to what has been a crazy emotional year of the Rat. The Obama inauguration on Tuesday inspired me perhaps more than any other event I can remember. I can still hardly believe it sometimes, thinking what his presidency means for this country in the long term, in the historical context, and also thinking that in catastrophic times like these an inspirational leader is perhaps as important to our well being as a nation as a good military exit strategy or economic recovery plan.

I'm trying hard not to have unreasonable expectations, but my generation has never faced a crisis like this, and I think about what it must have been like for my parents to face the upheavals of the 60s or for my grandparents to face the depression and the war. Obama just could be a Kennedy or Roosevelt figure, and many even speak of Lincoln.

I had to work on inauguration day, though I did catch the oath of office and Obama's inauguration speech from home before I got on the road. Was frazzled & couldn't concentrate all day. I got home and walked down to Broadway Cap Hill to this street parade a local Brazilian carnival group had put together in honor of the inauguration. There were drummers & dancing girls, and a crowd of about 50 locals. It was so different and fulfilling to be there. Then the drumming stopped and another set of drums started up behind the crowd - we turned around and it was a troop of Mexican dancers in golden & jeweled Aztec costumes, tall feathered headdresses... they'd crept up behind us while we were watching the Brazilians. The unexpected, exotic surprise of it literally took my breath away. I forget that the world is sometimes full of unexpected wonders.

At the end of the week there were big layoffs at my job, which was just more big news that sent me reeling. I wasn't hit, fortunately, but we did lose a lot of good people. When I get back to work tomorrow I need to find out who's left and which projects I have to drop because I won't have the support I need to get them done. Very grim. But I will say that the way they did the layoffs was as well as any company could have done, and the tough choices that were made do seem to make sense. We'll reset our expectations and just keep moving. Once the shock wears off there will be no time to sit and brood about it - there's too much to get done.

I've also been making strong progress on the book, and one of the reasons I haven't been updating this blog as often as in the past is because I've tried to prioritize every spare lucid moment (and fuck knows there aren't many of those) on trying to finish this thing in the next couple of months. It's been seven years, and I'm so close to finishing.

So there won't be much traffic on this frequency for a while, but stay tuned, stay close, and stay safe.

I love you all.

Joe Strummer

RIP Joe Strummer, who passed away six years ago today. I heard a great story about him when I was in California. A male flight attendant was on a flight somewhere in the US, and as he was walking down the aisle in monkey class, he overheard a teenage girl with a British accent giving her dad a hard time, saying stuff like "Hey dad I thought you were a big rock star, so why are we sitting back here in stupid economy class?"

The flight attendant turned around and looked, and realized it was Joe Strummer sitting there with his family. The attendant walked over to him and said "You are Joe Strummer! Your music changed my life when I was a teenager, and you will *not* fly in economy class on my airplane!"

He upgraded them all and dragged them up to business class, made sure they got everything they wanted throughout the flight. I like that story. Combat Rock was the first "real" (not kids' music) album I ever bought. I still have it somewhere... 'Rock the Casbah' was my favorite song when I was 10 years old.

Bad landing

Had a vivid dream last night of taking off in a widebody jet - an Airbus 330 or 340 - sitting in business class. Biz class was like it always is, nice and comfortable and friendly. Then after flying a few minutes I realized we had stopped ascending, and then I felt the plane's attitude change nose down as the flaps and landing gear deployed. I looked out the window and saw we were very close to the ground. Clearly, we had to land in a hurry because of some kind of unseen failure on the plane.

The plane did a slow procedure turn over a very small private runway, and we came around and touched down on it, landed hard, blew the brakes in a cloud of blue smoke, and came to a screeching halt just at the end of the small runway. We evacuated the plane and were milling around the huge body of the jet. There were houses all around because the field was just a local field built in the middle of a town.

I have this dream a lot and I don't know what it means - being on a large passenger plane that has a problem, and the pilots need to put it down on a tiny strip too small for the jet, or on a highway, or parking lot, or shallow water. The jet always ends up too damaged to fly again but no one is hurt, and myself and the other passengers end up milling around waiting for rescue. And I always wake up before rescue comes.

The future is an adventure

This is the closest description of my life's philosophy that I have yet found, over decades of searching.

Sickbed

I've had the flu for the last four days. It's no fun but I guess it's one of those times you might as well make the best of while you can. I haven't had real down time in a hell of a long time, so I've been playing video games for the first time in almost a year, and catching up on reading and movies.

I finally saw "Shaun of the Dead," which was as funny as everyone told me it was, and "Letters from Iwo Jima," which was just wrenching. I hate being non-functional, it just makes me feel pathetic when I can barely leave the sickbed. And I've missed two sushi appointments and my company Christmas party (which was down at the Boeing museum which I've never seen and really wanted to.)

But like I said, you have to make the best of it. And I guess lying in a raging-hot bath with Bob Woodward's new book and a glass of whiskey isn't that bad.

Zombie Caterpillars and Voodoo Wasps

This is a crazy story that sounds more like science fiction than science. There's a species of "voodoo" wasp that lays its eggs inside a certain kind of caterpillar. The eggs turn into larvae that feed off the caterpillar for a few days. Then they burst out of the caterpillar's skin, climb a nearby twig or branch, and transform into their chrysalis stage.

Here's where it gets weird (well, weirder). After the larvae hatch, the host caterpillar becomes a zombie, compelled through some unknown process to watch over the chrysalises and protect them from predators. Then when the chrysalises open to release the new wasps, the catarpillar dies. How the catarpillar "knows" that it's time to die is also unknown.

Here's a link to the article on the New Scientist site, with video of a zombie caterpillar.
Zombie Caterpillars Controlled by Voodoo Wasps

Sunrise

I was in a great mood as I drove to work this morning - not even sure why. Maybe it was the sunrise - a few gorgeous flat red clouds across a blush sky - reflected in Lake Washington as I hummed across the bridge. And Mount Ranier looming pink in the distance, too large, out of perspective... looking impossible, like I was driving across the surface of another planet.

Music on the car stereo instead of podcast today. I just didn't feel like thinking for a little while.

The joy of flying

This has been a great two weeks in Denmark. Conference successfully completed, and then more than a week of good socialism with old friends. I'm really lucky to know such great people, and lucky that I have a job where I can parachute in to Copenhagen every once in a while and see them. The only thing I regret is that be in all places at once - Copenhagen, Chicago, San Francisco, and get everyone together in one big house party. Maybe I'll schedule something next year halfway between the US & Europe - let's say Reykjavik - and see who shows up. Fantasyland.

So I just got a phone call from Scandinavian and my flight out of Denmark tomorrow just got cancelled. They can get me on another flight through Frankfurt tomorrow, but I have to be at the airport at 5:30 am - a 3:30 wake up call.

Come on, now that's just inhuman.

The Renegade Master!!

Ha ha! I just saw a BBC article on the Secret Service code names that were given to the Obama family - Barack is "Renegade," Michelle is "Renaissance," and the girls are "Rosebud" and "Radiance." All awesome names.

That led me to this article on NNDB which discloses lots of Secret Service code names over the years. Here are some of the highlights:

Jimmy Carter - "Deacon"
Ronald Reagan - "Rawhide"
George HW Bush - "Timberwolf" (badass!!)
Bill Clinton - "Eagle"
Hillary Clinton - "Evergreen"
Chelsea Clinton - "Energy"
George W Bush - "Tumbler"
Dick Cheney - "Angler"
Henry Kissinger - "Woodcutter"
Alexander Haig - "Claw Hammer" (also badass!!)
John McCain - "Phoenix"
Cindy McCain - "Parasol"
Sarah Palin - "Denali"
Todd Palin - "Driller"

I think it's kinda cool how the code names often pretty well match the personality of the person they are given to.

But I wonder - it's all well and fine if you get a badass code name like "Scarab" or "Stonecrusher"... but what if you get stuck with something stupid or pathetic like "Snapperhead" or "E Coli"? Can you go to the Secret Service and tell them you want a new one?

Remember on the West Wing when CJ Craig, the tall gangly press secretary, flipped out when she found out her code name was "Flamingo"?

But I was happy to hear that Obama's code name was "Renegade" - it brought me back to that Fatboy Slim track from like 1995... Back once again for the Renegade Master, D4 damager, power to the people!!! Man, I spent a lotta long nights in San Francisco dancing to that track...

Check this out on YouTube

IRAQ WAR ENDS

Some American pranksters printed off more than a million copies of a bogus edition of the New York Times and distributed them in New York and Los Angeles. The headlines included the ending of the Iraq War, and the creation of socialized medicine in America.

I love this kind of art damage. The kind that takes serious imagination, planning and resources, and which is just realistic enough to make people question whether it's really happening. I'd say the 1938 Orson Welles broadcast of War of the Worlds was at the same level of well-executed mindfuck.

I only wish I'd thought of it myself!

Election

Turns out I was too conservative on my election call in the last post. After the last two elections though, I really had a hard time keeping any faith that the Democrats could actually win, much less win with a commanding majority. So congratulations to all of us. It was a historic night, memorable in many ways. I'll never forget it, sitting with friends in a high-rise in Seattle, listening to the cheering coming up from the street as CNN called it for Obama. I must admit I did shed a tear.

Then seeing President Elect Obama on the news the next day at his first press conference, and letting it sink it that this was for real, that this was really happening, and that we can look forward to at least four more years of blandly competent, undramatic, down-to-business press conferences like this. It was exactly what I'd hoped for.

Not to say the next four years will be easy. The evidence leans towards the idea that at least the next two years are pretty much going to suck. So what happens now?

Obama can take two paths - the incremental and the revolutionary. He can run the first two years of his administration like Clinton (incremental) or like Roosevelt (revolutionary), and as one of the political commentators said over the last few days - I think it was David Brooks - that depends on whether Obama believes we are in 1993 or 1933.

There's a lot of reasons for Obama to take the revolutionary path - to use his majorities in the congress to drive forward on all fronts - market reform, energy, socialized medicine, infrastructure repair and social security reform, and try to get all that done before the next congressional election in 2010. One could argue that it's unusual for a sitting party to gain seats in an off-year election, so if he is going to push a broad center-left agenda, he has to push hard and do it right away, or never.

But I don't think that's the way he's going to move. Based on his disciplined, thoughtful peformance throughout the campaign, I think he will take one thing at a time. First, solve the economy. That alone will take more than a year to turn around, best case. Second, he's said he wants to focus on energy. That makes a lot of sense, because the Republicans have also said they want to prioritize energy over the next few years. Getting the country to be less dependent on imported oil solves an economic problem - sending $700 Billion overseas every year to feed our economy, as well as a political one - a great deal of that money is sent to countries that are not acting in our best interest.

By showing restraint, and by succeeding in its early missions, the Obama administration might hold off a loss of Democratic seats in Congress in 2010 and (who knows), may actually get some Republicans to cross the aisle to them and support future policies. Then in 2010 he may be able to tackle health care reform with an even broader coalition.

Of course, there is a lot that can go wrong. It will not be possible to easily disentangle ourselves from Iraq or Afghanistan. There is always the threat of another major terrorist attack. And we can only hope that a resurgent Russia will act in a more multilateralist way in cooperation with the Obama administration than they did when faced by a hawkish Bush administration.

But for once, it's possible to see a little light at the end of the tunnel. It won't be easy, God knows. And it's not going to happen in a straight line. President Obama will move more slowly than many people would like - the left wing of the Democratic party and the fringe left are especially likely to be disappointed. But for the first time in a long while, it's possible to believe that the day may come when we can finally stop saying, "it's going to get worse before it gets better."

We're not there yet. We may not even be close. But that day may come.

Battleground states

I'm deep underwater trying to arrange a big conference for my company on Thursday & Friday, and it's killing me because all I want to do right now is plug into CNN and watch the election coverage. At the least, I'd love to take election day off to watch the returns come in. I was out of the country for the last two elections and I feel like I need to be plugged in. It's probably unhealthy. But alas, there's too much to do this week.

My boss is awesome in many ways, one of which is that she's a political junkie too. So the plan is we're going to close off on business as early as possible on Tuesday and go to an election party at a colleague's place. I'm looking forward to it. The thing is, we may well be able to call this election by around 5pm Pacific time. Some of my friends are debating me hotly on this point, but I think if they call Virginia for Obama, we can pretty much turn the TVs off because it's all over.

I saw McCain on Saturday Night Live, and it made me feel a little sad. Although I'm disgusted with some of the things he's allowed to happen in this race, the John McCain we saw on the show last night reminded me of the John McCain of 2000. The John McCain who *should* have won that election if he hadn't been slimed by Bush and Rove, and who would have put this country in a very different place than it is now if he'd been allowed to succeed.

But that's all over now. Here are my picks for the battleground states. I'm being extremely conservative on purpose, because I believe that essentially all the undecideds will vote for McCain.
New Hampshire - Obama
Pennsylvania - Obama
North Carolina - McCain
Ohio - Obama
Indiana - McCain
Missouri - McCain
Montana - McCain
North Dakota - McCain
Nevada - Obama
Colorado - Obama
New Mexico - McCain

That leaves Virginia and Florida. The polls have been narrowing in the last couple of days in Virginia, and I think McCain has a just slightly better than even chance of squeaking by with a tiny majority. It's going to be extremely close.

I think Florida is going to fuck up just as they have in the last two elections. I think McCain is going to win by a wider majority than Virginia, but I don't think the vote in Florida will be settled by midnight. Mark my words (as Joe the Biden likes to say), there will be lawyers and shouting before this is over.

But in the end, Florida won't matter, for a welcome change. Even with Florida's 27 electoral votes going to McCain, if the election falls out with this very conservative scenario, that still gives the presidency to Obama with 293 electoral votes. Even if I'm wrong about Ohio, and McCain gets that state, it still won't be enough.

I'll be frantic till Tuesday night. It's a good thing I'll be too busy to sleep anyway.

Halloweenie

Ah, Halloween. I love dressing up. I was thinking about going tonight as Herbert Hoover and walking around telling everyone there was nothing to worry about. But Hoover doesn't really have any distinguishing characteristics, so I'd just be a guy in a suit.

I guess I could get a rubber chicken ("A chicken in every pot..."). But I'm afraid people wouldn't get it and I'd just be a guy in a suit with a rubber chicken.

Florida and Politics

Just got back from two weeks in Florida - one week at a conference in God-forsaken Orlando, and then a week seeing family in Clearwater. It worked out pretty well actually - the work part was necessary and successful, and the family part was more fun than I expected.

I got to go flying again too - took up an old Cessna 172RG to see if I still remembered how to fly the thing. It was great. I was rough around the edges but it all came back to me, as if I'd never quit flying 15 years ago. I forgot how much I missed doing it.

(Some pics here...)

Since I got back, the politics have been completely immersive - everyone's going crazy with the final days of this long, long campaign. A lot of people I talk to are exhausted by now and sick of it, but I'm just happy to be seeing this campaign from inside the States. I really enjoy this madness and only wish I had more time away from work to take more of an active role.

Seattle is a pretty "blue" city, which is fun - I was wearing my Obama t-shirt the other day on the street and people were smiling and shouting nice things at me. One girl walking the opposite direction on the sidewalk zipped down her jacket and flashed me her own Obama t-shirt. It's fun to be part of a tribe.

There's so much commentary out there right now I really don't have anything to add that hasn't been said before. I think we're at the cusp of an amazing inflection point in history. Whichever way the election goes, the US population - and especially the younger people - has never been this activated and engaged by the politics, at least not in my lifetime. I only hope that continues and becomes a new status quo. We need people to be interested, and to pay attention, because this is only going to get harder from now on. We're going to need people to be deeply engaged with some of the hard decisions that are coming, if we have any chance of finding a way to survive what's coming in the next few years.

One thing I will say - despite whatever is coming out of the polls, we would be fools to think this election is already decided. A lot can happen in 8 days. There is no time for complacency. This is in no way over.