I took the summer off, more or less across the board, from blogging. Between Euro 2008, the Olympics, not wanting to complain about work, and participating in a beta of a site associated with a US online magazine (much less interesting than it sounds, just a chance to give away some content for nothing, which is about what it was worth), there wasn’t much left to cover here or anywhere else.
Still, with autumn approaching and an ongoing agreement to contribute to a friend’s site on US college football (gridiron), I’m polishing off the rust. To which end, an “appalled in Tunbridge Wells” complaint:

If I see NBC getting one of their “correspondents” to stick a microphone in the face of someone who is having a nervous breakdown after some catastrophic fuck-up, I will start to bleed from at least one retina. The absolute worst was making a 15 year old “woman” diver finish out an interview after she missed qualifying for the 10 meter finals – but god forbid that Haley Ishimatsu should be allowed to have a bit of a sniffle without it being turned into a gonzo money shot. Was that really necessary?

The last couple of weeks were trying times for little sister, who is now 3 1/2. Her bestest friend ever (since before they were two) moved back to Switzerland because her father’s contract at the World Bank expired and he got a (frankly amazing sounding) job back with the Swiss government.

We didn’t make any effort to hide the fact that little sister’s friend was moving but we didn’t dwell on it. As the big day (Tuesday of last week) came closer, there were occasional crying jags and moping sessions until the final and most spectacular breakdown on the Monday. Little sister summoned up her courage to ask the most distressing question yet, but only of big sister: will bestest friend ever come back? Big sister, who is a fan of correct answers, relayed the question to the missus, and the missus could only answer: no, probably not.

I thought someone had fallen down the stairs when I heard the wailing that followed this revelation.

The missus felt that the real pathos here was in the likelihood that in six months, bestest friend will be at most a fond memory. While both of the girls have druid-like memories, the fact remains that little sister is only three. (And a half.)

I understand the missus’ reaction, but so it goes. Having grown up as an ex-pat and then an emigrant (or immigrant, depending on your location), I don’t know the whereabouts of anyone I knew before the age of 11 – and that was completely normal, people came and went and that was the way of things. So I certainly understand little sister’s reaction, but the happy reverse of her dismay is that there are always new friends out there somewhere – and one day she’ll even be old enough to retain them regardless of location.

When I was driving home yesterday, being part of the gas-guzzling festival that is an urban commute, I was struck by two things.

Firstly, when I was stopped at a red light by the Washington Monument, I looked west and there were 5 visible con-trails of commercial jets heading west, chasing the sunset. I don’t know that I would live in California again, but 10 years there left me with a soft spot for the place, and an unshakable sense that you are heading for the future when you go west, young man.  It’s the same sense of possibility I used to get as a kid when we would drop my father off at Schiphol airport when he was about to leave for one his semi-annual work trips to the US. Even though I was sitting still, those five con-trails gave that little frisson of going somewhere to the future.

Secondly, the sun was at a point in setting such that the Potomac looked for all the world like a mirror – this time of year and the early autumn are when this tends to coincide with rush hour, and as I drive under the Kennedy Center and past the  (iconic?) Watergate building, it’s always a pleasure to see a silver river wending past Georgetown with a red glow up river. The wind and a couple of 12 seat rowing shells full of training students gave plenty of surface chop (for a river), but it was grand nonetheless.

I’ve taken on a new project at work, which requires that I work in downtown DC. Any sensible person would immediately start using public transport, and lord knows I’ve been trying – the $18 / day for parking is a good incentive to save the earth, even though it takes half again as long as driving. 

Where it’s been falling apart is my inability to adapt  to the local bus service – in the old neighborhood, there was a bus roughly every 7 minutes to the Metro during rush hour. Now, it’s every half an hour, and because it’s so lightly used, the schedule is a little erratic because they don’t actually have to stop very often. I finally worked out to show up at my stop 10 minutes early… when I get the rest of the morning schedule right.Today was not one of those days…

And yet while I am engaged in mild mental self-flagellation over taking the car 2 days out of 5 (so far), other people aren’t bothered. I’ve started watching the people  drive by (or my fellow drivers on the days I commute above ground) and I think I’ve seen five (5) cars with more than one adult in them. And I didn’t even try to count the number of 14 mpg SUVs that drove by.

That’s feeble.  No wonder Americans use so much gasoline a year, but there are no incentives not to. Despite gasoline being expensive by US standards – about $3.50 / gallon for premium, or roughly £0.50 / litre,  it’s a wash for me to drive to my office including tolls, versus taking the metro at $8 day. 

Sad as it may be, when there are public transport options (not a given) that people ignore, I think I know why – it’s down to control: corporate managers being unwilling to let people control their hours around child care and other commitments, so that you have to use a car to combine hours at work with getting where you need to go in a minimum amount of time. And on a personal level, there’s something to be said of being in charge of your own vehicle, even if you’re not going anywhere fast… 

Not that it matters, but I’ve come up with my rationalization for deciding to vote for Barack Obama next week. It boils down to 4 factors:

Liberal Goals, Conservative Models: Oversimplifying madly, why is is that Republicans “win” on economic policy? It might be the odious opinions that drive their policies, but I think it’s because they fit the specific approaches to work in a liberal market economy. That is not something you typically see with policies from the Democrats – there’s a long history of trying to counter the negative results of the American economy by using non-market-aligned policies. Senator Obama’s economic advisers have steered in the direction of using market-friendly processes to counter-act citizen-unfriendly results. I find that to be a compelling approach, and a potentially better way of undoing the damage of the last 7 years of tax and economic policy.

Some residual freedom: Part of being free is having the chance to do something manifestly stupid. I mention this because a fair few people object to Obama’s health insurance scheme on the grounds that it is not mandatory for all, which means fewer people covered for a similar cost. There are two offsetting features as far as I am concerned, however: Obama’s focus on reducing cost, and not forcing people to get under the wing of the nanny state. I can’t imagine why anyone wouldn’t want insurance, but Senator Clinton’s plan to essentially compel people to buy insurance without driving out the 30% of US health care costs that are effectively administrative overhead and inefficiency created by the insurance companies: that strikes me as a nice present to the insurance companies without any expectation of return from them. Usually I am right inwith Paul Krugman (not that he would care), but not on this issue.

Sometimes, preparation isn’t enough: From a basic accounting standpoint, Senator Clinton’s claim of 35 years of experience boils down to “everything I’ve done since law school,” which establishes a threshold so low that anyone can join in the game. It’s also another way of saying “don’t vote for the whippersnapper.” But the fact remains that regardless of how many position papers she can recall, no matter how polished in a debate, no matter how hard she tries, Senator Clinton stirs a real animus in portions of the electorate and turns off others. Is it fair? Probably not. But despite the strong reactions from older liberal women who are treating Senator Clinton’s candidacy as a referendum on gender and feminism at the same time that they accuse African-Americans of doing the same with Senator Obama, her preparation is unlikely to be enough to counteract the fact that the opposition will turn out in droves to vote against her, against the odds that certain segments of the Democratic Party won’t bother.

One bullshit line too far: I know as well as anyone that politicians embellish, lie, fabricate and bullshit along with the best of them, and I usually just shake my head about it. However, Senator Clinton’s claim that she voted for the authorization to use force in Iraq without contemplating or endorsing the likelihood that it would lead to war: that makes my head spin. What did she think was going to happen, that GW Bush would throw fucking water balloons at Saddam Hussein? The vibes were there even during the 2000 presidential election, if you were listening, far less in the concerted effort after September 11 to paint Iraq as somehow being involved. I fully believe that Senator Clinton is intelligent and astute; I simply can’t believe that she’s trying to make this claim.

So anyway, there you have it. I’m not wholly convinced that Obama can win the delegation – even if he manages a dead heat in California, the convention super-delegates from the California Congressional Delegation will probably throw the state to Senator Clinton, and I suspect that type of informal patronage will play out elsewhere. That’s life in the big city, but it’s no reason to steer my vote accordingly.

Because I’ve had little enough else to say, and I read this one over at Melody’s.

I love to eat: pad thai, lamb khorma, alu ghobi, most sushi (especially eel), McVities Half-covered digestives, cashews. Double-doubles.

I hate to eat: Bananas and eggplant, sea urchin sashimi. It’s a texture thing.

I love to go: to the airport – for the fun of going somewhere or for watching family reunions from international flights. The National Building Museum. Big Basin Redwoods state park. Scotland. Weddings.

I hate to go: through the gauntlet of rude airline employees. To the doctor. To funerals. To work, most of the time.

I love it when: my kids come running to greet me. I get a new CD that is as good as I hoped. One of the ceaseless maintenance items in the house or the cars is cheaper than I expected. I get to watch the sun setting over the Pacific. Leaves come back on the trees in spring. The skies open during a summer thunderstorm.

I hate it when: I fuck up despite having really tried to get something right. I get into a fight with the missus even though I know that, objectively, she’s right. I shout at my children.

I love to see: my kids running and playing like loonies. Redwood trees. Mid-century Italian cars. Il Duomo (in Florence, as opposed to Siena or Milan). Desert mountains. The saguaro cactus. The naked female form.

I hate to see: Unfair fights. Gratuitous or exploitative violence and sex. Ordinary people being betrayed again and again by government and management.

I love to hear: My children laughing and singing. The electric guitar. My car’s engine between 3500 and 6200 rpm. Alfa Romeo V-6s. Bagpipes (seriously). The sound of waves from the guest room at my aunt and uncle’s house. Scottish voices. Southern girls from the Carolinas. “Congratulations, it’s a healthy baby girl.”

I hate to hear: My children in pain. Two cars colliding. Telephone calls that start with “I’ve got bad news…” Two blocks of styrofoam being rubbed together. The sound of someone vomiting.

A rare post completed, and WordPress promptly ate it. I don’t think that’s ever happened before. If it weren’t nearly 2 a.m., I’d rewrite said post. But it is nearly 2 a.m., so I’m off to do the dishes and get some sleep.

I’ve just spent a rewarding chunk of time arse-ing about in iTunes correcting dates. It drives me mental when the date for an album, as pulled from Gracenote CDDB, reflects the date of the particular release, rather than the original release date. It may well be accurate, but since I use “smart” playlists to manage what I hear within various categories, and to avoid repetition, having “Down in the Tube Station at Midnight” show up as a 90’s song is not going to cut it. I don’t care when the “best of” compilation came out.

So thanks to Wikipedia I’ve been slowly working my way through the old iTunes library. Some albums were tagged with the original release date – mostly jazz ones, I notice, which suggests that I can guess which section of the record shop is populated by obsessives also. Oh, wait, there are no record shops any more.

Not like the good old days, kids nowadays, no idea what they’re missing, grumble grumble, snore.

I was collapsed on the couch with the missus this evening watching the last episode of Long Way Round, which started out in Alaska. I was struck by two things:

1) Fox Reality Channel really is a tawdry, least-common-denominator little thing. Is there really any overlap between people watching Long Way Round and Battle of the Bods? Well, maybe.

2) Alaska looks spectacular. I’ve wanted to go for 20 years, since reading a magazine article about a couple of guys who beefed up a Saab, bought 4 extra tires, and went tear-assing along the remote gravel roads… but I’d settle for kayaking near glaciers and that sort of thing these days.

I mentioned to the Missus that I was interested in going to Alaska, and she immediately asked why: I’m not known for my interest in the great outdoors. I paused for just a second while I remembered how I got into trouble answering a question like this a few years ago*… and then I managed to come up with this rationalization: “It’s nature that goes to 11. Just like Iceland; there are other pretty places but this one is mad. And she bought it.

* I once made the mistake of admitting to my (America) missus that I have almost no interest in cultural tourism in the US because I just didn’t think that there was too much to find… and that the real strength of the country was the scale of the scenery. Fortunately for me, she didn’t remember that attitude or the tension that it created.

With Hillary Clinton’s win in the New Hampshire primary last week, the theoretically liberal US online magazine Salon.com exploded with the letters of various supporters of Mrs Clinton voicing their outrage. Evidently the mainstream American press was savaging her in a particularly personal fashion and individual “commentators” were showing almost pathological devotion to pulling her character apart.

Cue letters from angry older feminists and other Clinton supporters going on the offensive. Usually when I see people making baseless accusations, deliberately distorting the record, making coded racist comments, etc., I assume that they are far-right Republican hacks who are paid to do it.

I understand that it’s not fair that someone who is clever and prepared and works hard should be punished for not being an affable idiot, but this is the path that she chose. I can’t really understand the sense of panic that she must be voted for in order that it not be another 20 years before a female candidate emerges once again, but then again I can’t understand why we would be convinced that it’s a good idea to nominate someone who will triangulate away from the party to get elected, and yet so inflames the population that she may be borderline unelectable. If not nominating a woman means no repeat candidates for 20 years, how long will it take if a woman candidate’s performance in November is Hindenburg-like in nature?

Not that the rest of them are much better, but they don’t have the running start in not being able to acquire the all-important swing voter and wavering  Republicans.

More so than usual, when I look at the beat-up car for which the next President will receive the keys. I think that wanting the job should be the first thing to disqualify you. Even if a Democrat can get a win in November, what a poisoned chalice…