The Duck's Nest: online home of mizducky

Election night; also just another work night; and another cosplay photo

Wow, the polls in California closed just a little over a half-hour ago and McCain's already conceded. Whew. Good luck, Barack--I hope I'm proven dead wrong, but I can't help having a funny feeling that things are going to get even more challenging for you and for the progressive movement now that you've got the office.

Meanwhile, still waiting to get real numbers on Prop 8. The initial numbers are disheartening, but it's so damn early, it's almost meaningless to conjecture yet.

*   *   *   *   *

Meanwhile, I'm supposed to be getting work-work done, so that I can also get all this pre-dinner advance cooking done. So this will be a pretty short post ...

... except that I have to show off this other Halloween crossplay photo that my photographer-friend emailed to me, because it came out so damn good (if I do say so myself). The fangeek in me loves showing off my replica Airsoft Walther P-38. But even beyond that, I love how I managed to get a really Lupinesque expression on my face. All that's missing is the dangerously raised eyebrow--only, while I can and do raise an eyebrow, it's not enough under my conscious control to do it on demand. But still--this photo makes me so happeeeeee... :-D

First picture from my Halloween crossplay; action-packed week ahead; fear and loathing on Election Day

Okay, I have gotten my virtual hands on the first of a bunch of photos taken of me in my Lupin III rig on Halloween. Note the stylin' background--the Postal Annex branch where I keep my mailbox offered free photos to anyone who came in wearing a costume on Halloween, so I took them up on their offer. Also note the slight blurriness of the photo, even after I pounded on it a bit in Photoshop; ah well, as they say, there ain't no such thing as a free lunch. Or you get what you pay for. Or one of them thar sayings. Hopefully the photos taken by my camera-savvy friend will come out much better--he really went to town with taking multiple shots with multiple poses, which ups the odds of success considerably.

*   *   *   *   *

Got a fistful of action happening to me this week, starting of course with voting tomorrow--I always get an absentee ballot, and I always wind up hand-delivering it to the nearest polling place. I originally started doing this because I'm a lazy-ass procrastinator, but it turned out to be the best of all possible approaches: I can peruse the ballot at my leisure, without feeling like I'm holding up a horde of people in line behind me; I can then walk in to the polling place and hand it in without having to stand in that infernal line; and best of all, it's on paper and cannot be screwed up by flaky electronic voting machines with no paper trail verification.

Then on Thursday I am serving a catered dinner for eight that I auctioned off during my hippy-dippy Unitarian church's annual services silent auction fundraiser. The menu is a mix of some of my favorite dishes from a variety of Asian cuisines:  Vietnamese salad rolls; Thai tom yum goong (spicy coconut-milk/shrimp soup); Thai som tam (shredded green papaya salad); Vietnamese steamed whole tilapia; Chinese red-cooked pork belly; Hong Kong style sesame noodles; a trio of Korean banchan (little side-dish salads); and Thai black sticky rice pudding for dessert. It sounds a lot more difficult than it is--a lot of the dishes are make-ahead and require very little fuss. But there's no denying that there's a lot of shopping and prep, so guess what I'll be doing on Tuesday and Wednesday in addition to my usual load of work?

Then on Friday I'm driving up to Los Angeles and spending the night, so I'll be right on time for an all-day workshop on beginning voice acting for anime, taught by prolific voice actor (and voice of Lupin III for the American dubs of the 2nd series and Mystery of Mamo) Tony Oliver. Yes, I'm going to be a total fangeek and bring along a DVD for Tony to autograph. And yes, this little trip implies some extra work during the week too, because I'm going to have to make sure there's enough food and supplies in the house to keep my little Tottsan out of trouble--including, I suspect, getting all his meds for the coming week all counted out in case I return from LA wiped out. Well, at least while I'm away in LA it'll feel like a vacation. Sort of. If I get up there early enough on Friday I'll see if I can hit some interesting places--at the very least Melrose, and maybe Japan-Town to hunt for anime swag and good cheap Japanese comfort food.

*   *   *   *   *

 I've been some flavor of liberal-to-left political animal from way back when I was a little squirt watching my mom take care of duties as a county Democratic Party volunteer, and I gotta say it's been a pretty disillusioning experience. Every time I've seen a glimmer of hope on the horizon that the spirit of liberalism and altruism might finally be gaining a toehold somewhere, I've seen that hope collapse--either at the polls, or at the business end of a gun. Every time I've sworn that politics could not possibly get any weirder or nastier, I've been unpleasantly surprised. And there's been several elections--the first time Reagan got in, and the first time Papa Bush got in, and both times Baby Bush got in, that I've actually entertained 10-second fantasies of high-tailing it for the nearest international border for fear that Big Brother was about to descend.

Now we've got a guy speaking amazingly refreshing and thoughtful words about hope and change, and of course I'm voting for him, but I'm also holding my breath for fear of jinxing things. Just the mere fact that, even in this day and age, there are American citizens who are deciding to not vote for this guy solely because of his African ancestry makes my blood run cold. And don't even get me started about the homophobes who are attempting to ram an amendment into the California Constitution "defending" their narrow-ass view of marriage. Where the hell do these people come from? And how did they manage to sleep through all their civics, history, political science and philosophy classes so that they think these are legitimate and defensible political positions?

I know the higher road to take with these people is to say, yes, they're entitled to their opinion too, and that's what makes this a democracy. But the moody-ass curmudgeon in me, who has seen too many elections go by where the tyranny of the majority has voted in all kinds of idiotic demagogues and hateful legislation, has lost all patience with the higher road. Soooo: my inner curmudgeon says to all those idiots: hey! Have you noticed you're a bunch of bloody idiots? Maybe you should stay home and not bother voting. After all, according to that beloved Scripture you like to (mis)quote so much, the Rapture's supposed to come soon and take you all away, right? So what the hell do you care if those of us who get left behind decide to throw a big party and vote for some smart people and laws for a change? So there. Nyahhh.