Tradetalk Magazine

I saw that the new issue of Tradetalk magazine (#16) has been printed. This makes me happy, as I wrote the article for it so long ago that I no longer really remember it. It was while I was working on the elf books--February, 2007 according to my Gmail. When the mag arrives in my mailbox, it'll thus be all new to me.

This has got me off my butt about working on my next article, on The Vale of Flowers, which is either for #17 or #18. I'd been working on it earlier in October, but then I hit a roadblock when I discovered a source (The Book of Drastic Resolutions: Darkness) that contradicted some of what I'd written. Always a problem when you're writing for a game with scores of references available.

Anyway, I got back on the horse tonight and started revising my work per this last source. Once I can get all that done, including some additions, I should be in the home stretch.

This is going to be the longest Gloranthan thing I've written for a magazine. It's about 8000 words now, and will surely be 10000 by the time I'm done.

The Election

So, tomorrow is the election. If I were a good activist I'd go help GOTV tomorrow, but it's been a tough and tiring and sickly year and I don't have any sort of energy for that, so I'm just going to try and get the hell away from it all.

The plan is: vote; get a sandwich; ride down to Lake Merritt; have lunch; stop by EndGame; purchase Witch's Brew; go out to Alameda; ride the Bay Trail around the island; come home when it starts getting dark; go out to dinner; and only then look at election coverage (though it'll still be too early for local stuff).

Here's what I'm worried about for tomorrow:

Barack Obama. Unless every polling institute in the United States is wrong, even the ones with a Republican lean, I don't think Obama will lose. Or, to put it more clearly, I don't think McCain can win under any honest scenario. So, I'm less concerned here, but I do think it's a crying shame that Obama's grandmother, who raised him during his teenage years, died the day before his election.

Proposition 8. That this filthy piece of bigotry would be written into our state constitution is an affront against everything that the United States stands for. I also believe it's going to pass for reasons that I'm too tired to count. The question ultimately is going to be how long until it's overturned and how much it'll set equality rights back in the process. I hope I'm wrong.

Measure KK. This is a piece-of-shit Berkeley measure authored by the NIMBYs that unfortunately fill too many Berkeley homes. Because these idiots don't want Telegraph Avenue turned into a bus thoroughfare that would allow for real public transit alternatives between here and Oakland, they've put up a law that would make it illegal for Berkeley to redraw street lanes without voter approval. Yeah, really. I suspect it'll fuck the hell out of bike lanes just as much as it'll screw up AC Transit improvements. And people say Berkeley is progressive.

The Senate. I'm actually not too worried here, because I don't think the Democrats have a great chance of picking up their 60-vote majority, nor do I think it's a catastrophe if they don't. I would guess they'll end up with 56-58 seats. I think that in order to hit 60, Franken has to get lucky in Minnesota and there has to be a major upset in the Senatorial race in Georgia due to amazingly high African American turnout. So, it could happen, but it'd be a stretch.

But I do believe, whatever else happens, that tomorrow the end of our long, national nightmare will, at last, be in sight.

The Sad, Sad State of Our National Press

1. Palin doesn't like how the Republican Alaska legislature's abuse of power investigation is going.

2. Palin creates a second panel, made up of people who serve at her pleasure, to investigate herself as a result.

(I'll leave out some steps where Palin tries to get the original panel shut down, as I don't want to look them up.)

3. The original panel finds Palin guilty of abuse of power.

4. Palin's pet panel releases their results on the eve of the election.

5. Palin's pet panel finds Palin innocent.

(OK, so up to here, it just looks like another pathetic Palin abuse of power, exactly like the ones that she's already been found guilty of ... but wait, there's more.)

6. Our sad national press reports on this like it's news, and like it casts doubt on the bipartisan panel that already found Palin guilty ... and did so without trying to step on the election by releasing it in the final hours.

Our national press is utterly corrupt, so beholden to constantly chasing the newest story for ratings, that they can no longer be trusted to report the news. They should be destroyed, and will be as the internet slowly takes the power out of their dirtied, bloodied hands.