Terror in Mumbai - settling down and questions

So it does look like things are settling down; the bad guys have either been killed or have gotten away. I hope the cops hunt them down. And there's one guy I hear who was arrested. His ass is toast. As it should be. Indian cops, if you don't know, don't play good cop, bad cop. They play bad cop, sadist cop. (For a revealing look at how the police works in Mumbai, read "Maximum City" by Suketu Mehta)

1. How solid is the evidence that these people indeed came from Pakistan and Banglasdesh?

2. Who are the kingpins and the planners behind this?

3. Where did the money and the logistics come from?

4. Was there inside help? If so, from whom?

And of course, 

5. Where does the government go from here.

We'll see where all this leads...

 

Terror in Mumbai - things are still unresolved

I had written a long post about the latest, but then Com-#$@*ing-cast screwed up and I lost my connection. This is ridiculous.

Anyways, what I was saying is that things are completely vague on location, no one really knows what is happening on the ground, there are people talking their heads off with various theories, and there is a tasteless sensationalizing of an already bad situation in the Indian media. This is awful. You cannot shove a mic in someone's face when they've just lost a relative, or when they've just been rescued from a hostage situation. There was one channel where they actually bookended each segment with a graphic that screamed "TERROR IN MUMBAI!!!" that literally exploded in a fireball. Ugh.

Apparently though, all that intimate coverage (with details about rescue plans and commando positions) were on delayed transmission. Also the electricity at some of the places was cut and phone lines jammed. I'm not so sure about the latter, but apparently this is the case, so the terrorists couldn't find out exactly where these guys were just by flicking on the TV. Still, *way* too much detail, and *way* too little crowd control. 

But the situation still hasn't ended. They keep saying it has, or that its close to winding down, and then it flares up again, so I really don't know. We'll see how this goes down, but at the end, the Indian media needs to look in the mirror and do a critical assessment of how it handles situations like these. 

On the other hand, CNN has a link up called "India 101". You know, for those who want to know a little more about a country that has 17% of the worlds population and is the worlds largest democracy. Apparently its not a country full of Appus, elephants and snake charmers. 

Terror in Mumbai

So I'm sure all of you have heard about the terror attacks in Mumbai (Bombay), India. The media (especially in India) is all over this one, but to be honest, I don't really think ANYONE knows ANYTHING about whats happening. First of all, people who I know in Bombay are fine. Shaken, but OK.

There's a blog up that has pics. I'm not so sure about the captioning. There are people dying and this guy is gushing about the beautiful helmets of the Indian fire department. But still, some of the pics are arresting.

http://arunshanbhag.com/

This is an incredibly sophisticated and well-planned attack. Sure, there have always been terror strikes in India (some 3,600 deaths in the last three years, second only to Iraq). They usually get short shrift from the International media, and sadly, from Indians themselves. We tend to forgive, we tend to forget. And the one basic tenet of Hindu philosophy "Life will go on", which ordinarily helps one immensely with getting over grief, with looking past setbacks, rings terribly hollow right now.

I don't want "life to just go on". I don't want this one to be another one of those terror attacks that flits across the TV screens and fades away from memory as soon as it fades away from the media spotlight. We already had 50+ people die in a blast in Jaipur, another 50+ I think die in another blast in Ahmedabad just in the past few months. Didn't hear about them, did you. Yeah. Thats what happens when "Life goes on".

I want things to change after this one. I'm looking at a few things that were immediately, painfully obvious:

The cops were incredibly out of shape and were equipped with lathis (batons) and .303 rifles. No match against AK-47s that the terrorists had.

Bad communications on ground in the immediate aftermath; confusion, mayhem, even, where there should have been clarity and decisiveness.

Horrible decision making. How on Earth can the Chief of the Anti-terror squad and the top Encounter Specialist of the Mumbai Police be allowed to walk into a hostile situation without adequate protection? Within less than a couple of hours into the ordeal, these two top cops were shot dead. The Chief was shot thrice in the chest. No bullet proof vest???

Why do the police not have someone who can keep the media and the crowds at bay? Some of the media shots of the commandos and their setup was incredibly intimate. Sure, the public needs to know whats happening, but to openly discuss and reveal their locations and tactics on live TV? That just cannot be allowed to happen.

I know, I know; with this level of planning and sophistication, almost any government will have been overwhelmed. It is near impossible to completely prevent this sort of attack. There are long-term strategies aimed at stemming the tide of Islamic fundamentalism (all signs point to this also being behind the current Mumbai attacks), but thats a topic for another day. But for today, we need to think deeply critically of our counter terrorist tactics to keep fatalities and damage as low as possible, in the event of such an attack.

Lets see how things pan out.

Thanksgiving = chocolate orgies

My roommates girlfriend showed up and made a bunch of chocolate and cookie turkeys. I thought they looked like peacocks, and told her so. She was miffed. Actually, now that I've taken a photo of the thing, it does look like an army of turkeys. Neat. In addition to feeding us chocolate turkeys, the lady also cooked for all of us. She also cleans up each time she's in town. I like her.

The Drivers Licence Story

When I turned 16 (yeah, this story is OLD), we had to get me a licence. Now, I had already been driving for a bit, so I didn't really need formal lessons, but in the city that I was living in at the time (Madras), one of the requirements was that you needed a licenced instructor to sign off on a sheet that said you had taken 12 classes. Ordinarily, like SO many things in India, this can be done quickly with an appropriate amount of money exchanged under the table. But my dad doesn't do bribes (he's one of those). Instead, he sent me packing to a driving instructor. The one closest to my home happened to be "Dhanalakshmi Driving School". Dhanalakshmi is the goddess of wealth; pretty suggestive that we should have just paid the money off, but my dad was determined to get me formal driving lessons. So I enrolled for my 12 classes at Dhanalakshmi.

The "school" was a room that was about 8' x 8'. There was a desk, a bench for visitors, and a folding chair for the owner and head instructor, a potbellied unshaven drunk with red baggy eyes and an inadequate combover. I think his name was Mahendran. He seemed a little disappointed that we didn't just pay up and ask for his signature. But he did accept the money with a devout glance towards the eastward facing wall, which was covered with pictures of a variety of gods and goddesses (he had his bases covered) and agreed to teach me the basics of driving in India. All this seemed to satisfy my dad, so we left with instructions to come back the next day at 6 am.

I showed up at about 6 am at the shack, and there are a group of about half a dozen dudes already there. They were a bit older than I was, dressed in their Sunday best, and were looking around nervously. I understood immediately - these guys were also here for lessons, but for them, driving was going to be an occupation, their means of earning money, as opposed to what it was for a spoiled brat like me. Mahendran seemed to understand this as well, because he treated me very differently from the rest of them. The first thing he did was to send a couple to the gas station with a canister and just enough money to get half a gallon of gas. He then sent another dude to a shop to get a few lemons, and yet another couple to get rags and a bucket of water. They all shuffled off dutifully, and Mahendran and I were left alone. We eyed each other somewhat uneasily, and then settled into a mutually agreeable silence. I looked at the car that Mahendran owns, the pride of Dhanalakshmi Driving School. It was a white 1965 HM Ambassador, which looked more than a little weatherbeaten. There were rusty patches, and at least 3 layers of different shades of white paint peeling off. I also noticed it had a behind-the-wheel manual gear box. Great.

Once the guys showed up, he made two or three of them clean the windshield and wheels of the car, while he popped the hood open. I took a peek inside and immediately wished I hadn't. The thing was basically a bucket of rusty bolts. It literally looked like little bits of engine would fall off if we stared too long. Mahendran then took the canister half full of gas, fastened it to a small shelf on the inside of the hood with some twine, and shoved in some tubing that ran to the engine. Apparently, this was to be our fuel injection system. But we hadn't pleased the gods yet (which by now, I was really counting on to deliver me back home in one piece). To this end, the guy pulled out an incense stick from his pocket, lit it, and went around with it in front of the god wall and the car, chanting unintelligible prayers (he did look a little drunk from the previous night). He then extinguished the stick and saved whatever was left it for the next day. Finally, he had one of the minions place four lemons under each wheel of the car. This done, the eight of us (yes, eight) bundled into the car, with Mahendran at the wheel. With a last whispered prayer, and with an emphatic crunching of the gears and crushing of the lemons, we were off.

(... to be contd. in Pt. 2)

The Bailout for the Big Three

So, I'm sure you've all heard about how the Big Three automakers are on the edge of bankruptcy, and how they all flew into DC with their begging bowls. Except that they used their private jets for the trip, so they (deservedly) got rapped on their knuckles by the senate committee. Now, there has been a lot of talk from the Republicans about how we should let these guys go bust, file for Chapter 11, so that they can be restructured to be paragons of efficient productivity.

I'm not so sure.

Sure, these guys have totally screwed the system, screwed Americans in general, continued to make big bad trucks that no one really needed and that gave you 2 miles to the gallon, continued to fight the EPA (which to be fair, wasn't much these past few years) and succeeded in not only not having any sort of federal fuel efficiency limits, but also preventing forward thinking states such as California to enforce such rules. All this while the rest of the world has gone ahead and made better cars, more efficient factories and so on. Sure, these guys do deserve to roast in hell.

But you know what'll happen if/when these guys are allowed to go under? The guys at the top will be fine. The factory line workers, the welders, the machinists, those are the guys who will take the brunt. They'll lose their jobs, factories will shut down, taking down with them entire communities (where they are the primary job provider, and other associated businesses depend on them). Its millions of jobs at stake.

So, what do they do? Clearly, just giving them money so they can continue their obviously broken business systems is stupid. Here's what I think would be nice - Give them the money, but be very clear about what they HAVE to do with it:

In the short term, fuel efficiency for ALL cars to be on par with that of the Asians, and huge investments made into hybrid and electric cars.

In my opinion, MOST importantly, MAKE PUBLIC TRANSPORT. Sure, personal transport is nice and all, but about 85% of cars on American roads have one person. No matter how many fuel efficient cars you make, you are eventually going to have a problem if people continue to only drive cars. Buses, trams and trains are going to have to be the main mode of transport in all cities. Make these buses, make them reliable, get them to go into ALL parts of the city so inner city folk have a way of getting out and to where the jobs are. And of course, make them super energy efficient.

The system is so messed up, we're going to change it anyway. Might as well make dramatic, far reaching changes, as opposed to cosmetic temporary ones, no?

What say you?

Horribly dorky Limerick

Of Charles Darwin I'm no fan.
What he theorized, I too, can.
A little transversion,
mutation and selection;
ape, pea, pen, pan, man!

Survivorman Vs. Man vs. Wild

If you watch Discovery channel, you have probably come across these two shows some time in the recent past. The premise of both shows is basically that there's a dude in the wild and he's up against nature. Using his skills and smarts (which he helpfully shares with you), he survives. End of show. However, as I hope to lay clear in this post, there are some basic differences between Man Vs. Wild and Survivorman. As always, here they are, in list form.

1. * Survivorman is an actual expert on survival and a filmmaker. He remains the only producer in the history of television to produce an internationally broadcast series entirely written, videotaped and hosted alone. His real name is Les Stroud.
* The star of Man Vs. Wild is a wanker who went to Eton and is a son of a Tory. He owns an island and lives on a barge on the Thames. His goes by the neauseatingly wannabe macho name Bear Grylls. Sort of like the midget who calls himself Andre the Giant.

2. * Survivorman ACTUALLY goes into the wilderness all alone for a week. No camera crew. He lugs his own stuff (50 lbs), and only has a satellite phone that connects him to civilization in case of emergency.
* Bear f*@#ing Grylls has a camera crew with him at all times. Yeah, he pretends like he's alone, but really, there's a camera guy. And for all you know, an entire film crew and caravan with a hot water bath and scantily clad blondes right behind the camera.

3. Survivorman doesn't do stupid shit. If there is a straight line of distance 100m connecting point A to point B, you can be sure that Les will walk the line, traveling a distance of no more than 150m.
* But not Grylls. Bear f*@#ing Grylls will have to climb a cliff, jump a ravine, plunge through rapids, swim through whirlpools and bear hug an anthill to get from A to B, travelling (and mostly flat-out running) for 3.5 miles in 28 minutes of an episode to get from A to B.

4. * Survivorman doesn't eat crap just for the sake of eating crap. To be fair, he sucks at catching anything, so he tends to eat mostly bugs for 7 days, but he's OK with that. He sets traps, usually nets nothing, complains a lot, eats a few termites, and then moves on. For anyone who has actually tried catching any sort of animal, you know that this is pretty much how it goes.
* Bear f*@#ing Grylls on the other hand will eat crap. First of all, there always just happens to be a newly dead mammal of some sort in his path (killed by his behind-the-scenes coterie, no doubt). Then, he walks up to it and eats its most disgusting innards. Why eat dead skunk bladder when you can eat its thigh, I wonder. I have also seen him eat a "just dead" zebra with no hands. you have a knife, you idiot. Use the f*@#ing knife. He also drinks his own urine. Pees into a bottle and then drinks it. As anyone who knows the basics of survival training, you DO NOT drink urine straight. You make a solar still. Sure enough, in the one episode where Stroud was dehydrated, this is what he did. I have also seen Bear f*@#ing Grylls squeeze water out of some animal's dung and drink it straight.

I guess what pisses me off is the melodrama that Grylls tries to inject into the show. Why drink your own urine 5 minutes into the show when you have dudes a few feet from you drinking Dasani. I'm sure you have some too off camera. Jackass. (I also read that he faked some of his locations, but I am not sure of the details). But more importantly, you're misleading people. There are safe ways of adventuring, and genuinely useful tips that you should know to increase your chances of survival. And then there are stupid ways of doing all this shit, which is EXACTLY what Gyrlls does with his infuriatingly whiney out-of-breath accent. If people do get stranded, they're going to remember watching this idiot eat maggots off a dead sheep, and they're going to get themselves killed.

So, help us all out, Bear f*@#ing Grylls. Learn from Les Stroud. And if you can't, I hope the next time you jump across a chasm, its a really really deep chasm. And that you misjudge the distance.

Update: Got to love youtube. Bear f*@#ing Grylls is a fraud.

A few notes from the men's room

Let me start off by saying that I understand there is quite a bonhomie amongst women who make field trips, arm in arm, to the ladies room every day, and use trips to the lavatory to make their most important and enjoyable conversations of the day. Well, men are different - we have rules. You may or may not know the rules of the men's room. For those of you who don't, read on. For those of you who do, and for men reading this, here's a refresher. Men, tell me if I've missed something.

1. Flush. There are few things as nauseating as a urinal full of, well, urine. You see that little lever? Try giving it a gentle push downward. Whoosh! Dark yellow pee magically replaced by sparkling, clear water!

1a. Coming to think of it, there is one thing more nauseating than a urinal full of urine. Pubes. If I walk up to a urinal and it looks like a barbershop floor, it makes me want to vomit. Listen, I don't care if you're a Samson-type dude whose strength depends on his nether regions, but you either do some trimming at home, or you clean up after yourself. Leaving hirsute calling cards is repulsive.

2. Don't talk. its OK for a quick "Hey, whats up" on the way to the urinal. But once there, I really do not want to discuss the weather. I'm there to empty a kidney; I've got weather.com if I want to know what the weather is going to be like. No, not even football. If there was a conversation going on before entry into the rest room, it can take a break for half a minute.

3. Don't make eye contact. There are only two acceptable things to look at when you're taking a leak.
a. The business hand.
b. The wall directly in front of you.

To aid comprehension, I have included a quick sketch.



It is OK to:
Look away, at nothing in particular. This is completely kosher.
As above, looking at the business hand or at a point in the wall directly between your eyes is also fine.

It is not OK to:
Look directly at the person next to you, even if there is a conversation (which there shouldn't be)
Look at your neighbor's business hand. There are states where this can get you killed.

4. Wash up. Enough said.


These are the basic rules. But there are other things that you really should be doing to make your daily public micturatory trips pleasant:

1. If there is someone at the urinal, leave a spot between you and him if you can. Again, attached is a simple diagram to illustrate the point.



1a. If you have to be next to someone, do be mindful of your feet. We know you don't need to spread your legs 4 feet wide to get to your giant penis, so quit it. Its not classy, and thanks to Larry Craig, paves way for a potentially distasteful situation.

2. You are at the urinal to take a leak, not to pass gas. Gentle tinkling interrupted by thunderous flatulence is undesirable. If you suspect your toot might pack lass bark and more bite (especially if you've just had eggs), it would be highly appreciated if you could hold on. No need to make the men's room smell like your lunch.

3. If you so desire to wash your mouth, do so gently. Hacking up greenish phlegm from the deepest recesses of your lungs is unpleasant to watch and even less appealing to listen to.

4. Don't be a diva. You are indeed allowed to spruce up so you can impress the lady that's waiting for you on the other side of the door. You get 15 seconds, which is sufficient for a quick fix. Anything more than that is in bad taste. Too much primping can result in willful flatulence from your fellow urinal user, just to spite you. In this case alone, making the urinal (and you) smell like a fish sandwich is OK.

Hopefully this little write-up has been helpful in clarifying some of the little things that make life enjoyable.

Thank you.

Update: As veggie belly rightly points out, there is also this little thing about aim. Now, men are apparently way better equipped at this than women, but that being said, yeah, you have the equipment, now use it to aim well. i.e. INto the urinal, not ONto, or around.

Google makes the Earth go around. Literally.

This has probably happened to you before, in which case you are probably going to be underwhelmed. But I kept watching this for a LONG time. Its weirdly calming/hypnotizing after the 1st minute of "What the.. ?!?" . Like fish in a tank or something.

OK, I was also drinking.

Fall

Outside my window, before it started raining, obviously.

Happy to help

So today I happened to look at the search terms that people used to look up this blog. Sure enough, most of the search terms were pushupyogi. But I found two that were interesting.

1. Male nipple discharge.

2. Gay Photos.

Sorry I couldn't be of more help, people.

Teh stupid

1. It was raining this morning.
2. I have a solid 20 minute walk from my home the station and from the station to work.
3. I found out that cling-wrapping the broken foot may keep it dry, but cold moist cling wrap clinging to your broken foot is extraordinarily uncomfortable.
4. I also found out today that the boot that enclosed my cling wrapped foot is made of sponge.

So, after hobbling to work on a cling-wrapped broken foot enclosed by a sopping wet boot, I'm standing, wet and shivering, with squelchy feet and in obvious pain in the elevator, and this woman turns around and asks me :

"Aw, did you hurt your foot?"

Little things make me laugh a lot

1. Joe Scarborough drops the F-bomb LIVE on TV. I saw it yesterday, and couldn't STOP watching it over and over and over. And over. Its the reaction of the rest of the folks that gets me every time. Sure enough, as of today, MSNBC has a 7-second delay...

2. Dan Savage talks to Colbert. you'll have to go to Comedy Central for this, sorry. Its posted today. Killer lines: (They're talking about how blacks voted against gay marriage 7:3, and Colbert goes "So now the black man is keeping you down." Savage: "uh, well, a few black men have kept me down in the past..."

3. Matt Lauer gets reminded of his failed marriage, much to the amusement of everyone around. Poor Meredith Viera.

Center-right Country My Ass

This is the change in voting trends from 2004-2008. Looks pretty blue to me. (Uh, except for Real America).

Speaking of which, The Disasta from Alaska is making ALL sorts of moves towards 2012.

3. She's looking for openings, and if she sees one, she will "plow through it". Yeah, keep the joke to yourself. My mum reads this blog.
2. She was cooking moose stew with her dumb-ass family watching as Matt Lauer asked her about what she felt about America whupping her ass at the polls. She had one kid on her hip, her hubby was leaning back on the counter, and her other (8 yr old) kid was wearing high heels at home. Oh, this was SO not a photo-op. Of course dear, of course.
1. Most scary: She said she would pray, and do what Jesus told her to do. And since she clearly has a direct line to God, I hope he tells her to go to the middle of a big lake and jump on the ice to see how thick it is.

The Intertubes are working again

Man, I hate monopolies. They screw shit up precisely because they KNOW they can get away with it and no one is going to call them on their shit. Take the venerable Ambassador from Hindustan Motors. You think people would still buy that bucket of stones if they had a choice? Methinks not. Unless you actually *wanted* to be seen around town in a monstrosity that looked like this:



Anyway, my point is that Comcast has a near-monopoly on the cable business here and it sucks. Big time. We pay a bunch of money, and the interslice (this is what we call the internet at the house) stops working every once in a while, for no rhyme or reason. When the interslice stops working, we start calling it the intertubes, and we start yelling obscenities at it, which usually doesn't help any. And so we end up having to call someone and then having to wait several days while they figure out what the hell is wrong. Fortunately, the nice lady who I spoke to today, Susan from Saratoga (I bet she was Subha from Surat) told us what to do, and after half hour of tinkering around, it all came to life. Why they couldn't have done this 3 days back, I don't know.

Point is, that's why there's been this hiatus. Sure, its a hell of a long winded way to say a really simple thing. So sue me.

Why I hate my foot surgeon

As you all well know by now, I'm having issues with my foot. This has meant that I have had to go to the foot surgeon a couple times. My foot surgeon is an asshole. Given my generally low tolerance for assholes, it shouldn't be surprising that I have developed a deep seated hatred for this man. However, given that he is supposedly taking care of my messed up foot, I can't quite strangle him in his office. I can, however, launch into cyber-invective, which is exactly what I'm going to do in the form of a little list titled:

Top 5 reasons I hate my foot surgeon.

#5: The Hospital. I'm used to East Baltimore, where I have walked in the Johns Hopkins ER with a broken ankle and had to wait for hours on end, because people with multiple gunshot wounds kept getting wheeled in. I almost felt guilty about having a painful appendage. Here, in wealthy suburbia, the kid in front of me had a skinned knee. A skinned freaking knee. (Presumably by kneeling in the one square foot in his 10,000 sq.ft. house that his parents neglected to cover in Persian rugs). My toe was a bloody mess barely hanging on to the rest of my foot, and I had to wait for his little jerk and his mum (who looked as if her kid would have to be amputated knee down). To be fair though, they sent him packing pretty quick. The other thing is that only way you can get to this hospital is by cab (20 bucks), and I happen to draw the really talkative guy with really bad eczema from Action Cab Co. every time. Not that I have a problem with friendly people, but he gesticulates a lot, and bits of his skin keep floating down on me. This makes for a somewhat uncomfortable cab ride.

#4: The patients. The only people in the waiting room are old people. We are talking about really old, ancient, miserable senior citizens. About a dozen of them in various stages of decay, mostly confined to wheel chairs, that make McCain look like a young stud. They're watching Judge Mathis trying to decide if one woman keyed another woman's car or not. The program is interspersed with ads about wheelchairs, medical malpractice lawyers and medications of various types, which these people watch avidly. I cannot tell you how unnerving waiting in this room is. It feels like each time someone gets called and goes in, there's only a 50% chance they'll come out alive. The room smells and feels like a mortuary. A lot of them are seeing the foot doctor to treat bed sores, so I am not going to go into a detailed visual description of the scene. I understand that none of this is their fault, so I can't be mad at them. Instead, I close my eyes for the most part, and pray that my death comes quick and painlessly.

#4b: The dude is also the foot surgeon for the local penitentiary, so on one of my visits, we had prisoners in shackles walk by, surrounded by armed posse of sheriffs. But I've already written about it here ...

#3: The nurses. When I think of nurses, I think of warm, compassionate, somewhat elderly women, who are really good at taking care of the little things that make you think of mum. Sure there's the occasional hot nurse, but I never get them. Either that or they want to have babies with the more good-looking people in the room. What does not come to mind when I think of nurses is a bad-ass biker dude, mustache, tattoos and all, who treats your toe like a rusty drive shaft. This surgeon guy has helpers from hell who bandage my toe badly enough to make it hurt for the next two days non-stop. But we do have an entertaining talk about the tattoos, so that helps numb the pain a bit.

#2: The doctor is a prima donna. He twirls about with an entourage, and generally gives you the impression that you should be licking the floor that he walks on. He also has autographed pictures all over his ofice of C-level celebrities that have had their toes fixed by him. I bet they have a seperate non-funereal waiting office and hot nurses or those people. After a 2 week wait to get an appointment with him, he spends about 12 seconds on small talk, then goes to work on the toe (see #1), tells me to continue taking care of it the way I was going to anyway, and then to come see him 3 weeks later. 12 minutes in all. I'm sure he's going to bill my ass for a whole hour. Its all a giant scam.

The #1 reason I hate my foot surgeon: The torture instrument. My second appointment, he sits at the foot of the bed with his biker-nurse at his shoulder, and pulls out this steel thing that looked like a miniature ice-cream scoop. (The handle is normally sized, but the scoop end is about 4mm x 2 mm). And then he says "This might be a little uncomfortable". I bet both of them were smiling behind their face masks. The basement scene from Pulp Fiction flashes in front of my eyes, but I tell him to go ahead. And then the rat bastard proceeds to scoop out bits of flesh/scab/tisue/congealed blood/pus from my foot. Now, my toe might have been in bad shape, but my already jangled nerves were on high alert. So the second he touched anything, pain would sear through my body, and I'd have to plead with him to stop. This would be greeted by a look of contempt and disdain, followed by a spray of a "local anesthetic" to the area. The damn thing had to be cold water, because the pain was as excruciating the next time he went at it. And the next time after that. By the 3rd or 4th go, I was in a cold sweat, shaking and biting on my palm and begging for a wooden spoon, or a shot of whiskey, something (I get nothing. Bastards). Fortunately the guy had to go see his next failed sitcom star, so after a few minutes of digging around, he stops (only for biker-nurse to wrench the toe around while trying to wrap it in seven yards of gauze).

And then they let me go. I stumble out a few minutes later and hobble off to the taxi rank. I spot a familiar Action Cab Co. car, and crutch faster and faster till I reach it, and fall gratefully, sweating, weeping, shaking, into the waiting arms of eczema-man...

Ulimate Dorkiness/Awesomeness

So what you see in the background is a Ion Abrasion (Dual Beam) Scanning Electron Microscope fitted with a Kleindiek micromanipulator and Platinum Gas Injection System. There are maybe half a dozen of these in the world, and this one's sitting in our basement. We use it to do cool shit with cells.

What you see in the foreground is the controller device for the robotic arm that my lab mate installed in the machine. Look at it closely.

Yep, that's a video game controller that's been yanked out of a PS2.

OMG

Barack Obama. The next president of the United States of America.

Update: What a speech too. I am drunk with love/hope/all things good. Sure, tomorrow we'll have to face the crushing enormity of the reality we face (and the giant steaming turd burger that Obama's going to inherit on the 20th of January).

But for today, I'm just living in the moment. And enjoying it.

Liveblogging the election - CNN & MSNBC. And FOX during ad breaks (10)

Will.i.am as a HOLOGRAM?!!??!? wtf!?!??!! CNN pulling out ALL the stops now. Someone's getting a big fat check.

Update: VA for Obama. Phew. Brit Hume looks like he's undergoing a colonic on live TV. From a male nurse with huge hands.

Liveblogging the election - CNN & MSNBC. And FOX during ad breaks (9)

Franken with a slim, slim lead, but his is going to be close. Ditto for Landrieu, who really was the only D in trouble, and against a Kennedy who did a switcheroo from D to R...

Ronnie Musgrove isn't looking good in Mississippi.

Damn, Chambliss is also looking good in Georgia. BUT, if he does fall below 50, then I think GA has a run-off law.

Update: Wow, CNN, you're getting VERY fancy with the graphics... waiting for something to screw up. Surely, there HAS to be a glitch... FOX is pretty crummy.

Liveblogging the election - CNN & MSNBC. And FOX during ad breaks (8)

The republican party has been reduced to a southern party, restricted to the south. They're all fretting about "balance of power". Well, fuck them. If you cater to the crazies in the party, you get screwed.

They're absolutely NOT going to say anything until he actually hits 270, apparently. Maybe Obama will come up to the stage at the time.

We're not going to get to 60, I think, in the senate. The house is looking good, but there are a lot of seats that are going to stay (R).

Update: Why the hell can't people put their crackberries on vibrate?

Update 2: Who the hell has that horrible cough on MSNBC?

Liveblogging the election - CNN & MSNBC. And FOX during ad breaks (7)

YES!!!!!

CO defeats an absurd ballot measure that would have defined a "person" as an implanted embryo.

Also, SD defeats another "outlaw abortion" ballot measure.

Waiting on CA prop 8 now ...

Liveblogging the election - CNN & MSNBC. And FOX during ad breaks (6)

Chris Shays just conceded. THERE ARE NO MORE REPUBLICAN REPRESENTATIVES LEFT IN NEW ENGLAND.

America, meet Blue Wave.

Liveblogging the election - CNN & MSNBC. And FOX during ad breaks (5)

I am drunk with happiness. I am looking at Grant Park, and contrasting it with wherever the hell the McCain camp is, somewhere in Phoenix, AZ. Hank Williams is playing, and they've turned off the TVs. Typical Republican response.

I feel like the Visigoth who's just crushed the skull of a tribal chief in front of his wailing wife. Actually I feel like the wimpy ass dude who's left behind to guard the ship and is watching the Visigoth chief crush skulls in front of wailing wives...

Daily Kos isn't loading. Big surprise.

Update: I get the feeling all the newspeople at the Biltmore in AZ all want to be at Grant park. There's some other country singer now, playing to about 20 despondent people. They're all beginning to talk about "what could have been"

Liveblogging the election - CNN & MSNBC. And FOX during ad breaks (4)

They're calling Ohio for Obama. The people at FOX look like they're in the middle of a long funeral.

Its over.

Liveblogging the election - CNN & MSNBC. And FOX during ad breaks (3)

CNN has some really REALLY snazzy graphics...

Clean sweep of the NE, and MN also in the BO column. Very, very nice...

TOM UDALL IN NEW MEXICO AND JEANNE SHAHEEN!!!! Shaheen was running ahead of Sununu, great she could close the deal... The senate is looking good... (wonder how the other Udall will do in CO)

NO BRADLEY EFFECT. Great note by Bennett: Let's face it folks; the nation has grown up.

Now they're all trying REALLY hard not to just wrap up and call it and go home...

Liveblogging the election - CNN & MSNBC. And FOX during ad breaks (2)

Kay Hagan beats the dreadful Elizabeth Dole. Love it. West Virginia is getting a Dem Governor. Highly love it.

The whole NE is going to Obama, as expected.

OK, KY, you're welcome to take your princely single-digits to the McCain bank.

VA isn't looking good though...

Liveblogging the election - CNN & MSNBC. And FOX during ad breaks

They just called PA for Obama.

The fat lady is clearing her throat...

Answer of the day. W. O. W.

So we're at this Peruvian restaurant, and I order this appetizer that's basically boiled corn served with slabs of cheese. The cheese has an nice unfinished, cottage-y taste to it, and I'm curious, so I ask the waitress:

Q: So what kind of cheese is this? Where is it from?

A: Uh, its from a big brick of cheese. We just cut it up.

Now, at this clear indication of a single digit IQ, I should've stopped. But me being me, I persist.

Q: No, I mean, where does the cheese come from?

A: Uh... you mean... (light bulb flashes above her head) Oh, I see. We get the cheese from a distributor. They deliver it to the restaurant.

Thank you for your insight. Now let me stab myself in the eyeball with this fork.

Sarah Palin Limerick

Sorry, couldn't help it.

The roll out went off without a hitch,
Now the campaign's in the ditch.
Sure she has a pretty family and a handsome hubby,
And sure she gives old white men a collective chubby,
Its just that she's a bible-thumping, IQ-missing, Russia-viewing, moose-cooking, talking-point spewing, America dividing, lousy parenting, fake-bridge supporting, flat-out lying, non-traveling, joe-blowing, McCain backstabbing, race-baiting, socialist-scaring, interview screwing, go-back-the-f*ck-to-Wasilla cry deserving, 2012 run contemplating, $150,000 dress buying, shit-for-brains, uh, woman.

Joe The Plumber Limerick

Our friend Joe the plumber
proves himself to be dumber and dumber.
The poster child for McCain
turns out to have a fried brain.
My guess is he'll be forgotten by next summer.

(Huh, just realized; this could work for Sarah too. Except I don't think she's going anywhere. Which is scary, but ensures bigger democratic victories down the road, so I should be happy, I guess)

I want to weep

No, really. I feel sorry. For gramps, for his whole campaign, and even for Joe-I've-got-a-publicist-now.



I wasn't joking. Joe-the-plumber, who would do better under Obama's tax plan, who owes the government back taxes, who agreed that a vote for Obama = death to Israel, whose name really is Samuel Wurzelbacher, now has a publicist. And is planning

1. A run for Ohio Governor
2. A book deal
3. A record deal.

1 and 2 are bad enough for a guy who was (but really shouldn't be) mentioned 23 times during a presidential debate. But a Record Deal!?!?!! Really!!?? So now you think you can sing, Joe?

Where things stand as of today...

Now all we have to do is wait until Tuesday. My guess is that MO is going to swing Obama's way; not sure about IN. NC will swing Obama's way thanks to the gift from Liddy Dole.

Plus, since its the last 2 days,

1. GOTV! (Get Out The Vote)
2. STFIL!!! (Stay The F*ck In Line)

Bridge to No Underwear

Oh dear. So wrong, so wrong. Yet so funny, so funny. (from the Jed Report)