Personal

The stuff about me and my life. The “diary” side of blogging.

Dean support in Washington

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Speaking of the Stranger, I just happened across an article that looks at the ever-growing support for Howard Dean (and John Kerry) here in Washington State.

Dean has also won the support of former state party chair Karen Marchioro, who says she went to the annual meeting of the Democratic National Committee in February as a Kerry supporter, but was won over to Dean after hearing his fiery speech and after meeting him personally. She sees a regional divide in the party, with Left Coast insiders more amenable to Dean’s call for a head-on confrontation with the Bush administration and its policies. She recently attended a California party convention where hordes of party insiders expressed support for Dean’s candidacy after hearing him speak, she says.

Due to my work schedule, I haven’t been able to show up at any of the local Dean meetups or gatherings, unfortunately — they’re all scheduled for Wednesday evenings when I’m at work. Dean is supposed to be here himself on Monday, August 25^th^, though, as part of the “People-Powered Howard Sleepless Summer Tour“, and I may just see if I can escape from work early that day to show up.

Losing a voice

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Many years ago, Anchorage used to have two newspapers in town. The Anchorage Daily News was the more liberal of the two, while the Anchorage Times was the more conservative. It’s been long enough now that I don’t remember all the details, but after a while, the Anchorage Times closed its doors, and Anchorage became a one newspaper town. These days, all that’s left of the Times is an editorial column called Voice of the Times that was created as a way to continue a separate editorial voice in the city.

Currently in Seattle, a similar situation is developing. Seattle’s two newspapers, the Seattle Times and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer have been operating under a joint operating agreement for the past few years. The Seattle Times now wants out of the JOA, however, and it’s looking more and more likely that Seattle may soon become a one-paper town if the Times gets its way.

Having been around for the loss of the Anchorage Times, I have to say, I’m not looking forward to losing the P-I. While in Anchorage we were lucky enough to keep the more liberal of the two papers publishing, here in Seattle, the P-I is the more liberal of the two papers, and it’s the one were likely to lose. Beyond even just the editorial slant of which paper survives, though, I think that it’s important that there be more than one major public voice in a city, especially one the size of Seattle.

Once the Anchorage Times folded, I felt that there was a marked decrease in the quality of the Anchorage Daily News. Without the constant competition and opposing viewpoints, there just didn’t seem to be as much drive left at the ADN to keep up the quality that it had had before, and it wasn’t long after the fall of the Times that I stopped bothering to read the ADN on a regular basis. It just felt like much of the heart and fire that used to drive the paper was no longer there without the Times to challenge it.

On the bright side, though, Seattle does have two good weekly newspapers — the Stranger and the Seattle Weekly. This weeks edition of the Seattle Weekly has a wonderful story looking at the history of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and ruminating on everything we could lose if the P-I is forced to close.

The P-I’s newsroom culture in the 1960s and 1970s was far more freewheeling than what the staid management of the Times could have handled. At the Times, reporters wore sport coats and ties and trimmed their hair neatly and were largely a well-behaved bunch. The P-I was a newspaper that tolerated long hair and beards among its male staff at a time when those were firing offenses in many of the country’s newsrooms. It would, in the mid-1960s, send future novelist Tom Robbins and gonzo writer Darrell Bob Houston, both then copy editors, and cartoonist Ray Collins to cover Timothy Leary’s LSD conference in Berkeley, Calif. It ran a Hearst-dictated editorial endorsing Richard Nixon in 1972 but then allowed a group comprising more than half its news staff to take out an ad in their own newspaper endorsing George McGovern.

[…]

Frank Herbert, author of the Dune series and one of the most successful sci-fi novelists of all time, wrote the first Dune book while covering higher education for the P-I. He retired from daily journalism in 1971 after optioning Dune to a movie studio. Tom Robbins quit the P-I in 1970 and moved over to the Washington coast, where he eventually wrote Another Roadside Attraction, the first of seven novels. He now lives in La Conner.

There are a lot more good stories buried in the article. It may be nearly hopeless, but I’d be very disappointed if the Times ended up being the sole daily newspaper in Seattle.

Go Tigers!

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2003/07/graphics/tigers

Dad just sent me this a few minutes ago, figuring it tied in with the Filler and That’s it, I’m moving posts.

Now that’s a fashion statment.

I have to admit, though, my first thought on seeing this was just wondering if this (of all things) should become a trend and make its way here to the states. I think if I’m ever walking down the street in Seattle and see some cute young thing walking along with Ichiro‘s face staring at me — twice — from her chest, it’ll be questionable whether I can turn around before I bust out laughing.

Of course, it might also be the first time I have to resist the impluse to give Ichiro a big ol’ kiss. ;)

That's it, I'm moving

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I already have a tendency to find Asian women quite attractive. I’ve also long thought that clothing doesn’t have to be revealing to be sexy — leaving details up to the imagination can be a very good thing.

Then today, Jeremy posts about Yukata season in Japan…

This is probably the right place to mention that I think kimono and yukata are about the sexiest articles of clothing ever designed for women (with the possible exception of old blue jeans and a crisp white shirt). Unlike a lot of Western style clothing, they look great on people of all shapes and sizes and they provide the most tantalising glimpses of ankles, napes of necks (oooh!) and clavicles (big oooh!) as well as ample encouragement to the imagination (as if encouragement were needed). The pseudo-porn attractions of hot pants and bared midriffs are simply grotesque compared to the unostentatious (but hardly demure) eroticism of the kimono.

Damn straight. And when’s the next boat to Japan? ;)

Move, you momos

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To the group of yuppies walking down 8^th^ Ave., between Pike and Seneca, while I was walking up.

There’s eight of you, all grouped together in your power suits and nametags, on your way to or from whatever conference you’re at. Eight, stretched across the entire width of the sidewalk.

Meanwhile, there’s only one of me. And a fairly skinny me, at that. I don’t take up much space.

So why do none of you move enough to let me by? It doesn’t do any good for me to move to one side or the other, I’m still faced with a wall of corporate momos that I can’t get past. Would it kill you to leave a little space for people walking the other direction?

So that’s why I stopped dead in my tracks and watched you all. Not stalking, not trying to be threatening or obnoxious, as your puzzled looks when I stopped seem to imply. Merely waiting for you to get your little group out of my way so I could get home.

Gr.

Great minds think alike (and so do ours)

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If you ever want to know a bit more about me, talk to my dad for a while. Not necessarily about me — just talk to him. He’s a cool guy.

Dad and I are a lot alike, and I realize that more all the time. That certainly had its fair share of disadvantages growing up (saying that we butted heads on a regular basis might be something of an understatement), but once I got old enough that we could handle approaching things as two adults rather than as a father and son perpetually at loggerheads, things evened out. I’m glad they did, too. Dad is, quite honestly, one of the most intelligent and well-rounded people I’ve met. You should see the library at my folks’ house — heavy on philosophy, psychology, religion, and penguins (all good subjects to be heavy in, I’d say), but by no means limited to those subjects. Dad and I both have a tendency to investigate any little thing that peaks our interest, and it shows.

In the midst of all our various conversations (well, okay, arguments when I was younger, discussions as I matured), I picked up two very important lessons. Firstly, that having been gifted with a working intellect, it’d be a shame to let it go to waste. Secondly, that a good sense of humor is a priceless treasure (though, admittedly, whether or not dad and I share a “good” sense of humor may be a matter of opinion, given as we are to absurdities, wordplay, and bad puns).

Given the political slant many of my posts here and at The Long Letter, it would be understandable (though somewhat regrettable) if I gave the impression that I was uniformly anti-military. However, nothing could be further from the truth. While I never decided that the military was a direction I wanted to take my life in, I am a “military brat”. Dad served in the United States Air Force for ten years, and spent another eleven and a half years in the Air National Guard. Something I’ll be eternally grateful for, though, is that even growing up in a military family, I was never force-fed the steady diet of über-patriotism and “my country, right or wrong” (which many people, unfortunately, do not realize is only half of the full quote) attitude that so many other military children are.

Rather, I grew up realizing that the military, and our country, like any other large organization (all the way from corporate entities to religious movements) does some things that are very good — and some things that are very bad. The good things should be recognized and celebrated, but the bad things should also be recognized; not to be celebrated, but to be studied, learned from, and prevented in the future. Dad was very instrumental in keeping me grounded in my political views — grounded in a very liberal/democratic mindset, but grounded none the less — neither falling into an ultra-right wing “the military is always right” stance, nor an ultra-left wing “the military is always wrong” stance.

Which brings me around to what prompted this (hopefully not over-saccharine) missive. Dad just posted a wonderfully written post in response to someone being so uncouth as to drag out the old “baby killer” epithet when they found out about his military service on a mailing list he participates in. Rather than rising to the bait and indulging in a flame war, his response is beautifully stated, and well worth reading.

It does matter, Dad. I’m glad it matters to you; I’m glad that, thanks to you, it matters to me — and I’m glad that, even with all our disagreements, you’re my dad.

Homework

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Bring Marilyn Monroe’s “I Belong to Daddy” in to work tomorrow so I can let Bethany hear it and compare with some of Björk’s work (there’s a specific Björk song I’m thinking of, but for the life of me, I can’t remember which one off the top of my head).

Stubble fun

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Silly advantage to having a shaved head: after going clubbing on a weekend night and getting the stamp on your hand or wrist, next time you’re in the shower, get a good headfull of shampoo lather, then, before rinsing off, rapidly scrub your hand or wrist across your head. That sixteenth of an inch stubble makes a great impromptu scrub brush! Viola — no more stamp!

Yes, I know that a washcloth, or loofah, or bath poof, or any number of other things work just as well. But they’re infinitely less entertaining to blog about.

Batteries

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Note to myself: Pick up a 9-volt battery for the smoke alarm on the way home tonight. That painfully loud chirp every five minutes or so is getting really annoying.