Thomas Jefferson’s Koran

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Heh. This is very cool (that is, cool that a Muslim was elected, and very cool that he’s going to be sworn in on the Koran and not the Bible…not so cool that some idiots are up in arms about this)…

Rep.-elect Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, found himself under attack last month when he announced he’d take his oath of office on the Koran — especially from Virginia Rep. Virgil Goode, who called it a threat to American values.

Yet the holy book at tomorrow’s ceremony has an unassailably all-American provenance. We’ve learned that the new congressman — in a savvy bit of political symbolism — will hold the personal copy once owned by Thomas Jefferson.

[…]

Ellison will take the official oath of office along with the other incoming members in the House chamber, then use the Koran in his individual, ceremonial oath with new Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “Keith is paying respect not only to the founding fathers’ belief in religious freedom but the Constitution itself,” said Ellison spokesman Rick Jauert.

One person unlikely to be swayed by the book’s illustrious history is Goode, who released a letter two weeks ago objecting to Ellison’s use of the Koran. “I believe that the overwhelming majority of voters in my district would prefer the use of the Bible,” the Virginia Republican told Fox News, and then went on to warn about what he regards as the dangers of Muslims immigrating to the United States and Muslims gaining elective office.

Excuse me? The “dangers of Muslims immigrating…[and] gaining elective office?” Just what ‘dangers’ are there? And this guy’s a Representative?

How incredibly sad. I’m glad he doesn’t represent me.

Goodbye Vogue, Hello 2007

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Happy New Year, everyone!

Spent last night out at the_vogue, which was absolutely packed with people ringing in the new year and bidding a fond farewell to the club on its last night. I took a few pictures, but not too many — concentrated more on just having a good night out at the club. I almost made it to close, but as I’m still fighting off the last of the cold, I bailed out a few minutes early to beat the worst of the post-club drunk traffic and made it home by two.

There’ve been both good and bad points to 2006, but overall, Prairie and I are both looking forward to closing it out and getting a new year under our belts.

Here’s to that New Year. Hopefully this will be a good one for everyone.

We’re Back!

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We’re loopy as all get-outs, due to a delayed connecting flight pushing our arrival back in Seattle from 5:00am to 6:30am and sending both of us far into the realms of sleep deprivation, plus having to battle the head cold that I picked up midway through the week…but we’re back.

More details, pictures, and so on will arrive as soon as I can think clearly enough to bother. :)

Update: Dad has posted his pictures from our trip!

Merry Xmas, We’re Off to Alaska

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Or, of course, whatever holiday you might be celebrating.

I’ve managed to survive another Christmas shopping season while working retail in a mall (something I don’t really recommend to anyone, though this makes my second time), and thankfully, there weren’t too many truly obnoxious customers. A few, yes, there’s always a few, but few enough that nobody totally snapped.

Weirdest request of the season, especially considering I work in a camera shop: a gent who came in last week looking for a “drinky bird…y’know one of those sippy bird toys that bobs into a cup of water….” We managed to get him pointed vaguely in the direction of Archie McPhee’s, then wondered what made him think that we’d have such a thing.

I went out to the Christmas Confessional night at the Vogue on Thursday night, while Prairie was down visiting her family, and got a lot of fun pictures of the various peoples and performers. Quite a good night!

Christmas Confessional at The Vogue

And now, Prairie and I are waking up and taking care of the last few details before we head out to the airport to fly up to Anchorage for the next few days to visit my folks. Enjoy your Christmas (or Hannukkah, or Yule, or whatever) season!

Weekly World News

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Best discovery of the past couple weeks: the Weekly World News (sorry, Seattle Weekly and Stranger, but this is my favorite weekly newspaper) has an RSS feed.

I mean, really — how could I survive without knowing about this kind of breaking news?

Dreaded Hot Tub Kraken Menaces Hotel Guests:

A squid infestation has forced the closure of Hollerheim Suites’ flagship hotel.

“The creature is viscid enough to dart through the hotel’s narrow plumbing,” said squid abatement expert Erik Pontoppidan. “It surfaces in guests’ bubble baths, coils hapless bathers in its tentacles, and vanishes again in a deadly but invigorating whirlpool.”

So far, no guests have been seriously hurt, though one bather did emerge, wet and dazed, from a bidet three rooms down the hall from his suite.

“In all of these cases the kraken was successfully repelled with a loofah,” Pontoppidan explained.

Five Injured When Ouija Planchette Leaps From Board in Search of Semicolon:

Five people were injured last week when a planchette–the device which points to letters and numbers on Ouija Boards–flew violently out of a house in search of a semicolon.

The planchette went rogue when Kelly Smerton, eleven, and her sister Karen, twelve, inadvertently channelled the spirit of a deceased English teacher.

“Apparently he was a pretty mean one,” said Deborah Smerton, the girls’ mother.

At the end of an independent clause condemning the Smerton house as a “den of ignoramuses,” the ghost suddenly flung the planchette out of the girl’s hands, shattering the bay window of their bedroom.

Bachelor Days

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Prairie’s off on a train down to visit her family down in Vancouver (south), so I’m on my own for a couple of days. Probably won’t mean much of anything other than a chance to catch up on watching the Battlestar Galactica and Heroes episodes that I’m a couple weeks behind on, and tomorrow night I’ll be heading out to the last Confessional night before The Vogue moves to become the Blacklight.

(Also: assuming I have everything configured correctly, this post — and all forthcoming posts — should automatically crosspost to my LiveJournal account. In theory. We’ll see how that goes.)

Post-Storm Report

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Apparently, we got lucky. A few flickers and brownouts last night, but we didn’t loose power until around 2am (we’re estimating), and it came back on at about 8:30am this morning. We peeked outside, and don’t see any major damage in our area — a street just half a block away was closed off when a tree fell across it earlier, but by the time we got out to take a look, the tree had already been chopped apart and hauled off to the sides, so we didn’t see anything more than a lot of sawdust. So, all in all, nothing major to report, as far as we’re concerned.

Elsewhere in Seattle, though, it’s far different. Flooding, mudslides, downed trees, three people dead (one a woman who drowned in her basement apartment) and one million people without power. Yikes.

Local coverage: Seattle PI, Seattle Times, KOMO 4 TV, King 5.