All you need to know

The hours tick away on this last weekend before I head into work on what looks to be yet another very busy year for me. I've been going through the cartoon series and have been pretty surprised at how much I'm enjoying it. Toon to live-action transitions are tricky, so we'll see how it turns out.

Like some dingy stock room full of heavily-discounted-yet-unsold inventory, I find myself sitting on a stack of bloggable moments from 2k8 that I wish I had unloaded over the holiday season. One item that I think 'must go!' follows...

My usual enthusiasm for presidential politics went up another level this year as I not only signed up to volunteer for a political campaign – I signed up to travel to neighboring battleground states to try to help swing those. The weekend after wrapping up a show which had me working six-day weeks since early summer, I joined up with the Obama campaign in NV to do some canvassing. (Canvassing is basically going around knocking on doors.)

I was at least a bit nervous about the whole thing. This was that week in early October when we started seeing some disturbing behavior pop up at the McCain-Palin rallies. NV had gone red twice the last two elections, though it was pretty close. It was about as close when Clinton won there in the 90s as well, though.

And I actually wasn't totally sure how well I'd behave. I may be used to launching into some rant here in the people's republic of Berkeley among comrades either too gracious, too concurring, or too dismissive to argue, but what if I had to talk to some nut who really thought Obama was a secret Muslim terrorist?

By then, though, these people had almost gotten to be a curiosity for me. It wasn't so much about enlightening them for me as it was just meeting them in person and confirming that they exist outside of crazy youtube videos.

I also found myself sitting next to two conservative-leaning folks at work for a few months in the spring and got into various little debates over issues like global warming, Al Gore, and the electoral college. Usually I was smart enough to just let these guys be, though. After all, anybody who still thinks conservativism makes sense after the last eight years and remains unconvinced otherwise after having lived in the SF Bay for several years probably isn't going to change their mind on account of me.

Swingin' Reno

There were various offices in NV, so I was tempted to do the fun thing and go down to Clark County. Besides being the county where Vegas is, it's also a pretty safely liberal county that went Democratic even in the last two elections, so it might have been an easier place to go for my first time. Washoe was more rural/suburban, with Reno probably being the only town that you might be familiar with. It had gone red all through the Clinton years and especially so the Bush years. But I kind of felt guilty going for the safe/fun option, so suburban/rural Washoe it was, 'Mississipi Burning' paranoia be damned.

I chose... wisely!

Guess who's coming to Reno?

That was the week Obama went back to Hawaii for an emergency visit to his ailing grandmother. On his way back, he stopped in Reno for a quick rally. I first heard word of it on Thursday when I was reading the Caucus blog on the NYT. Apparently word had spread quickly -- it was the buzz in the hotel lobby as people were checking in on Friday night. Basically, instead of the campaign office, people were being told to go to one of the softball fields over at UNR in the morning.

A 'small' rally

It was a relatively 'small' crowd for an Obama rally –- only about 10-15k (some say 20k), I figure. As might be expected, several elements of the big guy's speech were familiar to anybody following the presidential race, though I heard a few odd lines and jokes not usually seen in the news or the interenets. There was also an unusual thing that happened when the power went out for about 10-15 minutes so he just hung out for a bit shaking hands and greeting folks until it was fixed.

Keepin' it cool during the outage...

Meeting the people

It was a nice surprise and a great way to kick off my first time volunteering in a political campaign. Besides general enthusiasm, I think the rally had the campaign offices absolutely flooded with volunteers. There'd be long lines to get assignments and I ended up splitting lists with groups of people because they'd flat ran out of assignments.

The satellite office

As I discovered, a well-run campaign reduces the chance of confrontation almost by design. The materials the campaign sent out specifically instructed the canvasser NOT to get into arguments and to only offer information and corrections on areas they were fluent in. Furthermore, it's not like you sweep through an entire neighborhood. The campaign specifically targets persuadable or undecided voters based on previous canvassing and phone bank results, so that in some 'turfs' you may only be given as few as 1 or 2 addresses to contact. If you found a house festooned with McCain schwag, you'd basically skip it and mark it down on the list as a strongly decided voter for McCain to save any future volunteer the hassle.

There's apparently more to Reno than the strip!

The extent of any hostility I encountered was people totally ignoring the doorbells because they were so sick of being contacted all the time. There was one old man in a trailer park who drove by joking that he wanted to make sure we weren't Acorn people (which of course was neither here nor there -- the Acorn 'scandal' was about voter registration. By then the voter reg deadline in NV had long passed.)

The only real 'argument' I had was with one really nice lady whose husband was strongly McCain and had her take down an Obama sign she had put up a few weeks ago. She said she was back to undecided after she got a mailer saying that Obama was going to repeal the 2nd amendment. She was pretty open minded and I think we were able to reassure her that this wasn't the case. She also wasn't too sure about 'spreading the wealth' with boosts to entitlement programs, so we talked about the pragmatic thinking involved in these kinds of economic programs from the banking bailout to very basic programs like these that try to prevent greater, costlier problems with comparatively cheap solutions now. When we left her she said she liked Obama and was probably going to vote for him, but seemed to want to be visited again. Talking to other volunteers, it wasn't altogether uncommon to come across a split household where we'd be looking for the lady of the house, but the husband would answer the door for her and pretty much shoo us away. A look at the list (your list would often still include contacts for voters recently marked unpersuadable) would usually show that he was leaning McCain.

Exploring a 2040 run...

I really enjoyed meeting other volunteers and talking to voters. I worked with some recent Cal grads the first day, and on the second day I joined up with a family to double-check any folks that were missed on Saturday. They had this little 10-year-old that was remarkably good at belting out the talking points, which was really cute. She kind of helped warm people up a bit if they weren't so enthused about answering their door on a Sunday morning.

I just generally had a great time with the experience. Goals were so well parsed down that it almost felt like a video game: You'd start out with this nice packet with maps, voter lists, and campaign materials. Simply hit as many of the addresses in that territory as you can, marking your progress and distributing campaign materials as needed, and do your best when somebody may need a little persuading. If you're not versed on an issue they're worried about, simply say so and refer them to the material. Or hopefully you'll be paired up with somebody who can cover on that.

Objective lists. Map reading. Processing lists and lists of info. Managing your items. This is pretty much what anybody racking up achievements on their 360 or raiding dungeons in WoW is doing. I found that this and just a basic interest in the process was all you really need to know to get started. Frankly, it may have helped me save a good turf's worth of votes in Gary, IN when I worked there on election eve. (I'd like to get out a write-up on that soon as well.)

In the end Washoe went blue for the first time in at least 20 years, and Obama won Nevada by a pretty healthy margin!

SITREP

Just didn't want the headlining entry on my blog to be a political rant from waay back before Super Tuesday. A few updates:

- Busy as hell on the current show. Had a great time wrapping up this summer's shows, Iron Man and Wall-E (very, very minor role on Wall-E). Took a few days out of my one week off to finally go check out tapings of the Daily Show and Colbert. A co-worker got me and a few other co-workers backstage for Colbert which was absolutely awesome. I took pictures, but I think they don't want me to put those up on the blog.

- I swear to God my body is just deciding to fall apart on me this year. The ankle thing from early on got re-aggravated three times through the spring/summer, putting me back on a cane for about a week or two each time. Now my back is acting up. I think a lot of it is the heavy work schedule resulting in lack of exercise and probably a bit too much 'comfort food'. Looking forward to spending time working out more and recuperating after the show wraps.

- I'm working with Milo to give up Tuna (the cat). I've got to say that folks really undersold the issues involved in getting a cat when I was originally making my decision. Contrary to what I was told, yes, I'm too busy, and yes, my apartment is too small. Maybe she's comfortable with the apartment's size, but even with daily litter changes, my apartment regularly smelled like poo. I also was never told about the kind of 'blame-the-victim' outlook on pee problems. If a cat pees somewhere, it's your fault, and there's no point in scolding or spanking them because they don't understand why you're upset. In my case it's probably the erratic schedule that upset her, which just can't be helped. I've seriously had a much easier time with dogs. While I still like cats, I can pretty firmly count myself as a dog person.

- A bit of a political rant: We're in the middle of the post-RNC bump for McCain, which is naturally disconcerting to see. Though I'm still somewhat confident for Nov. 4, I've got to admit that I've gotten pretty disappointed in Obama for not taking the offensive early and often. Like so many times before, it seems like the Democratic candidate is constantly on the defensive when the opponent has so much more to answer for. This campaign has managed to surprise me several times before, though, and we are still nearly two months out.

We're Super! Thanks for asking

Given my demographic, my location, and that I'm even writing in a blog, it's probably no surprise that I sent my mail-in last week with the little line filled in for one Mr. Barack Obama. Strongly so -- never has a mark been filled in as darkly or more completely and clearly!

As glad as I am that we're one of the headliners for Super Tuesday, looking at the polls now I can't help but wish that we had just a little while longer for people here in Cali to size things up and realize just how badly we could screw it up by throwing our many, many delegates behind the esteemed opponent. Of some solace is the proportional delegating system, so any momentum gained in recent days should be realized in the actual delegate count.

But still, I really want to shake people sometimes. There's so little substantive difference between what drives the policies of either candidate that electability becomes a perfectly reasonable thing to consider. And as such, you have to wonder how any Democrat old enough to have a fond memory (as I do) of the Clinton administration could forget just how much the GOP loathes the Clinton brand, particularly how well it endured all their attacks during that era. A rematch-by-proxy with the less popular half of the duo has been a wet dream openly expressed by most conservative pundits in the 24-hour news cycle. (As I said before, I'm watching *a lot* of this -- I can say that confidently.) With a base demoralized by the current presidency and a lethargic candidate pool, revenge could be just the motivation they need to bring out their vote.

Beyond the real enthusiasm that many in the Democratic party feel for Obama's message, one can't help but sense a tinge of exasperation in the flood of endorsements from the party leadership and interest groups this week. It's as if they can barely restrain themselves from screaming at the base, "WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE??? DO YOU KNOW WHAT WE'RE IN FOR IF WE SEND HER UP AGAINST MCCAIN???" Seriously.

I'd actually love to see her run again and win it, but now just doesn't seem to be the right time. With Obama we have a real opportunity to change the tone of politics in the nation and produce an environment in the future that may allow her to run without as much of the baggage of her hubby's admin. As Jon Stewart himself said, an Obama-McCain race would be "such a tonic for this country."

And if you think that's just a parroting of the Obama talking points, here's one thing to ask yourself: Do you think Thursday's CNN debate, by all counts the most substantive, civilized, and even fun presidential debate in the last several election cycles, would have even been possible if it wasn't for Obama and his commitment to taking the high ground through all of the abuse he took from his opponents? Imagine if we could sustain this through the General Election.

UPDATE: I guess it's a statement on just how fricking nuts this election is -- a Zogby poll released minutes ago shows him leading in CA 45%-41%. But, of course we know how good polls are this year...

I can stop anytime

It's an election year, and despite better efforts, I'm sure a political rant will crop up here every so often, starting with this one.

For most of last year, I wasn't paying much attention to the races. But then I hurt my foot and spent the days leading up to the IA caucuses stuck at home watching just enough CNN that, coupled with my NPR habit, pushed me from an ambivalent observer to a hopeless election news junkie. Over the past month, I've bookmarked political blogs, election '08 sections from the major news sources, and have been checking in on them far more often than I'd care to admit throughout the day. I'm watching CNN as much as your dad does. When Stewart lampoons network news clips, I've often seen the original broadcast. I turned down a night of drinking to watch the SC primary returns, candidate speeches, and analysis (okay, I was really tired too from a few 50+ hr work weeks).

Folks, if you're not paying attention, you really are missing something that at best will make history, and at the very least will be referenced heavily for years to come in discussions of politics and the nation. You could be experiencing all of it first hand, right now.

I can't conscientiously encourage the kind of habit I've developed, but research will surely show one day the benefits of recreational use!

Season's Triage

I've been a real frequent flyer at the ER this holiday season. On Xmas eve I finally got fed up with the cough I'd been dealing with for about two weeks and checked in, eventually picking up some fine Codeine syrup and antibiotics.

Then on New Year's even I went in for some odd foot pain that I originally woke up with on Friday. I had figured I maybe slept on it wrong or something and just needed to walk it off. By Monday it was excruciating so I was right back into the ER (couldn't find a Podiatrist open) and they figured it was some kind of ligament tear/partial tear in the foot. Raised a fuss and got some vicodin which even then only barely helped.

So I rung in the new year on my couch with my foot propped up and popping pain meds while watching the local news anchors cavort at various local festivities. Probably will have to take the rest of the week off from work too.

Quite a way to kick off '08. I'm really starting to wonder if, contrary to Chinese numerology, 8 is actually a bad number for me. I actually got laid off from my job back on 8/8/01 (though obviously I'm back now), dropped out of Cal in 1998, and probably my worst primary school year ever was 8th grade (but I hear that's the way it is for most people), which started in 1988.

Any way, happy new year, everybody! As for myself, I'm going to be busy watching my back!

Cal Band Great!!!

Well, the season didn't quite turn out the way we would've hoped, but I think 2007 will be forever remembered as the season the Band did THIS:



I was there, and I was just standing there in awe and forgot to take a single picture. You can take yer BCS rankings and shove 'em! None of you guys will top this!

I'M IN UR BASE

...KILLIN' UR IKEA COUCHEZ

Yup, picked up a cat from Milo. Besides the furry companionship, I got her in self-defense against the fleas that had begun to invade my house from all the goddamned strays the old lady downstairs keeps feeding. (Any pet owner will tell you -- furry companion + Frontline or Advantage = flea problem solved.)

Been great so far. Generally she just hangs out on a sunny window sill and then comes out to goof around with me for a bit and goes back to doing her own thing. Just need to get her to actually start clawing the 'iScratch' thing I got her instead of my !%$!@# couch! Other than that, she seems well house-trained and in good health.

Her original name's Tuna, not that it matters since she doesn't come when I call it. I'm thinking of calling her Decoy instead.

Open Letter

In quasi-socialist Bay Area, Radio listens to YOU!
... even if you never got around to writing in about it.

Sent to the listener feedback line:

I noticed after I got back from vacation a few weeks ago that Christopher Lydon's "Open Source" was taken off the air, and have been meaning to send in a note to heartily applaud the move! It seems he has a bit of a following, at least the last time I Googled the show, so I figure KQED's probably picked up some flak for taking it off the schedule.

But I think anybody who's been exposed to a show like KQED's own Forum or such NPR staples like Fresh Air and Talk of the Nation would have picked up within a minute what a total phony Lydon was. The man has no place conducting interviews or moderating discussions on anything more pressing than how to cook Thanksgiving Dinner. I've never heard a host press a guest to answer a question the guest himself insisted he was unqualified to answer, nor have I heard the phrase "Actually, that's not what I meant..." more often in a single show on 88.5. That "Talkin' with the Ghost of Thomas Jefferson" (or whatever the hell he called it) bit really sealed it.

I'm often listening weekdays in the wee hours, and I really appreciate the quirkier stuff that got programmed into the 11pm and later slot like Day to Day and especially News and Notes. But when 1 am rolled around I often found myself lunging for the off-switch! The only thing that show was good for was reminding me that I really should be getting to bed!

Anyway, rant over. Thanks for making the airwaves safe again, and please hold the line against anybody misguided enough to lobby for it to come back. I promise you there's a silent majority out here that feels just that much better now about how our pledge money is being spent. :)

EDIT:
Alas, a Google search later revealed that the show itself tanked due to lack of funds, so its absence isn't necessarily a brillliant, brave move by the local program director so much as it was a sensible, prudent move by the funders. Net effect is the same, though, so it's still a win.

EDIT:
The station's reply was fun.

New Digs

I'll try to get something together about the TW trip, but in a nutshell it wasn't terribly eventful, though I had a good time over in HK. I've been back for over a week now and have been mostly trying to make my new apartment semi-presentable. Thought I'd post up a few pics.


I was wrong when I told people it's four to five houses from Pac Wushu. It's actually TWO houses and a street. In the picture above, the foreground is, well, tenth street, but in the mid ground is the apartment, and in the background is Pac Wushu. I can't really say I'll be training there more often, though, since my schedule usually doesn't let me out in time to get to class on time. But I'm sure it'll be handy for various other reasons.


Here's the living room. In glorious high definition you can see the A's getting their asses handed to them by the M's. I still need to bring my fish tank over, no small task.


The bedroom. Furnished by Ikea, more or less.


The kitchen is pretty scrappy. I had to do a lot of work fixing the pipes on the sink -- it's absolutely amazing what passed for 'repairs' by the previous tenant. Basically, instead of buying a $2 slip nut that had broken, the guy layered on about 2 inches worth of caulk to try to 'glue' some pipes back together. Naturally, that didn't work.

I'm not much of a chef, so besides getting a microwave, I haven't felt too much pressure to improve much on the kitchen. I'm still tempted to get a new stove and fridge, though. What's there is old and not working terribly well.

Bathroom still needs some new paint, so no pics yet.

I wish I had taken pics of the place before I started. Across weekends and whatever spare time I could manage, I tore out the old, dirty, smelly carpet, stripped and re-finished the floors (though they probably should be replaced), and repainted all the walls (the Moms helped on some of that). There was all kinds of junk and furniture in there that was in no condition for me to use.

It is a rental, so it may sound odd that I've put so much work into it, but the thing is, the rent really is so absurdly cheap that I figured I'd eat the cost and 'sweat equity' to turn it into something I'd actually enjoy living in. Folks have been living in that place for over thirty years, and I could see myself spending quite some time here as I save up to get my own place.

Green Acres

Been there, done that

Islands can be quite big, I'm discovering. Formosa can seem quite the insignificant spec, but about two hours into the drive out from the airport, I had to accept that the entire island was not essentially a suburb of Taipei.

Spent the last few days in Taipei and am at this very moment sitting at Taipei Taoyuan International waiting for my flight to HK. This is all after a pretty arduous first several days on this trip in Taichung, which was not the sort of place I had in mind when I envisioned a vacation in the metropolitan centers of expatriate or formerly expatriate Chinese territories.

Given the relations many of us have to the folks here, let me warn the uninitiated that, at least for the next five-ten years, you will want to regard any warm-hearted and generous offer of lodging and visitation in Taichung with measured gratitude and great caution. When I heard 'rural' I pictured rural Marin relative to SF Bay, or even Narita to Tokyo. In fact it bore much closer resemblance to some of the provincial towns I visited in Rio recently or in China several years ago, though by many counts it still compares favorably.

But still, the streets are often unpaved, traffic is total chaos, the skeeters are numerous and very hungry, stray dogs and cats wander the streets, and the weather is a hot, sticky, muggy mess. Internet cafes were remarkably hard to find -- I finally had to take my laptop out and find WiFi hotspots at coffee shops.

Pretty rural street. Not pictured: mosquitos, strays

It all made for kind of an awkward situation when I really wanted to take off for Taipei. Uncle #2 was generous and hospitable to a fault, but the whole place got to be a terrific downer. Most days we'd spend sitting in the house watching TV as the rain came down in sheets. When we wanted to go out he or his daughters would insist on driving us, which became problematic as they tended to miss turns and get lost a lot, which only added to the list of things they were constantly bickering about. Meanwhile we'd be doing our best to stifle gasps and shrieks as we rode shotgun to the kind of driving that'd reinforce your worst stereotypes of Asian female and elder driving.

And obviously this is nobody's fault, but it got incredibly depressing because #2's wife had a stroke a year or so ago and was now wheelchair bound and vegetative (not in the clinical sense, but she couldn't talk or interact much). She'd sit there and kind of gaze around, looking at each of us and grin or chuckle occasionally. She'd still eat normally if spoon fed, but it was hard to figure out what was going on in there. I remember her from when she visited several years ago and was one of the few family members I had that enjoyed having my dog around.

Basically it was a good bunch of people that we wanted to see, but there really wasn't much to do in that town and they really seemed to want to monopolize our time here. My mom had been there over a week and only planned on spending a few days originally. I went to bed last Saturday night thinking we'd be on an HSR to Taipei by noon Sunday, but woke up to find that they didn't help reserve the tix they said they would and were suggesting we stay on for another 2-3 days. I put the proverbial kibosh on that and we were in Taipei by Sunday night.

Taipei 101 -- I've rarely been this happy in a mall