The Politics list sent out a really fascinating New Yorker article that makes my knowledge of history feel somewhat inadequate. Here’s one interesting snippet:

Reagan couldn’t cancel Roosevelt’s legacy; Obama won’t be able to obliterate Reagan’s. The past few decades have generated a great surge of private energy and private pursuits, and for some Americans they have been years of dizzying abundance and creativity. Laptop computers and microbrews are just as characteristic of the Age of Reagan as financial derivatives and outsourcing. Next January, legions of earnest, overworked, slightly underfed young men and women won’t flock to Washington to map out new government bureaucracies; instead, legions of healthy, casually ironic, extremely nice young men and women will flock to Washington to map out the green revolution. When it comes, it will look more like Google than like the Tennessee Valley Authority.

The rest of the article had relatively little to do with the high-tech economy but was equally interesting. Mostly it talks about the ways in which Change(TM) is reconciled with non-partisanship, and people’s differing opinions about what Obama can/will do as president.

Ginneh’s out and I’m working on our Netflix queue. Turned out no one particularly cared about Purple Rain, so it got sat on a while; since I got the night to myself I’m going through it idly.

The Internet will tell you it’s a semiautobiographical story about an angry young rocker, but here’s what Purple Rain is really all about: Prince looking good and making noise on stage; Prince looking badass and making everybody miserable offstage. For good measure he has sex a few times, beats girls up and even plays the piano a bit. Is there anything the nimble young Kid can’t do?

Interestingly it makes for really good background noise. I can’t watch most movies without getting sucked in, even if they’re pretty mindless. This is–I don’t know, it’s not exactly stupid. It does ask graciously little of the audience though. The characters are caricatures with a maximum of two emotions each. They don’t have any positive motives, so you’re not often surprised by what they do and you don’t feel sorry when things blow up.

Their pretensions of drama do however set up the music nicely, and that’s the main attraction. Music I can dig, and it doesn’t require my concentration.

If there’s one thing the movie does make me feel, it’s sorry for anybody trying to make it in Prince’s position. The performers and staff aren’t really enjoying themselves most of the time. Their real lives are unglamorous and, to top it off, they have to wear 80s fashions all the time.

The second half, should you make it that far, is a bit more charged. The clumsy plot picks up some momentum, the characters start saying less with their dull tongues and more with their forlorn eyes, which is to their advantage. Of course everyone finally falls in love with The Kid and his stage act, which wasn’t that bad in the first place, and it ends with Prince doing something horribly suggestive to the audience. But you’re not supposed to be paying attention to the plot at that point anyway, so it’s okay.

So I guess in summary if you’re only going to be doing problem sets while facing in the general direction of the screen, Purple Rain is a fine thing to have on it. Full-blown entertainment will be a bit too much to ask unless you have an undying lust for The Artist Known As.

So I got a neat early birthday present this week. I got the president I voted for. Woo!

Okay now to see if I can concentrate on writing for a while.

Also just in: Wordpress loses at daylight savings.

I’m the sort of person for whom it always seems like there’s too much happening to keep tabs on. At present, for instance, I have the election on my mind, but there’s also upcoming beta tests at work, the home heating service we just signed up for, organizing the Netflix queue, upcoming XBox releases to swoon over, visiting mom in NY, and probably a couple other things. I’d forgotten we would be changing the clocks so late, hence the lack of trick-or-treaters mobbing us Friday afternoon. I have calls to make, books to return, inquiries about DVDs so I can borrow rather than rent wherever possible.

I can manage all this–I just hope somewhere in there I’ll have time and energy to devote to NaNoWriMo. It’s a good thing we stocked up on some easy-to-cook dinner fixins. Especially in the darker months of the year, I have to budget the energy I’m left with when I get home weekdays.

I had this whole great thing about Christians and participation and shock films worked up, even containing a witty Stevie Wonder reference, and it got wasted on a network timeout. If my server had a personality, I could punish it for such misdeeds, but as is it wouldn’t understand the purpose of the torments.

Anyway, I think the gist was, if I’ve ever made your life hard by trying to get you out of your comfort zone when you couldn’t be budged, I’m sorry. I reserve the right to find this unworldliness a small character flaw, but I don’t have any right to give you shit about it. I’m your friend. I chose to accept you, all of you, when I signed on. It’s your choice whether, and under which circumstances, to accept me in return. That’s your right.

Also I, as an engineer, really need to unlearn my habit of mincing words. It’s totally awful and gets in my way constantly.