Only two weeks until the next one!

Well, wonder no more! Hot off the presses, here is my brand-new redesign of VGVA.com. Enjoy!

And I gotta say, McCain’s concession speech was pretty nice. Too bad it was marred by dickwads booing Obama’s name and shouting… stuff I couldn’t quite catch (probably just as well). McCain tried to shush them, but let’s face it, it’s too little too late. You ran your campaign on hate and paranoia and lies, you withered old gnome, and tried to foist a useless piece of fundie eye candy as VP just to energise your base, you don’t get to take the moral high ground now.

In contrast with the lily-white faces in McCain’s audience, the crowd listening to Obama’s acceptance speech in Chicago ran the full spectrum of skin tones, young and old (a lot of young people, actually); I saw at least one rainbow flag. That’s what the future looks like: people for whom race, gender and sexuality are just not that big a deal. It boggles the mind that this is the same America that voted for Bush twice (and before that, for the elder Bush, and Reagan), but I guess Leonard Cohen was right when he called America “The cradle of the best and of the worst”. Let’s hope this really marks a turning point in the nation’s history. But I couldn’t think of a better President to usher in this new age.

It’s changed, though, I think. Oh, some things were the same: all the excellent costumes of robots and ghosts and vampires, a Blackberry, the cast of Futurama (Fry, Zoidberg, Leela and Farnsworth), the black & white spies from Mad magazine, at least one Sarah Palin, a headline announcing John McCain’s victory (shriek!!!), the aroma of wacky tobacky in the air, glow sticks and those little plastic flashing antennas (I’ve actually got a pair of those, too, but I forgot them. Maybe it’s just as well, they’re really uncomfortable).

But… there wasn’t any actual parade. Or maybe we missed it? That was pretty disappointing to me. Years ago, I loved how the whole neighbourhood got in the game, individual houses or apartments staging their own little monster plays as the Parade passed by. It wasn’t just a few people putting on a show, it was a whole community event. And then, at Britannia High School, there’d be huge shadow puppets and fireworks and the spooky, otherworldly festival.

Still, Grandview Park hosted the festival, with shrines to the dead and the lost. That’s an important part of the event, too. Hallowe’en isn’t just about trick-or-treating, it’s a time when the veil between the worlds is thin. And, hard-nosed atheist though I am, it’s a time I allow myself just a little bit of spirituality…

Boo!

But here’s the best news: my wrist isn’t broken after all! I had it re-x-rayed this week, and saw a doctor yesterday to confirm: no sign of a fracture, it’s just a sprain. Yay! No spending months in a cast! I’m not out of the woods yet, though. Gotta work to recover my strength and flexibility. Hell, after just two weeks in that splint, my wrist and forearm were noticeably skinnier–and I’m no Mr. Universe to begin with. But the doctor said those squeezy stress-relieving balls are excellent for building up strength, and I just happen to have a couple lying around. At this rate, I should be back playing volleyball in a few weeks.

Yes, this has been a painful and inconvenient interval, but there’s been no permanent damage. This too shall pass.

I didn’t mind that the weekend turned out cold and rainy. I had the right gear, and they provided extra stuff like waterproof pants and goggles (for the mud). Was a little shaky on the controls, but with help from the hot French-Canadian guide, I was getting the hang of it. Turns were still a bit tricky, but I enjoyed the feel of cold mud and rain on me, and the loud throbbing engine between my legs. Heh.

Then, halfway up the mountain, I lost control of my ATV and drove off the road.

The next few seconds were kind of a blur, to be honest. There was tumbling… and noise… and then I was looking up at the sky, rain in my face, and people were calling my name, asking if I was okay. Was I okay? My right wrist hurt like a bitch, various other body parts were sending damage reports, but nothing critical. I answered (hey, my voice was okay) and the guide yelled at me not to move. Check, not moving.

Looking around, I was about ten feet below the road. Oh, and there was the ATV, upside down and facing backward. Huh. Good thing I’d bailed out like the guides said to do if we lost control, otherwise I’d probably be posting this through a Ouija board.

So the hot French-Canadian guide came down and checked me out. No, not that way, you pervs. Neck was fine, back was fine, yes I could move my toes. Nothing seemed broken except maybe my wrist. My vision was getting cloudy, which in a way was kind of cool: just that morning we’d watched “Enzo the Smart” (you know, the ReBoot episode where everything turns 8-bit?) And it was just like that, all in shades of blue and green. Mind you, in a way it wasn’t so cool, because I was afraid I’d pass out or my brain got bonked even through my helmet.

My left shoulder, side and leg, and lower back muscles were seriously sore, but with a bit of help I walked back up to the road. They say any accident you can walk away from is a good one, right? So we waited for the van to take me down to the health centre. Sandra offered to stay with me, but I told her she didn’t have to do that. I felt (mostly) fine, and also guilty of ruining my friends’ good time with my carelessness.

At one point my vision got seriously worse, and I had to sit down. Don’t know why I’d kept standing that whole time—maybe to prove I was really okay? But as soon as I sat, my head cleared and I could see again. I guess it was just shock, my brain was okay after all.

On the way back to town, we saw a black bear by the side of the road, so Todd the hunky guide (seriously, where do they find these guys?) stopped so I could take a picture.

It was a healthy specimen, said Todd, with a good thick coat. A bit later, we saw a cub by itself. No pictures, sorry.

At the health centre (warm at last!) my wrist hurt too much, so I had to have the nurse help me take my pants off. What a revoltin’ development this was!

Okay, so, final verdict: ribs, not broken. Wrist, either a sprain or a scaphoid fracture. Apparently they’re hard to diagnose even with X-rays, so I’m wearing a splint for now. Which… is taking a bit of adjusting, and that’s putting it mildly. Not to complain, lucky to be alive and all that, but going without my dominant hand is a huge pain in the ass. See, I typed that “in ht eass” at first. Even dressing myself one-and-a-half-handed is fucking hard, and I may have to keep doing it for 2 months or more. Bleah. Well, this too shall pass, and I’ve learned my lesson: no more Xtreme sportz for this little lame duck

It’s like a really bad Disney movie. The Hockey Mom. “Oh, I’m just a hockey mom from Alaska,” and she’s facing down Vladimir Putin using the folksy stuff she learned at the hockey rink. It’s absurd. It’s totally absurd, and I don’t understand why more people aren’t talking about how absurd it is. [...] I need to know if she really thinks dinosaurs were here 4,000 years ago.

And then some twisted genius actually went ahead and made that movie (okay, just the trailer).

Memo to Matt: what we’ve learned for sure about Palin in the last 2 weeks is that even aside from the rabidly anti-abortion stance and book burning and ethics scandals, she’s stunningly ignorant and unfit for the vice-presidency. That under a veneer of folksy charm she’s a mean bitch of a woman—though hey, she fits in well with Gramps McCranky there. And her base does appreciate it.

And if McCain does not tone down the contempt, it will simply feed the narrative. Or, if we are really lucky, as someone suggested in another thread, McCain will overcompensate and spend the entire time comically and creepily attempting to make eye contact with Obama (think Al Gore walking across the stage to stand next to Bush, and Bush looking at him as if to think “WTF are you doing?”).

This should be terrifying for the McCain campaign for two reasons. First, the base will not understand it. To them, a sneering, contemptuous jerk is a feature, not a bug. When they try to tone down McCain, it will turn off the diehards. Look at the reaction of the base to Palin’s RNC speech- they LOVED that she was, for all intents and purposes, nothing but an asshole the entire speech. They loved the “zingers” that were written for her. The rest of the country recoiled in horror, and Obama raised ten million the next 48 hours.

(Emphasis mine, and it’s my favourite line)

Not that doomsday crackpots haven’t tried to stir up fear of black holes swallowing the Earth and whatnot. Here’s what the scientists actually expect to find.

And because the world needs more cute nerds putting high-energy particle physics to music, I present you with…

• Taking a walk on the seawall last week, at sunset
• Going to the PNE last Sunday