Today is the day: Inaugration of President Obama, yet, I am not feeling the fever. What’s wrong with me?

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I am a liberal alright and a staunch Obama supporter. In fact, I am proud of the fact that I “called it” in 2004 before Obama gave that fateful speech at the Democratic Convention that launched him into the national spotlight. (And what’s more, he wrote it himself!) I called it even before that: I saw him on TV being interviewed for something, and I told my husband, this guy could run for the president one day and I would vote for him. After the 2004 Dem Convention speech, I was utterly convinced that he has what it takes to be the POTUS and I anxiously waited for someone, someone that mattered to make this official.

I still tell my husband, “I called it before anybody else did!” from time to time, and it annoys him to no end since, of course, it cannot be true that I was the very first one to see this coming…

I was guessing 2012, but it came 4 years earlier to my excitement. At the same time, I was worried that the timing was off, and the country might not be ready for someone so young, and this might ruin his chance forever. (Not ready NOT because he’s black but because he is young, relatively “inexperience” – I already predicted that the country would be ready for an African American man to lead them before a woman… but that’s for an entire different post later)

During the election, I constantly had panic attacks that we were going to lose again, and be under the GOP thumb for another 4 years. I joked, “kidding on the square”, with my husband that we should consider moving to Canada, as we did 4 years ago when Bush won again. On November 4, 2008, I was so happy that my worry was unfounded. He won. WE won!

I admire Obama very much and would like nothing more than the opportunity of speaking to him in person, or even just shaking his hand, like the rest of the nation, judging by the blogs, Facebook updates, Twitter followings, even the news media that lavish praise after praise upon him. He has made so many speeches that brought tears to my eyes. He is able to get in touch with many on a very personal level. I have posted tribute to him myself as well.

I admire Michelle Obama as well, on so many different levels, esp. her being an intelligent person, and a working mother to boot. Like her husband, many have responded to her on a very personal level as well. They are truly an inspiration to the “regular” Americans since as far as I can tell, they have absolutely no ties to any big political names, not the nephew or niece of so-and-so. And for African American women, her being the First Lady has begun to carry so many symbolic meanings, and many of them have been materialized in the new book Go Tell Michelle.

Oh, I have felt the fever alright. During the election.

But I woke up early this morning, at 2:46 am to be exact, feeling a panic attack, because I am not feeling the excitement that the news media has shown us, the screaming fans and all. Don’t get me wrong, I am happy. But it feels like, all of a sudden, at a party where everybody is screaming and laughing and drunk with youthful abandon, and well, partying, I am standing in the midst of all this, sober.

I can understand the significance of this event for many people, a significance much much deeper than the face value of a Presidential Inauguration – He IS the first African American to be elected the President of the United States. I cannot begin to imagine the significance of this event on the psyche of African Americans. This is truly a watershed moment that can potentially change the lives of so many, not just in the US, but around the world. The policies he will make, the changes he will carry out (or at least try his darnedest), the wrongs that he will correct (starting with banning waterboarding outright!), the people that he, as the first Black U.S. President, and Michelle, as the first Black First Lady, will inspire, again, not just in this country but all around the world.

But I am not feeling the screaming fan blind adoration bestowed on him as if he were a rock star or a movie star chosen as Sexist Man Alive. Maybe that’s my problem. This man has a wife, and two young daughters. And he is going to be OUR President for the next four years. To be honest, I am not cool with screaming female fans treating him like some sort of sex symbol. (Call me a prude… I am never one to fall for a celebrity so maybe that’s why I am such a party pooper at this moment). Calling him Obama-daddy trivialized the election of an intelligent capable man who just wants to do the right thing and inspire others to do the same. Selling thongs with his image on it and words “Sleep with Obama” is disrespectful to his wife, not to mention anything else.

Yes, I do have a sense of humor. I found the Obama Girl funny, during the election. But now we have reached our goal and elected the man, hmmm, don’t you think it is time to let it go? Last time I checked, this here is the United States, not France….

There lies my problem: I am not seeing him as a celebrity, commanding my unquestioned adoration.

This man is human. He is not Superman.

It is 4:30 am, on the day of the historical Presidential Inauguration of Barack Obama who I voted for and wanted for president since before 2004, I am completely sober, much to my liberal chagrin, in the midst of youthful obsession that turns anyone into a Hollywood-style “celebrity”.

My cure? Psyching myself up by shopping for the commemorative items on the official PIC2009 website. Get them before they are gone! If I am not feeling the party, at least I can fake it!

Bush commutes sentences of 2 Border Patrols – Finally, after 8 years, W did something that I approved of…

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I am sure a lot of my liberal friends are going to treat me like a traitor for saying this, but I am glad that the two men, Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean, will be out of jail in March, without having to serve the 11-year and 12-year sentences that they were given. There are already a lot of outcry and celebration in the blogsphere: On the Huffington Post, most of the comments expressed outrage at this “anti-immigrant” gesture, and conversely, on the “white supremacy” or self-proclaimed “red-state-leaning” oriented blogs (I am not going to provide links here, just google on your own and you will see…) , this act was celebrated as confirmation that white people won.  Eh, first of all, I believe that Mr. Ramos is not white…

I heard of this story last year when my husband got a hold of the wonderful book series “The Best American Writing” for the year 2008 (which by the way is a series worth looking forward to every year, making Christmas all the much better for grown-ups!), and inside The Best American Crime Reporting 2008 , is an extensively researched and well-written article by Pamela Colloff, published in the September 2007 issue of Texas Monthly.  Here is the reprint found on the US Attorney website.  Read this before you make any judgement!

It is hard not to feel bad for the two men once finishing reading the entire article.  The point, in my mind, is not whether they have shot an unarmed-man while he was running away, in the dark, but rather, the fairness in the sentencing of the two men for longer than a decade on the excuse of their violating bureaucratic procedures.  Anybody that is arguing the merit (or demerit) of the commutation of sentence from the perspective of immigration, whether pro- or anti-, is not looking at this issue rationally.

And how many people that are now outraged simply by the sensational headlines or out-of-context comments such as the one posted on Salon.com by Alex Koppelman:

“Bush commutes sentences of former Border Patrol agents – Anti-immigration forces won a partial victory Monday, as President Bush commuted the prison sentences of two of their heroes…”

Alex Koppelman published a long article on salon.com in January 2007 on this case as well which I was not aware of until just now.  He has a completely different take on this case: as a deliberate cover-up by the right wing and a transformation of criminals into folk heroes.  Guess I need to withhold my own judgement now too before I can make up my mind on this…

Why is life so complicated?

“You are not going to heaven because you are a bad mommy.” Religion? Yikes!

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This was not said in a huff or a tantrum. This was said matter-of-factly, more an observation than an accusation. A conclusion drawn by my 6-year-old because, well, he has noticed that we do not go to church on a regular basis. We are not particularly religious although both of our boys were baptized in the Catholic church. We are obviously not regular church-going folks. I am not even Christian. We simply do not talk about god at home. I wonder where he got all these ideas about god, Jesus, and heaven.

The other day he asked me whether I am one of God’s children, and I told him, no, out of honesty. Later I explained to him that not everybody believes in god, and heaven, and not everybody believes in the same god as he does. and therefore not everybody is going to heaven. In fact, “You and daddy and your brother are going to heaven when you die, but mommy will not be there… Mommy believes in reincarnation.”

(Maybe I should have lied? This would have been one of those times when a white lie is harmless and maybe even beneficial?)

Fortunately, at this age, they do have the attention span of the fly, so he was quickly distracted by some other mysteries in life. Crisis diverted. For now.

Note to self: research books on “How to talk to your kids about religion if yours is a multi-faith family”… Yikes! Who says parenting gets easier as they get older?!

The London Beer Flood of 1814

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After I learned about the Boston Molasses Flood of 1919, I quickly got wind of a rival event that happened more than a century before the Bostonian food disaster: the London Beer Flood.

In short, on October 14, 1814, heavy metal hoops that held a larger vat broke and ignited a chain reaction that smashed the other surrounding vats. In total, 1,224,000 litres of beer under pressure exploded through the twenty-five foot high brick wall of a London brewery and literally flooded the crowded area nearby. Two houses were destroyed in its path and nine people lost their lives because of the unusual flood.

Although the death toll was not as high as the Boston Molasses Flood a hundred years later, there were several fascinating details that if reenacted in the movie today, would have been accused as sensationalism, but life, alas, sometimes does ring stranger than fiction. Read on:

“Fearful that all the beer should go to waste, though, hundreds of people ran outside carrying pots, pans, and kettles to scoop it up – while some simply stooped low and lapped at the liquid washing through the streets. However, the tide was too strong for many, and as injured people began arriving at the nearby Middlesex Hospital there was almost a riot as other patients demanded to know why they weren’t being supplied with beer too – they could smell it on the flood survivors, and were insistent that they were missing out on a party!”

One of the victims actually died some days later of alcohol poisoning!

“Because of the poverty of the area, relatives of the drowned took to exhibiting their families’ corpses in their homes and charging a fee for viewing. In one house, though, too many people crowded in and the floor gave out, plunging them all into a cellar half full of beer.”

(source: BBC)

I guess too much food really CAN kill ya…

Again, the best succinct retelling of the event is by Tony Sakalauskas, a free-lance writer, on 3AmMagazine.com.

Hulu – the best kept secert? Best of SNL clips I saw, tonight…

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Am I out of the loop? Hulu truly is a much better way to watch TV and movie clips. The quality is a lot higher, never grainy. And you never have to worry about clicking on something that turns out to be not what you expected…

Thanks to Hulu, I can follow SNL again, and just in time for a better, much improved SNL as well. I don’t remember when it started, but for a while SNL sucked big time: it was turning into Mad TV. But now, it is actually funny again. To be absolutely honest, and I cannot believe I am admitting this! I never quite got the humor of Will Farrell. I mean, Will Farrell on SNL. I loved him in quite a few movies, Old School being one of them. (A classic in my book!) And the Anchor Man is not bad at all. (Another classic in my book!) But Will Farrell on SNL I didn’t quite get. I did laugh like hell, but I didn’t know why. More Cowbell being a case in point… (Is this blasphemy?) I felt guilty laughing so hard, worried that any second someone would ask me point blank, “Ok, it is funny, but why?” Worse yet, what if the question were, “It’s not funny. Explain to me.”

The boys and I did some Youtubing on Hulu tonight. We laughed out loud at the SNL Digital Short, “People Getting Punched Right Before Eating”. I laughed till tears came out of my eyes, but somehow I didn’t feel guilty. It was funny because it was random. As my 11 year-old said, “It is so totally random. It is awesome!” I guess that is this generation’s standard for humor now…

Another great piece is the SNL commercial for Taco Town. It is funny because it has a grain of truth to it, and it sort of makes you look at reality, and go, “Yeah, that’s kind of ridiculous what Taco Bells passes for food…” Watch this, it is funny!

p.s. The boys and I thought the 2 SNL clips were so funny that later when we chatted with Dad who’s away on business via Gmail Video Chat, we showed him the clips by pointing the webcam at the monitor (because Hulu does not work in China…)

By the way, Video Chat right from inside Gmail is truly awesome, and super easy to set up. Thumbs up!

More on the US Air plane landing in the Husdon River…

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The BOOT – The Business of Online Travel: Can a plane land on water and have survivors? Of course it can!

This blog post has many more links to information concerning the US Air plane landing in the Hudson River. It is interesting to view this incident from the perspective of someone from the travel industry. (Again, I am able to do all these theorizing now only because everybody was safe and sound).

All of a sudden, there is a Sully fever: apparently more than one fan site was created on Facebook alone, and this one has almost 74,000 fans! And of course, guess what? The domain Chelseysullenberger.com was immeidately bought and put up. America, you never disappoint!

Got Bacon? Thank goodness for people who have too much time on their hands…

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A colleague of mine sent me a cryptic link, when I clicked on it, it showed my company’s website with a big piece of fat juicy glistening bacon on top. I haven’t laughed so hard since the last time the same colleague sent me the link to “Sad Trombone” (which sadly seems to no longer exist?)
Check out Baconlicious…  or this one…  (ok, the second one is kind of mean, but I cannot help it!)

Today is the 90th anniversary of The Great Boston Molasses Flood

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It happened on January 15, 1919: a giant vat containing thick heavy molasses exploded, and the heavy goo flooded the streets of Boston’s North End, reportedly clocking at 35 miles an hour. In the end, 21 people died from this tragedy and hundreds of people were injured. It took many days and efforts afterwards to clean up the mess and put people’s lives back together.

The cause was surmised to be the drastic rise in temperature from the day before: the molasses expanded too quickly and the structure simply couldn’t withhold the sudden expansion.

Amazing!

I found the best retelling of the event by Tony Sakalauskas, a free-lance writer, on 3AmMagazine.com:

Chunks of metal flew everywhere, piercing into people and buildings for hundreds of feet around. One huge chunk of steel smashed through a massive stone pillar supporting an elevated railroad. A piece of the railway sagged and fell. An alert train driver had his locomotive come to a screeching halt just moments before it would have plunged over.

The disappearance of that huge tank sent out a blast of air that pushed people away. But seconds later a counterblast rushed in to fill the vacuum and pulled them back in.

But most of the damage was caused by the molasses itself. It splashed onto city streets in all directions, speeding as fast as a man could run. The molasses smashed freight cars, plowed over homes and warehouses and drowned both people and animals. A three story house was seen soaring through the air as well as a huge chunk of the shattered vat that landed in a park 200 feet away.

Rescuers were bogged down in the stuff and were scarcely able to move as the molasses sucked the boots right off their feet. Trapped horses couldn’t be removed so they had to be shot to death. The black sticky stuff filled cellars for blocks around and it took months for the hydraulic syphons to pump it out. Salt water had to be sprayed on cobblestone streets, homes, and other buildings because fresh water would just wash off the stuff. For months afterwards, wherever people walked, their shoes stuck to the goo. Some people even claimed that on a hot day one could still smell molasses even after thirty years.

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The following is a mesmerizing account taken when it was happening: (Courtesy of Bostonist)

[Boston police patrolman Frank] McManus picked up the call box and began his report to headquarters. A few words into it, he heard a machine-gun-like rat-tat-tat sound and an unearthly grinding and scraping, a bleating that sounded like the wail of a wounded beast. McManus stopped talking, turned, and watched in utter disbelief as the giant molasses tank on the wharf seemed to disintegrate before his eyes, disgorging an enormous wall of thick, dark liquid that blackened the sky and snuffed out the daylight.

I would love seeing a computer-generated re-enactment of the whole event. Who’d have thunk that molasses can do such damage?!

My favorite quote: “The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.”

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“The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.” Henry Kissinger

I am sure he said it in a context that was different from what I take this saying to mean.  FWIW, for some reason, it’s been haunting me.  Sometimes I see it as pessimistic, sometimes I see it as optimistic, Grin and bear it.  This is what existentialism is distilled down to, at least in my book, “Life sucks, but you’ve got to deal with it.”  When Goethe said, “God is dead,” I believe that’s what he meant: Regardless whether there is God or not, human beings need to take responsibilities for our actions.  Accountability, and the will to see things through.

As I tell my kids on a nearly daily basis: You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do.