Sleep Spent

Mike and I left at 11:30 this morning. Sadly, he ended up not getting the Z4. Instead, we’ve got a 3-series coupe. It’s still a Beamer; you won’t find me complaining! We stopped at the Harris ranch on the way down and bought some steaks.

I bought four mags on the way down (_The New Yorker_, Out, Harper’s and The Economist) and read some from all of them. This issue of Harper’s has two very interesting stories about the new Christian fascism. I recommend it highly.

Mike’s father, whose place we’re staying at, lives about 15 minutes from Coachella (the town and the festival both). It’s amazingly close. And his place is practically a mansion. I’m sitting in the round dining room right now writing this. There’s a massive kitchen, a decent sized pool, a whole patio area, a hot tub, four bedrooms, a bunch of incredible bathrooms... It’s just spectacular. I think this is the nicest house I’ve ever been in. :-)

Mike and I grilled up some steaks (which were fabulous) and ate once we got here. Then we had a soak in the hot tub. Then we hung out with friends of Mike’s sister (Ashlee).

Tomorrow: attend Ashlee’s VIP-only partee in the morning/early-afternoon, then head over to the festival around mid-afternoon. Return, crash, repeat.

Tomorrow morning, Mr. Margolis and I will head south to Coachella. I’m very excited to see Bloc Party and Coldplay and the Flaming Lips (again). This is going to be just non-stop fun, assuming I can find my tickets....

Oh, and we may get a loaner Z4 to drive down with!

If you listened to the President’s press conference tonight, you heard him say:

Condi Rice, our Secretary of State, just came back and she briefed me that she had a very good discussion with Vladimir about the merits of democracy, about the need to listen to the people and have a government that’s responsive.

but earlier on, he had said:

Polls? You know, if a President tries to govern based upon polls, you’re kind of like a dog chasing your tail. I don’t think you can make good, sound decisions based upon polls. And I don’t think the American people want a President who relies upon polls and focus groups to make decisions for the American people.

sigh. I guess that explains this:

A new ABC News poll suggests that a clear majority of Americans, 65 percent, believe that husbands and wives should have the final say in family disputes over life support. Only 25 percent say parents should make that decision. And when asked, ‘Would you want to be kept alive in Terri Schiavo’s condition?’ an overwhelming number, 87 percent, said no.

Republicans simply aren’t in tune with the public. The sooner the public realizes that (c’mon 2006!), the sooner we can start heading in a sane direction as a country.

I got my TiVo on Thursday. On Saturday, I watched a taped episode of The News Hour which featured an American soldier who had been in Darfur advising the AU forces there. He brought back pictures and stories of the atrocities being committed. It really woke me up; I haven’t heard much about this since Congress passed legislation declaring the Darfur situation genocide last year.

Tonight, I went looking for information and found this page at Human Rights Watch that gives a concrete list of suggestions for actions I can take, mostly through writing letters. So I’m going to write several letters over the next week. And I sent HRW a little cash.

So you’ve seen the diagram of Napoleon’s ill-fated march on Russia during the Napoleonic wars. And you thought, “gosh, that’s neat.” And maybe you take a look at the InfoPorn that shows up in Wired every month. You have a simliar reaction, but the diagrams there attempt to explain more specific things, so the sense of awe isn’t quite the same.

Enter HistoryShots.

It’s the site of a guy who creates and sells amazing diagrams, all of them even cooler than Minard’s. I found the site through a blogad on TPM. It is extremely neat! It’s all I could do to not pull out my credit card and buy the lot of them.

I’m looking forward to the “Conquest of Everest” diagram he’s got coming out next month.

Aaah, the joy of the GPL. It means I will never have to worry about WordPress changing out from underneath me. Not that I currently run 15 blogs, but hey, I can dream. :-)

In addition to WP having a friendly license, it has tons of pretty themes available. It also has plenty of plugins now; people have solved the MT parity issue quite rapidly. And it’s far more flexible than the old version of MT I was using anyway. I expect to be able to migrate my Song of the Week page to my blog much more easily now.

So here it is, my blog reborn. What do you think of the theme?

Tickets to Bloc Party at the Fillmore went on sale this morning at 10. I knew this. And yet somehow, when I got up, I completely forgot about it. I checked just now, and they’re sold out already.

Damn! This happened with Scissor Sisters too. I guess I’ll have to do the Craigslist thing.

Since March 23rd, I haven’t been able to use the Internet at home. First my parents turned it off at my old residence. Then I moved to Palo Alto, and my roommate hadn’t gotten DSL yet. But tonight, all that changes.

I’m so excited! I’m going to go download something huge. :-)