do you believe in planets?

A NEW AGE DAWNS: what is that strange feeling?

No, it is not the exhibitionist in me reveling in my return to blogging.

No, it is not MERELY the joy and gratitude gushing from my heart and my tear ducts as the words "President Obama" keep booming out of my turned-up-too-loud POS television set.

No, it is not the the unfamiliar pull of adoration + idol worship + real-live attraction that I feel towards a U.S. President.

Could it be--horrors!--a mild twinge of nationalist zeal?  Even--gulp--patriotism?  Because--well, yes, many amazing, positive, and entirely alien emotions have been coursing through me today and this evening--but also, I got a touch prickly at one segment of the "World Reacts to Obama's Inauguration" collection on CNN.com:

Okay, I don't know diddly-squat about Hong Kong politics, and I sure as shit wouldn't publish my thoughts on the subject, but when I read this, I thought--f'reals?  Even aside from the horrible syntax and general bungling of punctuating and constructing a sentence--what a load of horseshit!  That's not MY country at all!  Or at least that's NOT the typical Obama-fanatic's take on things!

Then I looked up the writer.  Apparently the English-language Asia Times (which is more precisely the Asia Times Online, its hard copy version having gone under years ago) imports content from many international sources.  This reductive, sour-grapes spewing nay-sayer is...drumroll please...

...a communications professor in Washington State.  Ba-dum-CHING!

Okay, so it's not my country, or even my generation that the snippet above highlights as problematic.  It's my profession.  What a douchy, douchy, douche-douche.

Oh well.  Communications schmations.  I'm turning into something of a cultural materialist myself, so I can tell you with similarly arrogant pomposity that Joooolian is wroooong.

Also: CNN.com, for jimminy's sake, do your own goddamn homework, just for once. Something that was published in an Asian newspaper does not necessarily represent a perspective even remotely "Asian."  Whatever the hell that would mean.

someone needs to write a handbook

Not sure I understand the contours of our political landscape when it comes to gestures--what's in, what's out; what's appropriate and presidential, what's "hood."

Apparently--that is to say, guessing by the silly-ass media hullabaloo surrounding it waaaaaay back in, meeeh, August--there's somethin' kooky about a half-black, half-white man fist-bumping his wife on the campaign trail.

By the way, doesn't that sound dirty?  "Fist-bumping his wife"?  Fist bumping? How about "giving the fist bump to"?  Still dirty.  Bumping fists with?  Sounds like... a euphemism for something dirty. Like, "I want to purple dinosaur Barack Obama!"  We all know what purple dinosaur means in this context, right?  Well, try replacing "fists" with "uglies." 

My apologies.  Truly, I: a) can't help myself, and b) digress.

Anyheeeww, riddle me this:  why isn't anyone up in arms about the below-pictured hella-ancient former president fist-bumping the below-pictured hella-emaciated former tennis pro?  Hmmmmmm? 

It all stinks of some lewd kind of conspiracy--and if we want to talk about bumpin' whatever and dinosaurs of any hue in connection with that second image, we can take "stinks" and "lewd" in all kinds of horrifying directions. 

AND THEN. As if the fist-bumping/purple dinosaur issue weren't baffling enough:

!!!!!

Apparently there's nothing kooky at all about a crazy-ass  rifle-totin' jesus-lovin' white lady rockin' the devil horns.  Right?

I suppose, so as long she's decked out in Marc Jacobs and Prada, we don't give a--how you say--hoot. Oh, gosh golly, you really let one slide der yoh gotcha media.  You are to the presidential election as DYBIP.typepad.com is to professional tennis. And by that, I of course mean AWESOME JOB.

So anyway, about that handbook. Karl?  MBIMOTMOG? (rise, rise from the ashes!)

hmm, elevate, um...ice...uh...ibuprofen? what's that effin' acronym???

I wanted a laugh, and Jennifer's adorable creations on flickr inspired me to revisit the silliness that is LOLcats. Here's my personal favorite. Look, don't judge me. Just enjoy:

Now the whining part: I wanted a laugh because I turned my freaking ankle over bigtime tonight, and I is pissed. I was swinging gleefully at the ball one second, collapsing in a pile and screaming silently the next. Freaking tennis center needs to sweep the freaking leaves off the freaking courts. FRICK!

Now I ice, I sit, I ice and sit, but it still freaking hurrrrrrrrrrts, it hurts it hurrrrrrrrts, way up the side of my leg to my knee, and I'm super worried about it. I don't want to ice and sit. I want to bike and play tennis and hike and swim and shit. Swam in three different rivers last week, hiked on the coast twice in two weeks, toddled around on mt. st. helens, and I figured my summer was just beginning... now I'm a cripple! A CRIP! Okay, I exaggerate, but...FRICK.

Let's look for the bright side...now I have an excuse to sit on my arse and watch the quarters, semis, and finals of the French Open this week, right? And I can blog about it all...RIGHT? Yeah, that totally makes up for a whole summer's worth of sw--PAGING DR. JZN FIX MY ANKLE KTHANKSBYE.

where oh where is my decision-making machine?

Google is no help.

Pro/Con lists make the choice seem obvious:

Pros to Moving:

Begin my career in earnest, finally, as I'm pushing 30
Closer to family
Breakfast club with Jane
Closer to friends and friendlies in Madison, Chicago
Big chunk of free money
Teaching job locked in in Milwaukee
Get away from increasingly troublesome departmental politics where I currently work

Cons to Moving:

Milwaukee, WI
Leaving Portland, OR
Leaving the ocean and the mountains and the hiking, paddling, biking, etc.
Leaving the roses and the flowers and the green green greenery
Leaving my boyfriend
Leaving my kitty
Leaving fantastic weather (for the most part, ignore previous post please)
Leaving friends whom I love and adore
I have, like, two whole friends in Milwaukee
My apartment is Porland is freaking gorgeous
Might have to consider diving back into the dating pool to avoid ending up a spinster
Moving farther from Seattle (a place I love)
Moving farther from San Francisco (a place I adore)
Moving across the country.
Moving, period.
Starting. Over.

Judging by the lengths of the lists, this decision is a no-brainer. On this point, Google seems to agree:

So why is this decision making me insane? Augh.

I got "the email"

and now I'm a little weepy. Totally DON'T wanna talk about it.

Bye.

and the evil puppeteer pulling the strings said, "hey, it looks like thelizabeth is actually have a GOOD day. let's fuck with her!"

I got some good news today.

Not GREAT news, but encouraging news anyway.

Then this evening I went to my tennis lesson and had a lovely time with the WASPish bitches I always whack balls with.

Came home, planning a yummy dinner in my head. Sweet potatoes were involved.

Ten minutes into dinner preparations, there was a fizzle and a wrrrrrrr.

Yupper, we lost our power--on both fuses simultaneously, so it's not a blown fuse issue--and our landlord won't send out an electrician until we can get in touch with our neighbors who know some random dude who does electrical work for cheap. AND, as our neighbors tell us, who took over a week to actually get out here and fix shit. So I am grading papers by candlelight... AFTER I transport all of our food to Sweet Baby's refridgerator and freezer, because we just spent $200 on groceries.

Cue the circus music, please.