Today’s kind of a double-dose of “fuck you” to the wingnut racist assholes out there. Not only does that you-know-what get ceremonially sworn in front of upwards of a million of the lazy slackers on the public dole that he gave all kinds of gifts to so they’d vote for him and not have to work for a living, but it’s also a public holiday honoring that other you know what who fucked everything up for the white man (and we had such a good thing going for the first couple hundred years, too). No matter how disappointed I am with Obama, it’s always nice to see a few teabagger’s heads explode. Which is a neat trick, because their skulls are basically filled with inert ingredients.

Otherwise, there’s no much going on today. The weather has turned a bit chilly – and temperatures are supposed to drop all week. They say the high temperature on Thursday will be in the single digits (take that, Al Gore). I’m trying to decide if I have enough ambition to leave the house to buy groceries and get gas. Plus I should drop off the checks to pay the property taxes. I really ought to, but that would involve getting dressed, and I don’t actually have to leave the house until Wednesday, so I dunno.

I doubt I’ll be watching any of the inauguration, though I gather that there’s really big news: Michelle Obama has bangs now. Now I just need to find out who made the dress she’ll be wearing, and my day will be complete. I’m sure there will be plenty of stupid-looking hats on display, too.

Whatever you do today, have a good one.

Finally, it’s Friday – and a three-day weekend at that. Finally, I get to spend some quality time with my imaginary girlfriend. Maybe we’ll hang out with Lance Armstrong and do some “T”. It’s pretty cold here today, and while it’s supposed to warm up tomorrow, the thaw won’t last long, as next week we’re predicted to get much colder (below zero, even). So I decided it was time to finally order another 4 tons of pellets. We’re going through them pretty fast, and are down to about 30 bags (1200 pounds). At the rate we’re burning, that’s about two and a half weeks’ worth. I’m kinda into staying warm, now that I’m old.

I don’t know if anybody’s familiar with the “Evil Dead” movies (Evil Dead, Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness), but they’re Sam Raimi classics starring Bruce Campbell. Well, now they’re doing a remake, and it turns out it stars everybody’s favorite city girl transplanted to the ‘burbs, Jane Levy. As cute as she is in Suburgatory, she’s equally creepy-looking in this movie – at least judging by the trailer. I can hardly wait to see it.

Have a good weekend.

Well, it’s always nice to start out the day with a trip to the dentist. Nothing too nasty today, however, and I received much praise for being such a good boy with my “home care.” So that’s it until July when it will hopefully be much warmer out than it is today. Now I just need to get through the rest of the day. Since I have now been given the go ahead to work from home on Tuesdays in addition to Fridays, and since Monday is a holiday, I won’t have to be in the office again until next Wednesday (which is another stupid meeting day). So basically, I’ll be in sweat pants and flannel bathrobe from about 3:30 this afternoon until 7:45 next Wednesday morning. I can probably get away with doing laundry about once every three weeks now.

I see all the southern states are up in arms (so to speak) over Obama’s gun control executive orders. It appears that people like Rand Paul and the governor of Mississippi don’t think they need to follow any federal laws they don’t like. I believe they are mistaken in this assumption.

But while I was reading about their whining (and about the Texas AG taking out ads encouraging gun-totin’ NYers to come on down to Texas), it occurred to me that I’d like to see a new law passed.

Basically, it should say that no state may receive more federal funding than it pays in federal taxes. I suppose you could make an exception for disaster relief or something (maybe average it out over a period of years). Rather than cutting off funds (which would probably just screw over the poor folks – goodness knows they’d cut social programs before they’d cut corporate welfare), they should come up with some sort of a levy to be raised by increasing taxes on anybody living in that state making over, oh, I dunno, say a million dollars a year. Whatever the rate needs to be to pay off the bill, that’s what it should be. This would make the budget pork “revenue neutral,” which is something all the cool Republican kids are into.

Oh well, time to get back to work. Pretty soon it’ll be lunchtime. I kinda hate to get my teeth dirty.

I really don’t like Wednesdays. They’ve always been the kind of day you just want to get over so that you can get to Thursday, which isn’t Friday but it’s the next best thing. And Wednesdays are the days where I have to work until 5:00, which really sucks. It gives me more time in the morning, of course, but I don’t really need more time. I’m out of bed no later than 4:45 (I’d get up earlier, but I have the water heater set to come on a 4:30, so I just lay around waiting for the water to get hot enough to take a shower), and am generally out the door by 6:10. Except on Wednesdays, when I don’t have to leave until about 7:50 or so. By 6:45 I’m kind of sitting around trying to figure out what to do. No way do I want to go to work – it’s a long enough day as it is.

Thursday is normally not too bad of a day, but tomorrow I start the day at the dentist. It’s only for cleaning and an inspection, but it’s still not something I’m exactly looking forward to. Hopefully he won’t manage to find something to work on (you know those dentists – always looking for a project).

When I got home yesterday, I found that our troublemaker problem child, Bud, had decided to celebrate my dad’s (who Bud is named after) birthday by knocking one of the model wooden ships my dad built (the USS Constitution, in fact) down and chewing it up. He broke all the masts and the rigging. This is not something I could possibly ever repair, so that’s that. I guess it’ll just sit around looking shipwrecked until I croak, and then somebody can come along and throw all my shit away.

Oh well, time to get back to work. Only three more hours to kill.

Seante Majority Leader Harry Reid says a federal assault weapons ban is (probably) doomed, because there’s no way it’ll pass in the House. I suppose that’s true. I mean, what’s a measly 20 or so six year old kids compared to the profits on selling high powered firearms with high-capacity magazines? We can always make more kids, but money? That’s a precious commodity.

In New York, however, things are different. It’s not often I get to feel proud of our incredibly dysfunctional government here in NY (gay marriage being about the only other time I can recall in recent history), but the Republican (sorta – it’s a long story) controlled NY State Senate overwhelmingly (43-18) approved a set of gun control laws that are said to be the toughest in the country. Since the NY State Assembly is run by Democrats, and since Andy Cuomo wants to run for preznit in 2016, final passage is a done deal.

The bill is designed “to basically eradicate assault weapons from our streets in New York as quickly as possible is something the people of this state want and it’s an important thing to do. It is an emergency,” Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver told WCBS-TV. “We are going to ban assault weapons. We are going to eliminate all of the loopholes that existed previously.”

Under current state law, assault weapons are defined by having two “military rifle” features spelled out in the law. The proposal would reduce that to one feature and include the popular pistol grip.

Private sales of assault weapons to someone other than an immediate family member would be subject to a background check through a dealer. Also, Internet sales of assault weapons would be banned, and failing to safely store a weapon could be subject to a misdemeanor charge.

Ammunition magazines would be restricted to seven bullets, from the current 10, and current owners of higher-capacity magazines would have a year to sell them out of state. An owner caught at home with eight or more bullets in a magazine could face a misdemeanor charge.

In another provision, a therapist who believes a mental health patient made a credible threat to use a gun illegally would be required to report the incident to a mental health director who would have to report serious threats to the state Department of Criminal Justice Services. A patient’s gun could be taken from him or her.

The legislation also increases sentences for gun crimes, including the shooting of a first responder that Cuomo called the “Webster provision.” Last month in the western New York town of Webster, two firefighters were killed after responding to a fire set by the shooter, who eventually killed himself./em>

I don’t know how much good this will do. If you can still buy whatever weapons you want in PA or OH or wherever, it isn’t all that hard to bring them into NY. But hopefully it will help some, and it’s always nice when NY can actually be the first at something (we’re still trying to live down the shame from abstaining from the vote to declare independence from the British).

Of course the really big news is that Lance Armstrong “confessed” to Oprah about his doping. I’m not sure why I’m supposed to care about this, but I’ll try.

But not right now, ‘cuz I’ve got to get back to work.

It got up to 60° here yesterday, which isn’t a record but it sure was nice. The dogs certainly enjoyed getting into the mud (and making more by digging holes – as if they hadn’t already dug enough holes in the lawn. If anybody knows of a strategy to prevent the little varmints from digging hols, let me know. I’m considering filling them all in with QuickCrete®). Almost all the snow is gone (at least in the places where the sun gets above the trees), and it was still warmish this morning, but that’s all supposed to change throughout the day. Oh well, it was nice while it lasted.

One of the things that sucks about Monday is having to listen to Cokie Roberts on NPR on the way in to work. Monday is her day to appear on Morning Edition and dispense her inside-the-beltway conventional wisdom. Today I think she nearly peed herself cackling over how “ridiculous” the trillion dollar coin idea was, while telling us that the Democrats and Republicans are equally to blame for all this debt ceiling nonsense. I really would like to figuratively smack her upside the head – if anybody deserves a dope slap, it’s her.

Not all was bad on Morning Edition, though, as there was a rather interesting Part One interview of Nina Totenbag with Sonia Sotomayor about Sotomayor’s upcoming (or maybe it’s out already, I dunno) book. She had somewhat of a crappy early childhood, and she actually sounds like a pretty decent person. Not a great humanitarian like Antonin Scalia, of course, but it wouldn’t be fair to expect anybody to fill his britches.

Oh well, I suppose I ought to get back to work. A shame I can’t be working from home.

Working from home is where it’s at, man. I got more done by ten AM than I normally get done all day (for one thing, I got to “work” at about 5:30) – no distractions, no discomforts, a window to look out of, and no stinky fucking public restroom. If only I could do this more than one day a week. Currently, I’m listening to a rerun of a Fresh Air with Lena Dunham of “Girls” fame. For those who don’t know, Girls is a critically acclaimed HBO “comedy.” I used quotes there, because I frankly think the show is not only not funny, but it’s totally uninteresting (though Brian Williams’ daughter is kinda cute, so it’s got that going for it, at least). I tried to give it a chance, I really did. But I finally gave up on it. I guess I’m just too old to appreciate the self-involved characters or something. And it’s not just me, ‘cuz my wife thinks it’s pretty awful, too. If it wasn’t for Bill Maher coming back next week, I’d dump HBO in a second. But I like Realtime, and I’m too lazy to track it down to watch it in an “alternative” method (though I know it’s not really all that hard to find). Enlightened isn’t bad, either. And then in April (I think) Game of Thrones comes back, and then in the summer comes True Blood. That’s how HBO gets you – there’s typically one or a max of two good shows on at any one time, that I keep shelling out $18 a month for. I guess I’d be better off buying them off Amazon. Oh well, back to work.

It’s a big day today, as the Academy Award nominations will be announced at 5:30 AM PST (you’d think they’d bump that up a bit, but I guess not). Now I get to hear which of the movies I haven’t seen are the best of the best. I can hardly wait ’til they come out on Amazon or Netflix.

In other exciting news, due to the fact that they’ve hired way too many people for our electronic medical records project, the parking lot where I work has become ridiculously overcrowded (as has the building; they have people stuffed into conference rooms, and offices designed for two people are now tripled and quadrupled up). It was bad enough before the snow flew, but now with snow piles and plows, we’ve lost even more spaces.

So they’ve come to the monumental decision to let us occasionally work from home (this isn’t a new idea, and is done extensively around the institution – just not in the IT area, because the person or persons who run the IT department are basically Luddites, which kind of goes to show who gets promoted around here). Apparently, we’re starting out a one day per week, and my day will be Friday (aka, tomorrow), which will be very nice indeed. Especially for the dogs, who get to have me around all day.

Speaking of the dogs, one of them chewed up my very expensive universal remote yesterday. I should have known better, but he had kind of ignored it, so I thought it was safe. Guess not. So he’s on my shit list for a while (until I get over it), and I’ve been shunning him. The little bastard.

Now, instead of just pushing one button on the touchscreen and having it turn on (or off) all the appropriate devices and settings, I now have to fart around with four or five remotes and try and remember what gets turned on for each thing. It’s kind of annoying.

Oh well, time to get back to work, I guess.

I’m not exactly an Alabama fan, but anybody that kicks the shit out of Notre Dame is AOK in my book. If ND has to be in the BS BCS Title Game, seeing them get killed (not that I actually watched, I have to admit) is the way to go. Otherwise, there’s not much in the news.

Republicans seem to hate Republican Chuck Hagel. I must confess that I don’t really remember all that much about him when he was a Senator, but if Republicans hate him, then he must be kinda OK. Plus he was an enlisted man in Vietnam, so at least he knows what it’s like to actually be out there getting shot at (and why he apparently seems to be opposed to endless war in the Middle East).

Then there’s the relentless march to the “debt limit” crisis, which Democrats (swear to god, hope to dies) claim they are absolutely unwilling to negotiate over. I kind of like the trillion dollar platinum coin idea, personally. Paul Krugman likes it, too. His idea is to pass legislation that abolishes the stupid debt ceiling in exchange for removing the loophole that lets the President mint trillion dollar coins to stick in the bank. Sounds fair to me.

Oh well, time to get back to obsessing on the current state of the SU football program.

So, from what I’m reading, it appears that Republicans are willing to shut down the government over the debt ceiling nonsense unless Democrats come up with massive cuts to Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid. Obama says he is unwilling to include cuts as part of raising the ceiling, so we appear to be at a standstill. I’m sure Republicans are worried, because Obama never backs down on this kind of stuff, and he has tons of leverage on them, thanks to the Fiscal Cli…. Oh, yeah, forgot about that. Anyhow, I’m sure both sides will get cracking and this will all be solved long before the Feds have to default on their obligations in March. Because when I think if our government (especially the House of Representatives), the one word that comes to mind for me is “proactive.”

I must say, I was doing pretty well with the whole going back to work thing this morning. Right up until I walked in the front door of the building, at which point I was engulfed in a dark cloud of depression. I’ll be most happy to see this day end.