“We’re fighting a war against evil. We’re fighting evil.”
–G.W. Bush

The girl in the photo above has just had her parents shot to death at a security checkpoint after their car failed to stop. If you want to shed a few tears, the whole sad story is here. Remember this girl when you see King George partying at one of the nine inaugural balls today.

I’m not entirely sure what to do with myself today. I thought of wearing black, out of mourning for my country, but I did that for a week following the election, and seemed redundant. Instead I’m wearing green, because I feel slightly sick to my stomach. Initially, I intended to go on strike today. Stay at home and not turn on the TV, maybe create some art. I’ve too much to do at work, however, so I came in. As I see it, my work here managing servers in some small way benefits the legions of patients who come here seeking solace, some of them strikingly similar to that little girl in the photo above. They take priority to my own personal pity party. The next four years will happen regardless of what I do today.

The one small protest I’ve decided is worthwhile is to not contribute to the economy for a day. For this day, I will not spend a penny, nor use services that bring profit to others. (I realize that using Internet access to post this could constitute using a for-profit service, but Blogger is free, and I’m using my company’s Internet access, for which they pay a flat rate.) I made my own coffee this morning, brought leftovers for lunch, and I filled a bottle with my own purified water at home. I put gas in the car yesterday, so I will not visit a service station and show my support for Shrub by consuming oil. I deliberately left all of the change out of my pockets so I will not be tempted to purchase anything from a vending machine. My cell phone (a pay-as-you-go model) is turned off today. (Actually, the battery is dead, which is a good discouragement.)

For today, my iTunes playlist is locked on “Rock Against Bush” (which I stole off the Internet, BTW), and I turned off sharing on all other playlists so anyone in the office accessing my iTunes share will only be able to get “Rock Against Bush”. If I get the urge to watch a movie later tonight, I have a couple of unwatched Netflix DVDs, so no trips to the video store. Will the economy notice my absence? Hardly. But I’ll feel better about myself with the knowledge that my miniscule economic protest symbolized a refusal to support the twit we’ve been stuck with.

Be strong. The next four years is going to pass for better or for worse, and the best we can do is ride it out. It’s dangerous times, and the popular revolutions of old will not work they way they once did. We need to come up with our own revolutions, new ways of thinking for these new times. Copy music. Copy movies. Remix, rematch, release. Create art and place it in public. Operate a pirate radio station from your car. Hold a public handfasting ceremony. Place your personal stamp on society. The one thing that cannot be squelched or legislated away is you, and you and I will not be hidden away.

I end with some words to inspire your own inner revolution.

“I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.”
– Martin Luther King Jr, Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech

“What am I in the eyes of most people–a nonentity, an eccentric, or an unpleasant person–somebody who has no position in society and will never have; in short, the lowest of the low. All right, then–even if that were absolutely true, then I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart.”
–van Gogh

“Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened, but go on in fortune or misfortune at their own private pace, like a clock in a thunderstorm.”
–Robert Louis Stevenson

The other night we were sitting our friends’ 3-yr-old, Ben. Ben had recently gotten the first two seasons of Scooby-Doo for Christmas, and we were watching a few episodes. He was already wound-up with excitement and was getting kind of loud when we started the ghost pirate ship episode. Early into the episode, the gang’s little rowboat is cut in two by the ghost ship, and they all end up in the water. Cut to a shot of Scooby and Shaggy treading water. Ben jumps up from his little Spongebob Squarepants chair, hopping up and down while pointing at the television and shrieking as only a 3-yr-old can: “AHAHAHAHAHAHA!! SHAGGY AND SCOOBY-DOO ARE DROWNING!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!”

I think I’m going to like that kid when he gets older.

I really wish I’d splurged and had hot-water coils embedded in the driveway slab.

Because the world doesn’t have enough Harry Potter.

Shrubbery on ice. 2005 began with an ice storm that encased our world in 1/4″ of ice. Ironically, the night before we had watched “The Day After Tomorrow”.

Remember in grade school when someone’s pen or ruler would go missing, and the teacher would make everyone in class stay in from recess until the perpetrator ‘fessed up? It was mass punishment, meant to incite the innocent to turn upon the guilty party and pressure them to cave in.

Now it appears that the federal government, speaking through the Metatron of the Social Security Administration, is engaging in mass punishment of people living in counties that don’t subscribe to the dogma that same-sex marriage is harmful to the mortal souls of heterosexuals. Perhaps the feds believe that by unduly punishing heterosexuals for the “crimes” of the county that the heteros will rise up against their local government and pressure them to change their marriage policy.

Social Security Rejects Multnomah County Marriage Licenses

By Colin Fogarty

PORTLAND, OR 2004-12-20 The social security administration is not accepting marriage licenses issued by Multnomah County after March of this year.

As Colin Fogarty reports, the agency considers documents from heterosexual couples just as legally suspect as those from same-sex couples.

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The federal Defense of Marriage Act already bars Social Security spousal benefits to same-sex couples.

What’s in question now is when someone asks the Social Security Administration to sign off on a name change. Anyone doing that needs a legal document proving they are who they say they are.

The agency doesn’t accept marriage licenses granted to gay couples in Multnomah County, San Francisco, New Paltz, New York and Asbury Park, New Jersey.

The agency also goes one step further, saying it won’t accept any marriage documents issued in those places at the time gay couples were getting married.

That means heterosexual couples who got married at the same time could have trouble changing their names.

Social Security stresses, though, that it does accept other proof of ID, such as a driver’s license.

When you have some time, check out Inaccessible Sites Tested by Users of the Real-Time Testing System Real-Time Testing of Internet Filtering in China. It’s a LONG LONG list. And pretty interesting, some of them.

Testing my new cameraphone. What did we ever do before the ability to
instantly transmit the image of a cat with its head in the toilet?

And now for something completely different.

I’d like to draw your attention to the file cabinet on the left, just below the blog archives. That’s the Collapsing File Cabinet, an entirely new blog that will serve as a clipping service for this blog. Too many of the posts here have begun to consist primarily of uncommented links to other articles, and that bothered me. If this blog becomes little more than a series of time-sensitive bookmarks, then what’s the point? I want Collapsing World to be about my thoughts and words, not someone else’s. For that reason, all of the articles and other blog entries I come across that I want to share but cannot substantially expound upon, will go into the Collapsing File Cabinet. Please, visit it frequently. There’s good stuff in there, just not perhaps a good fit for in here. I hope that in the posts to come you’ll get to see more of me and less copying and pasting. (And no, Albert, by that I do not mean that I’ll be posting nude pictures of myself!)

Oh, and get yourself a Bloglines account. It’s worth it. You’ll wonder how you managed all of those blogs and newsgroups and news sites until now.