Ick, ick, ick. This has been a pretty bad week. I just finished digging myself out; we had a couple of inches of snow around here. It's also been cold; cold enough that my car may be a fatality -- it's in the shop, and the inital reports weren't good, and I'm afraid I might have to buy a new vehicle. I'm by now means a car expert; I'm not terribly mechanically inclined, I'm afraid. I didn't want to buy a new car for another year; and that was what I was saving for, but I don't think I'm going to be so lucky.

I tried to drive my car back to the dealership for review, and I almost, just about, made it -- it died about a mile away from the shop.

I went to see Edward Scissorhands at the MISFITS Movie Night last night. I was fortunate that it really wasn't snowing that much until I got home, it was a pretty easy drive back, but there was still a lot of it. It was a good film; I think it's interesting to compare Edward Scissorhands to Burton's Penguin in his second Batman film really.

I found the history of women's voting habits in this article to be particularly enlightening.

What Now? by Alan Brinkley and Michael McConnell from Slate was a really interesting wrap up of the election issues. I've got grave concerns about what this election revealed -- ones that I don't think could be fixed after the election took place, and I think we have an imperfect result. But there will be other elections in the future, and we can consider that when we vote in the future. I'm also concerned as the parties become more regional; I think it's better for there to be healthy competition between the two parties, because that means that neither one is too comfortable with power, with too strong of an opinion of their own entitlement. I disagree with conservative Republicans on a great many issues, especially on many social ones, and I'm skeptical about a party that seems primarily interested in the upper half of the income spectrum, even though that's where I am personally. But they're there, and now the challenge is whether they'll be responsible or not; and if they aren't their time in power should and will be extremely short.

As you can tell, some of what I'm linking to in this little journal are just my favorite articles in items like Slate and Salon, this may change some now that we're out of the political season for a while, as I want it to be a bit of my insight into the world -- personal, political, entertainment, whatever. It's more for me than it is for anyone reading it -- there's more than enough things on the web for you to read. But this is a way I can collect the items someplace and not necessarily harrass all of my friends with e-mails saying "look at this link!" -- I can do it here, and some of them might actually check out this page from time to time.

I hope that George W. Bush's Weblog continues now that it looks like he managed to sneak his way in to the White House thanks to a few bad ballots. I also expect that he gets as much respect as Bill Clinton did, who at least managed to clearly win his elections....

Who owns fandom?

I didn't know that fandom.com owns Creation as well....they're definitely evil then. Which is too bad -- I check cinescape's web site fairly regularly, as well as occasionally checking out fandom.com

I saw Dungeons and Dragons over the weekend and wrote up a review.

My brother is also in town, and we spent some time on Saturday playing that other evil Wizards of the Coast game, Magic: The Gathering. We played it quite a bit when we were both in Madison, but neither of us have played it much lately. Harmlessly fun game, though definite a drain on cash if you want to collect the cards....