Maddow Gets Her Own MSNBC Show | The Trail | washingtonpost.com

Rachel Maddow's Life and Career (@ The Nation archive):

Unlike her beautiful, bilious conservative female counterparts or the cocksure boys-on-the-bus analysts, however, Maddow didn't get here by bluster and bravado but with a combination of crisp thinking and galumphing good cheer. Remarkably, this season's discovery isn't a glossy matinee idol or a smooth-talking partisan hack but a PhD Rhodes scholar lesbian policy wonk who started as a prison AIDS activist.

My mom is a huge Rachel fangirl, by the way. Has been from the beginning. We love her at our house. Now she gets her own show! w00t!

Because I am really good at memes but not at life stuff...

- medical stuff is going ok, have continued referrals, no real firm diagnosis yet but will continue with gluten-free diet until told otherwise.

- still out of shape. really really really wish the tai chi class was closer to me, or later in the day. considering yoga after work. has that worked for people I know? really? (my brother expressed interest in fencing. I could go out to the back yard and do my old college fencing workout. that would totally make me fall over.)

- I have cut back severely on my art exchange obligations for the autumn, mostly because the deadlines are all in Oct or early Nov and I have two Sept wedding weekends out of town, three classes at Rice, three portrait commissions (hm. is it still a portrait if it's of fictional characters?), and my regular meetings and meetups. Too bad more of the exchanges don't post for Epiphany or something.

- I picked up a bunch of hot patterns for costume pieces for something Steampunkish, which I will start muslins on as soon as I finish my Snape Quilt. (The Snape Quilt has to be done by the end of the month so I can ship it to its recipient, so perhaps I can get started on a jacket come the end of September.)

- I'm debating buying a Macbook Pro. Opinions? I can get a sweet educators' deal if I buy the machine and CS3.3 together. (I want Design Pro, of course.)

- DUDE WTF AM I GOING TO WEAR TO THESE WEDDINGS????
(And on the topic of what to wear, a quote from a great movie I just watched for the zillionth time:

Would you be prepared if gravity reversed itself? ... The only thing I can't figure out is how to keep the change in my pockets. I've got it - nudity!

and here, just because I LOVE THIS LINE:

We had, what, no one at the mutant hamster races. We had one entry for the Madam Curie look-alike contest, and he was disqualified later. Why do I bother?

I'm sure most of my flist knows the movie, but if you don't, get thee to a DVD store. Or my house, we can have a double feature with WarGames. And yes, before anyone asks, I'm aware of the WarGames 'sequel'.)

- I find what little I have seen of the Olympics to be completely saturated by sexism blatant and subtle, and it's actually extremely off-putting. Not even just the uniforms, although that is the most immediate symptom. I'm not really watching the games much, though, although I'm watching some of the fringe political and human rights stories engendered by them.

- I can't even be coherent on any topics of political or social import. Daily doses of Democracy Now! tend to shift me toward despair rather than hope, these days. But, everything gets a wee bit lighter when we listen to Rev. Gaddy on Air America. So I guess there's a teeny tiny bit of me that can imagine a world in which random detentions without recourse are not the norm, but rather the exception decried by the masses and punished by the courts. This country is doing nothing to ease my anxiety levels.

- Also, I really don't like the presidential candidates offered by the mainstream. I like them less and less the more they're allowed to talk, especially when they're allowed to talk to an Evangelical Christian pastor as if questions of religion were legitimate in a campaign for public office. Aaaaarrrrgh!

- You know who's cool? Cynthia McKinney. Doesn't really change my vote, unfortunately, because I'm committed to ousting the Republicans first and foremost, but it's nice to dream. And listen to someone genuinely progressive. May her voice be heard well into the next term as well.

No matter how good the fanfiction is, I am not allowed to stay up past my bedtime. My one story ration backfired last night and now I am exhausted. Oof.

And I can't get any AM stations on the office clock radio, so no Air America for me. Alas.

Ok, so I'm listening to Air America this morning and the Jerry Springer show is coming on, and there is an audio clip- John Lennon's "Imagine" recreated in audio clips of George W Bush. Egads! So bizarre!