Left of the Dial

animals

So the fireplace is Base, that magical place all children (humans?) instinctively recognize as utter safety, where not even the growling bear that is your father can touch you, no matter how close he might get or how loud he might roar. The toddler has been getting ever closer to me, taunting me, before running, shrieking, back to Base, at which point he always yells, half-defiant, half-terrified, "Base!" As I'm in the process of making a cuppa tea for Top Management, who's still fighting off a nasty cold, I'm not doing much more than headfakes in his direction, or maybe the occasional move of a foot in a hasty manner, but it's enough to keep him on edge. 

I finish with the tea and, having delivered it, head back towards the office. I expect him to follow, so around the hallway corner, I duck into the girls' room, the Blue Room, and wait, eyes narrowed, claws out, ready to grab; he'll learn not to mess with the bear. 

Only then the bear hears something in the wall behind him. As it's the time of year—when isn't it?—that San Diego's local tree rat population looks for someplace warmer to shelter, this is not an entirely unknown sound, but it's not a terribly common one, and is an entirely unwelcome one.

I turn and see that closet is mostly but not completely closed. And I see something moving in there. Something a bit larger than a tree rat.

A butt appears, covered not in fur but in a pretty print dress with flowers on it. This is followed by a back, covered in a much beloved pink sweater. Soon the Golden Weasel's golden locks come into view, slowly. She backs out of the closet and into the room carefully, holding something a bit too large for her to carry easily. She eases it down onto the floor and I can now see it's her bin of art supplies, recently reorganized for her by her loving mother. 

I wait for her to turn and see me. But she doesn't. She's too intent upon her task, digging through the supplies, looking for just the right thing. 

I realize that if she turns now, I'm going to scare the living hell out of her, and not in a good way. So I take one last look, then back out of the room myself. Once out in the hall, I peek back in, and she's still kneeling over the supplies, hard at work. 

There's nothing quite like observing wild creatures in their native habitat. 

And when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you, with googly eyes.

BREAKING: United States Votes to Keep Couple Together

 

Pour More Beers! Pour More Beers!

My fellow Americans: this day you have my undenying gratitude. You turned out in force and you spoke loudly and you spoke clearly. You sent a forceful message that Top Management and I should stay together, and I want you to know that message was received. 

Sure, there are some who will claim there were other reasons, and in a nation as large and varied as ours, that may indeed be so. But the result is the same: she's stuck with me for at least four more years. And for that, I—if not she—thanks you with my whole heart and soul.

Hope for No Change

So tomorrow's Election Day. Much of the country has already been voting for weeks now, but here in California, there's little early voting, which is no big deal, since lines haven't been long for any of the elections since we've been round these parts. 

Of course, a lot of the regular Left of the Dialians—is there any such creature as a regular Left of the Dialian, really?—live in swing states and themselves swing rather heavily to the right, and you know I love each and every one of you like the long-lost annoying little sibling I fortunately never had. And before you go vote, I'd like you to just take a few seconds and look at the following charts. 

 

Even a quick glance tells you that if you're voting on economic reasons, Barack Obama is the only reasonable choice, as Mitt Romney has surrounded himself with former George W. Bush advisors and the very few plans he's admitted to having have all been to commit to returning to Bush's policies. Care about the deficit? Well, cast your mind back to early 2000 and you'll recall we didn't have one. We had a surplus. Until Bush's tax cuts—followed by two unfunded wars and the Medicare Part D giveway to Big Pharma—blew it up and sunk us into an ocean of red ink. It's not the bailouts and it's not TARP: it was Bush's tax cuts for millionaires that screwed us. Those are the same tax cuts Mitt Romney wants to expand—the guy who's hidden his money away in the Caymans and is the first presidential candidate in 44 years not to release his tax returns, something his own father said was shady. 

And if you vote for pro-life reasons, as so many of you do, as the father of nearly twenty-nine kids, I'd like to remind you that for almost the first six years of the Bush administration, Republicans controlled the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives. And they didn't introduce one serious pro-life bill. No personhood amendment, even though they controlled all three branches. In other words, if you're pro-life, there's absolutely no reason to vote Republican, as all they ever do is play you as patsies, giving nothing but sweet talkin' lip service in a battle they clearly have no intention of winning but which exists merely to win elections and enrich lobbyists, and why on earth would you reward that kind of behavior? 

Finally, as many of you may know, the first decade of the wondrous new century was not a great one for me, for a variety of reasons. But perhaps the biggest was the funk into which I was cast by the stunning appointment of George W. Bush as president, and then perhaps his reelection in 2004. Things were, I will say for the first time publicly, more than a little difficult at home at times, in no small part, due to the daily horrors I believed were being inflected upon my beloved country. The criminal negligence that led to 9/11 is the most obvious, but the unimaginable incompetence in the way the Iraq War was run, as well as the immoral disregard for Katrina and its victims...well, y'all know the drill. 

So I'm just saying that if you love me and/or Top Management and you live in a swing state and you cast a vote for Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, you may as well be voting for us to get divorced. And here's the really bad news: in the split, she gets the kids and the books, and you get me.