I have the theme from Super Mario Brothers stuck in my head.

Great. Now I do too. Thanks a lot.

(Random synchronicity, some kid was playing SMB on one of the PCs in our patient resource center today. And the people in charge of the center wonder why I want to use group policy to lock them the hell down.)

That's further evidence that YOU SUCK!. Not that we needed any.

You could not be wronger if you tried, on the wrongest-thinking day of your life with an electric wrong-thinking machine manufactured by Wrongallthetime Corp.

It's unbearable hot in my office. Somewhere in the middle of the country, someone's office is absolutely perfect.

I'm feeling perfect, but I"m not at work (thus...postage!) I'm "working from home", because I"m waiting for the cable guy. Who is supposed to be here between 1 and 5. It's 2:45...not here yet.

Bleah. The humans are discouraging me today.

This morning Nina Totenberg did a report on NPR about a speech Sandra Day O'Connor just gave ripping into (not naming, but quoting verbatim) various Republicans in Congress and the Bush administration for their attacks against the independence of the judiciary and using the word "dictatorship."

I personally don't have any love for O'Connor whatsoever; she has a vile, vile record on the death penalty cases that have come before the SCOTUS, she was part of the 5-4 decision that gave us Bush in 2000, and even her most important vote preserving Roe was apparently the result of a fit of pique against Rehnquist.

But... she's someone who nobody on the right can possibly call a left-wing attack dog. She can't possibly be painted as part of some vast left-wing conspiracy (unless her former supporters want to deny her decades-long judicial record and pretend that she never existed until she made this speech). It's hugely fucking late, and she's done a lot of damage that can't be undone -- but, damn, it just seems huge that she's saying any of this at all. She'd been moving more to the center over her last 4-5 years on the SC, she consistently voted against the Bush administration on post-9/11 cases about lengthy detentions and defendants' access to records and lawyers, and in all likelihood there are restrictions on what justices are allowed to speak out on politically while they're still on the bench. IMO, she can rightly be slammed for her record, but she does deserve props for saying anything, ever. She could so easily have retired, gone home, and shut up, and she didn't.

And the diary on DailyKos discussing this speech of hers has several hundred comments already, and something like half of them are just bilious nasty railing against her for singlehandedly causing every bad thing on the planet since November 2000, hoping she fries in hell, saying that her husband having Alzheimer's is exactly what she deserves. I'm already feeling all beseiged and revolted by so many of my religious cohort; it's incredibly discouraging to see folks on the left being just as vile.

vile people are on all sides, and I think it is important to remember that these people are VILE much more than they are Dems or Repubs or Christians or Atheists or anything.

They have majored in VILE and only taken 1 or 2 electives in the other things they choose to label themselves.

I can't get the NPR report to play, but there's a text report on O'Connor's speech here: [link]

Dear studentlike people,

If you'd like to enjoy this lovely weather by sitting on a rock by the stream and smoking pot, you might want to not do it in plain view of 5 floors of windows looming nearby.

I'm just waiting for someone who, you know, cares, to notice and get all het up. It could just be handrolled tobacco, but the (pointless) furtive makes me think not.

Bah. I was feeling tired and out of it, so I took a brief naplet at my desk. Now I feel incredibly out of it. Light-headed, and sorta' spacey (like I'm on drugs). I otherwise feel OK.

My brain apparantly is working well enough to type and edit VB code, so I think I'll stay here for now....

Oh, and the comments on that Raw Story post are just as nasty as the ones over at Daily Kos. People suck.

I love Nina Totenburg, though. She doesn't suck. Also, her cubicle at NPR had a big sign on it saying "Totenbunker" the day I temped there (in 1994). (I met nobody famous, but I saw a lot of their desks and mailboxes!)