Well, surprise, surprise. NBC is now finally admitting the obvious: Iraq is mired in a civil war. I’m not sure exactly when this war-torn nation crossed the line from merely being occupied by an invader to being bogged down in internal strife, but that point was definitely passed some time ago. I can’t find it now, but I vaguely recall someone in our gummint saying that if Iraq descended into civil war, then it was definitely time to get the hell out of Dodge.

Yet the “cowboy” by the name of Smirk who says he makes all the decisions refuses to acknowledge the obvious, and says that we’re staying put “until the mission is complete.” Funny, that. I also seem to recall a certain banner on a ship somewhere, a banner that said, “Mission Accomplished.” That was quite some time ago, yet we still haven’t “completed” the mission. What we have completed is destroying a nation. Sure, some will say there’s “good news” and that we’re rebuilding the country, repairing damage. Sure we are– damage that we caused. Instead of investing in our own nation’s infrastructure and people, we went over there, bombed the hell out of the country, toppled its ruler, and then stayed.

Well, lemme tell you something: like houseguests, armies stink after about three days. Our troops have been over there longer than we were involved in World War II. At this stage, Smirk intends for us to be there at least through 2009, as he stated last spring. Instead of facing reality square in the face and realizing what a mess he’s made, he’s now claiming that the civil war isn’t really a “civil war;” instead, it’s an Al-Qaeda plot. Sorry, Smirk, but I don’t buy it; trotting out the Iraq-terrorist link is trying to rely on a old canard that has already been mercifully taken out behind the barn and shot some time ago.

Even though we’re supposed to gird ourselves and keep a stiff upper lip, and not question anything, it’s really hard to believe anything this gummint says anymore, on the matter of Iraq. Smirk and others have changed their rationale for this war so many times now, it’s practically become a parlor game. I fully expect to wake up tomorrow and find yet another excuse reason why it was right for us to go over there in the first place, and squander our national budget and military on warfare when there things like, oh, a country to take care of right here.

We aren’t even wanted anymore, Smirk. Back in January, Uncle Walter echoed his famous take on Vietnam, and said that we should pull out. Unlike LBJ, who had an entire brain more than you have, you have either been unwilling or unable to admit that perhaps Cronkite is right. You certainly didn’t listen to the Iraqi gummint last year; I pointed out then that the welcome mat had been pulled, and perhaps it was time to say adieu to Baghdad. It’s kind of funny too, because that nice Mr. Bremer that you gave that shiny medal to said way back in 2004 that if we were asked to leave, we’d pack our bags and head out the door– something we haven’t done regardless, obviously. If all that isn’t enough for you, the people of Iraq– you know, the ones that were supposed to be paving the way for us with cheers and flowers– have indicated in a poll that, ahem, the linens in the guest room really need to be changed, and perhaps it’s time for us to leave and go home? That certainly jibes with the view of the majority of the American public, which also thinks its time to perhaps cut things short. That seems to be the view too of your Iraq Study Panel, headed by Daddy’s good friend Mr. Baker. The New York Times will publish an article in Thursday’s edition that says this group recommends we start pulling out- oh, not overnight, no, but definitely stop sending troops over. Even your former Secretary of State suggests that perhaps you recognize it’s now a civil war, and act accordingly.

Here’s my suggestion, Junior: it’s time to put away the rose-colored glasses, and start thinking about the actual consequences of your actions, and act like a man, instead of being a stubborn, petulant child administrator who doesn’t want to have to admit that maybe Daddy was right after all for not marching off to Baghdad. Civil wars are messy, and it’s never a good idea to be in the middle of one. Let’s hope this is the last Christmas our soldiers have to spend abroad.

Yeah, I know– most of you deaf readers out there are used to the term “DeafBlogLand,” coined by Moi; just figure me for a subversive stick-in-the-mud, okay? *grin* Anyway, the deaf blogosphere. It’s grown by leaps and bounds over the last couple of years, and lately has just exploded, thanks to the Tent City Protest. Sometimes it’s overwhelming to pick and choose, and having an aggregator like DeafRead both helps and hinders this. On one hand, it’s nice to have everyone in one place, but on the other hand, there’s so many new blogs. For the most part, I’ve stuck with the tried and familiar blogs I’ve been following all along, although I’ve added a few to my day.

What’s really interesting is that with some exceptions, the early deaf blogosphere was composed of blogs– that is, written entries posted for the edification of the community. In the last year though, more and more people have been experimenting with vlogging.

I think this development is interesting. While there have been quite a few vloggers for some time out in the general community, this particular form of communication is tailor-made for the deaf community, and I think could actually be turned into a force to be reckoned with for society as a whole. Already, video communications have altered mass communications– witness the plethora of political ads on YouTube and other hosts during this past election cycle. Soon-to-be ex-Senator Allen began his long stumble towards political oblivion by being filmed during his infamous “Macaca” moment, which found its way to the web in no time flat.

During the Tent City protest, vlogging found its legs thanks to people like Joey Baer, whose site soon became required viewing for many interested onlookers.  Since then, others have been inspired to vlog more and more, even if they had previously done a vlog here and there. While a lot of vlogs that I’ve seen so far are focused on internal community issues, personal opinions, and the like, I think there’s also a lot of potential for vlogs to be used as a tool for social commentary and a continuation of our civil rights movement.

One example is a vlog by Joseph Rainmound, over at Deaf In The City. By now, many of you have already seen this particular vlog. But if you haven’t, or need a refresher, go and see it. It really is a marvelous mix of a personal soapbox with powerful political and social commentary, and I think exemplifies how the future of vlogging (let alone the blogosphere) could (and should) develop.

Those of us who blog have our tiny little audiences (such as yours truly. It doesn’t help that I don’t post daily…). A few of us pull in more than 20 or 30 people daily. A handful command larger audiences, such as DeafDC, Ridor, DeafRead, and the major up-and-comers, such as Mishka Zena.  Even among hearing bloggers, there’s a similar pecking order, following the hallowed tradition of Hollywood: “A List,” “B List,” and “C List” bloggers. On a recent Technorati blog by Dave Sifry, you can see some of the statistics: for example, out of 57 million blogs, only approximately 4,000 are considered “Very High Authority.” It’s a new world,  and blogs are still growing, changing, and developing. For once, we are in on the ground floor of a social phenomenon, and due to its visual nature, blogging/vlogging can be a powerful tool, both politically and otherwise, if we develop it right.

I carried on a conversation (here and here) with Jared Evans over at Jared’s Rambling Thoughts on the future of DeafBlogLand, and while I’m still skeptical about a deaf blogger reaching the top, I’m less skeptical than before.  One factor that I think greatly helps is the use of captioning in doing a vlog; Tayler Mayer’s done it, and Todd over at Triomphe L’Oeil captions every vlog he does (while Tayler, Jared, Ridor, and others have vlogged, and now Joseph Rainmound, Todd’s site is 100% vlogging. While his subject material doesn’t necessarily lend itself to a national vlog audience, his format (along with Joey Baer, another vlogger)  is certainly a template of sorts for future deaf vloggers. For example, don’t wear striped shirts…). This aids users, hearing and deaf, who aren’t familiar with or know no ASL to be able to follow the vlog post’s content 100%. It also shows others that accessibility for EVERYONE isn’t a hassle, and isn’t difficult.

So while I’m uncertain about where we’ll go in the deaf blogosphere/DeafBlogLand, I do know that we aren’t necessarily adopting a trend/fad a few months/years after everyone else. We have a future, and it is ours to develop as we see fit.

Our Thanksgiving was nice, if brief; one of the things I like about heading north out of L.A. is you can actually see the stars at night. Sure, these are heavenly lights that are long gone, and we are staring into the void in the darkness, bathed in the light of stars long dead, but there’s nothing like a crisp, clear fall or winter evening looking up overhead at the stars.

On our way home, we drove through Sacramento, and as we saw the familiar tower of the Tower Theater looming over Broadway from the maelstrom that is the Sacramento freeway system (nothing compared with L.A.– people up there whine about the merging of I-80, 99, and 5, and I’ll admit getting to the 15th street exit from 80 is a pain in the ass, but that’s nothing compared with the Parking Lot, or the Wilshire/San Diego Freeway interchange. Now *that* is something to weep over…), we wondered if Tower Books would be joining Tower Records and Tower Video in its demise. On the spur of the moment, I swung across three lanes, aiming as if a homing device was planted on the front of our trusty vehicle, and exited at 15th Street.

My heart sank as I saw not only the dying Tower Records store, but right behind it, large “Going Out of Business” banners draped across the storefront of Tower Books. The whole empire was falling, and we decided we’d stop briefly to pay tribute at a former haunt of mine.

We quickly found a parking spot and sauntered into the bookstore. Inside, half the store was already empty, and its voluminous magazine section was a shadow of its former self. I missed Tower when I lived in D.C., and found that they had an outlet on the Rockville Pike, which I visited from time to time, but it was nothing compared with the Tower Books on Broadway, or even the Watt Avenue branch (Tower Books in L.A. was practically non-existent, and in any event, the outstanding Book Soup is just down the street from Tower Video, and across from the landmark Tower Records, which actor Alec Baldwin laments in this blog entry at Huffington Post. I recently paid homage to Tower Video on Sunset with a friend earlier this month, and left with a bit of personal history under my arm. I probably won’t go back, although when I visited, the store was still well-stocked, compared with other Towers I’ve been in since). I’ve spent countless hours poring over the history section, the art books, the coffee table books at Tower after the workday, or on my way home from a social outing. Tower Records, obviously, held no attraction for me, but I did check next door at Tower Video from time to time– they had a very wide selection of films for rent, although the prices for the tapes (and later DVDs) they had on sale weren’t competitive with other stores (which is probably one of the key reasons this business failed).

While Tower is admittedly a chain, it was always to my mind a smaller, more friendly chain than some of the behemoths out there, and in any event, Tower started in Sacramento, which is close to where I grew up– as a child of the Sacramento Valley, Sacramento was the largest town around, even though The City always beckoned. Berkeley had Cody’s (another recent victim); Sacramento had Tower.

We wandered the remaining aisles, browsing through what was left. We left Tower for the final time, though not without some new memories: a couple of books to add to our library and its overflowing bookshelves.

Sacramento and its environs haven’t been home for quite some time, but visiting Tower when I was in town was not just an attempt at nostalgia, but a way to stoke my intellectual fires, even if just briefly. Now there’s one less reason to hang out in Tomatoville. Adieu, Tower. You shall be missed.

[Update on Christmastime: I don’t know whether to be chagrined or amused that our very first Christmas card was waiting in our mailbox when we got back from our calorie-busting repast. It was a lovely, pre-printed message from our loving insurance company, which no doubt wanted to get a head start on reminding us our premium is due soon. Ah, the joy and cheer of bills… Hopefully we’ll find far more personal and heartwarming messages in our mail in the weeks to come.]

For me, the holidays are always a fun time of year– probably because when I was growing up, my mother would always bring out all the decorations pertinent to that holiday. Most of these trappings were homemade, so they had that special quality to it. For example, I still fondly remember the yellow moon with a witch’s outline silhouetted against it, both created from construction paper, taped to the window and visible from outside.

Each holiday belonged to its own particular season, and one never began before another. In the Fall, Halloween decorations were never up before the second week of October, and Thanksgiving decorations always went up around the first or second week of November. Christmas decorations didn’t usually appear until December 1, or shortly thereafter.

As an adult, I’ve continued these traditions– Valentine’s Day decorations don’t go up until February 1 at the earliest, and shamrocks never made an appearance prior to March the 1 on the dot. Right now, our Thanksgiving decorations grace the dining table, the coffee table, and the hall table. But our Christmas decorations won’t go up until we return from stuffing our faces (although Thanksgiving has its origins in New England, and was first celebrated on a national scale at a time when the nation was far more divided than it is today (1863), to me it’s the one holiday whose sole purpose seems to be to eat as much as you possibly can without bursting).

The same goes for shopping– while I might “cheat” here and there (if I see something that I KNOW is the perfect gift, and it happens to be July, I buy it then– you never know– you might not see it again), I don’t go shopping until *after* Thanksgiving. That doesn’t mean I go out on Black Friday at 7 a.m. to the nearest Big Box store, along with 800 other people, and risk being trampled to death. It *does* mean that maybe on the Saturday or Sunday after Thanksgiving, I’ll casually stroll the local shopping district, or pay a visit to the nearest mall, and start browsing.

Retailers, naturally, differ from me (and I suspect, from most of us); for them, the holidays begin about 2-3 months before their actual calendar date. I don’t know if it’s me, or what, but this year, it seemed to begin earlier than ever. During the last week of August, I actually saw one store that had Santa stuff on display. Ugh. Spare me.

Halloween candy was already on the shelves at the chain drugstore down the street on the day after Labor Day, despite the fact that the actual holiday was nearly two months away. Stale treats, anyone? For the record, the world winner of the Iron Stomach contest has to be the individual who buys any candy from a chain drugstore the day after the holiday is over with…

What seems to be missing these days,  though, are any decorations related to the harvest season and Thanksgiving in general. When I was a child, stores and businesses actually put up displays of scarecrows, pumpkins, corn, Pilgrims, and other icons of November. We seem to have just entirely skipped one whole month, jumping from Halloween to Christmas overnight. I suspect part of it is the increasingly urban nature of our nation. Where people actually used to live near farms and more rural environs, now everyone either lives in a megalopolis or within the urban boundaries of a metropolis (witness West Virginia as a prime example; 20 years ago,  West Virginia was “West Virginia”; now it’s considered part of the “Greater Washington D.C.-Baltimore area.”).

While I can’t do anything about how businesses and corporations act these days, for me, Thanksgiving and Fall are firmly entrenched in my mind, at least until after Thanksgiving Day itself. Call it being old-fashioned, or subversive, or whatever, but to me, tradition is important.

Now that Thanksgiving is past, and Christmas is a month away, NOW Christmastime can begin!