No One Quite Gets It Right

Gack! It's 1 AM already! I've been fussing with photos, Twitter and a couple of campaign sites, and editing the last chapter of Heirs of Mâvarin (yay!), and suddenly it's late again. I'll just throw a few images and a few comments on here and call it a night, okay? (As if you have a choice!)

He's just a mouse, but he could be a metaphor,

John spotted this mouse outside his office this morning. He's climbed onto a ledge about ten feet off the ground, and seems to have no way to get down again. If he's still there in the morning, I've asked John to find a way to rescue him. I know, I know: mice can bite, and carry diseases. But I hope John will find a way to do it safely, assuming the mouse doesn't manage on his own. He's two or three times the size of a basic house mouse, and yet clearly not a rat. I even wondered whether he might be a house pet. Gerbil, perhaps? I could make the mouse (or gerbil) a metaphor for someone or something, but let's not.

I love the monsoon!

The weather here has been wonderful for the past few days, overcast with beautiful clouds that keep the temperatures low and disgorge intermittent rain. We've actually been driving two and from work with the a/c off and the windows open. Tucson in the 70s? In August? Amazing! Okay, so officially it did get up to 92 in Tucson at one point, but it was mostly in the 70s.

Another lost opportunity for metaphor.

Sort of like a pink and blue mushroom cloud.

I have a few days' backlog of sunsets and clouds and stuff. This one was Saturday, I think. Maybe Friday - yes, that's it. I liked that this vaguely mushroomish cloud built up right where the sunset was. I was going to use it as an excuse to call my blog entry "Boom!" But I hadn't quite worked out a concept to go with the title. Ah, well. Sometimes...most of the time...maybe all of the time, I don't quite manage to pull off the effect I'm trying for in these entries. There are typos and compromises as I get tired, realize I lack the resources or inspiration or expertise, or just run out of time. I don't quite get it right.

But that's okay. Nobody else does either.

As I mentioned at the top of this entry, I visited two campaign sites tonight - well, three, if you count the one with the live convention feed. If you've glanced at my sidebar, you know which sites the other two are.

I have to say, though, I was slightly disappointed with the sites for both Obama and my congresswoman, Gabrielle Giffords. Obama's web-savvy online presence has been heavily praised, and rightly so, especially in comparison to John McCain's technological illiteracy. Heck, I'm following Obama's campaign on Twitter, and they're theoretically following me. He's on all the social networking sites, has videos and web graphics and even news and video feed widgets. So how come I can't find a single downloadable Obama-Biden logo? I got one, but I had to "view source" to get to it, and it's not especially sidebar-friendly.

And then there's the Fight the Smears page, which debunks the anti-Obama email that my former co-worker and John's current boss both like to forward everywhere. (It's almost a game between John and his boss; John seems to research something and show C. that it's not true nearly every day.) I'm all in favor of Obama using the web to fight web-based lies and distortions, although Snopes pretty much has it covered, with more claims debunked than Obama's site. But why isn't there even one simple link from Fight the Smears back to the main Obama site?

As for Gabrielle Giffords, I kind of expected her site to be on a par with Obama's, since she's fairly young and definitely smart, and seems to have a clue about such things. After all, she's married to an astronaut, and is a bit of an expert on alternative energy sources. And her site is pretty good; like Obama she's got videos and online donations, organizing opportunities and email listserves. But she doesn't even have a page of logos for your blog or web site. The one of my sidebar is the one at the top of the page on her blog. In context, you know who Giffords is and what she's running for and when, but away from her own web site that logo, such as it is, is dull and uncommunicative. I added her first name to my sidebar logo, but the result is grammatically iffy.

Ah, well. I'm not going to solve the candidates' minor deficiencies tonight on this blog! It's late, and one of the things I'm not getting right is the whole adequate sleep thing. Good night!

Karen