Congratulations, Mr. President

Just listened to President Obama’s inaugural address. I didn’t get to watch it live because the class I’m teaching is from 8:00-9:30 a.m¹.  Pacific Time. It only occurred to me very early this morning that when they said the inauguration was at 11:30 a.m., they didn’t mean Pacific Time². And that I’d still be teaching at 11:30 a.m. Eastern, i.e., 8:30 a.m. Pacific, a.k.a., way too freaking early to be teaching.

I wished my class “Happy Obama Inauguration Day!” at the start of class and right after class, I came to my office and watched the video of Obama taking the oath (so eager that he jumped in while the Chief Justice was still talking, which I thought was so cute). And then I watched his speech while toasting him with a diet Coke³.  Because I wasn’t invited to an inauguration oatmeal party, which would be more appropriate, I admit, for the ungodly hour of 9:30 in the a.m, than a can of diet Coke. (Did I mention I have to be on campus, ready to teach at 8 a.m. and that I now live on caffeine even more than I used to?)

¹Who schedules class at 8 a.m. anyway? That’s just cruel.
²Maybe I have a case of eastern alienation?
³Because it’s really difficult to find diet Pepsi on campus.

Image credit at Obamicon.me

Babe for Obama

Sorry. Couldn’t resist that title after the title of my earlier post.

As you can see, I wore my democratic blue shirt today, in honour of Barack!

Just over half an hour left ’til the first polls close in the eastern United States and the results start pouring in.  To my American readers: thanks to all of you who voted for Barack Obama!!

In addition to the results of this historic presidential election, the results of a number of items on the ballots, including Propositions 8, 2 and 102 in California, Florida and Arizona, respectively, which, if passed, would ban gay marriage in those states, and Amendment 48 in Colorado, which would “define all fertilized eggs as full human beings with constitutional rights” (Source) are of interest to me.

Am hoping to get out to an Obama victory celebration tonight, but work is crazy busy, so we’ll see how productive I am in the next few hours!  Otherwise, I’ll be working this evening with one eye on the Internets!

Babies for Obama

In honour¹ of today’s US Presidential election, I give you this: Babies for Obama:

I saw this over at Feministing, where I also read that in the U.S., if you bring in proof of voting, you can not only get free ice cream from Benny & Jerry’s, but you can also get a free silver bullet and sleeve¹ at the New York and Seattle locations of Babeland sex toy store.

Given the pathetic voter turnout in our recent election, maybe Canada needs to look into this free-ice-cream-and-sex-toys-for-voters idea.

¹Yes, I am spelling honour with a ‘u,’ even though I’m talking about the U.S. ‘cuz that’s the way we Canucks roll.
²I especially like that this particular model of sleeve is called “The Maverick”^a
    aJust don’t picture John McCain using “The Maverick.”^{i
        i}I *told* you *not* to picture it.