Obama will clinch tonight, and Sen. Clinton will suspend her campaign. VP? Maybe. I dunno if it's the right ticket or not, but for now it's good that the healing can begin and the campaign against McCain commence.

Politically speaking there's a huge watershed opportunity here. Want universal health care? Elect the Black President, six or seven new senators, twenty congresspeople, and then hold their feet to the motherfucking fire.

Don't forget the last part, because FDR was just some aristocrat in a wheelchair without Huey Long, in the words of the Wu, moving on the left:

Number one, we propose that every family in America should at least own a homestead equal in value to not less than one third the average family wealth. The average family wealth of America, at normal values, is approximately $16,000. So our first proposition means that every family will have a home and the comforts of a home up to a value of not less than around $5,000 or a little more than that.

Number two, we propose that no family shall own more than three hundred times the average family wealth, which means that no family shall possess more than a wealth of approximately $5 million—none to own less than $5,000, none to own more than $5 million. We think that’s too much to allow them to own, but at least it’s extremely conservative.

Got beat with the drunk stick. Weddings; they'll do that to ya. It was a great one. Champaigne and scotch and dancing with maids. It all gets out of hand so quickly, and then you have to make a questionable bike run to catch the last BART. The real downside was that I didn't go right home, and -- in addition to making the executive decision to stop in at the Albatross and stare mutely at the attractive bartender (weddings; they'll do that to ya) while imbibing even more demon liquor, loosing track of my bike helmet and black suit jacket and some of my dignity in the process -- somewhere along the way I crashed into something and broke my laptop screen.

That scene is missing from my memory-reel, but the forensic evidence is conclusive. Stay classy, KoneZone.

On the upside, a bike ride to Emeryville for an on-demand replacement at the Apple store is a good hangover cure. The weather cooperated with brilliance, there was a cool Sikh parade on the way, and I'll have a new headless computer to muck about with for however long it stays alive.

Still, the whole thing feels childish. Especially the bartender part. That's just un-called-for behavior.

Now is probably as good a time as any to get healthy(er) again. I mean, maybe in advance of the next wedding (a western-themed hodown in Portland, guaranteed bacchanalia) I can abandon my five or six pounds of latent beer-weight. On the other hand, who knows what kind of awful trouble I'd get into if I showed up all lithe and sexy. Still, it's always a good idea to revive Operation Get Real Hot. Decisions, decisions.

I got a little email which told me the name of my favorite art piece from last year's Burning Man, which got some press, which led me find it on YouTube, which let me share it with you.

The spinning is powered by a number of bike stations around the structure, and the strobing is keyed to the drums, so it's a group effort to make it happen. Sweet.

And some pyroporn:

Anyway, I'm in the Bay for a couple weeks. Insanely busy as always.

Speaking of such events, the Baby Blue Cherub remebers Chineese dinner.

I'm in the paper! You can see why my back was so screwed up yesterday, and yes those are my underpants on over long-johns. I was told that was the right way to dress for the team.

Also, there a nice photo from Roller Derby with our friends Hanna and Sarah in it.

You go girls!

So after this weekends Kinetic festivities and my own automotive troubles, I feel it's appropriate to take note, again, of the hard facts facing humanity.

Things are going to be different. The price of gasoline is not going to reverse its trend this year, or the next. The rate of CO2 saturation in the atmosphere is also not going to turn itself around for some time, even under ideal circumstances. Things will change.

And we'll deal with it. That's the main thing to keep in perspective. The world will not end. Humanity will not be extinguished. Our particular configuration of civilizations cannot persist indefinitely, but it's not as though we're doomed as a species.

Rocks from space could come close to wiping us out -- real mass-extinction events do happen -- but even in that kind of case it seems highly unlikely to me that humanity (let alone life) would go into the wings.

It's important to resist apoclyptic thinking. This is something that's wired into us as people, a weakness for believing the end is nigh. It's an idea that pops up throughout history, and it's never correct. Which is not to say that terrible tragic things don't happen, but that the rapture never comes, and even sweeping watershed changes take time.

And even better is remembering that dealing with it can be fun. Like these biodiesel cats in Colorado who cut a deal w/New Belgium Brewery:

Man, I feel like I get beat with a sack full of doorknobs.

Rolled with the Kinetic from 8am to 7pm yesterday, then to the inugural bout of Humboldt Roller Derby, and then the dancy afterparty. Lots of screaming, bike riding, tugging machines up sand dunes, tailgating, screaming some more, jumping around and carrying on.

But hopefully with a couple cups of coffee and some Motrin, I'll get through enough work today to take tomorrow off for the finish-line run of the race. Its good to be out doing things.

Bad news. My truck is going to die.

Well, that's melodramatic. I learned today that the clatter I have at certain acceleration points is not a timing issue, but rather a piston bearing on its way out. Now, the truck can run on three (even two) cylinders, and there's no reason to think the bearing will go out any time soon. But it's an unknown. Could be tomorrow. Could be six months.

That means it's probably ok to take to town, but no running the 101 to San Fran. The risk/cost of blowing the engine out in the middle of nowhere is too high to run.

So what's next? Well, next week I'll roll south in a one-way rental. After that I might try and use a new connection to get some air travel in coming back up in June. But I'd been planning on driving this summer, piling up wedding trip and family visit, etc. That's no one-day stop-gap rental.

I see a few options:

• Replace the engine, giving me a relatively bullet-proof Moamar II, but costing a pretty penny.
• Sell the pickup for a couple hundred and get another used car. Pretty much a wash with the above unless there's a sweet deal to be had.
• Live without a long-distance-capable automobile: keep the pickup clattering along in the HC, use other methods (carpool, bus, plane, rental) to make longer trips.
• Buy a new car.

In the back of my mind I've been sort of planning towards the last and final option, but was thinking sometime in '09/'10, not right now. I don't feel excited about taking on a big new debt right now, and I have a feeling that when it comes to automotive technology the longer I can wait the better my options are.

More people.

I need to seriously get my rear in gear on some copyediting, but this is pretty exciting stuff.

Yarwood asked for it, so here's my response to this week's big legal/political news out of California:

The California Supreme Court struck down the state's ban on same-sex marriage Thursday in a broadly worded decision that would invalidate virtually any law that discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation.

The 4-3 ruling declared that the state Constitution protects a fundamental "right to marry" that extends equally to same-sex couples. It tossed a highly emotional issue into the election year while opening the way for tens of thousands of gay people to wed in California, starting as early as mid-June.

Groovy.

What I like about this is that the decision is broader than just gay marriage. It's gay anything. It's taking the moral high-ground of saying, "you can't stop people from doing X just because they're homosexuals." That's the right way to go, in my opinion.

This is going to move the ball forward and probably lead to more states doing likewise, which will lead to an inevitable showdown over whether homophobic states will be obliged to recognize marriages imported from more progressive climbs, and of course over how the federal hydra should react.

Personally, I think that the question over the magic word "marriage" may be a sticky wicket, and I'd be in favor of some kind of national normalization of the financial and legal aspects -- which is historically what it's all about, let's not forget -- and a decoupling of the State from the religious, spiritual or moral dimension of things. Any couple of consenting adults aught to be able to make this kind of union, and I think it's right and good that we encourage this as a society by recognizing special rights, providing tax incentives, etc. Beyond that, the government shouldn't have much to say about it.

I have a delightful memory from last summer, of Friday night at Burning Man, being out and about with two beautiful girls from Portland we met; real underground babes with dynamite style, impeccable festival pedigrees, and at least a decade's worth of world traveling and other bohemia under their belts, all without ever showing taxable income. "Gone chicks," an older generation of beat writer might say. I wrote about this obliquely before, but never told the story itself.

We'd met earlier in the week when they sheltered with us through a dust storm, and bonded over knuckle tats and their delicious lavender vodka cocktails, just a good honest click with the whole group, and so naturally it seemed we should all rendezvous and ramble the night together. Though the whole pack started out as one, the girls and I got separated from Mark and Zya fairly early -- no worries, just the way things flow -- and the three of us ended up making a great convivial loop of the grounds on foot over the course of the night, dance party to dance party to dance party and yon.