What Possessed Me

Bright, shiny new day.

I have to confess that I'm not a bright shiny new day sort of person. I'm more of a wake-up groaning - snooze 45 times - curse the gods for making it morning - put my underwear on backwards - stumble out for coffee type of girl.

I woke up late today, having stayed up to watch the inaugural balls. (I liked her dress. Did you?) I'll admit to crying at least once, when Beyonce teared up after singing to Barack and Michelle Obama for their first dance. I'm sorry, it was touching, okay?? (Yes, I'm a cheeseball. I can't help it. I got swept away in the moment.) Anyway, this morning my head felt like the birth of Athena.

Ouch. It must be a happiness hangover.

Image via dolores on the dotted line.

I'll read what he's reading

According to this article, Dubya read 95 books in 2006 - a delightfully surprising factoid (though how many of these books actually contained words is unknown).

Obama, on the other hand, appears unabashedly bookish. When asked who his influences are, he cites the following:

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Thomas Jefferson
Mark Twain
Abraham Lincoln
James Baldwin
Friedrich Nietzsche
Reinhold Niebuhr
Paul Tillich
E.L. Doctorow
Philip Roth
W. E. B. DuBois’ Souls of Black Folk
Martin Luther King’s Letter From Birmingham Jail
Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon
Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory and The Quiet American
Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook
Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s Cancer Ward
John Steinbeck’s In Dubious Battle
Robert Caro’s Power Broker
Studs Terkel’s Working
Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations and Theory of Moral Sentiments
Robert Penn’s All the King’s Men
Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom The Bell Tolls
Herman Melville’s Moby Dick

Lately, he's been seen reading:

Parting the Waters by Taylor Branch
Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin
Collected Poems 1948-1984 by Derek Walcott
Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer by Fred Kaplan
Derek Walcott’s Collected Poems 1948-1984

Um, does anyone else around here feel the tiniest bit stupid after reading that list? I think I'm going to need to step up my game a bit, since my major life influence, Anne of Green Gables, is probably not going to increase my chances of becoming President.

(Come to think of it, neither are those photographs of me with Joey B., the horrible orange stripper who "showed up" at my 19th birthday party.)


Photographs from The Selby via ??? (I'm sorry - I've forgotten. My mind is a sieve today).

We cannot walk alone.

New print from Upper Playground, with an excerpt from Barack Obama’s speech at the DNC.

America, we cannot turn back. Not with so much work to be done. Not with so many children to educate, and so many veterans to care for. Not with an economy to fix and cities to rebuild and farms to save. Not with so many families to protect and so many lives to mend. America, we cannot turn back. We cannot walk alone. At this moment, in this election, we must pledge once more to march into the future. Let us keep that promise.

Via Suicide Blonde.