Today I learned about King Ludwig II of Bavaria. He built this:
Looks like Sleeping Beauty's castle, huh? That's because Disney based his castle on King Ludwig's, who based his castle on neo-Romantic German kitsch, which was based on cultural memory of medieval castles that never existed.

King Ludwig II liked to imagine that he was a fairy tale king, rather than the lame-duck monarch of a barely-sovereign state in the Industrial Revolution. Wikipedia says he was fond of wandering through the countryside, giving lavish gifts to commoners who were nice to him. His fairy tale castle broke the bank, but the Bavarians loved him anyway (who wouldn't love a deeply eccentric castle-commissioner?). His ministers loved him less, and they engineered a legal deposition by having him declared insane - not exactly a stretch, admittedly, for a man who wanted no more from his kingship than to canoe around his palace grotto while a soprano sang Die Walkure for him.

But still. The whitecoats came to get Ludwig and he balked - "How can you declare me insane?," he asked the doctor. "After all, you have never seen or examined me before."

The next day, Ludwig and the doctor were both found dead in a shallow lake.

How this is not yet a musical is beyond me.

Today I learned that lady-senators have absolutely no decency when it comes to choosing the color of their lady-suits. The only rule necessary for the State of the Union drinking game is "drink every time some lady's lady-suit makes you cringe with its yellowness."

Valley Stream pride

There's an escaped lunatic on the loose in Valley Stream State Park. Or possibly an escaped kitty-cat. One of those.

I'm reading in the park, around 6 pm, and a helicopter passes overhead. And again, lower. And it quickly becomes clear that it is circling the park at low altitude. Since a string of ninjas didn't come out the drop door, it seemed safe to assume they were looking for someone.

Near me, a guy in a balaclava (also known as a ski mask) was practicing parkour. A balaclava. Mid-day. Mid-June. While exercising. Definitely a terrorist.

After a half hour, I head out. The entrance to the park is blocked by a police car, and a few cops are at the gate. I know for a fact that the other 7 entrances aren't being watched. I try to head back in to investigate, but they aren't letting people into the park now.

"You guys do know that the other entrances are open, right?"
"We're looking for someone we think is in this area."
"..."

The park, mind you, is maybe a mile around. So because I'm a punk, I bike around the outside of the park and re-enter from another entrance. Because no one ever taught me not to make fun of police officers. The other entrances are all open, as I'd thought, though one is being watched by a couple guys in South Shore Hospital uniforms. Undercover men. Or someone escaped the psych ward.

Back inside the park, two more cops are staring at the trees. There's a trail in there. The entrance to the trail is around a bend from where the cops are standing, out of their sight-line. Okay. Meanwhile, balaclava guy has fled the scene.

At the first entrance, another guy is questioning the cops.
"It's not the crime of the century or anything."
"Oh okay, so it wasn't violent."
"I didn't say that. You move along now."

I'm figuring those darn kids stole Baby Lindbergh from the manger again.

Eventually I got bored of watching my tax dollars at work. Nassau County police are the highest paid in the country. Way to earn it, guys.

Citing Safety Concerns, Harvard Solves Problem of Race

By Liz & Ben

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- The Harvard Admissions Office announced today that it would reverse its longstanding promotion of equal opportunity through the consideration of race in its decisions.

The move comes in response to the recent discovery that even African-American students who are three weeks from graduation are still dangerous criminal thugs.

"It's a shame", said William Fitzsimmons, Dean of Admissions. "After years of believing we were educating these kids, it's turned out that they are just as black and poor as they were before they enrolled."

Dissatisfaction with current policy reached a breaking point after the shootings in Kirkland house last month, in which Jabrai Jordan Copney of New York City allegedly shot Cambridge resident Justin Cosby in a drug-related incident. The spotlight quickly shifted to Harvard senior Chanequa Campbell, who, to the shock of many, was acquainted with the victim.

"I've known Channy for years, but I never saw this coming" said Chanequa's classmate, Eliot Canaday III. "Who knew she was still "down" with the "street?" Sure, she still looks black, but I mean, this is Harvard."

Widely criticized for failing to prevent this tragedy by properly assimilating black students into Harvard culture, the administration has responded with sweeping policy change. "Decades of occasional effort and perhaps hundreds of dollars have gone into Harvard's attempt to educate all students equally," said President Drew Faust in a video address yesterday, in which she appeared with several armed guards and a pitbull. "But it is time to acknowledge that these efforts have jeopardized the safety of our real students."

Harvard is calling its decision vital to maintaining the 371-year-old institution's educational integrity, but Plummer Professor of Christian Morals Peter J. Gomes disagrees. "This runs contrary to many years of progress towards the true American dream - to take any lump-of-clay students, whether financially, ethnically, or genderly challenged, and mold them into affluent white men."

Outside Cambridge the change has been applauded, except in the handful of newspapers not published by former Crimson editors, and Yale and Princeton have quickly followed suit. "We have been preparing to unroll a similar change for the last 19 months," grumbled an anonymous Princeton official, "but now that the cat's out of the bag: fine, us too." Neither of Princeton's black students could be reached for comment.

Meanwhile, student life has continued as usual. Junior Fulbright A. Rhodes didn't even notice the change. "The black kids, you know, they kept to themselves. Only time you saw them was at school-wide events, like formals and stuff. And even in tuxedos, they always ended up looking like the hired help anyway."

1:41 am on the LIRR

Announcement upon changing trains at Jamaica:

This is the train to Long Beach. Ladies and gentlemen, as part of our Clean Train Campaign, please be aware that there are restrooms located on every other car of this train. With the combination of alcoholic beverages, fatty foods, and the rhythmic motion of the train, please remove yourself to one of the restrooms if you feel the urge to yak. The next station is Locust Manor.

Unpopular Opinion Monday

Susan Boyle ain't much of a singer.

I enjoyed the clip from "Britain's Got Talent" as much as anyone. It was a fabulous five minutes of television.

But you know who deserves credit for that excellent video? It ain't Susan Boyle. I'm sorry, internet hordes, but she's just not much of a singer. Strong voice, but untrained and with no range (can *you* hear the "but the tigers come at night" low note? which isn't low at all?). She is no different than anyone else on these Idol shows - she's just uglier.

The people who really deserve credit for the Susan Boyle video are the people who put it together - the director and editors who took the raw footage and made it heart-tugging. In fact, I just spent ten minutes trying to find the program's credits, to give the crew some truly deserved props by name, but even ITV's website snubs them.

Congratulations to the crew of Britain's Got Talent - your video went viral. Congratulations to Susan Boyle - you lucked out, big time.

And for the rest of you... You can stop patting yourselves on the back. It is no different and no better to be wowed by Susan Boyle because she sang better than you expected, than it was to expect a joke in the first place.



...Plus I've had Les Miz stuck in my head for a week now and it's really not okay.

An Inauspicious Start

(I'm gonna backdate (backtime?) entries that I write by hand to reflect when they were actually written)

For two hours this afternoon, I could not find my passport.

It had been in plain sight for, oh, six months. It was my primary id in November, when I lost my wallet. It spent several months atop a pile of stuff in the den. It came to Florida, quite unnecessarily, just a few weeks ago.

Question was - did it come home?

For two sickening hours, I thought the answer was no. Or rather, for one hour I thought that Mom had stuffed my passport in a drawer in a cleaning fit and forgotten about it. And then for another hour I was convinced I'd left it in Epcot and that was the closest I was ever gonna get to Europe this year.

I was nauseus, I was panicked, I was deer-in-headlights'd, I was plotting how I could go into hiding for the next few weeks so I wouldn't have to tell everyone what happened.

And then I pulled the den couch forward, and burst into tears. Thank fucking god.

Back to packing...

Sober Train

I spend a lot of time on the Long Island Rail Road and, as such, I am constantly running for trains and dodging random high school acquaintances who somehow always seem to remember significant details of my biography. Sample conversation:

Person I've Never Seen Before In My Life: Oh my god Liz [Surname]! How was Harvard? Do you still play the cello? I heard you went to South Africa awhile back, how was that?
Me: Hey... you.

I appear to have been inexplicably famous. Or just really, really recognizable (the hair's usually a giveaway).

Anyway, there is a benefit to my LIRR dependency - namely, the Saturday night 1:42 am train out of Penn Station. Because it is hilarious. Much funnier than the 3:07, by which point everyone's sobered up in an hour of waiting around the train station, the 1:42 provides endless amusement in the form of underage intoxicated persons sharing their wisdom with those fortunate enough to share their train car.

I present you with a rough transcription of the highlight of a recent ride home:

A young man, probably 18, is standing at the head of the car. A half dozen of his friends, representing various levels of consciousness, lie in the surrounding seats. Our hero is singing.

YOUNG MAN
It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas! Eeeven thooough I'm a Jeeeew!

I shall spare you the remainder of his song, for it would be impossible to fairly transcribe his truly impressive feats of "making six words fit in the the space of one". Suffice to say, after several minutes, he ran out of the song, and began extemporizing instead. I wasn't ever quite able to hear the responses from his more lungpower-deficient companions - our hero, however, never failed to maintain a more than satisfactory volume.

YOUNG MAN
You didn't know I was Jewish? Oh man I am so Jewish. I don't believe any of that shit though, like the God stuff.

FRIENDS
[inaudible]

YOUNG MAN
Yeah, that's right, I'm an atheist. Total atheist. Ayyyyyyyyyyyy...theist. I like being neutral, you know? I don't just pick a side to be controversial or whatever, I look at both sides of an issue. I don't wanna say I'm a Republican or a Democrat, I'm neutral, i'm an Independent. And I'm not religious, I'm an atheist, cuz I'm fucking neutral.
My religion has a first name, it's A - T - I - E - "Est"!

FRIENDS
[inaudible]

YOUNG MAN
What? Oh yeah, of course I believe in God. Whatever. I just don't care about that religion shit, because it's shit! I don't like picking sides, you know? I don't, like, think there's no god or anything, I just don't want to be part of any religion, so I'm an atheist.

FRIENDS
[inaudible]

YOUNG MAN
Yes that is what it means! What, is there another word for it?

HELPFUL GENTLEMAN DOWN THE TRAIN
Yes, "agnostic."

YOUNG MAN
That's it! Thanks man! I love you! I'm totally agnostic!

ME
::facepalm::

The Doctor, The Middleman, and Sarah Connor Walk Into a Voting Booth

I'm interning for io9, Gawker Media's science and science fiction blog. After a new-hire probationary period of a month, I was finally assigned my own story. But after three complete re-writes, everyone came to the conclusion that the assigned premise didn't work, and my piece was cut. I'm not devastated, because I agree that it was a silly premise, but I still put a lot of hours into trying to make it work, so I'll share the final draft here.

If published, it would have included embedded polls after each entry.

The Doctor, The Middleman, and Sarah Connor Walk Into A Voting Booth…

We learned last week that Doctor Who is the favorite program of the Republican party, but which party is the favorite of Doctor Who? If Dr. Horrible whipped up an anthropomorphism device that transformed Life on Mars and The Middleman into registered voters, would Obama or McCain become the president of Scifi Land? We've broken down the politics of nine of your favorite shows to help you decide how each program would cast their ballots on Tuesday. Vote – it's your civic duty.

Doctor Who

When you look at the Doctor, do you see an anti-gun, bleeding-hearts gay icon with a massive guilt complex and a meddlesome need to make people better? Or do you see an old white man in a suit, who uses his power and privilege to cavort with young girls and topple governments that annoy him? It gets even more complicated if you try to compare individual regenerations. The Doctor of "Genesis of the Daleks" refuses to make a pre-emptive strike, but the Doctor of "The Christmas Invasion" will bring down a regime as punishment for the same - "Do I have the right?" vs. "I can take down your government with a single word."

Firefly

What do you get when you put the veterans of the losing side of the Civil War into space? You get Firefly, the show that mixed left-wing social values and right-wing economics with a heavy dose of frontier libertarianism. True mavericks Mal and Zoe fought against the ultimate big-government of the Alliance, and now try to live under its radar, stealing from the rich and selling to the poor. Individual freedoms are paramount to the crew of the Serenity, of both the traditionally liberal and traditionally conservative variety; all that matters is that they be left alone by the government. You can't take the sky from Mal – you'll have to pry it out of his cold, dead hands.

Middleman

The Middleman fights evil so you don't have to – big government hand-outs in the extreme. His apprentice Wendy is a struggling artist and her roommate Lacey is a tree-hugging animal rights activist who would be less likely to vote in a polling booth than to turn it into a vampire-puppet theater. But a conservative could easily latch on to the Middleman's Eisenhower-era stylin's and emphasis on modesty and propriety. The Middleman is constantly ribbed for his old-fashioned ways, and yet these ways are shown to be pretty darn effective at saving the world. Are the Middleman's values a parody or sincere?

Torchwood

Let's just get the obvious point out of the way. They're bisexual. Everyone, the entire cast. Nay, the entire city of Cardiff. All bisexual. It's good times. But there are also a lot of big honking guns that get waved around willy-nilly – none of the firearms skittishness of the Doctor's liberal side here - and Captain Jack and his crew have a tendency towards conspiracy and cover-up. Did I say Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11? Silly me – here, have some Retcon. And Ianto truly embodies the spirit of the Republican DIY bootstraps work ethic, working his way up from the mail room (and into the boss's bedroom).

Life on Mars

The progressive reading is pretty clear here. Sam Tyler, 21^st century liberal, wakes up in 1973 and rails against the racism, sexism, and homophobia of the Nixon era (as well as his colleagues' ignorance of computers). But although the viewer is supposed to agree with Sam that these retro ideals and heavy-hitting police tactics are best left in the past, a conservative viewer might note that Sam's weak-handed, suspect-friendly techniques are often shown to be less effective than Gene Hunt's tough-on-crime approach. Additionally, if Sam is in fact in a coma in 2008, then the series makes a pretty compelling argument for not taking people off life support.

Dr. Horrible

Dr. Horrible thinks the world is a mess, and he just needs to rule it. He scoffs at Penny's community-organizing on behalf of the homeless, and his solutions include a Freeze Ray that will stop the world – conservatism taken to a literal extreme - and good, old-fashioned world domination. The antagonist superhero, Captain Hammer, is a handsome meathead who uses his muscle to bully people – sound like any nation you might be a citizen of? But in the end Hammer's bullying and posturing are intended to root out horribleness and evil. A League of evil, in fact. You might even go so far as to call it an Axis. Think of Captain Hammer as George W. Bush, taking down the bad guys while remaining someone you'd like to have a beer with, and Dr. Horrible as Al Gore, kind of dorky and trying to save the world through inconveniently extreme methods.

The X-Files

The X-Files placed a huge emphasis on first amendment rights and freedom of information – secrecy and conspiracy are huge no-nos. Scully was a devout Catholic, but religious issues were drawn with the same brush as supernatural phenomena. Plus, Mulder really liked porn – big plus one for the right to privacy. But the show also featured a deeply ingrained suspicion of big government, and of course our heroes were all strongly against alien immigration. And come on: the guy's name is Fox.

Sarah Connor Chronicles

SCC is all about the guns and the militia training – second amendment rights are pretty strongly supported by all involved, and pre-emptive strikes against threats to the Connor clan are sometimes warranted. On the other hand, Sarah Connor herself is a single mother – a demographic catered by the Democrats. But the future U.S. Military created Skynet, a massive defense system that would eventually gain sentience and destroy mankind, all in the name of homeland defense - Sarah certainly does not welcome these new robot overlords. And let's not forget the franchise's connection to the state of California and its Republican Governator.

Star Trek: The Original Series

So you had your interracial, interspecies cast, complete with interracial, interspecies canoodling – daringly liberal for its time. And that Prime Directive thing is basically the antithesis of the Bush Doctrine. But then again, Captain Kirk did have a tendency to ignore the Prime Directive when necessary. And since Kirk never trusted a Klingon and never will, he also retained some of that Cold War paranoia into the post-Alliance era. It must also be mentioned that, depending who you ask, a couple members of that romantically liberal crew may have been just a wee bit closeted.

Feel free to rail against io9's political agenda in the comments while you predict the vote of other fine citizen-series. And remember, if you're not happy with the results of the real election tomorrow – you can always move to Scifi Land.

Vice Presidential Debate drinking game!

“I do not propose to be buried until I am dead.”
- Daniel Webster, turning down the Vice Presidency

Everyone and their teenage daughter's baby-daddy is writing a drinking game for tonight's debate. Here is mine.

Modulate size of drinks inversely with the size of the Dow.

Palin

Take one drink every time she says:

Soccer mom
Pitbull
Maverick
Reformer
“community organizer”
Small-town values
When Palin claims she said "Thanks but no thanks" to the Bridge to Nowhere: Demand a new drink from your hosts, say "thanks but no thanks," and then when no one's looking, take it anyway, then claim you never wanted it.
1 drink for a relevant reference to 9/11
2 drinks for an irrelevant reference to 9/11
1 drink for each of her children she references by name
When she makes a cute little hand gesture
Or flashes a winning smile
Or gets away with having no answer by being completely adorable
And and
Ah ah
That that
Let me tell ya
Let me get back to ya
I don’t know about that
As soon as you realize she has begun a run-on sentence, chug until she finds a period.
1 drink if she mentions Tina Fey
If she turns out to be Tina Fey in a wig, drink till it’s Saturday night

Biden

Take one drink every time he:

Talks about taking the train
Refers to himself in the third person
Refers to himself by his full name
Name-drops a famous friend
1 drink if he chuckles condescendingly at Palin
2 drinks if he chuckles condescendingly at the moderator
Drink every time you realize that you know 50 times as much about Palin as you do about him

General

Drink every time we hear:

Russia
USSR, two drinks
The Bering Strait, three drinks
Lipstick
Wall Street and Main Street in the same sentence
A pronunciation fumble on Ahmadinejad
Two drinks if he is referred to only by title to avoid pronouncing his name
Henry Kissinger
If Henry Kissinger actually responds, drink till it’s a war crime

1 drink for a relevant reference to 9/11
2 drinks for an irrelevant reference to 9/11
For a completely left-field reference to the Holocaust, invoke Godwin's Law and immediately end the debate. And then drink. A lot.

1 drink every time Biden or the moderator tries very hard to keep a straight face
2 drinks when they fail

If Biden seems condescending, stuffy, or elite, or if he outright laughs at Palin, or if Palin manages to get through the entire debate without seeming like a retarded chipmunk, it’s all over. Move to Canada.