Keeping it quick

• I've been continuing with Okami. It's very entertaining.
• I biked out to the library on Saturday. I got a few more CDs and those books, then read Stephen King in an easy chair. I headed out just as a thunderstorm was moving in. I had a good time, a little peaceful spot.
  
• I finished Christine. I won't spoil the ending. King got back to form, it is way better than Cujo. But I have a feeling I'm about to see a ton of books (along my chronology, I've got from 1983 till 1989, Misery) that are King working out metaphors for the damage his drug abuse was doing to his family. I don't think it's exactly transparent, but it definitely colors my reading...
• I put up the books I'm reading on my whiteboard at work. I'm kind of relieved to be able to erase Christine when I get in tomorrow, because I have a coworker named Christine and it must have looked a little strange.
• Up next, still doing The Way of the World by Ron Suskind. I also have a Stross book that eluded me, The Jennifer Morgue, which is more "James Bond meets HP Lovecraft". And I picked up the start of a newish series by Lois McMaster Bujold that I just hadn't gotten around to. The series is called The Sharing Knife, and the first book is called Beguilement.
• I watched the Star Wars CG film The Clone Wars tonight. It ends a little abruptly, and for all the exposition, it is actually a little tough for me to locate it in context in the storyline. The graphics were great, the dialog was ok if a little obvious at times. It was mostly fun as a chance to get out with Chuck, who is a guy I know via Sarah's friend Laura (his wife). We should do stuff like that more often.
• I loaned Chuck a few Bujold books: Cordelia's Honor, The Warrior's Apprentice, and The Curse of Chalion. Here's to another addict! I had no clue until recently that he reads fantasy.
  
• A dude named Mark (no forwarding address) commented on the last post. I do not know if I consider his comment particularly edifying or not. And my comment back is not so great.
• My basic argument is this: we want a president who will respect the rule of law. The last eight years have taught us how valuable that would be. Whether you agree or disagree on this issue or that issue with the president, you can rest assured that the president will preserve the laws that we have by proxy all agreed upon. The president will not attempt to shirk his responsibilities under the law or rewrite them by illegal action or inaction. The president will not play cowboy politics with people's lives.
• And the president will not torture people, even our enemies. The president will not attempt to move prisoners to so-called law-free zones like Camp X-Ray or give them law-free status like "enemy combatant". I think it's plain that what our soldiers are not allowed to do by the Geneva Conventions, even in situations of extreme duress like "under enemy attack in combat zones", our spies and politicians should not be allowed to do in well-appointed offices in cold blood, before they go out for cocktails and cigars with their lobbyist buddies and friends in the press.
  
• Like I told Mark, the United States needs a moral compass. We need a sense of mission untainted by what the devilish have done in the name of America. For me, torture represents a clear line to draw, and it is just as obvious that John McCain is not willing to draw it.