I'll have a recap and pictures of my trip to the Philippines up soon, but for now I'll just say that it was an awesome experience. I've spent my waking portions of the last couple days catching up on everything that happened while I was away. Here is some of it.
Election
Obviously I'm quite glad that the Republicans lost control of both houses of Congress. I spent several hours yesterday reading everything that Glenn Greenwald wrote about the election and other political matters while I was gone, and I'm repeatedly amazed by how he gets everything exactly right. I can't emphasize my respect for this guy strongly enough. He published top-quality commentary almost every day. One of many great things about his writing is that he's scathingly critical of the media's inept and corrupt coverage of politics, not just the ineptness and corruption of politicians.
I probably have 20+ of his links saved because I want to blog about them, but here are a few samples just from the time I was gone:
Hugh Hewitt shows how Bush followers literally deny reality
Extremely odd behavior from the Washington Post re: the President's Rumsfeld lie
The Military Commissions Act in action
Our wise national security guardians
Television - Lost, The Office, The Wire, Prison Break (spoilers warning)
I also spent some time catching up on tivo.
My first comment is to express relief that they brought Jim back to Scranton on The Office. I complained about the way the season started, but bringing a few new characters back with Jim seems to have a lot of potential. The new guy competing with Dwight is pretty funny, and the new chick is turning out to be way better for the show than Pam alone.
Next, I'm not sure what to think about the format for this season of Lost. No new episodes til February, but then we get 16 in a row. In the first 2 seasons of the show whenever Kate had a romantic moment involving Sawyer, I didn't like it. But I was surprisingly quite comfortable with the recent development. Meanwhile Jack is a fucking badass again, I'm glad that Mr. Eko is dead, and I really hope that Sayid and Desmond start to take some control away from Locke.
Prison Break is my guilty pleasure, but I'll admit to liking it. I think they've been doing a decent job this season with everyone out of prison and on the run. The FBI search guy and the asian Secret Service dude are good additions.
And I'll mention the best show on television last. The Wire is so good in every regard I don't even really know what to say about it. I can't believe what a great job they're doing with the school kids especially, and the scenes with the "corner kids" class have been brilliant. I loved their night out at a nice restaurant.
Sports
It is always nice when you have a few Sports Guy articles available that you haven't read yet. I enjoyed the recent mailbag especially. His NBA column was also good for getting caught up. I'm disappointed with how my NBA fantasy team is looking while I've been away. Looks like buying into the hype on Josh Smith, Steve Nash's bad back, and my lack of frontcourt depth behind Chris Bosh is going to hurt me pretty bad.
Poker
Ugh, the poker world continues its death spiral as Iggy is retiring Guinness and Poker, and Luke is applying to business school. Best wishes to both of them. Life away from the felt is good. I don't really miss Party Poker at all, but I do admit that I miss those $10 buy-in dealer's choice games we played all night in college. That was the poker I loved, and that I never really found while clicking a mouse.
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