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First of all, I am so glad that we will not have to suffer through a McCain/Bush-in-drag administration. I was thrilled to see Obama hit 220 electoral votes before California’s polls (with our 55 electoral votes) even closed. I hope people will realize though, that change will not come easily. Obama made a lot of promises on the campaign trail that he may not be able to keep.

Now, on to California’s ballot initiatives. Good news before bad. All maps are taken from the Los Angeles Times.

Prop 1A: High Speed Trains

We’re gonna get our high speed trains! Los Angeles to San Francisco in 2.5 hours for well under what any airline can offer will soon be a reality. And the jobs that will be created to build, operate, and maintain this system are just what our economy needs. Honestly, I’m surprised it passed. I’m surprised that a lot of counties where the system will not be going through (i.e. Santa Barbara and Imperial Counties) voted in favor of it, while counties where the system would be going through (Tulare and Sacramento Counties) voted against it.

Prop 4: Parental Notification of Abortion

Also good news. Not really a surprise though, since this is the 4th time in 6 years that California voters have shot this scheme down. The Yes on 4 campaign was running some pretty reprehensible ads, implying that pedophiles (everyone’s favorite boogeyman) had a strong interest in this initiative going down, so that they could continue to get underage girls pregnant with no consequences. Conversely, they were saying, “If your daughter is taken advantage of by a sex offender, punish her with a child.” Yeah, that’s pro-life.

Prop 5: Drug Treatment

This was a surprising disappointment. Just goes to show how much influence the prison guard union has in this state.

Prop 8: Elimination of rights

This was perhaps the biggest disappointment of the night. However, that’s all it is–a disappointment. It is not the end of the world. It is not a landslide. It is not a mandate. It does create a Constitutional conflict that the courts will have to resolve. Here are some interesting bits from Wikipedia’s Prop 8 entry:

On July 16, 2008, the California Supreme Court denied a petition calling for the removal of Proposition 8 from the November ballot on the grounds it was a constitutional revision that only the Legislature or a constitutional convention could place before voters. Opponents also argued that the petitions circulated to qualify the measure for the ballot inaccurately summarized its effect. The court denied the petition without comment. The question of whether Proposition 8 is a constitutional amendment or constitutional revision remains unresolved. (emphasis mine)

So, there’s still a question about whether Proposition 8 is even valid. I don’t think it’s likely the courts will want to take this issue up anytime soon, but it’s bound to come up eventually.

According to Joan Hollinger, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, Boalt Hall School of Law, “Constitutional scholars agree that the amendment cannot be effective retroactively.” The principal reason the amendment cannot be effective retroactively is the provision of the United States Constitution that prohibits the states from enacting laws which impair the obligation of contracts in Article I, Section 10 of the United States Constitution. The Ex Post Facto clause of the Constitution generally has been construed to prohibit the enactment of statutes which impose criminal penalties on conduct not previously defined as criminal, or which increase the penalties for act after the act has been committed.

This is interesting, because it means there will be same-sex marriages recognized by the state when the law states that they will not be recognized. Basically, what Prop 8 has done is it has made it the official policy of the State of California that we hold equality under the law to be a non-negotiable right of the people… except when we don’t.

Finally, to those despairing over this loss, keep in mind that Proposition 22 passed with 61.4% of the vote in 2000. Proposition 8 is only passing by 52% with 95.4% of the precincts reporting. The people who see gays and lesbians as less than equal citizens have seen their 22.8 point lead on this issue become a 4 point lead. They have lost 18.8 points, or 82.5% of their lead in just 8.5 years. And they had to trick people with lies, hide behind children, and compare the supporters of equality to Nazis to hold on to those 4 points. If they want to celebrate that, I say knock yourselves out, guys. Enjoy those 4 points while you’ve still got them. Because if the courts don’t overturn Prop 8, the people will repeal it. Maybe not in 2010, maybe not in 2012, but it will happen. This conflict is far from over, and we have time and the best values and traditions of America on our side. We are going to keep sticking our agenda in your face, because our agenda is equality. Nothing less; nothing more. We are not going to go away. We are not going to shut up. We are not going to go back in the closet. And you cannot change that.

The weekend before the election, I have a pretty good feeling that Prop 8 will fail. Not good enough that I’m not worried. It will definitely be close, but I believe our better nature will prevail.

Let’s look at the polling history. All data is taken from the Opinion polls section of Wikipedia’s “California Proposition 8 (2008)” entry.

Except for the first poll, done back in May by independent Los Angeles television station KTLA, support for Prop 8 has not broken 50%. Only briefly in October, when the Yes campaign finally started blasting ads out of their substantial warchest, did we see them pull ahead. That too, however, was short-lived.

More interesting is this graph, which displays the point changes from one poll to the next. With the exception of the change from the first to the second poll (making the first poll suspect), there aren’t many large swings in the Yes vote. They’re only moving about 3-4 points a time. The No vote, however, appears to change by wider margins. I’m not sure if this is a good or a bad thing. On the one hand, it means No voters aren’t as committed as Yes voters. On the other hand, it means the undecideds lean towards voting No. They waffle back and forth between No and Undecided. However, that’s in the opinion polls, not the actual election, which is the only poll that really matters. I only have myself as a guide, but even when I lean towards voting Yes on a proposition, I usually don’t if I still have doubts about it. That’s a fairly conservative quality (not in a political sense, but as Barack Obama described it during last Wednesday’s interview on The Daily Show), and I suspect it’s a quality I share with most people. Furthermore, the ballot is a lot like a multiple choice test. I think a lot of people forget that they don’t have to vote either way. There is no “Abstain” box. When pressed on something they’re unsure of, I think most people will vote no. But again, that’s a personal intuition, not really based on any hard evidence.

So, to recap, these are the things in favor of those who value equality in the law:
1. Support for Prop 8 hasn’t polled above 50% since May, back when the California Supreme Court issued its ruling legalizing same-sex marriage.
2. Conversely, opposition to Prop 8 has polled above 50% in several polls.
3. Opposition to Prop 8 has polled higher than support in the last 3 polls.
4. Since mid-October, the No On 8 campaign has closed the funding gap from $10,000,000 to $1,000,000. That means more money has been donated to the No campaign than the Yes campaign over the last couple of weeks.
5. If you add up the numbers from all 12 polls and average them (which actually gives the Yes side an advantage, given that the KTLA poll’s numbers are quite a ways off from the other 11), of the 10,198 participants in the polls, 43.7% have said they would vote yes, while 49.8% have said they would vote no, leaving undecideds at 6.5%. If we throw out the KTLA poll, it breaks down 43% in favor, 50.9% against, and 6.2% undecided.

These are the only things that give me pause:
1. The last poll that showed a result outside the margin of error (#8 on the first graph, conducted by Survey USA on October 4-5) showed support ahead of opposition by 5 points. However, it also recorded undecideds at their largest number since the first poll conducted in May.
2. In the last 3 polls, the Yes campaign appears to have moved more voters to their side than the No campaign.

If I was a betting man, I’d put money on Prop 8 failing by 1 or 2 points. So get out there and vote No on Prop 8 on Tuesday!

I am so very bummed that George Carlin died of heart failure yesterday. He and Bill Hicks were probably my two all-time favorite comedians. George Carlin’s penchant for skewering humanity’s incredibly stupid shit was unmatched, and will be missed. This is a little insensitive given other recent events, but it’s still one of my favorite bits. It ends well.

Anyway, there is certainly much better coverage of this out there on the internets (the best I’ve read, so far, coming from The Nation), so I shall leave you with this:

Rat shit, bat shit, dirty old twat!
69 assholes tied in a knot!
Hooray, lizard shit, fuck!

I salute you, sir.

Jarrod has started to prefer going to the gym in the evening. I definitely prefer mornings. Evenings do not work for me. It imposes on my routine much more, especially if I go when Jarrod goes. It’s like it requires extra steps or something… extra showers, extra changing of clothing, screwing up my eating schedule, etc.

Here’s how it works in the morning, on a relaxed schedule (on days when I don’t have a training session, this can be bumped up an hour to an hour and a half):
7:00 AM: Get up, put gym clothes on, eat something.
7:40 AM: Drive to the gym, work out, come home.
9:15 AM: Shower, shave, put on decent clothes.
10:00 AM: Get to whatever work I’m doing that day.

Here’s how it works in the evening:
5:50 PM: Stop what I’m doing, change clothes
6:00 PM: Drive to the gym, work out, come home.
7:20 PM: Debate whether to shower for the second time that day and change back into other clothes, or just sit around and smell a little funky.
7:30 or 8:00 PM (depending on the shower decision): Eat dinner late, and wonder what the hell happened to my evening.

So, in the morning, it’s just something I can stick between breakfast and my shower. It’s part of my start-up routine. In the evening, it’s this whole special thing to do that takes up more time than it needs to because of the extra hygiene involved. The shower in the morning doesn’t go away just because I don’t go to the gym, but I do kinda have to add another one if I go in the evening. So, ixnay on the evening gym sessions.

Jarrod and I had our first session with a professional trainer today. No use of the weight machines. It was entirely elliptical, stretching, and stairmaster. We were apparently just dicking around on our previous visits. I am very much in favor of people who don’t know what they’re doing in a gym (such as myself) utilizing the services of a trainer. I can tell that I will make much much much more progress with Dexter’s training than I would without. In the meantime, ow.

Oh, and I was at my ideal weight when I returned from Boston in October of 2006 (though my body composition was probably off). The 20 lbs. I put on over 4 months of removing dust from pictures of pets for the publisher of Cat Fancy is what needs to come off, and that is why I hate desk jobs.

I’ve been giving a lot of thought to grad school the last few months. I really like what I’ve been finding out about Savannah College of Art and Design’s online M.A. program in Digital Photography. I’ve heard very good things about SCAD in general, and the digital photography graduate program looks like it would be a great expansion on the technical knowledge I obtained at Brooks Institute of Photography. Plus, that it’s available online is a great benefit, as that means I wouldn’t have to actually move to Georgia, and that would save me quite a bit of money. However, it is not a Master of Fine Arts degree, which is something else that I am interested in. Enter California Institute of the Arts. I know many people who have attended CalArts at the undergraduate and graduate levels. I have not always been impressed with everyone and their work, but on average I have been. My exceptionally strange friend, Stephen torrential., is a current grad student in the Creative Writing and Musical Composition programs. From the conversations with him I’ve had about CalArts, it seems like it would also make an excellent choice. In particular, the main point Stephen has made that interests me is about the conceptual focus the school has throughout its programs. That seems ideal for a graduate program. Rather than expanding on my technical background, it would compliment it. Photography is a very technical form of art, and it makes sense to me to establish a base of knowledge about the tools at the undergraduate level, and then expand into honing one’s ability to express oneself with those tools at the graduate level. And of course, the final thing in CalArts’ favor is it’s location. Being in Santa Clarita/Valencia, it is perfectly in between the two places I already spend most of my time–Hollywood and Lancaster.

Up until now, the thing that has prevented me from pursuing graduate work is the entrance portfolio. I have not been sure what work I would want to put in such a portfolio, as my work tends not to be particularly portfolio friendly. I have often described the problem with the analogy that if I were a musician, I would be the kind of musician who releases great singles, but crappy albums. However, I recently began going through various ideas I’ve had over the years for photo essays, and one in particular struck me as ideal for a grad school entrance portfolio–The Faceless Series. Without going into too much detail, it is basically a series of images in which people’s facial features have been retouched out. Of course, a failing of mine is my inability to discuss what my work means. I know what it means, but I have trouble putting it into words. That is an area I hope to improve in grad school.

On a completely unrelated subject, here’s a book review by John Dolan I found entertaining: Why Is Coke Glamorous and Heroin Scary? Because of Halfwits Like Nikki Sixx. In particular, I enjoy how Mr. Dolan channels Bill Hicks, such as in this passage:

So, naturally, God comes in when the lights go out, right there on page 384. Before he can even turn blue properly, Nikki is visited by Grace — Grace the religious epiphany, not the groupie of the same name. His unintentionally hilarious reaction to the fact that he’s been literally, physically saved is, “Maybe there is a God.”

Many an observer would have come to the opposite conclusion: Cobain kills himself and Nikki lives? There is no god.