The Adventures of Chris

A lot of this weekend was spent shopping.

The first stop was Nordstrom for the half yearly women and children’s sale. I like Nordstrom, but I think it’s funny how the women and children get their own sale, where the entire store is being ransacked except for this little island of menswear that doubles as a waiting room for men waiting for their wives. Susan looked at shoes and purses and I gave input. I spent a solid 10 minutes looking at these two purses that somehow looked different when they hung from a hook. On a Nordstrom-related note, I always associate the mens section with one brand - Faconnable. I never heard of that brand until I saw it Nordstrom, and whenever I see some item of clothing there, the same sequence of events happens:

(1) Ok, this [item] looks decent….

(2) It’s Faconnable…I wonder how much it cos…WHAAAAT?

Anyway, we followed that up with a trip to Banana Republic, where I spent 7 seconds in the mens section and the rest of the time in the womens section. BR is really pissing me off now. 100 dollars for a shirt. Give me a break. A few bucks more and you can get a Hugo Boss shirt….or a whole jacket.

Then we went through Americana. They have this water show that is like a mini version of the Bellagio show. It’s not bad. Then we went through H&M, and even though I have a standing theory that every American clothing chain’s most unkempt store is always in Glendale, the H&M seemed more orderly than I thought, and the men’s section had the widest selection of really [slim fitting] suiting I’ve seen in a while. Other than that, Americana was only ok. I don’t understand the Johnny Rockets knock off burger joint’s existence and location. I’m also mad because Americana caused Barnes and Noble to close its original Glendale location, which was a lot more convenient to access. On a higher note, my favorite brand name to say is Lululemon Athletica. It’s like that first word could potentially go on forever. Try it. Lulululululululululululululemon Athletica.

The next day was spent at REI, where Susan and I shopped for hiking boots. I think hiking is one of the more confusing and overly broad words that describe physical activity. It could mean you walked around the park for 10 minutes, but it could also mean that you walked uphill for 100 miles through a snowy mountain range at 15,000 feet while fending off bears. How can those two things fall under the same umbrella?  Anyway, the shoes that we tried on were more for the latter form of hiking than the former. They were these big, armor-like boots that looked ultra-solid. They made me feel as if I could kick through a brick wall with them or deflect bullets with them.

I settled on a pair in 20 minutes. Susan took considerably longer. Hiking boots are tough to choose because any uncomfortable aspect of a hiking boot will be magnified over the course of a long distance hike. You start a hike thinking “that part of my shoe rubs my ankle funny” and you end the hike looking down and seeing a bloody sock and your ankle looking like a raw piece of meat. So hopefully that won’t happen to us. We also got some super socks and super underwear. By super I mean odor resisting and quick drying.
We’ve got a lot more stuff to get.

Today I couldn’t find a newspaper to buy. In a way, I’m actually happy about that.

I know there are countless people who are euphoric and thrilled about Obama winning. I’m too low-key to be euphoric. What I am, though, is happily and quietly amazed in a way that I’ve never been in my life. I know that every angle of the shattered race barrier has been covered, and, of course, I’m really glad about that. But I will never forget about this election is the electricity and collective spirit in the air during these last few months, and especially in these last few days.
I am a pessimistic person who is getting more pessimistic by the day. And as I get more pessimistic, the one thing that I’ve come to realize is that, when it comes to politics, and even their own country, most people don’t care about anything anymore. Despite my own growing pessimism, even I know that apathy is terrible. In a way, it’s worse than anger or sadness, because it means you’re past being angry or sad. It means that you think that your anger or sadness won’t mean anything.

On election night, I was sitting at work with three co-workers who were all McCain supporters. One of them broached the (dangerous and touchy) topic of politics. It was a friendly discussion, but it quickly became evident that it was clearly 3 on 1, and I was on my own. They asked me why I voted for Obama, and initially, I didn’t give the greatest answers. I started out by explaining how I can’t vote Republican now because I can’t bear the thought of being on the same “team” as right wing religious conservatives. I explained that I don’t believe in “originalist” Constitutional interpretation, and, that with at least two liberal Supreme Court justices close to retirement, I didn’t know if McCain would be able to defy his right wing base and appoint liberal or even moderate judges to replace them. I explained that voting Republican would go against my stance on gay rights and abortion. In short, I was making “party line” arguments and explaining why I’m a liberal. I wasn’t explaining why I voted for Obama. My coworkers seemed to enjoy that (but the truth is, I am a party lines voter and those issues are really important to me).

So I focused more on Obama. I explained how I really admired Obama’s perfectly run campaign and that his campaign, at the very least, showed me that he was capable of planning and executing something perfectly (even if he sucks as a president, no one can say that his campaign wasn’t the best run campaign in the modern era, if not history). I talked about how I liked his message of unity and that eight years ago, I remember feeling like the whole country was practically cracking down the middle, wondering if anything could get accomplished in such a divided country (then in 2004, the country almost snapped in half…). I talked about how, even though I know Obama is arrogant, I think that one smart person who is a little arrogant can be more effective than a party whose members are a little too ignorant.

But as I thought about it more, I realized that the one thing that made me want to vote for Obama was that he lit a fire under so many people. He made hordes of people believe that their efforts and feelings mattered. He made them think, at least for a moment, about something bigger than themselves.

I got a lot of flak from the three McCain supporters at work on this. They dismissed Obama’s supporters as “starry-eyed” people who were taken in my prepared speeches full of empty rhetoric. But I don’t care if Obama’s supporters are starry eyed who have been suckered by (really eloquent) rhetoric. After all, presidential campaigns are nothing but rhetoric-filled contests anyway. What I do care about is that Obama has done something I’ve never seen any individual do before. He not only made legions of people care about politics and their country, he pulled them out of their own self-absorption and apathy. And the bottom line is, I think that this, above all else, has earned him a shot at being President.

That, and the fact that he got me to restart my blog.

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