Now I'm angry again.

On the day after Obama "comes out" for gay marriage, stories circulate that Mitt Romney bullied gay kids in his school class.  Yes, this was a long time ago, but this sort of behavior goes to the core; it's expressed in meanness during debates and casual indifference to family pets.  Once a bully always a bully.

The main story getting press is that there was a gay boy in Romney's class who got a new blonde hairdo.  Romney led a posse that cornered the kid and held him down, screaming for help, while Romney personally chopped off his hair with a pair of scissors.  And then Romney laughed.  This is the sort of hatcrime that leads gay kids to commit suicide (though, luckily, it didn't in this case).

But there were other cruelities, too, leveled at classmates by Romney.  Whenever another gay boy spoke out in class, it was Romney who said, "Attagirl."

The most horrifying incident was when Romney pretended to hold open a door for a blind teacher.  But he didn't actually open the door, and ushered him into walking straight into the closed door.  And that was a teacher.  A blind teacher.

At no time did Romney ever receive so much as a reprimand for any of these.  Instead, Romney cackled in laughter after each event, just as he cackled recalling driving with a dog strapped to the roof of his car.

These stories are detailed in today's Washington Post. 

The contrast couldn't be clearer.  Obama is the nice guy, the hero fighting for the poor, the downtrodden, the minorities, the gays.  Romney was - and is - the asshat who bullied kids - and teachers - mercilessly.

And got away with it every time.  Just like he bullied his Republican opponents and Obama, with lies and deceit and ever-changing stories and plain meanness.

Don't let Romney get away with it this fall. 

Would you want the bully of your sixth grade class elected President?

Since he left office in 1993, fromer vice president Dan Quayle's been working in a Chinese restaurant.

Once you create a huge beast, you must continually feed it.  So... Lucas has created this Star Wars toy empire which, like all businesses, must grow or die.  You must continuously churn out new product that people will want to buy, or else sales will drop, investors will be disappoint, and shareholders will rebel against you as the evil emperor.  Problem is that we've all bought the X-Wings we want, we've all got a Millenium Falcon (or two or three or four).  What else is there left?  I thought we were scraping the bottom of the barrel with some minor ships and characters from the prequels and the Clone Wars show, but now, here comes...

Yes, it's a figure of Colonel Cracken. 

Who?  He's a member of the Millennium Falcon crew.

Really? I don't remember that.  Well, the reason you don't remember.  Look at the logo over his legs.  He is only in a DELETED SCENE.

Yes, Lucas is so desperate for new product that they are selling figures from the deleted scenes. 

The chutzpah.  But yet... I wish that someday on the Guidolon project or the Rev60 project we get to a point wherein we are so desperate for new toys that we have to push things that we're even included in the releases.  And people will buy them.  That'd be an awesome problem to have.

Whew.  We are back from MiniCon.  It's been a whirlwind couple of weeks, wherein we were away at a patent law conference, then Universal Studios, then Disneyworld, then back to Boston for a day and a half before whisking off to Minicon, from which we returned last night.

MiniCon was great!  As GOHs, Brianna and I did all these panels.  Bri did a fabulous presentation on her videogame Revolution60, showing off these excellent cut-scenes.  She was also on a couple interesting panels on gender in videogames and iOS game development!  I did a panel on my own art, wherein I was interviewed by Dave Romm (who's interviewed me years and years before, I think at Torcon).  But for me the highlights were a presentation of the opening of the new graphic novel work on Guidolon the Giant Space Chicken, as narrated by Chris Garcia (also a GOH, and the voice of Guidolon!).  I also did panels on What's New in the World of Dinosaurs, and The Art and Science of Spaceships!  Yeah!

It was really a blast.

I posted this comment on the Minicon lj site:

A big hearty THANK YOU from Brianna and me to everyone involved in Minicon, esp. Joel as chair, Anton as the guy who carted us around and got me emergency Cokes, Emily and Diane who made sure all the AV stuff was set up, Van who was just awesome in general, Alec who carted me around to get last-minute Revolution60 prints made, Peter who did tremendous work at the art show, Dave Romm who interviewed me and hosted that seder we couldn't attend because we were starving and had to go get food, and everyone else who ran the con, plus all the awesome people who attended especially that one guy (whose name I forget - please somebody tell me!) who knew all the technical stuff about spaceships and answered every trivia question I asked, Jocelyn who came up to me and told me that she'd bought a print of "Love is the Plan - The Plan is Death" at the 2002 worldcon (thus becoming one of the very first people to ever support me in my art career - thanks!), and everyone else we talked to, played Zar with, or just hung out with.  We love you all!  (And apologies to anyone I should have mentioned here but forgot.)

People have asked me if they could get copies of the PowerPoint presentations.  And, yes you can!

Even if you weren't at the con, or were there but had other things you needed to do, you can download the presentations here:

The new Guidolon graphic novel (the opening):  https://www.yousendit.com/download/M3BuV0oxaTFPSHcwTWRVag

What's New in the World of Dinosaurs and Other Extinct Forms: http://www.yousendit.com/download/M3BuV0oxaTFGR0d4djhUQw

The Art and Science of Spaceships: 
 https://www.yousendit.com/download/M3BuV0o2a0QzeUl3anNUQw


Yeah!  Also, if you were at Minicon, please feel free to friend me or to drop me an email at FWu@frankwu.com (of course, remind me who you are because we might not be able to associate a name with a face)!

I haven't posted any art for a while, so here ya go.

This is a painting of a panel from the Guidolon graphic novel, wherein Jerora the giant space jellyfish battles the IJN Nagato (IJN = Imperial Japanese Navy).  During World War II, it was the ship from which Admiral Yamamoto gave the command to attack Pearl Harbor.  Later, the Nagato fought in the battle of the Leyte Gulf, and was later so damaged that it could only do shore defense.  After the war, the Allies hauled its carcass (it had to be repaired again on the way) to the Bikini Atoll, where it survived one atomic blast and then was sunk after another.  You know those videos of the bomb explosion at sea with all the test ships engulfed by a huge blast?  The Nagato was one of them, really close in.

In the Guidolon universe, after the war, it was raised, decontaminated, and once again put on duty defending the Japanese coastline.  And then it was attacked again by a nuclear terror, this time in the form of a radiation-enlarged jellyfish named Jerora.  Sunk twice by nuclear horror.  Poor little battleship.

Way to go, Mitt.

It pretty much looked like Mitt Romney had the nomination in the bag.  Not literally, not mathematically, but by all indicators, in the bag.  What with a blow-out win in Illinois, closely following an even-bigger blow-out in Puerto Rico.

And then this.

In case you can't see the video, Eric Fehrnstrom, Mr. Romney’s senior adviser, was questioned if Romney was tacking too far right to win the nom, so that he would not appeal to moderates in the fall. Fehrnstrom said that Mr. Romney’s fall campaign as the nominee would be “almost like an Etch a Sketch — you can kind of shake it up and restart all over again.”

A lot of Democrats are overjoyed by this confession - it essentially reiterates everything we think we know about Romney - that he will take any position, say anything, do anything, to meet whatever goal is immediately in front of him.  He'll pretend to be a moderate to win an election in Massachusetts, then pretend to be a conservative to win a primary, and then pretend to be a moderate to win the general this fall.  He basically stands for nothing (unlike, say, Santorum or Reagan).  Which means that the powerful forces that put him in office will feel not compunction about pulling his strings and getting him to say or do whatever they want him to after he's elected - just like they did with George W. Bush (oh, and, thanks, Mr. Romney, for reminding us about W. yesterday).

I knew that's what I thought.  I wanted to hear what the conservatives thought about it.

It wasn't any better.

I listen to Jeff Katz on AM 1200 on the way to work because he's a more thoughtful and non-ranting talking head than, say, Sean Hannity, who continually and repetitiously unloads nonsense about Obama.  Jeff Katz, over the last few weeks, has come to the spot of not particularly liking Romney, because he's not conservative enough, but conceding that he had to throw his weight behind him because he's better than Obama.  He's never really liked the guy, though.  Katz made the good point that if Reagan had said this, it wouldh've been no big deal, no one questioned his conservatism.  But Romney...

And this morning, as caller after caller tried to midigate the damage (he didn't mean that... he could have phrased it differently... everyone will forget about it before November...) Jeff would have none of it.  It basically means that conservatives like him simply can't trust Romney.

On the show, Glen Beck made a surprise appearance (Beck's show wasn't scheduled to start until later) and Beck had this to say about the remark: "It punches me in the face."  About Romney he said: "He's done."  Why? Because the remark reveals his true nature: "It is who he is."  His conclusion?  Will he support Romney in the fall? "I don't know if I can do it."

Wow.  In Illinois, Romney had, for the first time, posted convincing numbers against Santorum among conservatives.  Now he's just slapped them all in the face.

The race looked it was essentially over.  Not any more. 

After finally ushering them into his pocket, they're all about to spill out again.  Democrats have already released an ad.  Gingrich handed an Etch-a-Sketch to a kid at a rally and said, Now you can be a presidential candidate.  Santorum's campaign released a foto of El Santo playing with an Etch-a-Sketch with the caption: Santorum studying Romney's political positions. A nice collection of videos is here.  (If you watch the videos you'll see a wonderful commentary about Romney's alleged inconsistencies: Truth be told, he's a millionaire governor who's the son of a millionaire governor who's never really given a flip about anyone but him and other rich people, willing to screw the little people and send their jobs to China for a dime - and on that he's been remarkably consistent.)

This is not going to die, not going to go away.  This is Walter "I'm gonna raise your taxes" Mondale bad.  Dukakis riding in a tank bad. 

To give you a sense of the scale of this fiasco, go to blogsearch.google.com.  Search for Romney + Obamacare and you get 14.4 million hits.  Search for Obama + Etch-a-Sketch and you get 16.2 million hits.  Tens of millions of people are talking about this. 

They even dragged out Mitt's wife Ann to try to clean up this mess.  The reason she has to is, well, because anything that he says will contradict something he's said in the past.  There is literally nothing that he can say to fix this.  That's why it's such a disaster.  Anything that he says to clarify his positions or deny being a flip-flopper just confuses the issue and elevates the problem.  It's political death on a cracker. 

And now if he wins, which is suddenly in doubt because of one dumb sentence, this WILL come back in the fall.  Expect to see lots of Etch-A-Sketches handed out everywhere Obama goes.

Oh oh oh: Now Rachel Maddow on this issue.  It turns out that Etch-a-Sketches used to be made in Ohio, and then the jobs were exported to China.  The conditions were so bad and pay so poor, that there were protests.  But the Ohio Arts company said it couldn't bring the jobs back to the U.S. - because the toystores were putting price pressure on them.  And the toystores?  Owned by Mitt Romney's Bain Capitol.

Notice that I am spelling out the word A*S*S*H*O*L*E and not pulling my punches by typing "A++hole" or "A@@hat" to make it funny.

No.  Mitt Romney is an asshole.

The story: Remember when Mitt Romney was governor of Massachusetts?  Remember, that was when the Big Dig was going on.  This was a massive, massive infrastructure project to take a major highway that goes through and OVER Boston and re-route it so it goes UNDER Boston.  It connects Boston (and all surrounding areas of the country) to Logan airport, one of the major airports on the East Coast.  You may have heard of it.

The Big Dig is Exhibit A in FUBARing a publics work project.  It was massively over-budget (the initial cost estimate of less than 3 billion ballooned to over 14 billion).  It was massively delayed, with shoddy workmanship and substandard materials throughout. 

In May 2006 (the chronology is important) a concrete contractor (Aggregate Industries) was indicted.  Not just randomly accused of wrongdoing, but indicted, meaning people going to jail.  They had been caught re-using old concrete.  The deal is that you have to pour concrete within 90 minutes of mixing it, or it starts to harden and goes bad.  They were recycling old concrete that wasn't poured in time and had to be tossed.  On busy days, they had literally hundreds of concrete trucks lined up to pour, and much of that concrete sat in the trucks for way more than 90 minutes before it was poured.  And they lied about it and falsified records and double-billed the state.  Perhaps one out of every 100 concrete slabs (these things weigh several tons each) was made with faulty concrete.
 
Eventually there were indictments and the company had to return $100 million to the state.  But that wasn't the only direction money flowed.  Money also flowed back to the concrete company from the governor, Mitt Romney, whose campaign had accepted $3900 from them.  

So the then-governor Mitt Romney was in bed with shoddy suppliers on the worst-run publics work project of all time, which he was ultimately in charge of overseeing. Oops.

But I haven't even gotten to worst part yet.  Mitt Romney at the time said that "No one in Massachusetts should be surprised to learn that a project so badly mismanaged, over budget, and grossly delayed is now also facing allegations of criminal misbehavior."  

The weird thing about that statement about mismanagement was that Romney was ultimately in charge.

Perhaps they were too distracted by the quality of the concrete, and the THOUSANDS of leaks, and the mediocre 2005 interim report - too distracted by all those problems to worry about the bolts and the epoxy glue holding the cement slabs to the ceiling.  

That's what led to several concrete slabs, weighing several tons each, falling from the ceiling of a tunnel and crushing a car.  This was in July 2006, just two months after the concrete fiasco (and four months before the next election).

This woman was killed:



Her name was Milena Del Valle, and she was 38, and she was crushed by falling concrete slabs.  She was riding in the front passenger seat, and her husband miraculously survived and crawled out through the window of the crushed car.  If she had been driving, he would have been killed. 

(As a side note, I drive through these tunnels all the time.  I last drove through them twice last Friday to pick up Brianna at Logan.)

And now we get to the part wherein Mitt Romney shows that he is an asshole.

Mitt Romney came rushing back from vacation after the accident and immediately "took charge" of the situation.  He closed the entire system to traffic (admittedly a good move) and called for a complete safety inspection of the whole system.  Another good move, though one wonders why a complete safety inspection hadn't been done before.  He took no responsibility for the collapse, but instead threw the head of the MTA (Mass. Transportation Authority) under the bus, blaming him for everything.

And the supreme dick move?

When Milena Del Valle's husband Angel and their family wanted to hold a press conference (which would have been a huge deal, because the whole fiasco had turned into a media circus), they wanted to do it at a convention center, because they needed the space.  And Romney - who had been using the accident to show himself to be the awesomest crisis manager - had his people step in and say that Milena Del Valle's survivors would have to pay the standard fee of $20,000 to use the convention center space.  To discourage them from doing so - because it might make Mitt look bad. 

First, through their mismanagement and continual bungling they cause her death and then they spit on her grave by demanding that her family pony up $20K so they can do their press conference.

That makes me mad.

Here, check it out:

Romney budget chief Thomas Trimarco wrote this: “(Massachusetts Convention Center Authority chief) Jim Rooney just called to say Del Valle reps are at new conv cntr looking to rent space for Wed. press conference. ... The normal charge is ($)20,000 ... I suggest they be treated no differently than any other user of the facility and hope the upfront cost would deter them from renting high cost state facility for their media circus."

And that is the the vilest example of self-centered politicking and spitting on the victims that I can think of.

All this came out the emails that were recently released from Romney's time as governor.

And the political fallout of the Big Dig fiasco (which, I really hope, has been fixed) continues today.  The current Massachusetts governor is Deval Patrick, who won election in November 2006 (just a few months after the fiasco).  Why did he win?  Well, Romney for some reason decided not to run again.  And his lieutenant governor, Kerry Healey, did run - and lost to Patrick.  One small contributing factor to that was a point raised by one of the other candidates (Christy Mihos, who ran as an independent).

Boston Phoenix reporter Adam Reilly noted: "[Mihos] basically said [to Lt. Gov. Healey], 'You and Mitt Romney are responsible for Milena Del Valle's death, in so many words."

(I post this partially because I think I'm awesome, and partially because I'd like mechanically-minded readers to check my work.)

Oh noes! 

The control panel in the front of the Frigidaire range has come loose! I'm trying to turn on the oven and the control panel just... falls in when I push on it.  The range is just over a year old, surely out of warranty.  It'll cost 75 bucks or more just to have a repairman walk in the door.  We got better things to spend 75 bucks on; we are making a video game, after all.



After I turned off the circuit breaker, pulled forward the range and unscrewed the back panel, the problem was clear.



There are four cheap little plastic ears (blue circles) that hold the control unit in place, screwed into screw holes (green circles).  Notice that there is nothing inside the blue circles?  Those little plastic ears are broken off.  Disaster, y'all!

My solution?  I had some leftover metal bits from when I made that chain link fence.  The unmodified piece is the one shaped like an R.  I made a complexly bent brace to hold the unit in place.  



The big bends are so that the metal brace doesn't touch any of the metal components of the control unit.  I don't know what they all do, but I suspect that metal touching metal would be bad here.  The extra bend that I'm pointing at serves two purposes - it pushes the unit forward (when you press on it from the front that pushes it back). Also, that bend makes something so that the upper lip of the unit can rest on - so the unit doesn't drop down.

I also made two other little hooks for the bottom two screws.

And voila!

The first brace is in place.  



Sharp-eyed readers will notice that the bent metal has holes slightly larger than the screwheads - so I used thin bits of plastic from a WWI tank model kit to act as washers.  And now the littler ones.  



Yeah!  It totally works.  No smoke, no flames, no nuthin'.  And then the reward!

For all the brouhaha about Romney being the worst frontrunner in recent history (which he probably is, and here's some more stats to show how he's less popular among Republicans that McCain was in 2008)...

For all that brouhaha, Santorum has to the weakest second-runner in memory.  Every time he's given the spotlight, he just... shoots himself in the face.  (Not literally, of course, and I am, for the record, not advocating any violence or self-violence against any candidate, politician or any other human being for that matter.)

The Republican primary is the battle of th midgets!  (Note: For the record, I have nothing against midgets, dwarves, short people, etc. etc. etc.)

Look - Santorum starts winning primaries, and the media turn to him to see what's on his mind.  What's he thinking?  Contraceptives are bad.  B.A.D. Bad.  What?  Nothing about fixing the economy?  About creating jobs? J.O.B.S.?  Uh, no, he'd rather talk about contraceptives.

Fine.  OK, Mr. Santorum, now that you've pulled off surprise wins in Alabama and Mississippi, what do you want to talk about now?  You've got the nation's ear.  Well... First of all, everybody in Puerto Rico better be learning English if they want to become a state.  Oh, well, so much for winning Puerto Rico.  What else you got, El Santo?  Wanna talk about jobs now?  No, because porn is bad.  B.A.D.

Pron? WTF?

Can we talk about jobs?  Nope.

No, because the only way that America will be restored is by returning to strict family values.  And pron distracts us with lust and makes you covet and lust after people other than your partner.  Yes, that is true, and it certainly can be destructive, but...

Obama wants the government to intrude into your life to, well, maybe make sure you all have health care coverage and can go to college.  And your kids have teachers and there's a cop around if someone attacks you, or a fireman if your house burns down.  Oh, and roads to drive on.  El Santo wants the government to intrude into your life to make sure you're not taking the Pill.  Or watching Pron. 

What's next?  Is El Santo going to come down on, say, women working outside the home (because that takes away time from feeding the baby)?  Or maybe R-rated movies.  Or cable TV, because it shows R-rated movies. 

Or swearing.  That's bad.  Because it's not what goes into your mouth that defiles you, but what comes out.

Or videogames.  Because sex and violence are bad for you.  (Videogames also teach "salvation by works" rather than "salvation by faith" - because, according to Christian doctrine, we are all sinners and the point of Jesus coming to earth and dying on the cross is that nothing we can do can repair our relationship with God - so that God reached down to us, because we could not reach up to him.  And Jesus' death was a way to pay for our sin (in the way that any debt needs to be paid), and all we need to do is accept it.  The good works we do are a sign of our gratitude toward God, not a way to restore our relationship with God. Anyway, that's a long-worded way of differentiating "salvation by works" and "salvation by faith."  Christianity, as taught by the Bible, is really about salvation and faith.  And videogames, because you live or die by your own actions, is salvation by works.  Except maybe "Prince of Persia," wherein whenever you screw up and are about to fall to your death Ellika reaches down and saves you.  Santorum would like that, because Ellika is a symbol of God reaching down to save us.)

Or maybe Santorum will come down on "Star Trek," because it teaches you secular humanism.  (Wherein you rely on your own ingenuity and pat yourself on the back for your own cleverness, rather than relying on God.  Note: The Christian workaround is that your brain is a tool gifted to you by God, so being clever is a way to use your God-given talents.) 

Or football.  Yeah, football's evil because it distracts you from focusing on God on Sunday, which is not Fun day, you know. 

But, I dunno. 

To quote Henry V:  If little faults proceeding on distemper shall not be winked at, how shall we stretch our eye, when capital crimes, chewed, swallowed and digested appear before us?

If everything is bad, nothing is bad.

Maybe he should start talking about jobs.  I think we'd like that.  And he'd probably do better in the upcoming Illinois primary.  Anybody want their old Sunday school teacher to be President?

The second half first:

2. This just in: The Gingrich camp is floating the idea of a Santorum-Gingrich ticket.  NOT, you might notice, a Gingrich-Santorum ticket.  Which would be an insult to Santorum (esp. after last night), and would never fly.  Just like Gingrich offered Perry the bottom half of the ticket yesterday, and Perry say, thanks but no thanks.  Rember how when Hillary was behind Obama in the primaries last time around, and she offered Obama the bottom half of the ticket?  He said no then, too.

But Santorum saying yes?  Wow.  They could combine delegates.  Then Santorum's not so far behind, after all.  It's not Romney (about 495) being at over twice Santorum (234), but... Romney ahead but not by an insurmountable lead (Romney 495, Santorum-Gingrich 376).

(This assumes that Gingrich can convince his delegates to stay with him on a Santorum-Gingrich ticket.) 

It also means that Gingrich is looking for a way out of the campaign.  He's a politician.  You don't give away something unless you get something in return.  His bargaining chip with El Santo is that he argues that if Santo doesn't pick him, then he stays in, bleeding both El Santo and RMoney all the way.

Because if he does stay in...

1. Romney wins enough delegates. Before the convention.  Probably.

We are not even at the half-way mark of delegates selected.  The math does favor Romney, though.  He has about 495, and needs 1144, or about 649 more, out of the 1351 left - about 48% of the remaining delegates. Joke all you will about his primary wins in Guam, American Samoa, Virgin Islands and Marianas - but his clean sweeps there netted him +34 delegates, which more than compensated for Santorum's gains in Alabama and Mississippi (+9). 

The big problem for El Santo is the winner-take-all states coming up.  The number of winner-take-all states that favor Santorum is small (inc. Wisconsin), but those favoring Romney are many, including the biggest prize of all, California at 172, for a total of 351.  El Santo's best bet is to take Gingrich bleed off some delegates from Romney in the next few proportional-delegate states, but THEN plead for Gingrich to leave the race BEFORE the next big winner-take-all states (Maryland and DC, April 3).  (If Gingrich doesn't bow out before California on June 5, then the conservative vote is split and Romney wins.  I actually think the conservo vote has a chance in California.  It's not as blue as you think - the blue is mostly in Los Angeles and San Francisco, with lots of red in between.  The so-called Inland Empire, for example, with huge amounts of rural farmland.  And the blue's not voting in California's closed Republican primary. If Gingrich drops out, El Santo has a realistic shot, with all his momentum, at taking California.  Unless he does, Romney wins outright.)

The other scenario is that El Santo becomes the popular favorite, but Romney wins the most delegates.  Then, well, Joe Republican will be about as happy with that as someone winning the White House in the electoral college, despite winning the popular vote (good thing THAT's never happened).

Bottom line?

El Santo's best hope to either block Romney or win the nomination outright is to accept Gingrich's offer, in exchange for Gingrich's delegates and agreement to leave the race.  But it's got to be done quickly, before April 3, or two-and-a-half-weeks from now.