Day 282: The Union's State

Today was a governmental day for me. In that I saw both the newly Oscar nominated The Queen and watched the State of the Union Address.

Helen Mirren's excellent performance in The Queen was based upon the revoluationary idea that Queen Elizabeth had to change her approach to her country following Princess Diana's 1997 death. Princess Diana being someone that the Queen was pretty mcuh not a fan of. Specifically, Helen Mirren as Queen Elizabeth needed to admit that she had been wrong about some of the ways she had been handling Diana's death in Britain, fess up, and finally come out in public and talk about it. (And she had to take the advice of Tony Blair and the public to do this.)

To highlight: before her transformation she appeared more sad about a dead deer at her country home than Princess Diana's death. After said transformation, however, she offered to place the flowers of one commoner (a small girl at a memorial) on the memorial. Wow!

The fact that she transforms, however, is not that remarkable. In fact, some could argue that there has never been a book or movie in the history of the world wherein the protagonist does not change in some way. At least not any good ones.

So I was thinking about this still when the State of the Union address began. Since the movie ended at 6:06, and I am in California, I did not have to wait more than three minutes before our President ad-libbed (the news said it wasn't in the original) a congratulations to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Nicely, the president said that he was proud to take the honor of thanking, for the first time, a "Madam" Speaker.

However, 49 minutes and 62 applause interuptions later, I felt pretty much that I had seen more of the same. If only a bit gloomier this time around. It ended on a high note, of course, but only because we have some really neat people in our country. Wesley Autrey, the man who saved the seizing guy from the train, was there, and he looked extremely touched by all the attention. Next to him, however, his daughter lay sleeping.

I was on her side - I was bored hearing the same thing again and again. Without getting too political, suffice it to say that sometimes the best thing to do in life is admit you're wrong, listen to people who are smarter than you are, and remove yourself (responsibly) from the mess you've created.

Lara and I should know, because this is what we do with Andy and Jonathan, who regularly fix the HTML-infused disasters we create on our blog. Today, please note

a. the new banner of an Egypt pic
b. this new widget at the end of th epost that you can link to your own website with