status: I'm reading Fire in Fiction. It's actually better than I expected, much more readable than Writing the Breakout Novel.

Yesterday Japan's Liberal Democratic Party (which BTW is neither liberal nor democratic) finally lost its grip on Japanese politics. Mind you, it's taken…something like fifty years, but who's counting?

Of course not everyone's happy about it. There have been sightings of angry drunken old Japanese men screaming, “Change in bad! Any country will tell you that!”

Gad, I love this country.

P.S. I'm loving the post-election silence. No more annoying sound cars, just the dulcet tones of construction drills at 9:00 in the morning.