Online Pride

I noticed yesterday that someone chose the Silver Moon iris picture as their favorite on Flickr. For some reason, a random person across the world liking the picture and "favoriting it" gave me a brief moment of pleasure.

On a related note, I enjoyed an article in this morning's Chronicle about the MySpace.com site for one of our two Democratic candidates for governor. Phil Angelides strikes me as the quintissential dry candidate (like the aptly named Gray Davis). His oppponent is Steve Westly, the quintessential Silicon Valley rich guy (including shady stock trading, of course) who made his money at eBay. However, Angelides has a 17-year-old daughter who is clued-in enough to set up a MySpace site for him:

"OMG it's Phil Angelides," she wrote. "I love that guy! He's pretty fly for a white guy if you ask me," she added, playing off lyrics of the Offspring tune.

"Pretty fly for a white guy?" Angelides said in the time-honored tone of fathers who are bewildered by their teenage daughters.

Campaign handlers have to learn how to cope in the brave new world, too. Her personal MySpace site is now private after the reporter clicked on the link to it.

There was nothing horrible or embarrassing there (although her friend Nicholas could clean up his language a little bit). Arianna says "I despise George Bush" and "I double dog dare you to find someone with smaller hands than me." There also are some photos, including a cute, informal one of Arianna and her dad at the father-daughter high school dance.

Yeah, well, Angelides could use some humanizing in my book, so this only helps him. And how bad could he be if his 17-year-old despises W?