What I was struck by was a mixture of confusion and, as I later determined, idiocy.  As it turns out, Aretha was refraining “Let it ring,” which I suppose should’ve been painfully obvious to any decent patriot. Why I choose to highlight this moment: among all the hubbub, my mishearing mirrored the general ludicrous clusterfuckery of the day: We were pissed off with the some 240,000 ticket holders that Congress meted out (but luckily weren’t turned away). We were among the record numbers of cattle-to-the-slaughter metro riders. And yet it was all worth it to witness, in the frostbitten flesh, a historic moment so I can count myself as a primary source.

We made our way over to the Inauguration around 9:30, crossing over carless highways and swigging the last remaints of last night’s Cap’n Morgs in public.  We were “silver” ticket holders, which meant that we would’ve been able to nuzzle up with the Reflecting Pool and see the black speck of Obama’s semblance, had we managed not to stay up until 6 in the morning. By the time we arrived  (12:04, to be exact), fellow silvers had managed to pack all the way up to the Pool — so we were left to squint at massive TV screens.

The ceremony was typical at times, and Obama’s speech fell under that specter, unfortunately. Aretha sang. Yo-Yo Ma and Ithzhak Perlman played. Elizabeth Alexander poemed. Leaving the place before the parade proved difficult, as many  other participants had the exact same idea. We ended up wandering to the opposite side of town we wanted, laboring under misconceptions about the DC grid system. Apparently, M St. SW does not turn into M St. NW. Who knew?

Right before I got back to my trusty MacBook to sit down and write this, I remarked that I was confused about what Aretha was saying at the end of her song. John-David corrected me, as he is one of those clever patriots who attends College Dems meetings. But I still want to believe that she said “Let it rain.” Obama is replacing an administration that might be handily compared to a drought: arid desert wars, an illiquid economy, and the complete lack of a presidential sex scandal. (Thanks for sowing your seeds in the barren sands, Clinton.) Maybe a young, hip Obama-ministration can wash away the stodgy second chapter of the Bush era… If not, let’s hope Michelle finds her own little intern manservant to make it with. How’s that for change?

UPDATE: Even more pictures!

What is Net(work) Neutrality (NN)? It’s kind of complicated, but PCMag.com says it “states that all traffic be treated equally… that packets are delivered on a first-come, first-served basis regardless from where they originated or to where they are destined.” Basically, NN would have Internet Service Providers (ISPs) like Time Warner not be able to discriminate torrent-downloading traffic from mp3-downloading traffic from whatever. Unfortunately for us ‘Nets-lovin’ kids, Mitrano suggested that Net Neutrality and other internet issues — most notably archaic copyright laws — are not really election issues.

“I’ll vote for the first candidate who utters the word copyright,” Mitrano stated, qualifying that she has been saying that “half-jokingly” for the past several months. The real joke is that copyright laws, to anyone with half a brain, are archaic and outdated, and the recording and movie industries are holding onto their ancient business models instead of keeping up with technology. But what can we informed Democrats do? “You guys haven’t gone out into the workforce and made this an issue,” she said. We’re down.

Mitrano may look like one of those cute moms whose ditzy e-mail correspondence with youngins would show up on “Postcards from Yo Momma,” but don’t let her nifty scarves fool you: she knows what she’s doing on her computer and is very much an academic type — she even teaches a popular Info Sci class called “Culture, Law and Politics of the Internet.” But that doesn’t mean she still can’t make really, really cute/insightful comments! When CornellWatch wasn’t prodding Mitrano about why lonely students hog so much bandwidth for their “romance movies,” we were scribbling down awesomecredible things that Tracy said. Some gems follow:

On internet trolls: “Sometimes people think, O-M-G people can be so mean.”

On Google turning evil and taking over the world: “It warms the cockles of my liberal progressive heart to see people interested in Google privacy issues.”

On marriage counseling**: “Like a mortician or a beautician, you will always have a job in this society.”

*For more information on the dinner-discussion series, contact the President of Americans for Informed Democracy, Lesley Hernandez (lah56@cornell.edu). You get free dinner at Alice Cook House, too, which is pretty prettty prettttty sweet.

**Why did this come up? Because Mitrano was asking us all what we wanted to do with ourselves, and one person answered that she wanted to become a marriage counselor. (I wanted to be an astronaut, but apparently that job is not always necessary in our society.)