Poetry and Scotch

Still Not Being Updated

2009-08-26T00:46:00.000-04:00

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House of War Review

2009-03-27T00:54:00.002-04:00

I'm really glad this article was in the NYTimes today (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/27/world/27military.html?hp ) because it's the necessary catalyst for writing what's possibly my longest original post on Tumblr (too long for Tumblr, moving it to Blogger) to date.

So first, go click on that link, and at least breeze through that article. If you're too lazy to do that (it's not very long) I'll sum it up for you. The Pentagon has released a report saying that China has upped its military spending, and is seeking to upset the "traditional advantage" that the US has enjoyed since the end of the Cold War. It also specifically mentions that China is looking expand its capability into space, which is relevant for reasons you'll see later.

Up until roughly two weeks ago, this article probably wouldn't have caught my attention, but now it does, and reading it makes me angry. Here's why:

I just finished (within a chapter of finished, which is as close as I usually get) House of War: The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power- a book by James Carroll chronicling the rise of the US Industrial-Military Complex since World War II (http://www.amazon.com/House-War-James-Carroll/dp/0618187804). It's one of the most amazing books I've ever read, and has done more to change my views of US Foreign Policy than anything else I've ever read, ever. I'll try to recap it through a few moderately lengthy bullet points, and try to build his argument without using the requisite 500 pages.

World War II- The book starts with the outbreak of World War II, and Army request for a new headquarters. The Army ignores FDR's command to build it within the city limits, instead choosing to build it across the river in Hell's Bottom, symbolically placing it outside the limits of Washington DC.

Carroll then moves on to an analysis of FDR's call for "unconditional surrender" at Casablanca, against the wishes of Winston Churchill:

Churchill knew that foreclosing any possible negotiation toward surrender, the Allies were making it more likely that the Axis powers would fight to the bitter end, at a huge cost in lives on both sides, resulting in a level ofdevastation that would itself be the seedbed of the next catastrophe. This was so because "unconditional surrender" could be taken by an enemy as promising the destruction not just of its armies but of its whole society.... "unconditional surrender" meant that the enemy would have no reason to mitigate the ferocity of its resistance. It was an invitation to the Germans and the Japanese, as their likely defeat came closer, to fight back without restraint, preferring to take their chances even with the brutally immoral tactics of a last stand rather than accept defeat at the hands of an enemy refusing to offer any terms whatsoever.

Specifically, this both deprived the German High Command of any reason to overthrow Hitler, and furthers complicates the Japanese situation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_cult#Japan). Also, "unconditional surrender" breaks down the objection to waging total war, a distinction held since the Middle Ages by the West.

In the Middle Ages, Christian distinguished between bellum hostile, which was war waged among Christians and according the rules of chivalry, and bellum Romanum, which was war without regulation, the sort waged against infidels. If the enemy could be defined as radically evil, then the restraints of morality did not apply.

The distinction is important, and Carroll uses it to lead into a discussion about the goals of the Allied air campaign in the final days of the war. I'm not going to reconstruct the entire argument (this is going to be a record length post as it is), but the culmination of the change in tactics leads to events such as the fire-bombing of Tokyo and Dresden, both with negligible military significance, and both possible war crimes.

Carroll then changes focus, and the middle two-thirds of the book is concerned with the development and deployment of the atomic bomb at the end of World War II, and the beginning of Cold War arms race. I'll recap Carroll's opinion on the atomic bomb briefly, and then jump into the Cold War, which is the real focus of this post.

Carroll's position on the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki is nuanced (and I believe I'm summing it up correctly as follows):

Morally, the dropping of the bomb is problematic, but a majority of the objections against its use were previously compromised (as detailed above), and use of the weapon represents a logical escalation of total war as opposed to a significant shift.
The use of the weapon (while probably wrong) was productive in providing a baseline for its capabilities, and a clear demonstration of its horror was an important check against future deployment (especially as the productive power exponentially increased, and mutually-assured destruction came into play).
The dropping of the bomb also has to be viewed against the growing threat posed by the Soviet Union. Deployment was as much a clear demonstration of US superiority against the Soviets, as an expedient end to a war largely concluded. "That the bombs would be used so precipitously- as soon as they were ready, well ahead of any possible escalation of battle casualities or invasion of Japan, and without pursuing any of the numerous positive diplomatic signals [Japanese overtures for a truce vetoed by "unconditional surrender"- read the book]- suggests that they would be equally and simultaneously be used to halt Soviet advances in Asia and Eastern Europe."

That said, let's jump to the Cold War, and the real influence of the book on my personal politics.

First, I'll recap my historical position. I've traditionally viewed the Cold War in Good vs. Evil terms; in which the free Christian democracy is forced into a dangerous arms race against the encroaching, communist antagonist until it's eventually brought to its conclusion by Ronald Reagan (RIP). While my opinion might be slightly more nuanced than that, I'm more than willing to admit that this mindset is the default for most Americans based on the context commonly understood: Soviet WWII tactics (clearing fields of land mines with troops), Stalin, 50 million dead, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bz3t4LcXwtE, Jimmy Carter, yadda yadda yadda. To be clear, I'm still pretty unequivocal in my condemnation of communism and the Soviet Union, but as Carroll shows in the book, the primary antagonist of the Cold War nuclear arms race is the US, not the Soviet Union.

First, let's start with NSC-68 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSC-68), the document that preeminently laid the ideological groundwork for Cold War policy from shortly after the war up until the 1970's. Two important things contextually for understanding it-

What is the role for the Pentagon in the post-WWII world? Obviously demobilization is called for- but serious demobilization will obviously represent an erosion of Pentagon budgets and influence (anathema to Pentagon Brass).
Deployment of nuclear weapons was controlled by Truman (i.e. civilian control in the hands of the President), and the Pentagon was arguing for the inclusion of nukes in the arsenal, similar to any other weapon.

So we're forced with an entity that is, in a sense, fighting for its own survival. Now quoting Wikipedia:

NSC-68 made the case for a U.S. military buildup to confront what it called an enemy "unlike previous aspirants to hegemony... animated by a new fanatic faith, antithetical to our own." the Soviet Union and the United States existed in a polarized world, in which the Soviets wished to "impose its absolute authority over the rest of the world." This would be a war of ideas in which "the idea of freedom under a government of laws, and the idea of slavery under the grim oligarchy of the "Kremlin" were pitted against each other. Therefore, the U.S. as "the center of power in the free world," should build an international community in which American society would "survive and flourish" and pursue a policy of containment...

Although Kennan's theory of containment articulated a multifaceted approach for U.S. foreign policy in response to the perceived Soviet threat, NSC-68 recommended policies that emphasized military over diplomatic action. Kennan's influential telegram advocated a policy of containment towards the Soviet Union. In NSC-68, it can be defined as "a policy of calculated and gradual coercion." That said, the NSC-68 called for significant peacetime military spending, in which the U.S. possessed "superior overall power"

NSC-68 is important in how significantly it changed US policy, and how completely unassailable it was during the height of the Red Scare and McCarthyism. Arguing that the US approach (initiating the arms race) was flawed was equated with being soft on communism, and being soft on communism was the fastest way to end a political or military career. Back to Carroll:

The postwar American impulse toward disarmament had grown stronger. Soldiers were sent home. Warplanes were dismantled for scrap, ships drydocked. Stringent budgets were imposed on the new Dept. of Defense... The Pentagon... had been built to be temporary, and it might have been, but those who wanted to maintain that power, and multiply it with a... thermonuclear arsenal, were "rescued" when the Soviet Union detonated its own atomic bomb in the summer of 1949.

Forrestal's demise [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Forrestal] by suicide in the same period suggested that the nascent "national security state", with an enemy it defined as if it had theological and ontological reach instead of merely imperialist ambitions, was, at least in part, founded on paranoia. At the same time, owing to the competing pressures of postwar economic dislocation and the reemergence of an instinctive American insularity, the hugely expanded military budget called for by the agitated NSC-68 was almost certainly never going to be passed by Congress. But then, as Dean Acheson- already dean on the national security state- later affirmed with brisk understatement, the Korean War "came along and saved us."

What ties all of this together (and provides some interesting parallels to today) is how the Pentagon substantiates its case for an enemy defined as in conflict both "theologically and ontologically" as a hedge against waning influence, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's recap- The Pentagon, operating separate from Washington both physically and ideologically [further detailed in the book], is fighting to gain control over the use of nuclear weapons, and for its own continued existence. So, in response to the first successful test of a Soviet nuke (1949) and the Korean War, they release NSC-68 (1950)- a self-serving document (in regards to the continued desire for budget and influence) that is the formal declaration of US Foreign policy highlighting a policy of military escalation.

However, the sensationalism of the Soviet test and the Korean War can't last forever (Korean War ends in 1953), so the Pentagon is in constant need of further justification for its budget (over 400% growth between 1947-1953). What do they turn to? The staple of Cold War rationalization, supposed weapons gap.

As early as 1954... Nitze knew America's strategic bomber force was vulnerable, and Sputnik underlined the point. Thus the Gaither Committee emphasized that America's bomber force would soon be overtaken by Soviet ICBMs. The report said that within a year the USSR would have 12 ICBMs ready for use. The Russians were two or three years ahead of of the United States...

...Nitze's Gaither Report was leaked to the press. "The Russians are coming!" was given more credence than ever, only now the Russians had a new weapon... The Washington Post declared "It pictures the Nation moving in a frightening course to the status of a second-class power. It shows an America exposed to an almost immediate threat from the missile-bristling Soviet Union."

But wait, it gets better, let's throw something familiar into the mix- doctored intelligence!

The Air Force had been the main source of all missile gap alerts, beginning in 1957 with the Gaither Committee's and including Stuart SYmington's warning that the Soviet Union by the early 1960s would have three thousand ICBMs... Soon it would be "discovered" that the actual number of deployed Soviet ICBMs was four.

Let's change sides now, and look at this from the Soviet perspective. At this point in history the Soviet Union is faced with the following realities:

No meaningful attempt or discussion regarding arms control of nuclear weapons. Any discussion (such as the Baruch Plan, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baruch_Plan) presupposed US nuclear dominance.
Open antagonism: the US used (USED!) nuclear weapons against Japan. A majority of the arms build up during the Cold War was related to strike first capability, i.e. incapacitating the enemy before he has a chance to do the same to you. So, from a Soviet perspective, not only is the US openly developing such a capability, but they've already demonstrated their willingness to deploy such weapons (albeit not on that scale).
Paranoia in the general public on a theological/ontological level.

What choice does the USSR have but to engage in the arms race? They could just give up any first strike capability, but they're still faced with the open antagonism from a nuclear capable nation opposed on theological/ontological grounds. That's asking a lot.

This is dragging, and I'm getting tired, so I'm going to wrap it up. We'll skip ahead and I'll go on my own tangents.

First, Ronald Reagan, and his "bankrupting of the USSR through the arms race." I've argued this before, but the more I think about it, the dumber this plan seems. Think about it: let's force an enemy state to develop a MASSIVE nuclear strike capability (warheads into the tens of thousands) with the intention that eventually the government will collapse from the spending. What exactly did Reagan think was going to happen with those warheads once the USSR fell? That they'd all be disassembled?

Two, and this is totally tangential, but nuclear weapons seem to me to be the ultimate counterpoint to Richard Dawkins/Christopher Hitchens and the whole science/rationalism over religion crowd. Nukes are the endgame (at least for now, until we make something worse) of violence. Sure the Crusades sucked, and are a giant blot on the history of Christianity, but the Crusades could never end the world. How many people died in the Inquisition? 5,000? How many would die in a serious nuclear confrontation between the US and Russia during the Cold War? Hundreds of millions. Bam.

Maybe I'll wrap this up later... but I doubt anyone is going to read this whole thing anyway. I'm going to bed, four feet of new snow in the mountains this week, and I'm getting up early to go ride.

New Tumble Blog

2008-07-31T01:07:00.002-04:00

I haven't updated this in years- and I probably won't ever again. However, I might update this from time to time:

http://poetryandscotch.tumblr.com/

I Can Still Hate my iPod

2007-08-25T23:58:00.001-04:00

So my digital camera can function equally well as portable storage for both PC's and Mac's simultaneously, but my freaking iPod can't. I guess this makes sense, because a sixty gigabyte portable hard drive that plays music is so much more functional when it can't be used as a sixty gigabyte portable hard drive.

Sixty Million Dollar Dream

2007-07-27T18:29:00.000-04:00

For the first time in months, I had a strong urge to post on my blog this morning. Specifically, I wanted to write a quick recap of the dream that I had just been enjoying up until the moment my alarm went off. I couldn't post it then (I obviously had something to do, why else would an unemployed person set an alarm?), so I thought about it most of the day, which will probably make the post a lot sweeter anyway.

First, I'll try to outline my dream. In my dream, I was a prison guard stationed on top of a mountain. I'm guessing it was early in the 20th century, because I was wearing a Green Mile uniform and holding a Tommy Gun. Oddly enough, the top of the mountain was some sort of desert plateau, like someone put a few acres of the Sahara on top of Mt. Rainier and then built the Afghan jail from Rambo. On orders of the warden, we were supposed to execute two prisoners to demonstrate our sweet killing device, but I never got to see the device, nor did we actually successfully kill anyone. Instead, our goal was to try to convince two prisoners to volunteer to be killed. I successfully convinced one prisoner (who was actually Michael Clarke Duncan in the dream, apparently the whole Green Mile concept was pretty fixed) to volunteer by telling him that his family would get some money for his death. However, seconds before his execution, someone told him that he was actually about to be paroled in a week. Understandably, he was pretty pissed. The dream start to get pretty nonsensical from here, as he turns into the Michael Clarke Duncan version of the Hulk, destroys the prison, and chases me down the mountain. Right before I woke up, I remember that he was on skis, and I was on a snowmobile dodging (there was a snow halfway down the mountain, obviously) and he was gaining on me. Then, my alarm went off, and I rolled over and thought, "Wow, what a freaking sweet dream!"

Then, on my hour drive this morning, I thought about it some more, and I actually think it's a pretty viable movie script. It wouldn't be a blockbuster, but it could probably open for about $15 million this first weekend, hang around in the States long enough to cover the budget, and then roll in some profit from overseas. I'll cover the basic revised plot points, suggest some actors, and you can tell me if you think it's doable.

In the interest of keeping the budget reasonable for an obvious second-tier movie, here are my rules.

No A-List actors: Besides the fact that we couldn't pay them, I don't see Denzel, Brad Pitt, Leo or Mark Wahlberg lining up to get in this movie. An exception could be make for Christian Bale, but we'd have to write in a totally new character and change the movie plot to something completely different.
No B-List actors who think they might command A-list money: Sorry Matthew McConaughey, Dwayne "the Rock" Johnson, and John Travolta- no room for you either.
No Paul Walker, unless he's willing to accept a part that doesn't involve speaking or acting. Same goes for Shannon Elizabeth, but I could write in a part for her boobs.
Anyone can direct, except for Michael Bay, Steven Spielberg, or the guy who made Face/Off.

I want marginally talented semi-recognizable actors, and the occasional A-lister who will settle for a bit part in campy movies because they're established enough that being in bad movies won't ruin their career (that could be you Steve Buscemi!). Ready? Here goes (multiple casting/plot options separated by a slash):

Eccentric warden (Christopher Walken- you know he'd do it) is pressured by overbearing Congressman (Jon Voight) to make an example of new super-jail to help discourage criminals. Needing volunteers, prison guards (Steve Zahn and Karl Urban) convince large, scary prisoner (Michael Clarke Duncan or Ving Rhames) to volunteer. Prisoner actually finds out he's about to be paroled/mother is dying/daughter is getting married, and goes berserk, killing Karl Urban with some form of blunt instrument causing other prisoner (random ethnic guy) to say "That motherf*****'s crazy, yo!/holmes!" Scary prisoner then chases remaining guard down mountain/through city/on highway/past Shannon Elizabeth's exposed breasts, causing explosions and mayhem, until remaining guard seeks out unrealistically hot, street-wise ex-girlfriend (partially ethnic actress who uses small part to launch her spread in Maxim before fading back into obscurity) for protection. They set an elaborate trap, which is somehow ruined when ex-girlfriend misses important step to sleep with acquaintance of remaining guard. Remaining guard barely escapes from prisoner, confronts ex-girlfriend (Steve Zahn's emotional range is going to surprise you here, I promise) who offers excuse of "I'm so confused/I was drunk/he had a mustache". Fed up with life, remaining guard gets careless, and is about be killed when eccentric warden (Christopher Walken) shows up to save the day. Upon recapture, eccentric warden gives emotionally charged, cliche-reliant speech, before releasing wronged prisoner to spite overbearing congressman (Jon Voight).

Genius, right? You're kidding yourself if you don't think this would make sixty million at the US box office. I want to go rent the DVD just thinking about it.

Al Gore Learns What the Rest of Us Know, Writes Book

2007-07-23T19:23:00.000-04:00

These blurbs are quoted from an article that I half-read quoting Gore's "Assault on Reason."

He fears that the media trigger in people responses that are not ‘modulated by logic, reason, and reflective thought’. He says that a manufacturing of consent has led to the hollowing-out of democracy, which means the ‘public is often persuaded to endorse and applaud policies that are actually harmful to its interests’. Gore writes: ‘Bush would not be able credibly to label a bill that increases air pollution “the clear skies initiative” – or call a bill that increases clear-cutting of national forests “the healthy forests initiative” – unless he was confident that the public was never going to know what these bills actually did.’ From this perspective, public ignorance is actually the foundation for American political life. [I used to believe that the public at large universally read most government legislation... wait, no I didn't]
‘We often make snap judgments based principally on our emotional reactions rather than considering all options rationally and making choices carefully’, says Gore. [Right, I've read Malcolm Gladwell also Mr. Gore]
He writes: ‘Many advocacy organisations – progressive as well as conservative – often give the impression that they already have exclusive possession of the truth and merely have to “educate” others about what they already know. Resentment towards this attitude is…one of the many reasons for a resurgence of the traditional anti-intellectual strain in America.’ [What? Who claims exclusive possession of truth?]

I wish I was famous so I could write best-selling books rehashing obvious arguments.

Long Time. No Post.

2007-07-19T01:56:00.001-04:00

...and I'm not really sure what is going to happen to change that. I have plenty of time, I'm unemployed!

Simple Harmonic Motion and Presidential Politics

2007-06-01T14:48:00.000-04:00

Prediction: The winner of the 2008 presidential election will be a Democrat.

Years ago, I was riding in a car back to Michigan with a friend of mine and his dad discussing the current state of American politics. While I don’t remember the exact topic, I do remember my friend’s dad’s describing how the political scales tipped back and forth between the two parties in relation to the length of time they’ve spent in office. Basically, the American populace will tolerate political hegemony for only so long, until the pendulum shifts too far in one direction that the opposite side combines with disenfranchised moderates to swing it back the other direction.

Since the introduction of term limits after FDR, the political landscape has looked like this: Truman (Democrat, 8 years) – Eisenhower (Republican, 8 years) – Kennedy/Johnson (Democrat- 8 years) – Nixon/Ford (Republican, 8 years) – Carter (Democrat/Ass Hat, 4 years) – Reagan/Bush (Republican, 12 years) – Clinton (Democrat, 8 years) – Bush (Republican, 8 years).

With the exception of the Republicans lucking into an extra term after totalitarian fellate Jimmy Carter’s run in the late seventies, three quarters of the last century have been split neatly into periods of 8 years divided between the parties. So, now the question remains: Will the trend remain intact through the next election cycle?

Judging from this article – Party Unfaithful: the Republican Implosion – in the New Yorker, the answer is a definite “maybe.” Citing the rifts in the Republican Party by setting the Bush/Rove school against Gingrich, Goldberg provides plenty of material that would seem to support a Republican loss of the Executive Branch next election.

Rove starts by punching Joel Osteen right in the face, while still attempting to steal his base:

“As baby boomers age and as they’re succeeded by the post-baby-boom generation, within both of those generations there’s something going on spiritually—people saying it’s not all about materialism, it’s not all about the pursuit of material things. If you look at the traditional mainstream denominations, they’re flat, but what’s growing inside those denominations, and what’s growing outside those denominations, is churches that are filling this spiritual need, that are replacing sterility with something vibrant, something that speaks to the heart of the individual, that gives a sense of purpose.”

Gingrich fires back:

“Let me be clear: twenty-eight-per-cent approval of the President, losing every
closely contested Senate seat except one, every one that involved an incumbent—that’s a collapse. I mean, look at the Northeast. You can’t be a governing national party and write off entire regions.” For this disarray he blames not only Iraq and Hurricane Katrina but also Karl Rove’s “maniacally dumb” strategy in 2004, which left Bush with no political capital. “All he proved was that the anti-Kerry vote was bigger than the anti-Bush vote.”

What’s left to complete this article? According to last post’s formula, non-sensical ramblings from an irrelevant ass-clown! Ladies and gentlemen, I present you Tom DeLay.

“God has spoken to me, I listen to God, and what I’ve heard is that I’m supposed to devote myself to rebuilding the conservative base of the Republican Party [by attempting to build a Republican version of Moveon.org], and I think we shouldn’t be underestimated.”

Note to Tom Delay, your colleagues aren’t God, and them removing you from your position as Majority Leader for ethics violations doesn’t mean they’re cutting you free to rub your dirty hands all over their base.

One more thing supporting a new party in power: the apperent Republican intention of granting millions of illegal aliens amnesty and citizenship so they can be promptly voted out of office.

Obama's Health Care Plan

2007-05-31T07:58:00.000-04:00

The LA Times is headlining an article on Google News about Barack Obama's plan to expand medical coverage to the uninsured. The tagline- "The Democratic hopeful's proposal lacks specifics, but he says it would cut costs while expanding coverage to everyone." Wow, sounds foolproof!

The article doesn't have much on specifics, except that consultants for Obama have stated that the plan can save up to $200 billion a year through increased efficiency.

"The plan's most far-reaching aspect is a set of cost-containment changes that Obama said could save a typical insured family up to $2,500 a year by wringing
out much of the inefficiency and waste that make the U.S. healthcare system the world's costliest."

Does anyone know what this means? I'm guessing it means that my doctor will stop using $100 bills as prescription tickets, or something. The token industry expert interviewed also disagrees-

"The numbers don't seem to work very well," said health policy analyst John Sheils, senior vice president of the Lewin Group, a top healthcare consulting firm. "I think [the savings] are just dramatically overstated."

What's left? Gratuitous naysaying from a competing campaign!

"The Edwards campaign also criticized the plan, saying the lack of a requirement that individuals buy health insurance means it will not achieve universal coverage."

I think that I'd like my next job to be one of the reporters that writes articles covering proposed legislation. It seems pretty easy. Every article seems to follow this formula:

1) Senator/Representative/Electoral Hopeful X proposes a plan to fix Y costing Z
2) Industry Expert says plan is way too optimistic
3) Irrelevant ass clown weighs in

I can't wait for my Pulitzer!

Michael Moore Asks Bad Questions

2007-05-21T07:53:00.000-04:00

Michael Moore has released in new documentary about the failing state of the US Health Care system at the Cannes Film Festival in Europe. While I haven't seen it, or even heard about it until I read this article in the Globe and Mail, I'm betting it's probably full of singular examples that don't extrapolate to larger trends and misleading statements like this:

"When I look at Canada, the only long line I look at is that you get to live three years longer than we do. ... Why does a baby born into Toronto have a better chance of living to his first birthday than a baby in Detroit?"

Really, we're going to compare Toronto to Detroit? Is that really apples to apples? The only data I can find on this is from the CDC website, where Detroit is ranked the third highest in terms of infant mortality out of the largest 60 US cities. The only cities that rank higher are Norfolk and Cincinatti, neither of which is probably as recognizable to foreign audiences like Michigan's failed labor union headquarters.

Regardless, I was pretty sure the benefits of the US health care system was not that they don't drop babies on the linoleum any less than the Canadians, but that you don't have to wait for three years next time you want carpal tunnel surgery. You know, that and the fact that capitalist health care allows for the costly research and development that leads to pioneering techniques and technology.

It's Science!

2007-05-17T11:20:00.000-04:00

I don't have any idea what this article is about, but paragraphs like this make me think the author doesn't either:

Theorists say the Higgs or something like it has to show up simply because the Standard Model breaks down and goes kerflooey at energies exceeding one trillion electron volts. If you try to predict what happens when two particles collide, it gives nonsense, explained Dr. Ellis of Cern, a senior theorist with the long white hair and a bushy beard to prove it.

Monthly Recap

2007-05-12T14:48:00.000-04:00

The internet no longer works in my apartment, so my posting is going to be very infrequent from here on out. I can only do it from the office in my apartment building, and only if no one else is using the computers. So, in order to cover the most ground in the least amount of time, I'll resort to bullets.

My last day of work is June 29th, my last paycheck from work will arrive September 15th. Sweet. I'll probably be going home for a few days before the 4th of July and then driving back to Ohio on the 4th. I'll then be packing all my material possessions into the back of my Civic ,and then driving to the Cleveland airport on the 5th to pick up the Redhurt and take off to Colorado. 40 hours of driving in a week? I'm looking foward to it.
I'm currently involved in what will assuredly be a giant trainwreck. I'd like to post about it, but I'll refrain for the immediate future. I'm going to wait and ride it out to the end, and then let you know what it's like to go down in flames. Scorching, firey, flamey flames. There are probably a lot of things I could do to prevent this, but then I'd have a lot less material for the book I'll never write.
I officially graduated from college, apparently with some kind of honors. Now I'll find out how worthless my degree really is while looking for a job in Colorado. However, the worst case scenario is that it looks like I have a job in the Grand Junction oil fields if I want it. Things I know about this job: 1) long hours 2) really hard work 3) fantastic money. The plan is to find something better.
I spent a weekend not too long ago with CharlesPeirce and Wife_of_CharlesPeirce. It was pretty fantastic, I took some pictures at Manassas of people we didn't know who weren't paying attention with the intention of posting them here and making Redhurt captions, but I can't upload them because of all the stupid security on this computer. I can't even right click.
I've been drinking a lot, and frequently. I'm not sure how I feel about this.

ABC Polling Data

2007-04-27T13:24:00.000-04:00

Can anyone explain to me why this poll oversamples African-Americans? Is there a reason? Or is that just how it worked out?

So It Goes...

2007-04-16T21:47:00.000-04:00

Since I'm leaving work in a few months and 90% of what I used to do was related to things now made irrelevant by my leaving, I am now in possession of exactly what it was that I decided to force the issue with work over: time. It's fantastic.

Today I finished up early and took off to Barnes and Noble where I sat in the cafe and knocked out Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five in an hour. Now that I've completed it, I vaguely remember reading it a long ways back- most likely something I picked up and read because of its pariah status. I don't understand the movement behind banning books. I can understand why certain individuals would protest a certain book's place in educational required reading, but the effort to remove it completely from the library seems counter-productive. Slaughterhouse Five is a book that I never would have read before if I hadn't been curious to figure out what exactly was so offensive, and it always seems that the material is never worth the fuss. Slaughterhouse Five is certainly no Backdoor Sluts 9. (By the way, that link is totally SFW, feel free to click the link if you don't get the reference.) As for Vonnegut's death, well, so it goes.

After, I was driving home when I passed by a section of Lake Erie where the wind was whipping waves through a hole in the breakwall protecting a marina and trapping them up against a pier and another breakwall on the coast. The waves rebounding off the coastal breakwall were interfering with the ones being driven in, churning the water into enormous swells that would sometimes slap against the pier, washing up against the rocks and pouring onto the walkway. I happened to be in the lane adjacent to the pier exit, and I happened to have my camera in my coat pocket (the reason I bought an ultra thin camera ) so I pulled off to take some pictures. I walked out next to the railing just in time to fully experience the phenomenon, as crest met crest next to the pier, splashing thirty feet up into the air, cascading over the side, drenching me in filty, probably flammable, Lake Erie water. I had intended to wait out a bit to capture some of the more impressive waves, but the thirty plus mile an hour wind on a forty degree day off the water coupled with my soaking had a negative effect on my enthusiasm. I took some video that is a bit more impressive than the following pictures, but I don't have the time to upload it to YouTube and then embed it back in Blogger, so this is what you get.

Friday Quiz

2007-04-13T17:24:00.000-04:00

Today at work I didn't have anything to do, and my bosses couldn't come up with anything for me to do. Why? Leaving at the end of June has made roughly 90% of the things I used to do irrelevant, so I sit at my desk and try to look busy. I'd leave early, but most of the people at work wouldn't understand why I'm leaving early every day, and doing it everyday would lead to problems. As a result, I made this quiz this afternoon using Wikipedia and emailed it to friends around the office. The current high score without using the internet is eight/fifteen.

The band with the most number one weeks on the Billboard modern rock chart (81) is:

A) U2

B) Red Hot Chili Peppers

C) Green Day

D) Marcy Playground

The original Nintendo was released in the following year:
1. 1985
2. 1986
3. 1983
4. 1981
Mark Curry, host of “Hanging with Mr. Cooper” lost to which of the following B-list celebrities in “Celebrity Mole: Yucatan”?
1. Angie Everheart
2. Dennis Rodman
3. Stephen Baldwin
4. Tracy Gold
Name two American Gladiators, and two events from the show:

In Seinfeld, the character responsible for allowing prostitutes to work in parked cars in a downtown lot also plays which other minor character?
1. Kramer’s caddy
2. An employee of Elaine’s boss, Mr. Pitt.
3. A dump worker who refuses muffin stumps.
4. The thief responsible for snatching Jerry’s man purse.
Besides being an inspiration for Ice-T, the rapper Schoolly D created the theme song for which Adult Swim cartoon:
1. The Boondocks
2. Metalocalypse
3. The Venture Bros.
4. Aqua Teen Hunger Force
In Batman: The Animated Series, the actor responsible for providing the voice of The Joker is:
1. Mark Hamill
2. Jim Carrey
3. Jack Nicholson
4. Don Johnson
While credited as being the Center of Hollywood by the game “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon”, the actual center of the Hollywood universe is:
1. Dennis Hopper
2. Harvey Keitel
3. Rod Steiger
4. James Caan
Which of the following is not a tagline for the movie “The Princess Bride”?
1. Heroes. Giants. Villains. Wizards. True Love.
2. It's as real as the feelings you feel.
3. The Fire Swamp. Lightning sand. Dread Pirates. True love has never been easy.
4. She gets kidnapped. He gets killed. But it all ends up okay.
Which is the coolest fad of the last twenty-five years?
1. Pogs
2. Slap bracelets.
3. Laser pointers.
4. Member’s only Jackets.
Which formerly intimidating NBA player had a brief cameo in the 1992 film Singles?
1. Xavier McDaniel
2. Wilt Chamberlain
3. Mitch Richmond
4. Charles Barkley
According to Wikipedia, which of the following activities is “usually free of the common race, gender and age boundaries of a subculture?”
1. Live Action Role Playing
2. Body Building
3. Break Dancing
4. Drifting
When not executing his wives, King Henry the VIII could be found:
1. Playing golf
2. Dieting
3. Playing Badminton
4. Playing Shuffleboard
What fan of classical philosophy is known to have said “I’m like the Pythagorean Theorem- no one has an answer to my game” in reference to his on-court basketball ability?
1. Jalen Rose
2. Shaquille O’Neal
3. Allen Iverson
4. Mark Madsen
What famous mathematical problem should he have been referring to?
1. Fermat’s Last Theorem
2. The Bridges of Konigsberg
3. Zeno’s Paradox
4. Any math problem not easily understood by sixth graders.

Tuesday Night at the HOB

2007-04-11T19:00:00.000-04:00

I woke up this morning at 5:20, and couldn't fall back asleep before my alarm went off at 6:15. It was, without a doubt, the most alert I've felt in the morning in at least the last six months. I felt fantastic. I didn't even really want to stay in bed, I wanted to get up and go into work early, but I didn't. There is a difference between waking up feeling good and waking up retarded, and I did not wake up retarded. Sadly, this was to be the best I felt all day.

Things started turning against me about a half mile in on my walk to work. The morning was crisp and clear, and I stopped long enough to take this underexposed picture from the bridge crossing the magnificent Cuyahoga River (Trivia Question: Why is the Cuyahoga River famous? Answer: It once caught on fire.) As I started walking again, I started to feel what would soon become a vicious hangover. It started in my stomach, with the feeling that I'm starving yet nauseous, and I finally realized that I felt good in the morning because I was still drunk, and regaining sobriety was going to be a bitch. By the time I got to work, I had been staring at the apple I had in my pocket for a full five minutes, weighing the consequences between eating the apple and either feeling better or throwing up, and not eating the apple, where I would feel miserable and probably throw up. I ate the apple. It helped.

Ten minutes later the apple was probably fully digested, as the potent brew of stomach acid, Pabst Blue Ribbon, Vodka Cranberry, and at least a couple of Jagerbombs finished breaking down the apple into its respective nutrients and now started working on eating its way through my sphincter and out onto my office chair. While I managed to retain the solid waste, I couldn't help but drop a couple bombs and I opted out of the morning meeting. The rest of the day was spent building mindless spreadsheets, taking frequent bathroom trips, fighting major heartburn from pounding a couple of Gatorades and a BBQ beef sandwich, and feeling really, really awkward and uncomfortable around a specific female co-worker.

Tuesday had been a fairly normal day, but I skipped my evening workout in order to go get drinks with a friend of mine, who is in the process of dealing with some of the issues that I recently dealt with at work, and is probably on his way to finding something else to do as well. We stayed at the bar until 7:30, drinking Miller Lites and reaching the conclusion that nothing proves The Fall quite to the extent of a typical white-collar job, before I had to run back to my apartment to meet another friend of mine for some pre-game action before the Stephen Kellogg and the Sixers concert at The House of Blues downtown.

He stopped on the way up to grab a fifth of vodka, and we put a good portion of it away along with a freezer pizza before heading out to the HOB around 9:00. My move downtown was a strategic masterpiece, and I'm now becoming to free parking in the city what George Costanza is to public restrooms in New York (the emerging similarities between me and George Costanza are deserving of a post on their own, probably while I'm on vacation enjoying my severance package during the upcoming "Summer of Jackscolon"), and I found a place within a half mile from my place across the bridge where I had a straight shot home and a short walk down to the HOB on E. 4th. I fully intended to take copious amounts of pictures at the concert for this intended post, but I left my camera in my coat in the car on the corner in downtown Cleveland.

As we walked down to the HOB to get tickets and get into the show, we carefully picked our way through the gathering homeless who flock downtown on event nights, stopping only to give money to a one-eyed man talking in the third person and waving some papers releasing him from prison. As we neared the entrance, I received a text message from the physically stunning and remarkably personable girl (who will be referred to in the rest of this post as "Jane") who sits in a cube across from mine at work informing me that she had decided to come as well, and she was bringing her roommate to hang out with my friend. In all honesty, my phone didn't really ring as much as scream "Yahtzee!" and I immediately nicknamed my friend "Wedge" for the remainder of the night and started saying things like "I can't see the exhaust port!" and "That's impossible! even for a computer!" He, not being a giant nerd like all of us, didn't get it.

She arrived soon after with her roommate, and we pushed our way back to the bar in the concert room while everyone else pushed closer to the stage. While Jason Spooner warmed up the crowd for Stephen Kellogg, Wedge and Jane's roommate warmed up to each other, and I discovered that Jane had also been pushed out the door at work, and was leaving the same time I was. Apparently, if there is anything that can push an incredibly attractive girl down a few rungs on the ladder to my level, it's lots of alcohol and shared misery.

As they dimmed the lights to change the stage for Stephen Kellogg and the Sixers, I took the opportunity to jump on the make out train, and the conductor went ahead and waved me up to first class. What can I say? I'm a sucker for a girl who presses up against me to keep her balance while looking at me with some glassy, half-drunk eyes. Unfortunately, I had only consumed just enough alcohol to overcome to hesitancy to make out at a bar in front of a hundred people, but not so much that I didn't feel stupid making a spectacle of myself.

As Stephen Kellogg started playing, Jason Spooner and his band worked their way back to the bar. We struck up a conversation (him being from Maine, me being born there) bought some Jagerbombs, and I just may have mentioned how envious I was that they traveled around playing gigs in bars, made a toast to doing what you love, and then listened to how miserable it is to travel for ten years and be stuck opening for a guy who didn't even sell out the small room at the Cleveland HOB, and heard some hilarious stories about how Ray LaMontagne is a dirty, weird, musical genius. We then tagged along as Jason Spooner used his all-access pass to get us into the big theater to see G-Love and Special Sauce, but I didn't actually see any of it. I only made it to the bar, and then got pulled into a back hallway for some more making out while the security guards walked by and yelled at us to get a room.

I'm not sure what else happened, but somebody ended up driving my car home (me) and then I woke up four hours later feeling fantastic.

It's That Time Again

2007-04-04T19:04:00.000-04:00

There are few things that can get me drunk at 4:30 in the afternoon. No, wait... scratch that. There are quite a few things that can get me drunk at 4:30 in the afternoon, and Jagerbombs and Miller Lite in sufficient quantities fit the bill. Fortunately, the mile long walk home from the bar across from work with a 40+ mph wind coming off the lake on a forty degree day, followed by reading a magazine on the pot for enough time to make my legs fall asleep is enough to sober me up enough to finally post something. Why the extended absence? Why not? It's now official that the blogs are dying to make way for Web 3.0 or something, and we can get plenty of incidental contact from each other now that Facebook is open to everyone. Care for a poke, anyone?

Regardless, my six month struggle to adjust to my job has finally come to its dramatic conclusion, a frank discussion about my long-term suitability for the profession, followed by a generous severance offer and help finding something else where I don't work seventy hour weeks in order to get a promotion I don't want to earn money I don't really need, and I'm taking it. I've got a few months to start looking before I stop working, followed with a few months of pay after I officially leave, and I'm excited.

What am I going to go do? I'm not really sure, but I'm sure I'll find something. I always do. My immediate goal is to move out of the Midwest, most likely to Colorado. There, I'll be too busy climbing mountains and transcending reality to worry about my pending unemployment, and I'll probably find a job anyway, because in all honesty, I'm a totally sweet employee if you can get past the fact that I've never stayed at a job for longer than nine months. However, in my defense, most of the jobs I've been hired for in the past three years were intended to be for short periods of time.

All in all, I've developed at least one major complex over the past four years. I've become a nomad. Working a bunch of different short term jobs in different parts of the country (I'm averaging a new state every 6.8 months over the past three years, and I've had a different residence something like ten times over the past 2+ years) has made me incapable of thinking of any place as "home", it's just somewhere I stay until it's time to move again. I don't even bother unpacking what I do take from place to place anymore, it just stays in boxes hidden away until it's time to move again.

In conclusion, trees don't die until they put down roots. Seeds are eternal.

Americans and Vegetables

2007-03-20T08:32:00.000-04:00

I'm sorry to keep posting these, but sometimes Google News headlines crack me up. I happen to be one of those Americans who doesn't eat enough vegetables- but will I turn into that guy?

Secret Missions

2007-03-16T11:58:00.000-04:00

I would give either testicle to someday have a headline like this on CNN. Currently, my secret missions are limited printing off Wikipedia articles at work and looking like I'm busy. Today's topics: Structuralism, Bornean Clouded Leopards, and Painting.

Kafka- Before the Law

2007-03-10T20:42:00.000-05:00

Anyone in the mood for a post completely different than anything else I've posted for the last two years? Good, here we go:

I'm reading "The Trial" by Kafka this weekend while I'm back home in Michigan, and I'm intrigued by the following passage. Anyone of you have any familiarity with Kafka (other than what I can and have read on Wikipedia), or have any thoughts on the following short story included in "The Trial"?

Before the Law

Before the law sits a gatekeeper. To this gatekeeper comes a man from the country who asks to gain entry into the law. But the gatekeeper says that he cannot grant him entry at the moment. The man thinks about it and then asks if he will be allowed to come in later on. “It is possible,” says the gatekeeper, “but not now.” At the moment the gate to the law stands open, as always, and the gatekeeper walks to the side, so the man bends over in order to see through the gate into the inside. When the gatekeeper notices that, he laughs and says: “If it tempts you so much, try it in spite of my prohibition. But take note: I am powerful. And I am only the most lowly gatekeeper. But from room to room stand gatekeepers, each more powerful than the other. I can’t endure even one glimpse of the third.” The man from the country has not expected such difficulties: the law should always be accessible for everyone, he thinks, but as he now looks more closely at the gatekeeper in his fur coat, at his large pointed nose and his long, thin, black Tartar’s beard, he decides that it would be better to wait until he gets permission to go inside. The gatekeeper gives him a stool and allows him to sit down at the side in front of the gate. There he sits for days and years. He makes many attempts to be let in, and he wears the gatekeeper out with his requests. The gatekeeper often interrogates him briefly, questioning him about his homeland and many other things, but they are indifferent questions, the kind great men put, and at the end he always tells him once more that he cannot let him inside yet. The man, who has equipped himself with many things for his journey, spends everything, no matter how valuable, to win over the gatekeeper. The latter takes it all but, as he does so, says, “I am taking this only so that you do not think you have failed to do anything.” During the many years the man observes the gatekeeper almost continuously. He forgets the other gatekeepers, and this one seems to him the only obstacle for entry into the law. He curses the unlucky circumstance, in the first years thoughtlessly and out loud, later, as he grows old, he still mumbles to himself. He becomes childish and, since in the long years studying the gatekeeper he has come to know the fleas in his fur collar, he even asks the fleas to help him persuade the gatekeeper. Finally his eyesight grows weak, and he does not know whether things are really darker around him or whether his eyes are merely deceiving him. But he recognizes now in the darkness an illumination which breaks inextinguishably out of the gateway to the law. Now he no longer has much time to live. Before his death he gathers in his head all his experiences of the entire time up into one question which he has not yet put to the gatekeeper. He waves to him, since he can no longer lift up his stiffening body. The gatekeeper has to bend way down to him, for the great difference has changed things to the disadvantage of the man. “What do you still want to know, then?” asks the gatekeeper. “You are insatiable.” “Everyone strives after the law,” says the man, “so how is that in these many years no one except me has requested entry?” The gatekeeper sees that the man is already dying and, in order to reach his diminishing sense of hearing, he shouts at him, “Here no one else can gain entry, since this entrance was assigned only to you. I’m going now to close it.”

There is one glaring question/theory I have regarding this story, but I'm going to hold off for the moment and hope one of you blows my mind and goes in a different direction with this than I did. One stipulation- unless you are emphatically of the opinion that the meaning of this story is tied up in the specifics of who Kafka is, then I'd prefer to treat it as an independent entity and go through it using only the information contained within it. Ready, set, Get on it!

Broken Window Theory

2007-03-08T20:58:00.000-05:00

You may not be able to see much from this picture, but if you were able to look closely (and possibly pop the hood) you would see that the plastic grill in the front of my old truck is loose, smashed, and pinned up between the rest of the truck. Why? Because two years ago I was driving from Ocala to Orlando, and a semi threw a piece of retread the size of a brick and scared the crap out of me. Why is this relevant? Why am I posting pictures of a vehicle I haven't driven for four months?

Two reasons: The first is that a semi threw a rock a few months ago and put two gouges in the driver's side of my brand new month old Civic. The second is that a couple of days ago I was passing another semi on the inside lane of the highway (the asshole thought he was going eighty apparently) and I was hit yet again with another chunk of retread. Where? Here's where:The underside of my driver's side mirror, and it was 12 degrees outside, and it shattered. Son of a bitch. There are two main questions here: 1) Why does God hate me? and 2) Why the hell are semi trucks allowed to drive on the road without something better than those tiny mudflaps equipped to drop flying, rubbery shrapnel? Honestly, I don't know, but I'm getting close to the point where I'm frustrated enough to start a Facebook group against semis, and if I get hit again, I'll probably pee on the next one I see parked unattended in a parking lot. If there is one bright side to this story, it's related to broken window theory. I would have been materially more pissed had this been the first thing to have fucked up my car.

Lastly, I had a thirty dollar plate of lobster ravioli tonight that severly underperformed my expectations. Why is it that the more expensive the entree, the less you get with it, and the hungrier you are when you leave the restaurant? If you have to know, I'm washing down that shit with no small part of a six dollar bag of chicken nuggets, some barbeque sauce and getting grease all over my keyboard while I watch The Wire. Best part of the day!

Dysfunction

2007-03-06T22:18:00.000-05:00

Through recent discussion, I've found out that I have at least two habits which are fairly unique.

1) I plan meals around condiments- I frequently have urges not to eat specific foods, but the condiments associated with those foods. It works as follows: A bbq sauce craving usually leads to me to cook chicken (or occasionally vegetables, I happen to like bbq sauce on vegetables), ketchup leads me to fish sticks or french fries, hot sauce to nachos, freezer burritos, or quesadillas.

2) I set my alarm clock an hour early- This way, I can wake up and think "Alright! I still have enough time to go back to sleep!" I'm not sure if I'm any more rested when I wake up, but I can't describe how happy I am every single day at 5:15 am, knowing I can roll back over for another hour.

By the way, I have real post ideas stashed away, I'm really just trying to find the time to write them.

Is the Media Biased?

2007-03-02T08:48:00.001-05:00

Delay

2007-02-28T21:40:00.000-05:00

The reason I haven't posted lately after a flurry of activity two weeks ago is this: I have not had internet available at my place. The wireless network aptly named "Boobies" went down while Time Warner Cable struggled to switch the bill from the former payer to the person currently responsible for paying. I have not posted from work for the obvious reason that I A) am much too busy at work to rush one out and B) I'm trying to keep the two as distinctly separate as possible.

This isn't a real post either- it's just a quick update, a picture, and then a quick something for you all to weigh in on. Everything above the picture is the update, and everything below will be the latter.Now I need some input: There is what appears to be a homeless man (he may or may not be homeless, he is most definitely a man) who networks for dollars outside of my office building frequently. Rather than the usual aggressive technique common to such in my area, he sits piled under blankets in his wheelchair with an open coffee can, and plays his saxophone. I most certainly would make an effort to give him money (most likely regularly because I prefer his approach and have sympathy for his situation) except for one thing- he's absolutely terrible at the saxophone. For someone who has an inordinate amount of time to spend practicing, he is the least accomplished player I've seen since the kids in Junior High who take band to get out of health class. If his work ethic for music is anything similar to his work ethic for work, then it is no wonder he wound up homeless. So my question is this- do I give him money? My current solution has been to bring my lunch to work and avoid the decision altogether...

Snow Day!

2007-02-14T07:26:00.000-05:00

While we didn't get 14-22 inches of snow, we did get enough to get this kid out of work today, and I'd like to thank the City of Cleveland. The roads, while bad, are completely passable now that the plows have gone through. However, since I live in the city, I have to park on the side of the road, and when the plows went through, they created a nice two foot high birm of ice and snow on each side of the road, making it completely impossible for my Civic with a ground clearance of about four inches to make it out into the center of the road.

Here is a short list of things I plan on doing today while home:
1) Enjoy my fireplace.
2) Read through two annual reports, six quarterly reports, 20+ earnings calls.
3) Take a nap.
4) Play Gears of War.

I also plan on doing these in reverse order.

Where you goin? Nowhere!

Snow Day Tomorrow?

2007-02-13T07:27:00.000-05:00

Babel

2007-02-11T10:12:00.000-05:00

I went and saw Babel the other night with one of my friends. Why Babel? Here's why:

Friend: "What's the rating of the new Hannibal movie? One and half stars? What else is out?"
Me: "Ummm..."
Friend: "We could go see Stomp the Yard."
Me: "Shut the hell up! What about Babel?"
Friend: "What's it about?"
Me: "I don't know, but Brad Pitt is in it..."

That's all I knew, but it was enough. Brad Pitt (along with Edward Norton, Matt Damon, Jeremy Piven and a few others) is an actor for which I'll attend almost any movie, regardless of how little I know about it. After Babel, I'm seriously rethinking that policy.

So what's wrong with Babel? With a Golden Globe win, seven Academy Award nominations, and an excellent cast, it seems like that would be a difficult question. Short answer: This movie is the 2006 NY Yankees- All the pieces work, they just don't add up to much.

My biggest problem is that the movie just doesn't make any sense if you're watching it. It isn't hard to follow, or confusing, it just doesn't make sense. Without knowing beforehand what the movie is trying to accomplish (hint: it's part anti-globalization, and more about difficulty in communication, hence the title), none of the stories tie together very well, and there are four of them. I'd give you a warning that there are spoilers ahead, but in this case, they aren't spoilers. Knowing what this movie is about would make it a whole lot more enjoyable to watch, kind of like taking time to learn the language before going to an opera. This movie is about knowing what happens next, about reconciling a bunch of seemingly unrelated events into something understandable.

Story 1: Moroccan man buys gun, gives it to his sons to shoot jackals threatening the goat herd, sons shoot at tour bus, hitting an American tourist. Police come to arrest shooter (using overhanded third world police brutality) end up in unnecessary shootout with Moroccan man and his kids, killing one.
Story 2: Man (Brad Pitt) and wife (Cate Blanchett) are riding in said tour bus, on vacation to try to cope with the death of a child from SIDS, and trying to sort out the complications in their marriage resulting from this event. Wife gets hit in the neck with bullet, no medical help immediately available, American government labels this terrorism, Morocco insists it isn't, and won't let American choppers fly in to provide medical assistance. (Swipe at US Government) Other people on the tour bus refuse to stay, leave man and wife with Moroccan locals, who help (kind of). (Swipe at industrialized peoples in general)
Story 3: Children of said Americans on vacation in Morocco are staying in the care of illegal alien caregiver. Mexican caregiver has son's wedding to attend, can't find someone else to take care of the kids, parents largely unsympathetic to her plight (Swipe at US arrogance) so she takes them to Mexico. On her way back, she is stopped by a-hole border patrol agents, prompting her nephew (driving the car) to make a run for it and drop them off in the desert. She eventually leaves the children in the desert to go find help, finds help, results in her deportation back to Mexico. (Less specific swipe at US border policy)
Story 4: Asian deaf-mute teenager coping with suicide of her mother and the resulting gulf between her and her father fights handicap using exhibitionist behavior (i.e. She attempts to sleep with everyone and anyone) and is unsuccessful. Her father happens to be the tourist, who while in Morocco, left the gun with a local guide as a tip.

Exhausted by reading that? I'm tired out just by writing it. The two real focal points of this movie are the gun, and the Asian girl. The gun is the vehicle for the anti-globalization message, and it goes something like this. American gun exported to Japan, Japanese man uses it for trips taken to escape from the problems at home, leaves gun in Morocco where teenage boys use it to wound an American tourist (resulting in the death of one and the probable destruction of their family), wounded American tourist and her husband can't find someone to take care of their kids, prompting the Mexican story that results in deportation for the Mexican nanny, and probably jail time for her nephew. The only story that ends happily is the American one- man and wife reconnect over trouble, kids end up being rescued in the desert. All of the non-American stories end in tragedy, with the exception of the Japanese one, which doesn't end badly per se, just nothing is resolved.

If the point of this whole thing is that globalization is bad for the world with the exception of America (and somewhat less the Japanese), then I can accept that. I don't agree with it, but I'll concede that the movie is powerful in its attempt to convey this message. My problem is that unless you majored in allegory at the University of Colorado, you aren't going to pick this up just from watching the movie. You're going to have to search the internet for a couple hours trying to find some reason not to label the previous two plus hours a total waste of your life.

The other focal point of this movie is the story of the deaf-mute Asian girl. Whereas most of this movie is murky and unclear as to what it wants to accomplish, practically anyone (with the exception of a possible blind-deaf person) can pick up on the damage that being unable to communicate can cause to a person. I'm not going to spend much time on this part for two reasons- 1) This post is already way too long and 2) I need to do some laundry and go grocery shopping before heading down to Quicken Loans Arena for Cavs-Lakers @ 3:30- but I will say this, there are a couple parts of this story that are brilliant. Example- One scene shows the girl entering a club, and alternates between third person shots of the action with the pounding music overlayed, and first person shots with all the sound muffled close total silence, and the camera focus switching to flashing lights. For a second, my sympathy for deaf people changed to empathy, but then I remembered how miserable this movie actually was to watch, and I went back to just feeling sorry for myself.

Conclusion: this post needs to be rewritten at least once, and don't go see Babel, unless you're J. Morgan and you pick up on all the subtle symbolism the first time.

Sorry Steve Jobs, I'm Giving My Soul Back to Microsoft

2007-02-07T20:27:00.000-05:00

I wrote a screenplay today. I didn't intend to write one, it just sort of came to me while I was driving, so I jotted it down. It's a pretty timeless story of love, deceit, betrayal, and jealousy. It is a screenplay about movie cliches, except the characters chosen to play the leads are actually electronic devices such as laptops and media players. Confused? I'll explain.

For the lead role, that of the hard working boy from the wrong side of town, growing up disadvantaged, raised by foster parents, and with some sort of emotional disability as a result, I've chosen my old PC desktop. For the arrogant, upper class prick, who dresses in ultra premium denim and attends the finest boarding schools, I've gone a different route. For this upper crust asshole, who eats lobster and shits in gold toilet boils (figuratively of course), I've chosen my Mac Powerbook G4, and for his slightly less good looking stooge, who ends up being twice as mean to Johnny Try-Hard (played by my desktop), I've chosen my 60 Gig Video Ipod. Don't get the symbolism yet? You will.

I guess what I'm trying to say is this: my old PC was a piece of crap. It was ugly and bulky and slow, and it wasn't without the occasional freeze-up, but I knew it was junk, and it never tried to pretend it wasn't. For the most part, it did what I wanted it to, and when it got too full of spyware and malicious processes started to overwhelm its capabilities, I broke the seal on some free internet system tools that didn't do a great job but kept me running. It never wanted to be in the audio-visual club, or in a fashion show, but it could run four screens of party poker at a time if I wanted it to.

My Mac, on the other hand, is the opposite. It's pretentious and showy, and intimidates people at the coffee shop into thinking I've got John Lennon playing on iTunes, or that I'm about to open-mouth tongue kiss Hermann Nitsch and than drive off in my Toyota Prius. What they don't see is that my Mac was actually the child of a single parent who was too busy with work and forcing accomplishment on his/her son (my fictional parent needs not be gender specific) to go throw a baseball or teach him how to grill a steak (my fictional parent just became much more gender specific). He/she wasn't too busy to tell him that the smoke from fat dripping into open flame increases the cancer risk, or to make a sizeable donation to get him into an Ivy League school. Basically, my Mac looks the part, but doesn't offer much in the way of qualitative difference between it and my old desktop. Furthermore, it's more infuriating when it does break, because it shouldn't due to the structural advantage it enjoyed. Yes, my Mac freezes occasionally, the battery life sucks, it never really ran that fast (I mean, c'mon, in my analogy it is a privileged white kid from Connecticut, who can't really run without tripping over his Burberry scarf) even though I acted like it did. The worst part is when it does crash, the arrogant pricks who designed it didn't include any tools I know of for a quick fix. It's the Titanic of the digital age.

When my PC locked up, I just hit Ctrl-Alt-Delete, closed some non-responding programs, shut down a few processes that sounded like they weren't important, and got back to looking for pictures of Jessica Alba. When my Mac freezes, I don't have such options. It wants me to Ctrl-Click the program icon down in the dock, or click on the Mac logo in the upper left corner, but I can't, BECAUSE MY FREAKING MOUSE CURSOR WON'T MOVE (i.e. the definition of a computer freeze). I've got to hold the power button down and start over. Granted, it may not lock up as often, but it shouldn't, and I don't expect it to, so when it does, it's much more frustrating.

As for my iPod, it suffers from the same defects. Here I am running Apple proprietary software (iTunes) on my Mac laptop, connected with a Mac issue cord to my Apple iPod, and my iPod still locks up. It probably does it at least once a week. The battery isn't low, I didn't leave it out in the cold, I didn't throw it down a flight of stairs or take it scuba diving with me. I listened to it at work, put it in my pocket, walked down to my car, took it out of my pocket and *BAM*, the screen is locked up. Can I reset it? No, there is no button to cut power, and the battery isn't removable. I have to take it back and plug it in to my laptop and hopefully it will reset, or wait for the battery to die on its own if that doesn't work (what I'm doing right now and hoping it works).

Do I care that my electronic devices occasionally don't work? Not in the least, they're complicated, and fragile. What does bother me is the fact that I pay a premium for their supposed quality, watch their smarmy television ads, and listen to every Apple-phile (present company excluded in terms of my ill-will) tell me how flawless Apple technology is, and how ignorant everyone else is to go buy a PC that will do everything a Mac does for 2/3 the cost.

Sorry J. Morgan, Redhurt, Mair, Standingout and whoever else told me to get a Mac. I tried your Kool-Aid, it tastes like expensive piss.

Now- more pictures of my condo.

Chipotle

2007-02-07T09:06:00.000-05:00

I just looked at my credit card statement, and it looks like I ate at Chipotle a total of 16 times this month. Total calories: 24,000+. Total fat: 1,100 g +. Total deliciousness: priceless.

Industrial Wasteland

2007-02-04T16:45:00.000-05:00

I downloaded and installed Camino, and it's awesome. Well, at least, I haven't had any major problems yet, which makes it better than Safari and IE for Mac.

Anyway, I moved. I no longer live with my friend's parents forty-five miles outside of the city, I live in a new condo development roughly in the city, and one mile away from my place of employment. In case you're wondering what $800 a month can get you off Craigslist, it will get you roughly this:

Blogger

2007-01-31T18:31:00.000-05:00

I opened up Blogger in Safari, and it can't load it. I opened up Blogger using Internet Explorer for Mac (and it crashed) and then it won't display Blogger. Does anyone know if new blogger has support for Mac? Or do I have to download freaking Mozilla again?

In other news, I'm working on putting up a virtual tour of my new condo (which is sweet). It's going to get done as soon as I sit down and find a web browser that supports Blogger (probably FireFox), so, I would say probably within two weeks. (I'm gone this weekend to the Steel City, and next weekend to Grand Rapids (maybe, we'll see).

Also, I need one of you nerds to tell me why no one has made a cable modem/wireless router yet, or if they have, where I can get one. I bought both stupid things yesterday ($130 ugh... at least I have a mail-in rebate that I won't mail-in and even if I did they probably wouldn't return) and I can't believe both products can't be compressed into one amazingly easy, single product.

Life 2.0

2007-01-16T21:02:00.000-05:00

At my company, one of the policies (along with paying 100% of health care costs) is to conduct performance evaluations every three months and use them to decide bonus amounts. I don't have a whole lot of intro material on this, so I'll state that I had my evaluation the other day. Without getting too deeply into details, I'll say that the majority of it concerned my ability to adapt to the demands of my current position, and that my future at Company X is carefully situated on the horns of a dilemma:

Option 1: Working 50 hours a week, and finding myself back in the ranks of the unemployed come April.
Option 2: Pulling a stool up to the company bar, and ordering triple shots of workohol.

So, over the weekend, I sat down and picked at my spaghetti and paradox sauce with Morton's Fork. While Option 1 would seem to satisfy my inner Ignatius J. Reilly, Option 2 would satisfy my father, and pay off my Honda Civic debt. For most other positions, the answer would obviously be Option 1, but there are a few things variables that need to be considered.

I like my job.
I don't know what else I want to do.
In the medium to long run, I stand to be well compensated.
Working a three month stint would damage my resume.
There is a lot of money tied up in this decision.
I finally learned all my coworker's names.

I considered these variable for all of about five seconds before coming to my conclusion. Why complain about giving up my life (i.e. time outside of work, not my life-life), when I don't have a life to begin with? Working 70 hour weeks will not impact my life in any of the following ways:

I won't spend less time with the girlfriend I don't have.
I won't spend less time with the friends I don't hang out with.
It won't keep me from not exercising.
I won't spend any less time playing the Xbox 360 I don't have any games for.
It won't interfere with the time I don't spend blogging.

So... there you have it. I'm actually kind of excited. Modern literature was depressing me anyway, and I don't hang out with Hans-Georg enough to be an optimist. Out of my way peasants, here is my new schedule (Monday- Friday):

5:15 AM - 6:15 AM: Wake up, shower, dress, eat breakfast.
6:15 AM - 7:15 AM: Commute.
7:15 AM - 6:15 PM: Work (with a nice break to take a dump and read the WSJ).
6:15 PM - 7:15 PM: Commute.
7:15 PM - 8:00 PM: Dinner, either before or after a dump.
8:00 PM - 9:30 PM: Work.
9:30 PM - 10:00 PM: Dump. Brush teeth.
10:00 PM - 5:15 AM: Sleep (Hopefully I'll dream I'm at work).

The only time this schedule will change is on Thursday, because I'll watch "The Office." Also, if it snows, rains, sleets, or hails, or if some gets into an accident in my lane on the highway stopping traffic, or gets into an accident on the other side of the highway (causing people to look), you can add 30 minutes on each end of that commute, and a few more dollars in the coffers of terrorism.

Ignatius J. Reilly

2007-01-09T19:57:00.000-05:00

I'd like to say that a myriad of eventful activities has kept me from blogging for the past... month (has it been that long?), but I can't. A myriad of activities, yes- a myriad of eventful activities, not so much. A few things that I have been doing include:
1) Eating Chipotle three to four times a week
2) Eating Taco Bell two times a week
3) Not eating whenever I'm home because I don't have food, and don't want to spend precious evening time doing errands
4) Questioning my apathy (exploring might be a better word)
5) Gloating over the Florida victory in the NCAA Championship to everyone at work (...since I now live back up North. If I still lived in Florida, and Ohio State had won, I'd be talking about how strong the Big Ten Conference is. Why? Because I don't conform!)
6) Trying to work just hard enough to be ignored, but not hard enough to be promoted.
7) Reading. Fiction, mainly.

I've been reading fiction because I can't seem to get pumped up enough to come home and crack open some treatise on cognition, Ancient Greece, the evilness of China, how technology is redefining humanity (along with its antithesis- how humanity can resist being redefined by technology) or any other of the interesting books that litter the floor at the foot of my bed. So, in the past week, I've knocked out John Kennedy Toole's "A Confederacy of Dunces", Jonathan Franzen's "The Corrections", and now finally working my way through "Fight Club" by Chuck Palahniuk. We'll hit them in reverse order-

Fight Club- I can't comment extensively on this, since I haven't finished it yet. It's kind of weird that I haven't read the book until now, seeing that the movie tops my "Top Five Desert Island Movies" list, but I haven't. I finally sucked it up and went and purchased it, mainly because I was trying to explain why it topped the list to someone questioning it's authenticity atop the list, and I felt like an impostor for never having read the book (though I've read nearly everything else of Palahniuk). And yes, the person debating its place in the Pantheon obviously had ovaries. So far, the book is understandably great.

The Corrections- There are some titles amongst "The Top 100 Novels of The Century" that I would dispute (Catcher in the Rye? Arguably the greatest piece of trash ever to win critical acclaim until the Black Eyed Peas. I only wish it had been written more recently, so I could describe it as "Dashboard Confessional: The Novel"), but this is not one of them. "The Corrections" is amazing. Period.

A Confederacy of Dunces- While I'll say "The Corrections" is a better novel (and in many ways eerily similar to my own life), I'll point out that Ignatius J. Reilly could well be my alter ego. I can't think of anyone in any book, TV show, or movie that I resemble more closely. It was like I was reading a novel about myself, unleashed. As he is described in Wikipedia:

Ignatius is something of a modern Don Quixote — eccentric and creative, sometimes to the point of delusion.
He disdains modernity, particularly pop culture. The disdain becomes his obsession: he goes to movies in order to mock their inanity and express his outrage with the contemporary world's lack of "theology and geometry." He prefers the scholastic philosophy of the Middle Ages, especially that of Boethius. However he is also seen as enjoying many modern comforts and conveniences, and is given to claiming that the rednecks of rural Louisiana hate all modern technology which they associate with progress.

Throughout the novel, Ignatius exhibits what would today be considered symptoms of depression. He operates under the mindset that he does not belong in the world and that his numerous failings are the work of some higher power. He continually refers to the goddess Fortuna as having spun him downwards on her wheel of luck. This type of thought may be akin to the psychological idea of "external locus of control" in which the subject believes that he is more or less powerless to alter the circumstances of his life through his own actions. Additionally, Ignatius shows the traits of an addictive personality in his inability to eat in moderation and regular bouts of chronic sexual self-fulfillment (he becomes sexually aroused by thoughts of his deceased dog and when he is lifted into the air by four black factory workers). His mockery of obscene images is portrayed as a defensive posture to hide their titillating effect on him. In addition, he exhibits bizarre aversions, for example to Greyhound Scenicruiser buses, the bi-level coaches used by the company at the time for its longer routes. He speaks of the horror he feels even just knowing that they are hurtling about in the night.

That's me in a nutshell, except my "chronic sexual self-fulfillment" is a lot more normal. Hey-O!

I've also been harboring weird fantasies (in no way related to sexual self-fulfillment) about how great it would be to be a writer. However, I'm not sure if that is really something I want to do, or just a reactionary opinion based on the fact I get up at 5:15 AM everyday and just want a job where I can choose to work, or not work (the "not work" appeals to me strongly). Now, that raises the more interesting question of- "Why am I the Least Motivated Person in America?" It's a question I've been thinking a lot about recently (see #6 on the list of activities), and so far my only solution is to have an illegitimate child to give myself some perspective. At some point in my life someone asked me the high school guidance counselor question of "What would you do if you were independently wealthy?" In high school my answer would have been to play professional golf, in college my answer would have been to play videogames, and now I'm pretty sure the thing that I'd do if wealthy is lie on a psychologist's couch all day and figure out why I'm so fucked up. In related news, my company just voluntarily agreed to pay 100% of all health care costs (including copays) for its employees, which is bringing me closer to making this dream a reality.

I only wish I had more time, because this post needs a good rewrite...

Marriage

2006-12-12T21:04:00.000-05:00

A post on the historicalness, state of, or general health of marriage this isn't, rather I think it's more my general feelings on the subject, posted because I can't think of anything else to write about, and I really need to post something, or just put a picture up and call it a post. I realize that the vast majority of you-who-read-my-blog are married, and I'll leave it to you to agree or disagree with the merits 0f my argument-which-is-more-rambling-than-a-real-argument.

Now that I am living with an typical empty-nester married couple that are not my parents here in Ohio, I've had the ability to calmly and objectively evaluate the state of marriage, and with the exclusion of certain perspectives my gender empowers me with, to do so from a fairly detached state. Conclusion: marriage is sweet for women, and not so sweet for not men.

Lest I attempt to speak for women and have Mair rip me a new sociological butthole, I'll concede my lack of authority, but I think we can all agree that women have a lot of very real benefits from marriage, such as a potential cure for hysteria.

Men, however, have it a bit rougher. In no particular order, here is a list of reasons why I really don't want to get married, but I'll concede that I'll probably do it eventually, once I've run out of single friends and reconcile myself to the fact that a voice telling me to do something I don't want to do is preferable to no voice at all.

Authority- there are very few things that I care about domestically enough to make an issue of, but I'm pretty sure I don't want to concede any of them. I don't want to own useless crap like holiday decorations, I don't want to spend money on artificially valuable jewelry, and I don't want to remove snow from the driveway. I'd much rather spend a thousand dollars on a painting I don't understand, than $14.50 on a statue of a mouse holding golf clubs made by the millions in China. I don't want to buy some stupid ring, I'd rather give you 200 shares of Microsoft stock, and I don't want tools for Christmas bought with my money just so you can tell me what you want built.
Time- I don't have enough on weekdays now, and barely enough on weekends. I really enjoy the fact that I can do whatever I want with that time, and don't want to waste valuable weekends doing something like... I don't know, going to the wedding of one of your friend's that I don't know, or don't really like.
Money- I'm extremely cheap on things girls aren't (personal hygiene products, food, etc...), but not so cheap with large ticket impulse items (video game consoles, multiple books from Barnes and Noble I never get around to reading, GPS for my car because I think more electronic screens are never a bad thing (I haven't caved on this third one yet, but I can imagine I will, probably unexpectedly because I happen to see one at some store)). This issue, especially if I'm at all successful, is going to be huge. I'm half Scrooge, and half MC Hammer, and there are no clear guidelines. However, this is acceptable from me, because it's my freaking money.
There are lots of other things, but I'm not going to get into them because they are more anecdotal than topical, but it's all stuff that has really soured me on marriage. Basically, it boils down to this, middle aged women are brutal. Chances are if you know a happily married middle aged family, you know a reserved, hollow shell of a man who just doesn't care enough to fight about issues that matter to him.

In conclusion, ideally I'd probably like to get married before I'm thirty, and divorced before I'm forty, provided I can find a way to safeguard my income during the marriage.

Hooray America! I can't imagine living anywhere else.

Casino Royale

2006-12-02T23:07:00.000-05:00

Two words. Awesome.

Weekend Update

2006-12-02T09:01:00.000-05:00

Since I haven't posted anything in an inordinately long time, I'll provide a bulleted recap of the nothingness that has kept me busy, and then hopefully post something of substance later this weekend.

The main reason that I haven't been posting is that I don't think I can get away with it at work. One reason is that it takes me generally over an hour to write a post on any specific topic, and since I sit in a cube in the middle of the floor, I don't think I can hide it. The other reason is that our IT intern has been systematically blocking sites that I frequently traffic- starting with this (this one is work related), and then this, and most recently this. Since I like checking blogs while at work, I've been trying to limit my visits to quick hits when new content is up.
I've driven over two thousand miles in two weeks in my new car. This was skewed by a trip from Ohio to Midland to Grand Rapids to Harbor Springs to Cheboygan and back for Thanksgiving, but it will be likely skewed the same way over Christmas, only with added miles to New York and back for a possibly planned snowboarding trip. For the record, I have not snowboarded since eighth grade- making moderate to serious injury the expected result of this trip.
I hate Methodist College, excuse me, Methodist University (upgraded name, same crappy college). I'm not going to get into the reasons here in the interest of brevity, but let's just say the possibility of me being elected into full PGA membership is very slim, regardless of the fact that I've completed every requirement of the program. I really wouldn't care, except that I've done everything I was supposed to do (and more) to gain election, so just give me my FREAKING CLASS A STATUS and let us part ways amicably.
Why do I have little interest in moving out from my friend's parent's house here in Ohio? I don't know... maybe because of things like this (Yes, this picture was taken at 5:40am , and that is a lunch for me to take to work, and yes, it's pretty freaking impossible to put a caption on that while in the confines of Blogger's bullets):
I watched probably the most terrible movie created in the last decade at the theater last night- Van Wilder 2: The Rise of Taj. In my defense, I knew it was going to be horrible, but I went anyway because a friend of mine was somewhat excited for it, and well, I don't always want to be Johnny Naysayer, even when I know I'm right. Without getting into specifics, here is a quick formula for making a box office dud.

Take a popular movie, preferably one built on the appeal of a single character who has since moved substantially higher in movie actor hierarchy, and make a sequel. Double points if the original actor refuses to make even a small cameo in the sequel.
Take a kind-of-funny-in-very-small-doses sidekick character from said movie, and have the sequel star this person. Double points for making this character have an annoying accent, and triple points if this character has most of the lines for the sequel.
Instead of writing an original plot (college journeyman becomes party liaison to raise money for graduation), write a strikingly unoriginal one (former college misfit turns other misfits into successes). Double points if you successfully integrate every cliche misfit character from other movies into your ragtag group of losers (scrawny nerd, alcoholic tough guy, weird guy, and hot girl dressed down to look ugly along with being unrefined). Triple points if you copy the rest of the original movie almost exactly (arrogant privileged prick dates hot girl who feels unappreciated, old lady is shockingly explicit in regards to her intention to fornicate with main character, canine ejaculate, etc...)
Create the most unrealistic action-oriented closing scene ever, and then further punish it with stilted dialogue and less than athletic actors.
Realize movie is complete crap, and try to save it by promoting it on television with this basic theme- Look at this crazy college movie! Don't you want to find out how many of these partially clothed girls get naked?- Then, feature less nudity in the movie than assumed in the commercials, in the hopes of boosting DVD sales with an "Unrated" version.

See? This post took me over an hour- no way I can swing that at work.

Bill O'Reilly- Douchebag

2006-11-19T16:57:00.000-05:00

I'll quote the important parts of the article, but you can find it here.

Breaking ranks with management, Bill O'Reilly and Geraldo Rivera have spoken out harshly against the planned Fox's two-part special hyping O.J. Simpson's "If I Did It" book currently scheduled for release end of November. O'Reilly minces no words and vows to boycott any company that advertises on Fox's televised interview. O'Reilly declared: "If every American walked away from the O.J. garbage, it wouldn't happen." "I'm not going to watch the Simpson show or even look at the book," he added. "If any company sponsors the TV program, I will not buy anything that company sells - ever."

Good work Bill O'Reilly! Keep boycotting those companies! Don't spend any of your money that comes from the network hosting the special on products from those evil companies that would dare advertise on it! You're making a difference!

If Bill O'Reilly was lost in a desert with just a machine that turned principles into water, I'm pretty sure he would die of dehydration.

To the contrary, You'll find my rims quite stationary

2006-11-18T14:41:00.000-05:00

"The things you own end up owning you" -Tyler Durden

If that's true, then I'm now officially owned by a 2007 Honda Civic Ex Coupe, and I don't even care. I haven't had to fill it up yet, but I'm pretty sure the salesman told me it runs on molten lava, that's how tough it is. Here are some pictures- Enjoy! (The dull, heavy gray permeating the backgrounds is not just my car making its surroundings seem dull by comparison, Ohio actually looks like that) Captions courtesy of Justin Timberlake.

I'm bringing sexy back.

Them other boys watch while I attack.

If that's your girl you better watch your backCause she'll burn it up for me and that's a fact.

Lastly, let me just say- No, I don't know what those lyrics mean either. I'd say they aren't quite as bad as anything by Gwen Stefani, but my brain still hurts just reading them.

More Democrat Oil Bullshit

2006-11-15T12:57:00.000-05:00

I can't say I've been anywhere close to happy with the former Republican majority, but at least they restricted their hijinks to sending sexually explicit text messages, and empty posturing. Not so much with the newly elected Democratic majority. A large part of my day is spent scanning business news, and the Democrats are already talking about penalizing Big Oil for the recent record profits.

Holding a slim majority, Democrats will instead attempt to eliminate tax breaks for energy companies and raise royalty payments for oil and gas drilled on federal land, according to a spokesman for House speaker-to-be Rep. Nancy Pelosi.

Now, the biggest question remaining is how to reconcile this plan of action with statements like this:

"Oil companies are swimming in windfall profits and American consumers are sinking," -Sen. Dick Durbin

I'm confused. The problem seems to be that oil companies are making money, and ye olde taxpayers aren't, so the Democratic solution is... more taxes? How does this help consumers? By not giving them any money back and giving the oil companies more reason to raise prices to maintain profit levels? I may not be that smart of an individual, but I'd like to think I can recognize idiocy when it's river-dancing on my 17-inch LCD monitor. This. is. idiocy.

What the Democrats have also failed to consider is that this record profiting by the oil industry has caused substantial appreciation in the stock value of said companies, and these companies are owned by mutual funds, and your 401k is determined by mutual fund performance. So, what the Democrats are going to do to solve high energy prices is A) not give you any money B) make it so you're probably paying more at the pump and C) make sure that your 401k posts weaker returns while also mismanaging private pension fund money and letting Social Security go the way of Newt Gingrich's "Contract with America."

Republican majorities! Brilliant!*

*Only when compared to much less brilliant Democratic ones.

John Derbyshire on Religion

2006-11-13T12:09:00.000-05:00

I think I finally figured out why I like John Derbyshire so much. While the correlation isn't perfect, I'm on board with at least a few of the things he says over here, and more so with what he says here, which I'll quote since it's much, much shorter.

There’s an extreme position on religion, as both a personal and a social phenomenon, which I often find myself slipping towards, but which I can think of counter-arguments to. This is the position that religion makes nothing happen. In other words, that an individual person, or a human society, would be pretty much what it is, with or without its faith, or lack of faith — that religion is just, so to speak, a thin coat of paint over something whose salient features are caused by other factors.

One of the English lady novelists — Elizabeth Bowen, I think, or possibly Rose Macaulay — has a character say that trying to change what you basically are is like “walking north on the deck of a south-bound ship.”

I have said this is an extreme position, and of course it is. To a devout person who thinks that all of history is shaped by God’s hand, it must look very extreme. I think it’s tenable, though, just about. Suppose, for example, that Christian doctrine had settled down not with a Trinity, but a Quaternity. Would the history of Western civilization actually have been any different? Why? More broadly: Does religion actually make anything happen? Or would the same stuff, or pretty similar stuff, have happened anyway? And then the meta-question, which is much more interesting: Could we ever know the answer to the foregoing? How?

Coincidentally, the last two new South Park episodes were mainly concerned with what would happen if Richard Dawkins was successful in destroying religion totally. After Cartman freezes himself in an avalanche (attempting to just freeze himself until the launch of Nintendo Wii), he is unfrozen five hundred years later to find everyone saying "Praise Science" and that the major atheist groups are all at war with each other. It's hilarious, and relevant, in that I think if religion didn't exist we'd find something else to fight over. Anyway, rip this to shreds. Please!

The Island

2006-11-05T09:38:00.000-05:00

"Cartman gets his own amusement park, and Michael Bay gets to keep making movies. It's true. There is no God." - South Park

Since my new mom works for Time-Warner Cable, I've been lucky enough to have access to tons of movie channels, with the added bonus of HBO On-Demand, Showtime On-Demand, and Starz On-Demand. All together, I probably have access to over a hundred movies at any given time, which translates into about six movies worth watching. Since I have nothing to do on weekends, I've already watched most of the good movies like The Machinist, Crash, Batman Begins, Life Aquatic, Cinderella Man, etc... so now I'm working my way through the not so good movies- like The Island.
First, let me preface this by saying that The Island was not a disappointment. In fact, it probably was much better than I expected considering the fact that it's a Michael Bay movie, meaning that I expected less than nothing. Why do I hate Michael Bay movies? I'm not sure if I can explain it, but I'll show you. Here is what would happen if Michael Bay directed my life:

Normal Day: I get up at 5:15am (yeah, gross, I know), eat breakfast, drive to work, work, drive home, eat dinner, watch TV, go to sleep.

If Michael Bay directed my life: I wake up to my alarm clock blowing up. I eat breakfast, the camera zooms into my face as I try to look really serious, my spoon blows up. I run outside to my truck, dodging bullets from some motorcycle gangs having a shootout with assault rifles on the street. The camera prominantly displays the brand of my truck, the insignia on my shoes, and my exposed underwear band with the letters "FTL". My underwear band blows up. I drive to work, swerving from lane to lane as boats/cars/giant iron dumbells are being rolled off the trailer in front of me. I dodge them, but the other cars don't, and crash spectacularly, flipping over repeatedly, flying through the air, and coming to rest in slow-motion as smoking heaps of metal. My I-Pod (the camera zooms in to make sure you see the Apple logo) seems to be filled with techno filmscore music, which builds in intensity as the drive to work progresses. Finally, I throw it out the window at the helicopter firing rockets at me, they both explode. I walk into work, and start making out with our hot secretary. She offers to do the scene topless, but Michael Bay won't let her, I walk to my desk, she blows up in the background.

Understand? Good. Now, a few specific issues I have with The Island.

Why do clones get $80 sneakers? Seems like the facility could save a lot of money with generic sneakers, and the clones wouldn't know the difference.
Why did they put in the scene where they talk about how he has memory? That doesn't explain why Lincoln Six Echo questions his surroundings, or the meaning of his life. That's a fairly standard human trait. The better question is- why don't the others do the same thing?
How do the clones go from absolute zero in terms of sexuality to being professionals in the span of two minutes? I know at least from a male perspective that you can't just get there without going through the whole awkward erection at a high school dance phase (Do I back up? or just trap it up against her?). This was probably the worst scene of the whole movie, probably because I kept thinking, "Wow, she's going to be really disappointed about thirty seconds from now."
There was absolutely no need for the redemption of the guy from Gladiator. He could have just grabbed his money, walked out of the movie, and it still could have ended the same. Michael Bay- stop trying to force emotional depth in your movies! You aren't John Woo!

Hamas

2006-11-03T07:23:00.000-05:00

Not sure how I feel about this. No, wait, I know exactly how I feel about this.

and I'll post something better later. I'll give you a hint, Michael Bay is prominantly involved.

With You Always

2006-10-31T21:42:00.000-05:00

*First- a quick note to the mother of a friend who reads my blog regularly and apparently likes it. Thanks! I'm actually a little embarassed on some of the content, so please note that quite frequently I'm not totally amoral. Deal?

I can never thank Hans enough for introducing me to Larry Van Pelt and his wonderful drawings of Jesus lurking in the background of everyday activities such as selling insurance, retarded juggling, and bank telling. Now finally, Larry has finally added a magnificent sketch of Jesus on duty with the troops. However, what I (and Dick Cheney) really want to see is a nice picture of Jesus hanging out with some troops while they waterboard suspected terrorists. I think that would be sweet. Almost as sweet as this video, which is almost identical to what I could imagine if I told Charles to reenact the story of Redhurt's life through rap...

Weekend Bullets

2006-10-29T00:08:00.000-04:00

I don't even want to write an intro paragraph...

1) I'm not sure what I was surfing to get to a graphic t-shirt website, but I found this shirt. The shirt really isn't that great, but the description is- "Our most intelligent shirt by far. You see, some kids at an early age in life are labeled as not being "good" at math and are therefore sent on the "slow track" in mathematics throughout junior high and high school. Good kids by all measure, they wind up in class with their "shady" friends who are in general disbelief to see who they once considered an intelligent person share the same math apptitude as them as well as younger pretty girl students who look at them instantly like they are the bad boys for not knowing math, because they are probably too busy partying and getting into fights to learn calculus. Well, to that person I raise my beer and say, "Congratulations sir, I have been down that road and you are going to tear Algebra 2 up this semester.""
2) I was at a local Honda dealership today, investigating my upcoming purchase of a 2007 Civic. Seeing that I've spent the better part of the last three years in a business primarily concerned with merchandising, I'm familiar with some of the tricks of selling. So, here's my short dramatic piece entitled "Monologue for a Car Salesman". Look buddy, you aren't going to con me into purchasing today because you asked me "How much do you want to put down today?" I understand that by assuming the deal and skipping certain steps people are more likely to buy, but probably not people who know what you're up to. Bastard. Yeah, you. You're a bastard. Look at you. You're wearing a sweatervest. I can't take you seriously. Furthermore, had you paid attention to the meaningless questions you asked about what it was that I did, you would have heard say "financial analyst." Even with no prior experience with the field, you might have been prudent enough to know that by just defining the words in my job title, you could tell that my job involves "analyzing finances." You know, crunching numbers. So, when I say that I'm not buying today and say that my reason is "I don't have my down payment ready", you should know better than to try to push me on a sale with "no down payment." I already ran the numbers, I know that taking a few grand off my down payment can cost me into the thousands in added financing costs. In conclusion, I was fully prepared to purchase a vehicle from you, you had it on the lot, I took it for a test drive, I was in. But you ruined it. So, I'm going to go buy the exact same car at the Honda dealership down the road. Congratulations, you're a douche.
3) Today I watched Crash, Be Cool, and Batman Begins. All great movies. Except for the middle one, which is just mildly entertaining. What can I say? I like Dwayne Johnson. 4) Finally, if I was the director of the CIA, I would definately have Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas killed. Or if I was a mob boss. Or someone who knew how to kill people. I'm pretty sure this opinion is shared by anyone with taste. She's on some cell phone commerical, and it makes me wish I was Helen Keller. Seriously, it's like someone took an average body, made it work out, put a couple thousand dollar pair of breasts on it, topped it off with the head of Andre the Giant, and then had Don DeLillo write song lyrics. Charles, feel free to drown this last paragraph out by just turning up "My Humps" a little bit in your headphones.

Editorial Oversight

2006-10-25T21:03:00.000-04:00

The headline on my Google news page currently is, "Speaker Hastert testifies before panel probing sex scandal." Not much by itself, but I took a screenshot of this just a day or so ago... Seriously, does every single headline regarding the opening of a sexual assault case have to contain the word "probe"? What about investigate? Or the myriad of other acceptable synonyms with less explicit baggage? Can't we agree not to "probe" sexual offenders anymore?

In other news, my job is sweet, and I've narrowed my car selections down to either a 2006 Honda Civic Coupe or a 2006 MINI Cooper S. Most likely a Civic... I can't decide if driving a MINI makes me an unrepentant anglophile ala J. Morgan, or just kinda creepy. I'm leaning towards creepy, but having a car I could store under my desk during work (and thus avoid paying exorbitant parking fees) would be a definite plus. Anyway, The Italian Job is still cool, right?

"I'm the #1 ranked car in terms of resale value!"

Weekend Update

2006-10-20T19:39:00.000-04:00

What? No poorly written prose? Nope, just a bulleted post explaining why I haven't been posting by summarizing the previous seven days...

I failed to attend Homecoming at Grove City on Saturday under the assumption that I would stay in Ohio and work on my presentation for PGA checkpoint, and that I would go to bed early since I was getting up at 3:30 am for my flight down to Raleigh. Sometime Sunday night I realized that I was dragging from only getting three hours of sleep, and that I had nothing done on my presentation. Verdict- should have attended Homecoming.
I passed all my certification requirement at PGA checkpoint (including my presentation- regardless of it being a poorly disguised polemic against the PGA) which should have made me eligible for election into full PGA membership this January. However, it seems that my "firing" has invalidated my long months of underpaid internship. Frustrating, yet oddly appropriate. For me, drafting angry letters against injustice was as much a part of college as videogames, pizza, and beer. Glad I get one more shot at it...
For the fourth time in six flights, I was delayed flying through Atlanta. To me, it seems that if you are going to close runways for maintenance, the least you could do would be to build that into your flight schedules. Instead of getting back to Ohio on Wednesday at 7 and having plenty of time for a good sleep before my first day of work, I got back at 11, got to sleep by 12, and got back up at 5:15. Gross. The rest of my flight experience can be expressed in the following logical progression:

I have scar tissue on my eardrums from childhood ear infections, making it extremely difficult for me to handle extreme changes in pressure. Dive to the bottom of a ten foot pool I don't.
I happened to have a cold. Not a drippy, coughy cold, just pure congestion, plugging up my head and my mind.
Consequently, I experienced the most excruciating pain in the world since Denzel cut off some fingers in "Man on Fire." As soon as the plane started its decent, the pressure became acute in my ears, and as a result of the congestion, it felt like someone was driving a railroad spike through my left eyebrow and into the center of my brain. Only the railroad spike was on fire, and made out of angry badgers. I seriously thought I was seconds away from having an aneurysm and bleeding out on the airplane floor. As soon as the pain hit, my left eye started to water. Well, not water, flood. It just poured tears, Victoria Falls style. I was under such agony that I thought I was going to throw up, and I was forced to grab the vomit bag from the seat back. To make the situation even worse, I happened to be lucky enough (and then unlucky enough) to be sitting amongst the NC State women's varsity volleyball team. They proved extremely sympathetic, while I proved myself the world's biggest wuss.
As insult to injury, I didn't have a direct flight. Meaning that once I landed, I had two hours to look foward to going through the exact same thing again. Yay!

While in North Carolina, I stayed at a friend's brand new condo while he was off on his honeymoon. While the wedding gifts we opened in his absence included a shower rod and shower curtain, they didn't included shower rings to bind the two. Consequently, I took my first, second, and third bath in well over a decade, and it was horrible. Seriously, taking a bath is what I'd suggest if I was trying to come up with the longest, most uncomfortable, ineffecient way to get clean. Someone please explain the attraction to me of soaking in your own filth. Also, he didn't have any shampoo yet, but antibacterial hand soap left my hair squeaky clean.
I started my job on Thursday, and completed my second full day today. Some quick reason my job is better than yours:

No one keeps track of my hours, or my days off. Consequently, once I'm off the radar for being a rook, I can show up whenever, leave whenever, and travel whenever, within reason.
We have a kickass coffee maker that brews individual flavors of Green Mountain Coffee.
Monday afternoon will involve me going to the mall and shopping, in order to chart traffic on a few of the retailers I cover and promotional and pricing trends. I'm not sure if I'll be able to write off things I buy as business expenses though.
In the hierarchy of interesting-ness, my job ranks highest. For your information, the hierarchy is as follows: Market Research, Culture Research, Theology, Fashion, IT, Computer Programming. Take that Redhurt.
I have an amazing view of the cold, grey Cleveland sky.

Finally, a quick summary of what I've accomplished at work in the last two days.

I sat in on some conference calls.
I sat in on some meetings, including one with the CEO of a major publicly traded company. I'll refuse to name names, but the highlights of the stop included this exchange:

CEO: "Our line of industrial snow melters faces zero market competition."
Senior Partner at my firm: "What about the sun?"

I spent eight hours reading financial reports and company information on the specific retailers that I cover.
I updated my Facebook profile, read articles at ESPN and NationalReview, talked to some of you through GMail, and was blocked from websites NSFW at least half a dozen times. That's right MySpace, you are officially NSFW.

Tomorrow, I'm off to meet up with the manic-depressive, former fullback that some of you know who may or not be the direct descendant of a garden gnome. We're going to go car shopping, and probably celebrate my belated birfday at some Japanese restaurant where they grill the food at your table. That's right, I said birfday. For the record, I'm 22, some old hag is old enough to be my... well... older sister, really.

Christian Music? No Thanks...

2006-10-13T10:59:00.000-04:00

By the time he arrived, the band had already been playing for half an hour. He squeezed through the aisle, each person seeming not to notice until he touched them on the shoulder, then making an awkward display of pressing back against their seat so that he could get by. Thirty minutes, long enough for the acrid stench of the artificial smoke to drift silently up into the fifth row of seats in the lower section. The smell was familiar, yet twisted. It seemed commonplace, yet different, and wrong. He couldn’t place it. The arena had been split in half by a huge curtain, creating an amphitheatre effect and halving the number of available seats, but even so it had failed to sell out. People stood crowded on the floor directly beneath the stage, but on the lower level empty seats were easily discernable, and in the outreaches of the arena small groups hung in clumps, framed against the folded chairs. He wondered why they didn’t move closer, there was plenty of room and it was obvious he was among the last to arrive. Maybe the fact that it was a Christian rock concert had something to do with it. Was it immoral to jump a few balconies and claim a better seat? Would the band stop playing and pray aloud for contentment among God’s people? He was in uncharted waters, and felt that voicing these questions would betray him as an outsider.

He hadn’t intended to attend this concert, nor had he ever heard music by Audio Adrenaline, or the feature band Mercy Me. To be specific, he'd never even heard of Mercy Me. He had planned on staying home, working on his presentation, and falling asleep early. He had picked up a cold during his visit to Michigan, as usual, and wondered if he had contracted it while at the hospital, or while running around downtown Grand Rapids, underdressed, drunk, and lost. Supposedly the colder weather had little to do with the illness, it had more to do with the increased transmission of viruses while sequestered inside for the winter months. While he agreed with that in theory, he still wondered why he seemed to catch cold every time he left the south to visit Michigan in the winter. Regardless of the method of its acquisition, the cold had left him tired and congested, and the music rang hollowly in his plugged ears.

He had been roped into attending the concert by his friend’s parents, whom he was staying with for a few months until he found his own apartment. They had an extra ticket, and he had no excuse why he couldn’t go, save his general aversion to Christian music, and he felt he couldn’t use that excuse without offending them. Plus, he was indebted to them. Not only were they largely responsible for his new job, but also they were putting him up, and refusing his offers to pay rent. If spending a few hours listening to mediocre music helped even the deal, then he would grudgingly attend.

The artificial smoke continued to assault his nostrils. He took out a couple pieces of Trident Tropical Twist gum, but even while chewing with his mouth open the stench wafted up and into his brain. He finally placed it. It smelled like buttery movie popcorn and flatulence. No, not flatulence, ass. Hot, wet, steamy butt. It didn’t have the pungent spice of a good fart, just the heavy, monotonous reek of sweaty ass. It reminded him of a bus trip back from Cedar Point during eighth grade. After a warm day running through the park, the group had stayed for the laser light show, which had been impressive framed against the dark clouds. Halfway through the dark clouds opened up, and twenty plus eighth graders and chaperones had ran a half mile or so back to the bus in the rain. The combination of old sweat and new sweat was magnified from the rain, and overwhelming in the enclosed bus. It was that, plus popcorn. He took a big whiff of the smoke to make sure he had it pegged. He gagged, if anything, quantifying the smell had made it worse, but even so, the description was so precise and perfect that he couldn’t help smiling.

On stage the first band was wrapping up its set. They were attempting a big finish, but for some reason the crowd had trouble matching their enthusiasm, even with the efforts of the tech crew to synchronize the clapping, arm waving, and screaming through a twenty foot screen projected on the curtain behind the band. He no longer had any interest in the music, to be precise; he now had less than the zero interest he had started with. His attention was focused on the crowd, and on exploring the reasons why this concert seemed different from a secular one. Several reasons immediately came to mind, and he started to mentally draft a future post for his blog. First he needed a clever title, something along the lines of “Ten Reasons Christian Concerts Suck.” No, wait; he had a better one, “Why Christian Concerts Have No Soul.” Less polemic, it was drier, subtler, more appropriate.

The obvious first reason was the crowd. On stage the lead singer from Audio Adrenaline was thanking the crowd for fifteen years of devotion, apparently, he had unknowingly attended part of the farewell tour. Fifteen years… that would put the debut date in the early nineties, and explain the proliferation of not-so-young mothers accompanied by their newly balding husbands. They had been in the latter stages of secondary education or the early stages of college back then, at the age where new bands become emblematic of a generation. They were the initial followers, and had been responsible for purchasing initial cassette tapes, then CD’s, and probably now shelled out money for DVD’s of concerts they’d never attended. When the rest of their generation had been mourning the suicide of Kurt Cobain, they had been rejoicing to the accompaniment of their bland, Christian pop-rock, and reading World Magazine as Tupac was gunned down in the streets.

The rest of the crowd was older, and less demonstrative. They’d probably attended Guns and Roses concerts twenty years ago, maybe even had a White Snake jacket. Now they attended Christian Rock concerts in order to feel young without betraying their middle-aged family values, or as a result of some compromise made with their pubescent child. He had it. That was the problem with Christian Rock. Hell, that was the problem with most of Christian music. They were taking genres and divorcing them from their roots, neutering them in the process. Rock without counter-culture, Metal without protest, Grunge without depression, Rap without violence, Music is hollow without context. You can’t explain troubadours without chivalry, classical without the Enlightenment, Jazz without Black America, Pop Music without consumerism. Where is Frank Sinatra without the Fifties? The Beatles without the Sixties? Kanye West without Enron?

He turned his attention to the stage area, not to the band, or the stage itself, but the first few rows of floor seats. One staff member in a yellow shirt relaxed on a folding chair, head nodding along with the music. The audience stood by their seats, hands raised, devoid of the frantic crush and mayhem appropriate to front-row floor seats at a secular concert. On stage the lead singer was rolling through some canned monologue about the graciousness of God, the audience enrapt. Musicians without Megalomania, he was on to something there. At a normal concert the focus is local, superficial. Religious music resists the deification of its performers, and deification is responsible for the intensity of secular concerts.

Ironically, the last concert he had been to had also been in Cleveland. When was that? Four years ago? He had been a college freshman, and had somehow wound up eight rows back from the stage on the aisle watching Tim McGraw and the Dancehall Doctors. He'd felt detached the whole night, the only person in that section who didn't push up against the human security fence when Tim McGraw came up through the floor and ran down the aisle onto the stage. He'd been the only person who laughed out loud when a woman was allowed to climb up on stage sobbing, and show how off her Tim McGraw tattoo. The only person who knew less than half of the songs. The only person more interested in watching the crowd than the performers. He felt the same way now. The difference was the level of excitement. For Tim McGraw, it had been harder not to get swept up in the emotion of the crowd, forty thousand people screaming, clapping, demanding more music. Now there were what? Five thousand? Nor we they packed tight enough to feed off each other's energy. For Tim McGraw, he'd had to stand the whole night just to see the stage from eight rows back. Here, he counted less than eighty people standing in the entire floor section. The audience was reserved, quiet even. After Tim McGraw the girl he'd gone with had been so turned on that he'd wound up rolling around in the back of an Explorer parked outside a self-storage park at three o'clock in the morning. Had they attended a concert like this, he would have been lucky just to get a kiss later. No tongue, no eye contact...

Prose Blogging

2006-10-10T10:28:00.000-04:00

He placed the small, plastic garbage can on the floor, feeling both repulsed and oddly fascinated by the disgusting collection of fluids congealing in the bottom. The thinner, less viscous, green bile raced around the darkened clumps where stomach acid had mixed with blood and mucus, turning almost black. The neon rivers seemed to glow as they coursed through the larger, darker clumps , the fluorescent sheen reminding him of ectoplasm, or what he imagined ectoplasm would look like. Perhaps cartoon acid was a better description. He imagined someone carelessly knocking a beaker over and seeing the glowing, green liquid eat through a table, hearing the tell-tale sizzle and then viewing thin cartoony wisps of smoke floating up, as only an acid-shaped hole remained. His esophagus was raw from vomiting all morning, and the animation in his head seemed to resemble old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle cartoons, so he decided cartoon acid was a better analogy. After all, ectoplasm would most likely have some restorative benefit.

The matter settled, his stomach lurched, and he looked away quickly, regaining control before adding more to the bucket. He slowly straightened his arm, watching the drips fall faster and faster in the IV, until it was impossible to discern one from the next, and the now steady stream of fluids flowed down through the plastic tubing and into his arm. The IV fluid, though room temperature, created a numbing sensation in his veins, causing him to shiver violently under the thin hospital gown. The nausea medicine seemed to be taking effect, and he could no longer feel the unmistakable twinge in the back of his throat. Was the medicine working, or was he just imagining himself feeling better? The calm mechanics of the hospital and smooth, unhurried professionalism of the doctors had caused him to feel slightly better the moment he'd arrived, body numb, muscles locked, mind frantic. The curative powers of modern medicine were probably due as much to some placebic effect from watching fictionalized TV accounts as from science. On TV, doctors miraculously cured strange illnesses in the nick of time, finding the cure just as the patients neared death, before retiring to the break room to bang hot nurses. How could one not feel better at the hospital? Nothing bad ever seemed to happen in hospitals. Bad things happened in subways, and at intersections, and on overloaded backyard decks.

He eyed his sweatshirt sitting on the counter across the room, wondering why he was forced to remove it when he could have just rolled the sleeve up. The IV had come close to draining itself, and just minutes after its insertion, was now nearly two-thirds empty. Still cold, he pulled the hospital blanket up farther, trying to guess how many times it had been washed since someone died under it. Two? Five? Twenty? How many people die in hospitals in medium-size metropolitan cities every year? How many blankets do they have? Why the hell couldn't he just put on his sweatshirt? He lay back, closing his eyes and trying to relax his muscles in order to stop the shivering...

He had arrived in town less than forty-eight hours ago, intent on burning a few days of his two week break between jobs. Agenda? He had no agenda, save trying to put together a small presentation he needed to give in ten days to complete his certification as a golf professional. Mostly, he planned on watching some TV, drinking a few beers, and catching up with some high school friends he hadn't seen in months. The first night had been simple enough, some chicken and beer at one of those mid-level generic restaurant chains. Which one was it? Fridays? Chili's? Applebee's? Ruby Tuesday? They all seem the same. Surely there was some scathing intellectual commentary of the commodification of American taste that existed on the Internet somewhere. Most likely written by some wanna-be academic indoctrinated on Karl Polanyi theses and Chuck Palahniuk novels. Most likely, a white, upper middle class, card-carrying member of the intelligentsia, bound for success in corporate America, and slightly uncomfortable because of it.

He had played some pick-up basketball at the YMCA that night. Coincidentally, he'd played on an all-white team versus a couple of all-black teams, and not coincidentally, they'd won every game. While not yet on Wikipedia, there exists some principle that states all-white pick up teams generally outperform their all-black counterparts in full team games, unless huge physical dissimilarities exist. The reason is that white kids, suffering from years of embarrassing defeats in individual match-ups against black kids, realize that to avoid getting kicked off the court, their only hope lies in playing solid, fundamental, team basketball. Consequently, they spend the game setting picks, making extra passes, hitting three pointers and playing help defense while black kids, cocky from thrashing white kids in individual matchups their whole lives, are tempted to try to do it all themselves. Empirically, this theory had never been disproved to him, holding true from intramural games at college, to pickup ball at the outside courts, and now YMCA ball on a Wednesday night. He'd always wanted to test this theory at the NBA level, curious to see how a team consisting of Dirk Nowitzki, Steve Nash, John Stockton, Larry Bird, and some big, white center would stack up against Jordan, Shaq, Kobe, Dwayne Wade, and Lebron. Even with the principle, he still figured he'd bet on the black team in this example, unless the white team was coached by Phil Jackson, and the black team got Isaiah Thomas.

He hadn't done much the second day either, getting next to nothing done for PGA checkpoint, waxing a couple of his friends at Tiger Woods 2005 for Xbox, and eating half a cheesecake he found unattended in the fridge. It had been delicious. Once his friend had returned home from work, they had run to Taco Bell, and the Chicken Ranch Wraps he eschewed his normal Grilled Stuffed Burrito for had been a mistake. It had been years since he had tried anything else, not only did the Chicken Ranch Wraps not look anything like the poster (the Grilled Stuffed Burrito looks identical, placing it in a very select group of photogenic fast foods, along with the McDonald's ice cream cone, and Wendy's chicken nuggets), but they had also been unexpectedly diminutive.

He had recently decided that it was not man's strengths that made him human, but his weaknesses. Man's humanity is more clearly demonstrated in the fact that he dies, rather than because he lives. While free of many of the flaws that plague lesser humans, he still had a couple of weaknesses, namely narcissism, and top-shelf vodka. While technically he possessed the free will to be able to moderate his consumption of such spirits, occasionally events manifested themselves in such a way that his free will was negated. Events such as weddings, hurricane parties, and two dollar you-call-it's at VIP parties. Ironically, The Perfect Storm was playing on HBO that afternoon, filling the room with thick New England accents and as yet unnoticed symbolism. As people filtered into the apartment, Svedka vodka was poured into shot glasses and consumed, chased by some cheap tropical punch. His reaction was mixed. Grey Goose it wasn't, but it was definitely a step up from the Aristocrat pounded in leaner days at college parties. A few shots and fifteen minutes later, he and the others piled into a few vehicles and made their way to the bar, courtesy of drivers he didn't know.

He was held up at the door, his Florida license being carefully inspected. The process seemed somewhat weird, until he realized that it had been months, if not years, since he had last been carded. He realized that being in a town with a large, underage undergrad population, his out-of-state license probably seemed suspicious. After all, who leaves Florida to go to school in Michigan? No one that he had ever heard of. Finally allowed into the bar, he paused long enough to get his green bracelet signifying him as one of the lucky few who would be drinking for next to nothing tonight, and then ventured upstairs.

It was early, and the bar was far from busy. A few older people were mingling around the remains of a buffet, most likely the remains of some earlier birthday party held before the night bar rush, although judging by their ages, it could have just as well been a retirement party. He opened a tab, and within seconds, his first Grey Goose and Cranberry arrived. A few moments later, the empty glass was replaced with a full one, and a few moments later, the new glass was in turn replaced. Sitting in a booth watching the Mets-Dodgers game, he was soon absorbed in the idle bar chatter that goes with heavy drinking.

"You're retahded... No, you ah..."

The conversation was punctuated with Jimmy Fallon and Rachel Dratch SNL quotes whenever Nomar appeared at the plate for the Dodgers. He looked at his glass, and noticed he'd been saving the straws from each drink. How many straws were in his drink now? Seven? Nine? He lost interest in counting them before he arrived at a definitive number. Excusing himself, he made his way down the stairs to find a bathroom, gripping the handrail and taking the steps deliberately. He still felt sober, not sober enough to drive, but plenty sober enough to keep up his current pace. As usual, all the normal height urinals were in use, so he placed his hand on the wall as he leaned forward to make sure the splatter would stay in the urinal, and not rebound out and on to his pants and shoes.

As he made his way up the stairs back to the booth, he became aware that the bar had definitely picked up in intensity. No longer could he just wait at the table for the server to notice his emptying drink and replace it, but he had to fight his way through the crowd to the bar. To save time waiting, he began to order two drinks at a time. Later, he would view this as oddly analogous to much of American foreign policy in the latter half of the twentieth century, a short term fix that only fuels underlying problems. The problem with ordering two drinks at a time is that one is immediately downed in order to save the trouble of wandering around the bar with both hands full, while the other is eventually consumed at the normal rate. In essence, this nearly doubles the pace of drinking, but in a way that is not immediately obvious to the drinker.

He wandered over to where his friend was talking to a couple of girls, noticing that his buddy was paying much more attention to the more attractive one. A team player, he engaged the other in conversation. While talking to her, he kept noticing that he wasn't paying attention to what she was saying, but rather he was constantly lapsing into some internal monologue.

"What is with her hair? Why is it sticking up in the middle when it appears to be tied back? It looks like a female mohawk. Wait, I've seen this on other girls... when did this come into style? I wonder what it's called, does it even have a name? I think I'd call it the continental divide, or maybe... why did she stop talking? Did she just ask me a question? Shit! What was she just talking about?"

He had no idea, and he took advantage of the crush of people to slip away without looking like he was abandoning the conversation. At least, he tried to make it look like that.

"Fuck! You just broke my thumb, you asshole!"

He collided with his friend, jamming his thumb awkwardly into his chest, causing immediate swelling and tenderness in both knuckles. The pain was real, but deadened by the alcohol. He pressed on, fighting through the crowd, he made his way to bar and ordered two more drinks...

He woke up, shivering violently, clothed in a sweatshirt that wasn't his, still wearing the jeans from the night before. He felt his pockets, and found them empty. Where was his wallet? Cell phone? He remembered he'd left his keys at the apartment, but couldn't remember what else he'd had with him at the bar. He pulled the blanket up over him, it had only been covering his legs, and rolled away from his cramped position against the wall on the floor of the apartment. He was curled up in the fetal position in the corner of the hallway, next to the bathroom. Had he been throwing up? His mouth was dry and tasted like vomit, and throat felt raw. He vaguely remembered huddling over the toilet, on hands and knees, shivering constantly except for the brief periods of sweating immediately after the evacuation of his stomach.

He was freezing, why was he so cold? He racked his brain, trying to piece together what had happened after they had left the bar. Jumbled images came to mind, he remembered sitting on the curb talking to a couple of girls while also talking on his cell phone, but he couldn't remember their faces. So he had had his cell phone on him, hopefully, it was somewhere in the apartment next to his wallet. He remembered wandering around the city in just jeans and a shirt, knowing it was cold, and that he was cold, but not feeling cold. That explained the shivering, he must have gotten chilled while running through downtown trying to find someone he knew. How had he gotten back? He vaguely remembered a taxi ride, but couldn't place how he had flagged one down, or how he had given directions back to where he was staying. As far as he knew, he didn't know the way from the apartment to the bar, so he must have met someone he knew on the street.

As drunk as he was the night before, he felt amazingly good. He looked at his watch. Ten o'clock. He'd been asleep for at least seven hours. He stood up and stepped into the bathroom, noticing the shoes he'd worn the night before, and the vomit caked onto the top of the right one. He didn't feel hungover, his head felt clear, and he seemed to be moving without the uncertainty that happens when waking up before the ingested alcohol is fully processed. He turned the water on and took off his clothes. Looking at himself in the mirror, he didn't see any bruises, scratches, or caked blood. A small victory, but a victory nonetheless. He turned on the sink faucet and starting gulping the cold, clear water. He knew he was dehydrated, and drank as much as he could before turning the faucet off and stepping into the shower.

He stayed in the shower for over half an hour, turning the water hotter and hotter, but yet he wasn't able to stop shivering. Finally, he reached the point where the water could get no hotter, and he turned it off. He dried himself quickly, rushing to get back into some pants and the thick sweatshirt. He walked through the apartment, finally settling into the couch and covering himself with a blanket. One of the guys he knew from high school was playing Xbox, and he half watched while he tried to fall back asleep. He noticed that watching the TV was starting to make him feel nauseous, so he closed his eyes. It didn't help, but standing seemed to. He strolled over to the kitchen, poured himself a glass of water, and started to drink. It caught in his throat. Putting the glass down quickly, he walked quickly to the bathroom, closing the door. He threw up quickly, and immediately felt better.

Minutes later, he joined one of his friends who needed to run a few errands. His friend needed to stop at the bank and then the gas station, and he wanted to purchase some Vernors' from the gas station to settle his stomach. While sitting in the car at the bank, his stomach wrenched again. He stepped out of the car, feeling somewhat refreshed by the cool fall air, but not completely. He threw up in the grass, feeling the stares of some Mexicans unloading a produce truck across the street. His stomach already emptied by vomiting earlier, he gasped and spat, covering the ground with green bile. He hated dry heaves. He hated how he felt that there was something inside him to be vomited, and how he knew that there wasn't. The agony was in the contradiction. He sat back in the car, ignoring the workers across the street, and waited for his friend to finish up inside the bank.

At the gas station, he purchased two twenty ounce bottles of Vernors', and once back at the car, opened one and took a small swig. The crisp taste and carbonation provided a welcome relief from the dry, stale taste of vomit. He was extremely thirsty, but had enough self control to pace himself, to make sure that he could hold down even a little bit. He smiled at the irony, had he paced himself last night, he wouldn't even be in his current position. Within minutes of arriving back at the apartment, he found himself once again hunched over the toilet, stomach painfully cramped, regurgitating the small bit of pop along with more stomach acid.

The intervals were shortening. Whereas he had almost forty minutes between the first and second time he vomited that morning, he was now throwing up regularly every ten minutes. Not only that, but his intestinal track was also... shaky. The problem with puking and pooping is a matter of proper ordering. Should he puke first, or poop first? Puking first raised questions of bowel control, as he imagined it would be easy for the wrong muscle to clench itself in the process, but on the other hand, throwing up into a toilet so recently fouled did not appeal to him either. After a brief moment of indecision, he decided to vomit second, but only after dousing the toilet with a thick layer of Febreze Air Freshener.

His hands were numb. He was puking roughly every five to eight minutes, and the time spent balanced on his hands and knees seemed to be taking a toll on his circulation. He thought that placing that much pressure on his wrists had started to limit blood flow to his hands, and he tried shaking them and leaning on his fists to restore the flow of blood. He vomited again, and began to notice that his legs were going numb also. He tried standing up and walking. However, rather than lessen the heavy feeling in his extremities, movement seemed to accentuate it. The numbness was spreading farther up into his arms and legs, and he could feel his face pulse. Four minute intervals, and now there was blood mixed in with the vomit. Immediately after vomiting, the dullness in his body would dissipate, only to return more severely seconds later. His stomach muscles were almost permanently flexed, squeezed so tightly that his breathing grew shorter, and more labored.

His face was now almost fully asleep. He thought of the movie Blow, and the quote from the small-time drug dealer after doing a line of almost pure coke.

"I can't feel my face, I mean, I can feel it, but I can't... feel it."

A million pin pricks seemed to be pushing up from the inside of his skull into his skin. He was starting to panic. He considered calling his parents and asking if he should consider visiting a hospital, but decided against it. He settled on calling one of his friends who was pre-med. He had found his phone and wallet earlier, but was now surprised how much difficulty he had trying to push the buttons on his phone. His hands had started to clench, fingers and thumbs extended, resembling clamps. He threw up again. He was now gasping for breath, only able to inhale shallowly and rapidly, as he couldn't get his stomach muscles to unclench. His friends had gone out to lunch, and he realized that he desperately needed to go to the ER. He thought about driving himself, but realized that he did not have sufficient control of his body to operate a vehicle, nor did he know where the hospital was.

He could now barely move, and his body was shutting down rapidly. Realizing that he was alone, and that in a short period of time he might be unable to get help, he called his friends, only to find that his jaw was now locking up. He was mumbling barely intelligible phrases, but they promised to rush back and take him in. His mind was racing, but there seemed to be no pattern to the thought. He couldn't think clearly, nor could he pull a solitary image or concept from the avalanche of his mind. He tried to walk downstairs after the phone call, to meet his friends outside and make it in faster, but his friends burst in before he made it out of the apartment. How long had it taken him to make his way to the front door from the bathroom? Thirty seconds? A minute? Three? He had no idea, it only seemed that there had been no delay between calling his friends and their arrival.

They half-guided, half-carried him down the hall, into the elevator, and into the Jeep in front of the building. Someone had thought to bring a small, plastic bucket, and he threw up again. Immediately after, he felt the brief relief of his muscles relaxing, and he found himself able to communicate clearly. It didn't last, and by the time they were stuck at a red light, the paralysis had returned.

"Fuck it, drive... I'll pay... ticket," he mumbled desperately, once again hunched over the small plastic bucket. He had no idea how far away the hospital was, and figured getting pulled over would at least provide them a police escort, saving them a few minutes in the process. The hospital was situated on top of the next hill, and pulling into the ER drive, he stumbled out of the front seat only to collapse into a waiting wheel chair.

Communicating with the nurse at the front desk was difficult, as his jaw was now almost completely immobilized. In an effort to speed things up, he struggled to remove his license and insurance card from his wallet, and placed them on the counter.

"Is this the right address?"
"No... I... don't live in Florida..."
"In town?"
"No... moving to Cleveland..."
"Where have you been living?"
"North Carolina... but don't live there... now... use parent's address..."

It took a few minutes for him to say the address clear enough for the nurse to register him. Finally, he was wheeled back to a room, where he collapsed on the bed momentarily, before vomiting into the plastic bucket. Two doctors, a physician's assistant, and a nurse all came through the room individually in the next twenty minutes, all asking the same questions, before he was finally hooked into an IV, and given some medicine to lessen his vomiting.

That was where he was now, reclining in the hospital bed, shivering under the thin blanket, gradually regaining the sensation of feel in his arms and legs. His breathing was less labored, now that the medicine had eased nausea's strong clench on his midsection, allowing him to close his eyes without immediately grasping for the bucket. The technical explanation for the paralysis had been a form of hyperventilation, as the near continuous vomiting had changed his breathing sufficiently so that he burned off more than the usual amount of carbon dioxide through respiration. Low carbon dioxide levels cause the blood vessels in the brain to constrict, creating the numbness in his face, and the rise in his blood's pH reduced the amount of available calcium, affecting his nerves and causing the numbness in his arms and legs. It would be a few hours until he was released, as the doctors ran tests to determine what had caused the initial wave of vomiting, but he knew.

28 hours later he would be engaged in some intense games of beer pong, esophagus aching, Miller Lite bottles stacking up on the counter, hospital bracelet still attached as a reminder to exercise better judgment. The keyword being better judgment, as the fact that he was drinking again was clearly against good judgment...

Coffee

2006-10-05T10:37:00.001-04:00

I'm not sure exactly how this happened, but sometime within the last few months I've become increasingly addicted to coffee. Granted, my taste has not developed to the point where I can discern a Costa Rican Terramazu Estate from some hot water sloshed around a coffee pot that hasn't been cleaned in a couple of weeks, but I'm still stunned by the development. After an incredibly intense bout of introspection, I've reduced to my addiction to a few key factors.

1) I've moved back across the Mason/Dixon line, reaffirming my allegiance to things like reading and abstaining from sex with family members, and the cold mornings (currently defined as anything under 60 degrees) are much more compatible with a hot beverage.

2) I've become a suit, and in order to complete the change to my new identity, I need to be able to competently trash ubiquitous coffee chains in favor of independent growers in the least accessible places on the globe, while simultaneously pumping money into SBUX (Starbucks) through my Ameritrade account. Nothing screams "I've made it!" louder than a brand-new Dodge Stratus and a heaping pile of self-contradiction.

3) I enjoy hanging out in coffee shops, and I feel uncomfortable raping free Wi-Fi access without purchasing something. I also feel uncomfortable with just buying something and throwing it away, so naturally, I buy coffee I don't want and then drink it. (Oddly enough I just broke into the "USA!, USA!, USA!" chant...)

4) Most people I hang out with drink coffee, consequently, the trait appears more desirable. Other similar concepts that I was once opposed to made more attractive by association include postmodernism, Christianity, and monogamy. Hopefully, I'll stop short of letting Charles make me into a relativist...

On a final, semi-related note, I was rudely awakened this morning by the high pitched whine of an automatic grinder/brewer at my friend's apartment. Had someone immediately offered me a choice between the following two explanations, I would have chosen (B), Occam's Razor be damned!

(1) The sound is from an automatic coffee grinder/brewer.
(2) Somehow I've fallen asleep on the deck of an aircraft carrier, and I'm seconds away from having an F-14 land on my face.

Lastly, can anyone explain why "a F-14" sounds like velociraptors attacking a chalkboard, and "an F-14" sounds like a koala bear crapping a rainbow in my brain? Wouldn't "a F-14" be correct?

Adventures in Capitalism

2006-10-01T23:34:00.000-04:00

Since I've upgraded careers, it is only a matter of time before I decide to upgrade the rest of my life. Now that I'll be making real money, and with my looming graduation, I'm months away from having the apron strings cut, resulting in a repossession of my truck by my parents. Consequently, it's time to start car shopping. So, in a Clinton-esque manner, I'm going to conduct a quick survey to see what kind of vehicle is favored by the public at large. However, in a very un-Clinton-esque manner, it probably won't factor into my final decision. Ready? Let's roll...

I've narrowed the field down to a few choice selections- I'll let you know how they stack up after I get some input. Please don't hesitate to suggest cars that aren't currently in the top five, but for every hybrid suggested, I'll club at least two, but no more than five, baby seals.

1) Honda Civic- Economical, Efficient, Generic
2) Audi A4- Tasteful, Appealing, Cost-Prohibitive3) Nissan 350z- Exciting, Sexy, Not Practical4) Nissan Murano- Rugged, Modern, Exotic5) Volkswagen Passat- German, Reliable, Cliche
Lastly, I'm not buying a Kia, Hyundai, Daewoo, Suzuki, Ford, GM, or Chevy- so don't even think about it.

I'm Unemployed... Damn!

2006-09-27T15:14:00.000-04:00

Today, I walked into the golf shop, fully intending to put in a substantially-less-than-two-weeks notice of my impending departure, only to be fired summarily before I got the chance. Not only was I fired, but I was also barred from the property, and my package from Amazon.com that arrived was refused (this is by far the most grievous offense). Why? Honestly, I don't have a good reason. While I am one who likes to initiate a good bridge burning and regret it later, I have to say that I was entirely magnanimous throughout the entire situation, doing everything I could to try to leave on good terms. The only reason I was going to put in a less-than-two-week notice was because my sources on the inside told me this was coming, so I was trying to preempt this ensuing mess. I failed.

Throughout this whole ordeal, I was basically treated like some "oxford-cloth psycho [who] might just snap, and then stalk from office to office with an Armalite AR-10 carbine gas-powered semi-automatic weapon, pumping round after round into colleagues and co-workers," regardless of the fact that they knew I took a better job (it was discussed in a frank, open, and friendly manner less than 20 hours earlier), and had already told them that I was leaving, and I quote myself here, "at a date within the next month that is most convenient for you." Apparently, that day was today. While I can't say I'm not frustrated with the whole situation (I actually liked the people I worked for until this and wanted to leave on good terms), the whole thing just strikes me as incredibly petty, and incredibly hilarious. Rather than just say, "Hey, actually, we really don't need you anymore, you can stop today, and good luck with everything in the future," they chose to make an issue over my "lack of interest in *** Golf Club and my inattention to its members and guests," (a charge we both know is bogus) and then give me ten minutes to grab my things and vacate the property. Totally uncalled for, and the absolute hardest way to go about it.

In conclusion, I no longer wanted to be a golf professional because of the accompanying petty bullshit, so, this petty bullshit makes perfect sense. I'll be on my way to join the khakistocracy now...

Apparently, I Did Hit Bottom

2006-09-26T14:29:00.000-04:00

What do this guy and I have in common? Giant... smiles. I was extended an offer just a few hours ago to start work as a market research analyst for a brand new company located in a midwestern city bordering a lake, and no, it isn't Seattle. I'll give you a hint, Stephen Kellogg is on record stating that prettiest girls live here. Anyway, I obviously accepted although I have not determined a start date yet. A couple of things complicating this: I'm required to stay employed as a golf professional until roughly the middle of November to get my PGA card (most likely not happening), I'm quasi-signed into a condo lease until December (I haven't signed anything, but certain oral contracts are binding, I'm in the process of figuring out my liability here), and my future roommate in Cleveland is out in California until December. Furthermore, I have more crap than can fit in my truck, and I don't think I have any clothes suited for temperatures less than 50 degrees. In conclusion, I'm freaking pumped.

Addendum: On a sadder note, having a job that requires me to work will limit my blogging. However, it won't be like I'm the only person who neglects it...

"Only From Disaster Can We Be Resurrected"

2006-09-22T14:59:00.000-04:00

The past week (Friday through Friday) has seen me travel some 6000 miles, sleep for less than 35 hours, consume fewer than 4000 calories (Sunday-Friday) resulting in a loss of 7-10 lbs of body weight , experience the rapid rise-plunge-rise-plunge of both testosterone and seratonin levels, and listen to endless hours of Stephen Kellogg and the Sixers. Basically, the last seven days has condensed a wealth of human experience and emotion down into a few poignant moments wedged between endless time stalking airport corridors and somnambulist passing of mile markers. Personally, I think I'm at the end of a long period of "dismantlement", where the person I thought I was and what I've thought I've believed has been show to be false in a lot of ways, so I'd like to think I've turned a corner in some sense. I've realized that I feel ways about things, which is weird, scary, and oddly refreshing. I'm not going to be anymore specific, because I'm not sure how this is going to pan out, and I'd rather not feel compelled to delete this post later. So, outside of that, here is last week's rundown:

Spent a few days in West Palm Beach, Fl hanging out, freaking out, and airing it out, respectively. I defied death numerous times, from watching electrical storms on the roof of a twenty story building, to almost drowning while snorkeling out in front of The Breakers. How did I almost drown? In a nutshell, spending time building fast-twitch muscle fibers has limited use in paddling through pounding surf, and an over-whelming fear of drowning (most likely caused by my general incompentence in the skill of swimming) leads to panicked breathing when I fail to successfully eject all the water in my snorkel. In my defense, I'm more scared of looking like a pansy than I am of drowning, and the water was really cloudy and murky, so I don't think anyone saw me tear off my mask numerous times and frantically paddle my way to the surface.
After catching the red-eye (a delayed red-eye at that) back to Newport News, VA and driving back to the beach Monday night (arriving at my house for a few sweet hours of sleep before running into work), I spent the day frantically putting together a PowerPoint presentation for my job interview on Thursday. Taking off Wednesday morning, I found out while confirming my intinerary for the interview in the airport in Atlanta that a PowerPoint was unnecessary, so I attempted to redact my whole presentation to be strictly auditory at around 34,000 ft somewhere over Appalachia. The presentation was later described as "adequate." Yes!
Saw my brother up in Pittsburgh Wednesday night, ate two pieces of Stuffed Crust pizza and a couple of breadsticks (the closest thing to a meal since Saturday night), and battled out about five hours of sleep before getting up at 4:30 AM, taking a shower, choking down half a yogurt, and hauling ass over to Cleveland for my 9:00 interview. From my perspective, the interview went as well as it could have for me having little (ie: nothing) in the way of relative experience of education, and we'll (ie: I'll) know within a week if I got by on my good looks and charm. I'm feeling optimistic, but not so optimistic as to sign the lease on my Lambo...

"When the doors on this Diablo raise, I'm going to have the front of your crib looking like Diablo's doorways..."

Culture Warrior

2006-09-14T16:55:00.000-04:00

I was flipping through channels last night, and paused on Bill O'Reilly while waiting for the lead-in to Hannity and Colmes (which I stopped watching once the feature piece was on Rosie O'Donnell saying Christians are as dangerous as muslims) and I saw a plug to visit Bill O'Reilly's website and take the test to see if I'm a culture warrior! So, I did, and apparently, I am.

Why am I a culture warrior? Because I answered five incredibly stupid questions. Questions like, "Do you believe America is harmful to the world?" or "Would it be unfair to rank the following in terms of evil power (in lowest to highest): Darth Vader, Al Gore, Stalin, Al Sharpton, Cindy Sheehan?" or "Do you think Nancy Pelosi should be able to give post-natal abortions by waiting in the nursery with a machete?" Answering no to any of these makes you a "culture warrior!" So, at least I have that...

- incidentally, the "discussion" between David Limbaugh, Bob Beckel, and the Hannity/Colmes duo consisted of mainly this (most accurate if read aloud yelling):

Limbaugh: "Democrats disparage Christians!"
Colmes: "Which Democrats? How can you implicate an entire party based on quotes by three or four people?"
Limbaugh: "Read my book! Page 97-104!"
Colmes: "We're on TV, how about you just tell us?"
Beckel: "I'm a born again Christian! Six years! Stop bringing my Christ into your politics!"

Finally, I think we all need to hope that I won't be too heavily evalutated based on my current ability to do the job I'm being interviewed for, but rather more heavily on my potential ability to do said job, if someone can show me how to do it first. Most appropriate analogy: Would you draft Brent Barry if his playing resume consisted of- "Won two of three games of HORSE in gym class?"

"You cannot wield it!"

Blog Neglect

2006-09-12T13:36:00.000-04:00

This blog has been neglected of late, and it won't be changing at least for a couple of weeks. I'm flying up to Cleveland next Thursday, to give a presentation to a company that will hopefully land me a job earning me some serious loot. So, unless you know something about financial modeling and can clue me in, don't complain that I haven't been blogging detailing my latest bowel movement or why I fall asleep every night thinking of Kate Beckinsale. Just know that I do both.

Incontinence

2006-09-05T17:03:00.000-04:00

I was bored at work today, so to complement the time spent reading Stalin, I decided to see how many 20 oz. bottles of Dasani water I could drink in thirty minutes. The answer is six (for today), and judging by the absolute transparency of my urine, I'm fully hydrated.

Also, I had an interesting argument with the Redness about the actual meaning of incontinence. I argued that it was the inability to exercise proper fluid dynamics, and he postulated that it was a much more solid problem. We were both right, amazing.

Finally, the time spent waiting between initial interviews and follow-up calls is probably the most excruciating thing I've experienced, short of a vise grip to the sciatic nerve. Especially when it is a job I actually want, and more money than I can spend is on the line...

"Could I buy one of these? Possibly, but I'd lose it in the lake effect snow..."

Steve Irwin- 6241, Wildlife- A Very Big 1

2006-09-04T15:02:00.000-04:00

For the most part, I really can't care less about the deaths of people I've never met, but when I heard that Steve Irwin was killed by a sting ray this morning at the gym, I was actually kind of stunned, probably more stunned than when the Space Shuttle exploded or when the Twin Towers came down (a space shuttle explosion and terrorist attacks are well, within the range of things I can expect to happen, whereas The Crocodile Hunter being killed by a relatively docile animal isn't). Granted, my life isn't going to change at all, and it isn't like I've watched his show in years, but I'm still a little disappointed. Stupid freaking stingray.

Community College Sweetness

2006-08-28T15:28:00.000-04:00

I'm currently taking my last couple of classes for my undergraduate degree through some online classes at a local community college. The best part about online classes is the required participation on discussion boards, as teachers and profs somehow think that steps need to be taken to compensate for a lack of discussion that might occur in a normal classroom setting.

Hi, I'm a nontraditional student. When I'm not wearing jerseys over long sleeve t-shirts to cover the stench of desperation and failure, you can find me rambling about how the government eliminated my low skill manufacturing job, or posting irrelevant replies on discussion boards using this weird, electrical, type-y gadget thing...

My opinion is that this is completely unnecessary. At the community college level (where classes consist of those who struggled through high school, empty nest mothers, and bored retirees), virtually nothing important is ever brought up in a class discussion. Why? Here is what each discussion boils down to- 1) The kids who barely escaped high school aren't interested, unless it's a discussion about parties, drugs or alcohol 2) The retooling mothers are incapable of discussing anything other than children and 3) the retirees can only talk about what things used to be like. Add a good dose of idiocy, and you get get discussions like the one going on in my Intro to Computers Class, over the required topic of "Are Computers Necessary to College Students"-

Highlights (typos, poor grammar, and stupidity included):

" Students do not need a computer for success,but sure does make it easier when they work. They have made us lazy. Students do not research papers as they used to by reading different litatures on the subject. Students use the search engine to do our work. It does make it faster and easier,but I can do the same a little longer but same results."

The point this older lady appears to be using is that she can do something in a way that is both slower, and more difficult, yet only returns the same results. Note to her- doing something faster, easier, and getting the same results is not technically laziness, I believe it's called efficiency.

"I think that it is very important to use computers in college and it does help you become sucessful! In most classes you end up doing papers or some type of work that involves a computer. Computers are involved in everything now days, pretty soon everything will be ran by computers. Computers help me out alot for my classes, without them I would not be albe to take my internet classes and then I would not be able to work as much. "

Pretty soon everything will be ran by computers.. ummm, what? I'm not saying she's wrong, I'm just saying I can't wait to get my first digital belt, or my very own wireless Q-Tips.

This next one was under the subject- "Computers in todays world... have become A MUST BUT it doesn't have to be"- Thank you CNN. Anyway, here is what she had to say.

"Though computers seem to be becoming "smarter" they can't replace our own human brains. I think that is one thing scientists and the technical world haven't been able to duplicate it yet. At least to our own magintude, besides HUMAN's invented and make computers. They're only as smart as we can make them. So yea they can help in many ways it still doesn't replace being able to use our heads in LEARNING."

First, I don't know why the phrase "At least to our own magintude" is before the comma, but after the period. Had it been the other way, it would have made more sense, but still not much overall. Nor do I understand what the "HUMAN" is possessing, or how most of this paragraph relates to the intended topic. If I was the prof, I would respond to this with a comment like this-

"What you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul."

Finally, my personal favorite is this reply-

" I agree, I to use my computer for school because I'm forced to work full time and internet classes are more convient. They are still very stressful when things do not work as they are supose to like the internet to stay on or when I push a wrong button it dosn't leave forever into cybird space. I have many assignments out there!!!"

"Ummm... what?!"

The absolute highlight would have to be "cybird" space. I don't think this can be a typo, because I can't imagine typing "bird" instead of "ber". The letter "i" is just too freaking far away on the keyboard to accidentally hit. I really think this lady thought she used the correct term...

Summer Movie Review

2006-08-25T19:48:00.000-04:00

First, let me make the disclaimer that I have not actually seen any of these movies I'm going to review. In fact, the last movie I saw at a theatre was Underworld: Evolution, and it was at a second-run theatre at that. And it was awesome, on so many different levels. Anyway, I'm going to list a few movies and tell exactly why I didn't see them, not least of which is the fact that I refuse to go to movies by myself, and I'm removed of meaningful human contact by what feels like a million, bajillion miles.

Movie: Accepted
IMDB plot outline: When a high school burnout discovers he's been rejected from every college he's applied to, he creates a fake university in order to fool his overzealous parents.
Reason for my lack of attendance: This movie is completely unrealistic on about fifty different levels. First, Justin Long is the star. I mean, I can tolerate him in meaningless supporting roles, but starring? I don't know. Was Ryan Reynolds not available to do another slacker college movie? Two, it is absolutely impossible to be rejected by every college. At last chance, he'd be accepted here. Three, without an R rating, there is no chance that there will be enough boobs in this movie to hold my attention.

Movie: Dead or Alive
IMDB plot outline: The movie adaptation of the best selling video game series Dead or Alive.
Reason for my lack of attendance: Umm, to start, how about the plot outline doesn't actually outline a plot. It just describes where the movie came from. The only thing that could possibly save this movie would be if John Wu directed it, and I can't believe I just wished John Wu would direct anything. Look, I'm fine with sex and violence being an integral part of a movie (see: A History of Violence), but, I'm not sure if I can watch a movie which only revolves around the two. Wait, yes I can... actually, I think this is going to be the greatest movie ever!

Movie: World Trade Center
IMDB plot outline: Two Port Authority police officers become trapped under the rubble of the World Trade Center.
Reason for my lack of attendance: 1) Nicholas Cage. 2) Nicholas Cage. 3) Nicholas Cage. 4) I hate watching movies where the America loses (ie. Pearl Harbor). 5) Read the plot outline, I'd consider it if it read like this: Two Port Authority police offers are exposed to radioactive waste while trapped underneath the Twin Towers. Developing super powers, they rescue everyone, and then hunt down Osama Bin Ladin, while taking plenty of time to get wicked drunk, do lines of coke of stripper's asses, and arm wrestle grizzly bears and midgets. Starring- Ron Perlman and that huge, huge guy who gets his ass kicked in the beginning of Troy.

Movie: The Covenant
IMDB plot- Sorry, I'm talking to this hot Lithuanian at the coffee shop... this post will never be completed...

Children = Accessories?

2006-08-23T17:31:00.000-04:00

From the Virginian-Pilot:

"For the working mom who is pretty much on top of trends, her kids become a reflection of who they are. You do for your kids what you do for your own wardrobe..." says Jaye Hersh, "When you're walking down the street holding your daughter's hand, it makes you feel good when she looks good. It's like having the right car or the right handbag..."

I don't have kids, but I'm pretty sure that's not what it's like...

Rich Arabs Like Israel

2006-08-22T16:49:00.000-04:00

I found this over at Nationalreview- I found it interesting, although slightly vague. If anyone knows where I can go to Grad school and research things like this, I'd be interested.

Things Not to Do at a Golf Course

2006-08-21T15:57:00.000-04:00

Since I'm getting out of the business, I figure anything I'll ever want to post about the golf business I should post now, before I lose my authority. So, in case any of you are ever wanting to go to a golf course, here is a quick list of do's and don't's-

Do call for a teetime, and actually have an idea of what time you want to play. Also, when calling for a teetime, Don't provide any information that is unnecessary to the actual business of obtaining a time, you're just wasting both of our time.

Examples of Bad Phone Calls-

Customer: "Hey, what's the earliest tee time you have available on Wednesday?"
Me: "7:24"
Customer: "Great, can we get four on about nine o'clock?"

Customer: "Hey, my name is Joe, I live in New Jersey, we just drove down last night and we're renting a house on the beach. We've got about thirty of us here, my whole mother's side of the family. We're..."

Do tip people working if you're trying to scam something like a discounted rate or some kind of service for free. Don't ask for one. I sure as hell won't give it to you. Double Don't ask for one like this (I got this one today)-

Him: "Hi, my name's Frank Carter, I work for ESPN and NBA TV televising basketball games. Do you have some kind of discount for that? A lot of other places have given us a break..."
Me: "Why? Why would any golf course give you a discount? What is it that you do that in any way benefits us enough to discount your rate? How does *** Golf Club recover this money down the road?"
(I didn't actually say that, but I wanted to. He was big, and angry, and black, and his hand came halfway up my arm when we shook, so what I said was- "Yeah, no problem, I'll give you the unaccompanied guest rate (which is exactly the same as what he would have paid), how does that sound?" He seemed to appreciate it.)

If you play somewhere less than twice a year, Do get in your car and drive away if something happened that you don't appreciate. Don't come complain to anyone who works there, they don't care. Double Don't complain about anything that can't be fixed. Ex-

Some Douche- "I just wanted to let you know that your driving range is way to close to the first hole, there were balls coming into the fairway while we were playing..."
Me: "Actually, I just talked to our maintenance staff, we're going to rebuild the first hole twenty yards farther right to fix this."
Douche: "What? Really?"
Me: *Blank Stare*

Do hang up the phone if you're on hold for more than a few minutes, like two minutes. Don't sit there and wait while the people working take bets on how long you'll hold (today's winner, 22 minutes!), they're not picking that phone back up.

Moving

2006-08-20T22:13:00.000-04:00

For the fourth time in four months, I'm busy packing up everything I own and moving it to a new apartment/condo/house/cottage. Well, specifically, I'm moving it all back to a condo that I used to live at, and had to move out of for a month because our landlady is a complete and total bitch. Unfortunately, due to a few acquisitions of an Xbox 360, numerous books, a fair amount of new clothes to replace ones that were perfectly fine, and the non-perishables I failed to eat before moving, everything I own no longer fits in my truck. So, instead of one cleverly packed uber-trip, I have to make a couple of smaller, less careful trips. It isn't too bad, since my old condo is only a mile away, but it's going to suck in two or three months, when instead of driving a mile, I'm driving to Akron/Charlottesville/Denver/Florida/?/Grad school somewhere, and I have to start throwing things away again...

Article Review

2006-08-19T19:51:00.000-04:00

I ran into this over at ESPN.com- apparently an 18-year old male made himself a fake press pass to get into baseball games and talk to some of the Met's players. How illegal is that? Well, apparently he could get seven years, which strikes me as odd, since in New York the average sentence for vehicular manslaughter is about 16 months. Hmmm... fake press pass vs. hitting and killing someone with a vehicle, saving $28 in admission and getting to talk to few heroes vs. running a person over with a car... yeah, that sounds about right.

At least this person didn't see a free baseball game!

Courtesy of Google News, I found the exact article I saw a couple of days ago in CNN titled: "Earth's Moon could become a Planet." According to the new definition proposed by the IAU- "Every round object orbiting the sun is a planet, unless it orbits another planet. But there is a big caveat: If the center of gravity, called the barycenter, is outside the larger object, then the smaller object is a planet." The article then goes on to describe how the moon moves a few inches farther away from the Earth every year, so that eventually (we're talking billions of years) the moon may end up being labeled as a planet. Suddenly, I stopped caring. So, as for the title- Technically correct? Yes. Incredibly misleading? Yes. Did I end up reading the article? Yes, and then I blogged about it. Touche CNN!

Finally, I urge all of you to check out this thrilling exchange played out over a few days between the Redness and I. Pay special attention around the 28th move, a brilliant fork by the Redness forces an early (yet tactically brilliant) Queen sacrifice by me, which paves the way for a crushing victory. Somewhere, Miyamoto Musashi is smiling...

Books and Airtran

2006-08-15T15:32:00.000-04:00

First, let me declare that Airtran is the greatest discount airline ever. Granted, I've never flown anything but Airtran, but why would I? I've flown Airtran probably 12-20 times, and I've never had a bad experience, a flight delay, or suffered a catastrophic crash resulting in my death or permanent disfiguration. Granted, with the exception of some middle-aged jewelry retailer-women who mistakenly operated under the assumption that I was somebody, I've never sat next to anyone attractive or interesting, but c'mon, I just found out I could fly from Newport News, VA to West Palm Beach, FL for $49 each way. Are you serious? Count me in.
Secondly, I went on a reading binge this weekend and knocked out The Interrogators, Confessions of an Economic Hitman, and a large portion of Fermat's Enigma. A few reactions:

1) The Interrogators- Awesome. A fascinating insider account of the intelligence battle between US Forces and those picked up in raids and battle during the invasion of Afghanistan, and incredibly descriptive when it comes to the method used by Army intelligence to break prisoners without crossing obvious moral barriers. This book got me so pumped up about America that I started a USA chant while picking up some weird chicken stuff at the Chinese restaurant on the way back to my house. It didn't take.

2) Confessions of an Economic Hitman- This book should come with a warning, and it should read "Contents of prologue may make book appear more interesting than it really is." Basically, the point John Perkins tries to make is this: The US Government, which is both controlled by and acts through US Corporations, actively solicits loans to developing countries through organizations like the World Bank. These loans are then used to pay American companies to develop infrastructure, effectively channeling the money back out of the country and crippling its economy with debt payments. As a result, these countries are then forced into doing whatever America wants, Perkins calls it- "exacting our pound of flesh." Actually, I think it's a legitimate argument, however, Perkins is short on details, long on moralizing, and incredibly tedious. For someone who brags, "writing comes easy to me", his book is about as literary as a Dean Koontz novel, and fails to hold my attention as well as, let's say, The Lusty Argonian Maid. If anybody is familiar with a book on the same topic, with more substantiation, let me know. I'd like to be able to fall back on more than just John Perkin's self-righteousness to support an anti-corporate position.

3) Fermat's Enigma- Simon Singh's account of the solving of Fermat's Last Theorem. At least, I think they solved it in the end, I don't know, I didn't finish it, I just stopped caring. I'm not sure when this happened, but I think sometime after the start of Dr. Carlson's Calc Two class, but before my 38% on the final, my brain learned to just shut off . A quick equation highlighting this problem- (|Numbers + Letters|)/relative complexity= amount of interest. I think this would be better phrased as a limit problem, and it somehow approaches zero, logarithmically, or something, I don't know, I just blacked out writing that paragraph. Redness, I'll be happy to mail this back to you, I only ask that you mail me back a few hours of my life in return.

Anyway, fresh off the Amazon train is The 48 Laws of Power, The 33 Strategies of War, War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning (I need to finish that up), The Island of the Day Before (thanks to EAP for reminding me that there is an Eco novel that I haven't read yet), and The Name of the Rose, and Gates of Fire (which even if I never reread them (unlikely), deserve a spot in the Pantheon of my future bookshelf. So, in conclusion, there are two peaches sitting on the counter at work, and just looking at them and imagining biting into that weird fuzz is enough to make my skin crawl...

Microsoft Game Development

2006-08-14T10:32:00.000-04:00

This is awesome. I'm not sure what kind of effect it will have on the video game market, or how I'm supposed to purchase the games produced, but I think this is a really, really neat idea.

New post is in the works, so if anyone has anything left to say about the previous post, then get on it before I pass it over.

How Far Does the Rabbit Hole Go?

2006-08-11T00:04:00.000-04:00

Recent comments on Charles’ blog have slipped from Lieberman-Lamont back to the Iraq War, and explaining my position requires a bit more space, so presto- an attempted post jack!

My own personal position on the Iraq war has become less hawkish the more I read, in some part to the principled objections of Charles, J. Morgan, and others, and in some part through knowledge gained elsewhere. I’ll sum up the old position, and then try to convey the new:

Old Position: Saddam crossed multiple lines, all of which dictate the loss of independent sovereignty and a unilateral, global response. Regardless of immediate terrorist threats (and independent of motive), removing Saddam from power was an appropriate, somewhat pressing need, and I couldn’t care less for Bush’s justification for US action- I was in.

New Position- I still agree with most of the old position, only I think engaging in Iraq was a tactical, strategic mistake, and I think initiating war is out until this aspect is solved. Partly from reading the first few pages of “War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning”, partly from reading Robert Greene’s page over at Rudius Media (the host of great sites such as Tucker Max, Tard-Blog, and others…), and partly from less gripping, less recent sources, I think that America got caught up in an emotional backlash created by 9/11, and the helped fuel the rise of conventional arguments (“For us or against us”) over necessary tactical discussion on the war (“What is the criteria for victory?”).

I strongly recommend reading “Western Strategy is Bankrupt” by Robert Greene over here. It’s been hugely influential in the way I view the war, and I think Robert Greene does a great job of reframing the debate in angles not taken by the MSM, other media, and partisan apologist groups.

“Terrorists understand that western democracies have certain limitations. The public generally has little taste for big-scale wars in which lots of lives might be lost. They have little taste for wars that would have to last several years to have any effect. They know that a politician in power must consider his response to a terrorist attack in terms of his own political situation. He must play to the public and perhaps do something dramatic in the short-term, but cannot take action designed for the long run, because election cycles do not allow this. They know that politicians come and go in the West and that every four years a new party can totally alter the situation. The terrorists can think long term, while we can only respond in the short term. This is an asymmetry of power that is rarely discussed--that of time.

Furthermore, we in the West only tend to think in terms of conventional warfare even when we think we are talking about the unconventional. A case in point: to us, war must have clear objectives, this objective generally being victory on the battlefield. But this is nonsense. There can be all kinds of objectives that have nothing to do with conventional victories on the battlefield. Seen in the western light, it is hard to understand what Osama bin Laden is after. If he wants to take over the middle east, well, he seems to be failing in that light. But terrorists can have a different objective: namely to create and exploit chaos, to stir things up and rewrite a stalemated situation. Their goals can be limited, or even vague, without making them ineffective.

Another case was the Yom Kippur War in which the Arabs successfully launched a surprise attack on Israel, but eventually were pushed back on several fronts and defeated. Although Israeli military officials were chastised for allowing this surprise, they were generally credited with using an effective strategy to counter this attack. What was not considered was the fact that the Arabs in this war knew they could not defeat Israel militarily. (Sadat later admitted this.) They did not have the weapons or the armies. They wanted to demonstrate to the public that Israel was vulnerable, not this monolithic beast that could not be challenged. In the Arab world this war was seen as a turning point in morale and it has been so ever since. It is a great mistake to not understand the strategy of your enemy, but equally bad is to misread its intentions, its objectives. Sometimes it is not to gain territory or win set-piece battles. Sometimes battles, wars, attacks have political purposes that play out over time. We seem blind to this possibility.”

In our attempt to clean out the Middle East of terrorists we’ve created a large mistake in forgetting that war and politics are inseparable. Fearing that the rest of the world will see our actions as an extension of American hegemony, we’ve attempted to conduct the war in a strictly militant fashion, leaving the politics of the region to, well, the region. I don’t think this will work. I’m all for exporting democracy (in some form) as an alternative to totalitarianism around the world, but I think we’ve got to come clean that part of exporting democracy is exporting America, and if exporting America is out, then we are in no position to get involved.

Over the last few weeks I’ve been obsessed with analyzing my motives for certain actions (“Why am I doing this? Why did I just say that?”) and trying to figure out where I’m doing things that reflect who I am, and where I’m attempting to create an image, or manipulate those around me. (It’s scary how much it’s the latter). I think that idea is applicable in this instance- What are we trying to do? We’re trying to change the equation in the Middle East by creating America Jr. to counteract Syria, Iran, and others. (I’m totally for this by the way, let J. Morgan dream of landed gentry, and let me dream of American Imperialism) Can we create America Jr. without attempting to create Iraqi-Americans? No. You can’t just slap two coats of paint on any car sitting in a junkyard and expect it to run, and we can't set up a democracy without changing the culture underneath it to something complimentary. We've got to be upfront that either we're posting soldiers in Iraq to keep the fight over there, or realize that the tools we've laid out aren't sufficient to the job. I don't think this is a "We never brought enough soldiers " issue, it's that we brough paintball guns to a debate.

So, what do we do now? We can't just say, "We're here, some of us are queer (but we aren't allowed to discuss it), get over it", we've got to come up with some plan that allows us to withdraw without leaving a giant power vacuum, a civil war that involves more than just the Sunni Triangle, or win, somehow, I think. I don't know how we're going to do this, you tell me. I only know that everything is a whole lot more nuanced than I used to think it was, and every new piece of information gives me two new shades of grey...

The Peace Law Open Letter

2006-08-09T09:36:00.000-04:00

I was looking through the email attached to my blog for the first time in months, and I found a wonderfully informative piece from Jack from Melbourne about "the profoundly conservative (but not right wing) Social Wisdom Teaching of Avatar Adi Da Samraj." Since I'm at work, and bored, I read through most of it, and I'll post a few of my favorite excerpts from the essay titled (entitled?) "On Liberation from ego and egoic Society, or, Cooperation + Tolerance = Peace". Incidentally, the "Cooperation + Tolerance = Love" equation was first discovered by Pythagoras- wait, maybe I'm thinking of John Lennon... I don't even know anymore. Anyway-

The ego-"I", whether individual or collective, is eventually reduced to sorrow and despair (or chronic life-depression), because of (and as an experiential result of) the inability of life (in and of itself) to generate Happiness and Joy and Immortality. And that self-contained depression finally becomes anger, or loveless confrontation with the total world and every form of presumed "not-self"—including even (and especially) the Transcendental, Inherently Spiritual, and Self-Evidently Divine Self-Identity (or One and Only and Non-Separate Self-Condition), Which is "locked away", by means of conventional (or merely exoteric) ideas of "God Apart", and is (thereby) made into an "Other" by the egoic mind.

If you didn't catch that, don't worry, our boy (or girl, I'm not sure) Avatar Adi Da Samraj clarifies in a later paragraph-

The only-by-Me Revealed and Given Way of Adidam is the Divine Way of the always already presently existing (and always already able to be functioning) heart in every one—and It is, therefore, based on the always present-time-existing participatory intelligence (expressed as devotional heart-recognition of Me), and the always present-time recognition-response of devotional love of Me, and counter-egoic surrender of self-contraction by Means of that devotional love of Me.

Yes, Yes, that's it. It's all clear to me now. By the way, I was lying. I didn't read through 4,149 words of this crap (word count courtesy of Microsoft Word), I just selected two blurbs at random. Furthermore, I remember being taught that the correct way to write anything is to parenthesize multiple times in a sentence and capitalize random words, wait, nevermind, it was the exact opposite. Anyway, I'm pumped I didn't attach a real email address to my blog, so I don't have to sift through this very often.

Anyway, let's hear what Joe Biden says about people like Avatar Adi Da Samraj:

Stories and Conventions

2006-08-08T10:34:00.000-04:00

I read this interesting article (suprisingly) at Malcolm Gladwell's website. I was expecting some fluff, like how eating Kraft Easy Mac three times a week leads to an increase in left-handedness and then absolutely nothing about why this matters, but instead was treated to a book review of "Why?", by Charles Tilly, which I fully intend to order off of Amazon but most likely will never get around to doing it.

Anyway, interesting excerpt-

Some social situations don't lend themselves to the easy reconciliation of reason and role. In Jonathan Franzen's novel "The Corrections," for example, one of the characters, Gary, is in the midst of a frosty conversation with his wife, Caroline. Gary had the sense, Franzen writes, "that Caroline was on the verge of accusing him of being 'depressed,' and he was afraid that if the idea that he was depressed gained currency, he would forfeit his right to his opinions. . . . Every word he spoke would become a symptom of disease; he would never again win an argument." Gary was afraid, in other words, that a technical account of his behaviorÂthe explanation that he was clinically depressedÂwould trump his efforts to use the stories and conventions that permitted him to be human. But what was his wife to do? She wanted him to change.

Why this excerpt? It reminds of a recent frosty conversation between a somewhat inebriated Redness and his wife. I'd explain, but everyone who reads this was there and should see the parallels...

Work Related Stress

2006-08-07T13:49:00.000-04:00

I've been back at work for two days now since my mini-vacation, and every time I hand someone a credit card receipt to sign (which is pointless), I've been fantasizing about stabbing them in the eye with the pen. Why? I've spent the morning researching psychological stress regarding environments, and I've been surprised (not happily) by the fact that the Wikipedia torture article has had much more relevant information about my work environment than a site like MindTools. Unfortunately, my immediate work environment contains roughly ten stressors that qualify as psychological or physical torture. The list:

1) Extended Solitary Confinement- I'm working on a ten hour day today, with only momentary contact with other coworkers, mainly when they come in to grab a drink out of our Coke machine, which emits-

2) Constant Low Frequency sound- In this case, the annoying hum of a compressor, which runs constantly, filling the-

3) Confined Space- ,which happens to be a monochromatic, doublewide trailer, with its mindless buzzing. Furthermore, the trailer is constantly experiencing-

4) Alterations to Room Temperature- It can be hot and humid, much like our disconnected outside bathroom, or freezing cold, depending on sudden changes in the outside temperature and irregular changing of the thermostat. Bad, but much worse is the-

5) Shaming and Public Humiliation- which is predominantly self-imposed due to the fact that I'm a glorified counter clerk. Yes, I'm ashamed of what I do.

6) Constant, Irregular, Annoying Stimuli- which is provided by ringing telephones, five ringing telephones. It rings all day, every day, and is exacerbated by the fact that every conversation is exactly the same, driving me insane with it's mindless repetition.

7) Poor Lighting- In our 800 sq ft. trailer, we have no less than 16 five foot long fluorescent lights, which have been shown in numerous experiments to have adverse effects on humans.

8) Sensory deprivation- Not in the sense that there is nothing for my senses to process, but by the fact that there is nothing meaningful for my senses to interpret. Just annoying sound, harsh light, and extreme boredom. Here comes a killing spree...

9) Poor Ergonomics- This isn't in Wikipedia, but the fact that the keyboard and mouse are in the most inconvenient position (with no room on the desk to make them better, believe me, I've tried) and the the computer is my only diversion, AND being forced to stand for hours on end behind the counter since we have Judas Chairs instead of stools- -has to count for something (we have stools, but they aren't much better). Not only that, but the counter is located at the only place in the golf shop where I can't look out a window- somewhere, right now, the creator of the Hawthorne studies is rolling in his grave.

10) I'm poorly compensated, and my job lacks any real meaning.

In conclusion, I can't decide whether to pray to John McCain or OSHA to come rescue me.

Is Death a Disease?

2006-08-01T13:48:00.000-04:00

“The first person to live to be 1,000 years old is certainly alive today; indeed, he or she may be about to turn 60,” says Aubrey de Grey, the Cambridge University geneticist who has become the de facto spokesman of the anti-ageing crusade.

Interested? Read this article from Barron's. I read it a few months ago, and it blew my mind. I tried earlier (unsuccessfully) to find a copy online to reference so I could write this post, and reading this article in the NY Times today prompted me to look again. I found it this time.

I'm not going to waste time paraphrasing either article, I'm just going to note that the issue makes me somewhat conflicted. Before I go on, let's make two assumptions for the point of argument.

1) We're going to assume that Aubrey de Grey is A) correct on his scientificness and B) not a Russian mystic.2) We aren't talking about aging normally until 75 and then just hanging on for a few more decades, we're talking the aging process scaled out over centuries.

On one hand, I have trouble justifying the need for anyone to live past a 100, but I'm willing to admit that at 21 years old, being 200 is no more incomprehensible to me than 85, and that death is an issue I haven't really thought a lot about. I mean, the whole thing doesn't seem on the up and up (somehow I can't see the medical system offering equal access to life extension), but unless I join some gnostic cult and learn the secrets of the universe, you can bet I'll be first in line in sixty years.

Here's my estimate of reactions from you all (going from most opposed to most in favor)- J. Morgan, Hans, Charles, Standingout, Redness, Me. I can't really offer a good guess for Mair and EAP, and I'm not sure where GMack fits in. I think he'd be up for two centuries more of fashion, although he'd probably kill himself once we end up wearing this-

Scantily clad women in mithril space clothes? Schwing and schwing!

Bathrooms

2006-07-31T17:02:00.000-04:00

It's the last day of July, so one more worthless post to bump my total up. What's that? All my recent posts have been worthless? Touche!

I had a most interesting conversation with a man who owns some gas stations, and he shared this interesting piece of convenience store genius- he refuses to stock the condom machines in the women's bathroom. Why? Since the women are too embarrassed to buy the condoms at the desk anyway, what's the chance they are going to complain about getting screwed *cough* in the bathroom? None. I couldn't pin him to a number, but thousands of dollars a year are made this way. Totally unethical, totally genius.

Lastly, while about to light a match in my bathroom this morning to clear away some noxious fumes, I had a most magnificent idea. Instead of just lighting the match, I first sprayed the inside of the toilet bowl with Lysol disinfecting spray, and then dropped a match in (note: I realize that in no way is dropping the match into the toilet critical to the success of its mission). Not only did the sulfur help take away the stench, but the resulting fireball completely obliterated any remaining nastiness (I'm talking gases, not skid marks) in the bowl while providing a satisfying visceral thrill, and then was cleanly extinguished by the flushing of the toilet. Genius? No, but enjoyable.

Questing for Oblivion

2006-07-30T14:23:00.000-04:00

I'd like to say that I just walked into Wal-Mart, picked up an Xbox 360 and a copy of Oblivion, and was home to play by 3 PM the other day, but in reality, it was much more difficult. Purchasing Oblivion and the necessary hardware was actually an eleven-day quest fraught with danger and frustration, which in all actuality, is probably making the game that much sweeter. Here is the rough order of events.

Day 1: I stopped by Wal-Mart, to conduct a visual inspection as to the availablity of an Xbox 360 and Oblivion. Negative. I wanted to ask when a shipment was coming in, but the Wal-Mart Electronics Monkey was engrossed in discussing World of Warcraft strategy with some professional looking man in his mid-thirties. Nothing, absolutely NOTHING, makes me happier than hearing a sentence like, "I found the Helm of Varedoth in the Western Plaguelands, which gave my orc shaman +5 strength" in a public setting. Especially when uttered by a non-traditional gamer, without any sense of embarassment. I repeat, nothing, except for maybe watching these people.

Day 3: Still nothing at Wal-Mart, so on the way back from landscaping, I stopped by Play N Trade, where I found both Xbox 360's aplenty, and a few copies of Oblivion. Jackpot. I held off on purchasing, since I was running dangerously low on coin, and I refuse to purchase things on my credit card without having the cash to back it. I contemplated breaking into some houses here on the Outer Banks to raise some cash, but I'm still a novice in sneak and I couldn't cast a chameleon spell past 25%. So, I went and practiced to get ready for the weekend's Pro-Assistant Championship.

Day5-7: Pro-Assistant Championship down in Myrtle Beach. I ended up winning about half of my future planned Xbox expenditures, and I was visited by a member of the Dark Brotherhood during the night. I was passed out from the vodka and cranberry, but I saw his business card when I got up in the morning.

Oddly enough, that's my hotel in the background.

Day 9: I cashed checks from work and landscaping, and stopped by Play and Trade. Unfortunately, Oblivion is in stock, but 360's are sold out. I reserve a 360 (estimate arrival date tomorrow), but now instead of playing Oblivion the rest of the day, I cry into my pillow.

Day 10: I spend the longest seven hours at work in the morning, and rush back to Play and Trade as soon as I get off. Still no 360's in stock.. I swing by K-Mart on the way back to my house, and purchase the last Xbox 360 they had. Oblivion was sold out, but I picked up some Trident Tropical Twist gum. Not only is it delicious, but I believe the packaging when it says it is good for my teeth.
I pick up my buddy who was staying at the house for the weekend, and we run back to Play and Trade to pick up a copy of Oblivion. He, unfortunately, had fallen victim to the epidemic of conjunctivitis that is decimating the Virginia/North Carolina area, most likely as a result of some minor offense against God. (See, I told you this adventure was full of danger.) Anyway, along with picking him up, I also grabbed a can of Lysol disinfectant spray, which I discharged in his direction along with a string of profanity commenting on his general hygene every few minutes. We walked into Play and Trade reeking of lemony, sterile freshness, only to find that along with the Xbox 360's, Oblivion is now also sold out. I took my name of the Xbox 360 reservation list while I was there, reserved a copy of Oblivion, and then made a vow never to purchase anything in person when it can be obtained through the internet. A vow which to this day is still unbroken.

I should have quietly admitted defeat, but instead I drove to three seperate video rental joints, where I was finally informed (at the third one) that there is no place on the Outer Banks that rents Xbox 360 games. The only highlight was that at each place (and the rest of the weekend at various fast food establishments) I had a conversation exactly like this:

Me: Do you have Oblivion for Xbox 360? and don't worry about him, his dog just died.
Clerk: Awwww, I'm so sorry.
CB (my friend): My dog didn't die, I'm not crying, I have pinkeye!

So, I drove back to Play and Trade, and told the kid working there that I wanted to be moved to the top of the waiting list for Oblivion, and that he could name his price for this favor. He declined, but promised to bring in his personal copy and sell it to me the next morning, which he did. I then played it twelve consecutive hours, went to sleep, got up and played for five hours, and now I'm at work, counting down the hours until I can go back and resume playing. It's times like these I'm glad that I'm not involved in any interpersonal relationships within a hundred miles of where I live.

Oblivion

2006-07-28T11:37:00.000-04:00

Someday, I hope to post something this entertaining on my blog. However, today is not such a day. Instead I'm going to write a post about going to pick up my Xbox 360 and a copy of Oblivion when I get off work around 2 PM today. So, yeah, that's my post.

To Oblivion! and Beyond!

Catching up on Things

2006-07-26T14:26:00.000-04:00

I've been gone for a few days, so here is the obligatory bulleted post.

Where was I? I was down in Myrtle Beach playing in the Carolinas Section PGA Pro-Assistant Championship, we tied for 19th, which earned me $242.50. Not bad, except the entry fees added up to $350. I could have played a whole lot better, except for having the detox shakes durin the final round. However, the rest of my trip was paid by my travel partners- and I made up the difference in $40 entrees, and top shelp vodka (Grey Goose biatch!) and cranberry. I stayed here, and urinated off the 12th floor late Monday night. I remember it being as awe-inspiring as I would have hoped.I played here, and here.
Job offer from here should be coming through in the next couple of days, and depending on job description and compensation, we could have a winner.
My new house, described in an earlier post, comes with one more important feature I forgot to mention- an outdoor shower. After cutting grass and moving mulch all morning, I can clean up without making the inside shower filthy, which is a huge bonus. Also, each time I shower outside, my ass gets a little tanner.
I watched Lord of War in the Suburban on the way back from Myrtle Beach. In case you haven't seen it, you should. I really enjoyed it, despite the best efforts of Nicholas Cage. I felt like tying the ending in to some political type post, but we'd most likely just end up arguing about Iran-Contra. I'll be saying something like "The US government should have avenues to effect change in the world outside traditional means," and Charles will be saying, "I'd like to bottle peace and sell it to the whole world, and then give my workers the profits, while taking a giant dump on hegemony." (Gmack- click here)
If anyone has ever watched Chappelle's Show- the lady from "When Keeping It Real Goes Wrong" just called the golf shop here. The conversation went like this-

*Phone Rings*
Me: Good afternoon, --- Golf Club, This is Jackscolon.
Her: Rabble, rabble, rabble (I couldn't understand)
Me: What?
Her: Rabble, rabble, rabble! (Still no comprehension on my part)
Me: What?
Her (talking slower): Did you just call me?
Me: No.
Her: Your number is on my phone:
Me: Ma'am, no one has called you from the golf shop.
Her: Somebody called me, I don't like people playing on my phone!
Me: *laughing, and then hanging up*

New Job?

2006-07-21T13:19:00.000-04:00

The best thing about being a golf professional is the ease of finding employment, anywhere. Yesterday I was investigating a possible position listed on our job posting board, so I sent out a resume and a cover letter and *BAM*, formal job offer came through at 9:54 am this morning.

Formal job offer? Doing what? Good question. As I understand it, I will be employed as an independent contractor attached to a cruise line. Meaning? I live on a cruise ship, giving golf lessons and setting up golf excursions for passengers when we stop at one of the numerous ports.

Compensation is based on a strict commission basis- meaning I'm guaranteed to make at least $0 dollars a week (although generally people average $300-$400, and generally people aren't as dynamic and engaging as I am). Also, here is a quick list of things I have to pay for while on the ship: my bar tab. I get three meals a day, a complimentary cabin, and I will not need to purchase costly gasoline for my truck, since it will be sitting idle in some parking lot. However, after a couple months I should be getting bumped up to busier and busier ships, where $1500-$3000 a week is not uncommon.
Here are the pros and cons as I see them-
Pros: International Travel, Exciting work environment, and I get to stop with morally bankrupt activities like answering the freaking phone six hundred times a day, plus I have to consider the dollar bills, ya'll.
Cons: I live on a glorified houseboat (a very glorified houseboat), I really don't get days off or days away from the office, I don't have a guaranteed income, and well, the whole thing is really weird.

Decision? I told them I was undecided, so as an incentive, they offered to take me out on a week-long cruise just to observe, to see if I want to do it. Free cruises? Yes, please.

New Home- Kinda

2006-07-20T13:32:00.000-04:00

Because our landlady is a complete bitch, my roommates and I are being kicked out of our apartment for a month while her family comes up, so something. However, because the realtor-lady we know is not a complete bitch, we've been hooked up with a new residence without our rent increasing. The new house is, well... tits, figuratively and literally.Curb appeal = lacking, but a 1200 square foot house with a yard you can spit over retails for about 300k down here. We, however, are paying 1200 a month. Not bad.Walking through the front door, you're greeted with 18 foot ceilings, and a naked mermaid statue about 12 feet up in the air. Just so you know, her breasts are amazing. I named her Gaia Earth Mother (narrowly beating out Sophia, and Tiamat) and she is the new patron saint (demigod) of our abode on West Eden Street. The statue is really old, judging by the "Made in Pangea" sticker on the base.The kitchen is brand new, with a sweet island in the middle containing a dishwasher, and a couple of sinks. Everything is brand new, including the 12 pk of courtesy beer in the fridge, and the lone bottle of Robert Mondavi Cabernet Savignon aging the wine rack. It will still be aging when it comes time for us to leave, the beer however, will be long gone.Lastly, our living room has some sweet fake plants, some sweet old books, a sweet comfy couch, and the best chair ever (located just out of sight at the bottom left of the picture). The chair will soon be broken in by my sweet ass, once I pick up an Xbox 360 and Oblivion, courtesy of the $1100 I saved by filling out a four page application that changed my residency to got me in-state tuition, and landscaping at $35 an hour. Speaking of landscaping, I can't help but think that if Pharoah had given the Hebrews I-pods, they'd still be toiling in Egypt.

Internet Homages

2006-07-18T15:37:00.000-04:00

You wanna know what I love? I love when I see little things on TV shows, commercials, etc... that reference little known internet esoterica. For example, if you read the henchman's shirt in this- -you can see a reference to this- -Things like this give me a warm, fuzzy feeling, like when I beat my computer at chess, which is really freaking hard, or really easy, depending on the setting. It either trades pieces like crazy, or it turns into Deep Blue.

Hooters- Worst Restaurant Ever

2006-07-17T14:08:00.000-04:00

First off, I deleted that stupid video post that always plays even though I turned the "autoplay" value in the html from "true" to "false". So, good riddance.

Second, Hooters is the worst restaurant ever. The food is terrible, the atmosphere worse, and unless you're in California, Texas, or Florida, even the industrial strength nylon can't keep your waitress' ass from sliding its way down the back of her legs. I went last night because it was late, I was meeting someone, and I needed a place that had beer and food. The Outer Banks is limited when it comes cheap food and beer, so we ended up at Hooters by default. We walked in, it was karaoke night, and our waitress sat us the table closest to the speakers. If she looked like any of these girls-

"We have MBA's from Columbia! Just kidding, but she nailed a guy in the back of a Tahoe once."

- I still would have been mad. Unfortunately for both of us, she doesn't. I'd like to say that I was a total asshole and got us moved to a new table, but I wasn't. I was exceptionally polite, and got us moved to a new table. With the exception of employees of college registrar offices, I'm a complete gentleman, regardless of the incompetence of service personnel. Even when my Red Stripe with Lime turns into a Red Stripe with Lemon.

Hooray terrorism!

Anyway, I'm totally uncomfortable interacting on any kind of level with Hooter's waitresses, and I'm sure I'd be even less comfortable if I ever wandered into a strip club. Why? Internal conflict. On one hand, I try to give extra consideration that these are people first, but they're so totally objectified, and I'm also addicted to boobies. As a result, the social dynamics of the situation are a slightly more complex version of elementary school, when you let that one girl know you liked her by tripping her when she wasn't looking, and then making fun of her in front of everyone else.

Standard dialogue-
Her: "Welcome to Hooters, can I get you anything to drink?"
Me: "Yeah, an apple martini, and can I buy you back your dignity?"

Bono: Sanctimonious Ass-Clown

2006-07-16T17:00:00.000-04:00

Recently, Mair reacted to a general dislike of the Bono with this,

Why is there all this hating on Bono? Give him your money - he'll give it to starving children in the third world who also happen to be dying of AIDS. So what if you don't like his music - he wasn't nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for nothing!!!!!

Why? Here's why-

1) The band was founded in 1976, the same year as Apple Computer. Not suprisingly, Bono's mother died of a brain hemorrhage (most likely self-inflicted) around the same time. How long ago is that? Here's what things looked like in 1976:

Look at my classy moustache, hard collar, and amazing black and white photography. The computer in the background is calculating body weight vs. pubic hair weight ratios, which averaged around .3 for the 1970's.

Here's a quick list of bands I don't hate that have formed, rocked, and broken up or faded into obscurity, all in less time than it took U2 to become both ubiquitous, hollow, and self-serving: Nirvana, Rage Against the Machine, Pearl Jam, Dispatch, Wu-Tang, The Fugees, etc... What's that you say? All of these bands are from the last decade-ish? Exactly, it was some TWO DECADES after the inception of U2 that I was finally old enough to even being having an opinion on music, and luckily my parents were both discerning enough to avoid leaving (or having) U2 cassettes around.

2) Quick question- what appeared in the 1970's, spreads quickly but ravages slowly, and is at the forefront of every discussion involving world aid? That's right, AIDS and U2. Not suprisingly, the careers of both these plagues run roughly parallel to each other, with AIDS causing pain and heartache for poor, underdeveloped nations, and U2 laying waste to white suburbia. Obvious conclusion? U2 caused the AIDS epidemic. Evidence? Bono is so potent with the virus that he has to wear special glasses lest he infect someone with a glance, and up until recently, the band member known as "The Edge" was known under a different name, "The HIV".

3) What was going to be my favorite episode of Entourage was ruined today by none other than, you guessed it, Bono and his plague spreading band. Why was this almost my favorite episode? Two words: Comic book convention, porn stars, Mandy Moore, and the actor better-ly known as Dwight Schrute. Not suprisingly, the Entourage star most enamored with U2 was the annoying Johnny Drama, played by Kevin Dillon.

More Registrar Goodness

2006-07-11T17:44:00.000-04:00

I'm not much of a believer in predestination, but I've come to realize that certain people are doomed to certain fates, and mine is to be continually harassed and abused by the offices of the registrar for various colleges, lesser colleges, and scumbag community colleges.

Here's my current situation- I need two classes left to complete my undergraduate degree, Intro to Computers and an English Lit, any English Lit. Seeking to circumvent the inevitable hassle of filling out a visiting student letter and getting it approved at the Methodist College (the nexus of registrar hell) I found both classes at a community college in NC, and they're preapproved for tranferable goodness thanks to an articulation agreement.

Before I could take them, I had to fax in a transcript to the new community college. No problem, I faxed a transcript request to Methodist college. Like every other transaction of any importance that ever occured between me and the Methodist College registrar, this one had little chance of success. It's been two weeks, and the transcript still hasn't arrived. Luckily, I also talked to my advisor, and had her fax an unofficial to me directly. I then faxed this one to my new academic advisor at Butthole Community College, who told me I now need one from Grove City to attest that I completed Calc 1 and Calc 2 with a C- or higher. Why? Because I need a math prerequisite before taking Intro to Computers... the conversation on the phone went something like this.

"I can't tell what you actually got in these math classes, the transcript just shows that they transfered in as Pass."
"Yeah, they don't accept anything as tranfer credit lower than a C-, it's in their policy. Will that work?"
"No, this won't go through since there is no way to prove you didn't get a D in these classes."
"Well, except for the fact that if I had gotten a D, they wouldn't show up on the trancript as credit hours, because they wouldn't have been accepted."
"You're going to have to get me an official transcript from Grove City."
"Ma'am, what is the closest grade to a D you see on the rest of that transcript?"
"Umm... a B+..."
"Right, so judging by the fact that I've got a 3.95 for those other 100 credit hours, do you really think I got a D?"
"I'm going to have to get a transcript from Grove City..."
"Ok, but it will probably take a few days, and then the classes I need will most likely be filled, right?"
"Maybe, but I can't get you in unless you get me that transcript or pass our math placement test."
"What's on this math placement test?"
"You have to test out of at least algebra one, the test consists of numeric problems, and some basic algebra..."
"Fine, whatever. I'll take it, does it cost money?"
"Yes, the test is $50 and the next one is Thursday afternoon..."
"So, by then my classes will probably be filled right?"
"Mayb..."
"I'll try to get a transcript faxed in the morning."

Chance of me graduating ever? Unlikely.

Entourage

2006-07-11T14:19:00.000-04:00

During my *cough* flight back from China, I watched the first few episodes of Entourage.

Why am I in the back? because I think my finger is a gun.

Verdict... Decent, but not great. It's what I would call a guilty pleasure show. Yeah, I'll sit down and watch it, and I'll even enjoy watching it, but I'm not going to pretend the acting is great, the formula isn't predictable, or that the Dillon brother not lucky enough to star in Wild Things and thus score a staged threesome with Denise Richards and, you know, that other girl, doesn't grate on me from time to time. (Note to Kevin Dillon- I'm not saying you're a bad actor, I'm saying your character is supposed to be a loser and somewhat annoying, and you are doing a really great job making him that way, so yeah, he's totally pissing me off.)

Watching Entourage is like listening to the radio in your car when Enrique Iglesias comes on the radio. You smile inwardly, look around, see that no one else is in the car, and then sing along. Anyway, I'm flying back to China tonight to pick up the rest of Season One, and then, well, I'll probably be tired of it tomorrow.

Sounds Like a Case of the Mondays

2006-07-10T18:16:00.000-04:00

Bullets anyone?

My Powerbook is totally tits, except for a few things. 1) It can't play Oblivion. 2) Safari can't handle Blogger, so I had to get Firefox. 3) It can't play Oblivion 4) I don't have a freaking delete key, or a home key, or an end key
I'm not sure if this started before or after I decided to buy a Mac, but I have the urge to go backpacking... for at least a week, although a month sounds better. I think most of that stems from my current existential crisis-ing, and consequently, the rest from my unconscious assimilation of society's view that nature and solitude will help me A) recharge my batteries or B) find my center, but I'm not unwilling to consider the effect of my Mac's groovy hippy powerness on my psyche. We'll know if I pull up to some National Forest in a brand new Jetta. Or maybe it's just because Charles called me a social liberal the other day...
I bought a video I-Pod, the sixty gig model. Go big or go home I say. Anyway, my purchase is probably proof that I-Pods have now jumped the shark, since I run at least a few years behind mainstream adoption of any technology. (For example, me finally getting a real cell phone last year, or a MySpace account like two weeks ago, which I don't really use because, well, I have Facebook, and I don't use that much either). Anyway, I'm not really looking foward to my next plane ride, since between my Mac laptop and I-Pod, I'll probably have to buy an extra seat to fit my bloated sense of self-satisfaction.
I'm currently *cough* flying to China to pick up the first season of Entourage. I keep hearing that it's good, and I know GMack has a man crush on Jeremy Piven, and I'm bored at work, and I haven't decided if I'm going to start playing World of Warcraft yet to pass the time, and if you've played WoW you should tell me if it's worth my time (or not), or tell me if Entourage will really rock my face off or just seem kinda cool until you realize that it actually sucks balls like Rome.

Blogger, Pictures and Bullets working seamlessly? No way, Jose.

New Toys

2006-07-07T13:19:00.000-04:00

I finally joined the dark side with the purchase of my first non-pc computer. It's a Powerbook G4, 1.25 GHz, 512 mb RAM, 80 Gig machine of pure madness, and it could be here either this afternoon or most likely, Monday. I've been watching it's progress with the Fed-Ex tracking system and it should have arrived today, but it got held up in Virginia Beach, where it ate someone's puppy, and then washed it down with a drum of diesel fuel. That's how tough it is.

However, when I bought my Mac on Wednesday, I made sure to buy it off of eBay so it doesn't directly violate my number one personal maxim- Always support companies you own stock in. Since then, I've unloaded my MSFT today for a tidy gain, doubled down again on PSUN (the bane of my existence, I'm down roughly the value of two powerbooks on it since the spring), and realized that a host of my current peripherals will no longer work. This is in no way a bad thing.

Consequently, I now require a new mp3 player and digital camera. I worked out a deal with my brother where I'm trading him my old computer, camera, and mp3 player and in return he is reimbursing me for the roughly the cost of an IPod, minus the cost of shipping my old desktop up to PA. It's a win-win situation. I no longer have to haul some 400 odd cubic feet of vacuum tubes, cathode rays, and cast-iron transistors in the bed of my truck when I move every five months, and he gets a machine that can actually burn cd's.

Buying an IPod presents a whole new set of challenges though. I have to 1) figure out a way to get one with in any way condoning the music of the Bono

"I'm Steve Jobs corporate monkey!"

2) decide whether or not I really need one that plays video (I don't, I think) and 3) find one that does have Tetris.

Coworkers

2006-07-04T13:35:00.000-04:00

I've been starting to make plans to get out of the golf business, and one of the main reasons is because of other golf professionals. Take one of the guys I work with for example, he's a third generation golf pro, and he's close to having forty years in as a golf professional. He is by far the most bitter, disenfranchised, sarcastic, miserable human being I've ever met. Need proof? This nugget of joy was delivered no less than two minutes ago (brought on by seeing that I brought Paul Johnson's A History of Christianity with me to work today)-

If all that I've been told by the Catholic Church about heaven is true, with the no pain, peace, loving everybody and the whole big family thing, then fuck it, I don't want to go. I don't want to go to hell either, with all that, but I don't want to go to heaven. I want to go to Purgatory. I want to sit out at the end of some field with a bunch of beat up range balls, a seven iron and my dog, where no one will come fuck with me.

He's a multi-millionaire, been divorced twice, hates his job, and loves surfing through porn here at work. He is without a doubt, one of the greatest people I've ever met. He's me, only thirty years down the road (if I stay in the business). Every once in a while, he'll make some statement so random and accurate that it blows my mind. Yesterday, it was this-

So, have you been having much luck with the ladies down here? Yeah, that's what I would have figured. You're just like me, you can't stand associating with women of that level just to get laid anymore than I can. You'll end up falling for some girl who is on your level or above, and she won't even notice you, which will just make you want her all the more.

Amazing, and totally true. Anyway, besides being an astute observer of people, he's one of the driest, funniest people I've ever met- and since he doesn't care about anything, he pulls off things I can only dream about.

Today, for instance, some douchebag walked back into the shop after playing a five hour round of golf (it's the Fourth of July- the busiest three days of the year) and started bitching right when I walked in the door to work today.

"Look, I just wanted to say that this was the worst experience I've ever had on a golf course. Your ranger staff was incompetent, we must have waited for five minutes on every shot. This place is..."

Before he even finishes, the man I work with goes into a perfect stutter, trying to apologize for the experience but just struggling to get anything out, and the whole time staring straight down and off the side. He finally expresses that he'll give the guy a raincheck to make up for it if he'll just wait for him to fill it out. After walking over and grabbing a raincheck, he tries to fill it out, but his hand is shaking so much and he's pushing the pen so hard that it rips a gash in the raincheck, the whole time apologizing profusely through this stutter. The guy, who hasn't noticed that I'm standing off to the side barely suppressing my laughter, just deflates, thinking that my coworker has just been overwhelmed by some psychosomatic illness carrying a tidal flood of cortisol and epinephrine into his now stress-addled brain. Instead of complaining, he's now trying to calm the man I work with down and saying things like, "It's ok, don't worry about it. No, seriously, it wasn't that bad, I really appreciate that you're trying to help, but seriously, don't worry about it" before finally just giving up and walking outside, without his raincheck. As soon as he was out the door, I just lost it, nearly wetting my pants.

As soon as I recovered, my coworker then started telling me that he's been going to the same gas station for three years, and every time he goes he pulls his pants up to his chest, making a Tom Jones inspired cameltoe (I'm not even going to attempt to Google a picture for that), and from time to time putting his slip on deck shoes on the wrong feet. He said at first he could see people just trying to suppress laughter, but now everytime he goes he gets ushered to the head of the line.

One New Post for the Next Tally

2006-07-02T14:01:00.000-04:00

I thought this was funny...

One Last Post for the Tally

2006-06-30T12:44:00.000-04:00

Get this video and more at MySpace.com

"The Bottomless Well"- Alternate Title "Yes America Really is Better Than the World"

2006-06-29T08:49:00.000-04:00

Every once in a while a book comes along that makes you feel happy and optimistic and smug all at the same time. Generally, these books consist mainly of pictures of midgets using comically oversized tools, but occasionally the book will instead be shedding light on the energy issue at the forefront of American politics. One such book would be The Bottomless Well: The Twilight of Fuel, The Virtue of Waste, and Why We Will Never Run out of Energy. I'm not going to lie, the book rocked my face clean off, and then riverdanced all over my exposed skull.

What fuels Michael Flatley? Enriched uranium, and power bars.

The bulk of the book organizes itself around seven key topics, or as the authors describe them- "The Seven Great Energy Heresies." I found this to be slightly humorous, since the proper thing to do with heretics is to burn them, much like fuel. Anyway-

The cost of energy as we use it has less and less to do with the cost of fuel- If you're running a wood stove, the cost of your fuel is basically the wood. If you're like Charles and running a Civic, the cost of your fuel is compounded by all the additional mining, refining, and taxes that go on top.
"Waste" is virtuous- This doesn't mean it's okay to leave the lights on, it means that most of the energy we use is used up making energy usable. Only a few percentage points of the total energy mined, drilled, pumped, or burned ever ends up turning the wheels on your car, or heating up your toaster- the rest goes back into satisfying the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Sure you can try to make things more efficient, but it won't lower the total amount of energy used because...
The more efficient our technologies, the more energy we consume- light bulbs don't convert enough energy to light, so we make LED's (more efficient!), but then a strange thing happens- we put LED's into a host of things we never put lightbulbs in. Individual power consumption- down, total power consumption- up. Think 2 million PS2's vs. 1 Eniac. The only way to conserve power is to make things less efficient, not more.
Competitive advantage in manufacturing is now swinging back to the good old US of A- We're in the midst of a third industrial revolution- the first was steam power, the second was internal combustion and electricity, and now the third is solid-state devices. I'd explain more, but the shit's complicated, so buy the freaking book.
Human Demand for Energy is insatiable- energy lets us do more things, faster and better. Things can always be done faster and better, and I want to do them that way now.
The raw fuels are not running out- As fast as we use it, we just find more. We used to dig 100 ft oil wells, then mile deep wells- now we drill through four miles of rock, two miles below the ocean, and then another six miles horizontally, all for less than a sixty-foot well cost a century ago. Humanity currently uses around 350 quads of energy a year, global coal deposits hold at least 200,000 more quads, oil shale deposits another ten million quads, and the sea 10 trillion quads of power in the form of deuterium- which we will eventually know how to use. Granted- Charles has some valid criticisms about how we extract the energy, and hopefully he'll explain them in the comments.
America's relentless pursuit of high grade energy does not add chaos to the global environment, it restores order- Wondering why I felt smug? Here's why- America adds no net carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, we're actually a carbon sink thanks to reforestation. We plant 3 million acres of trees a year, we add lumber quality trees 30% faster than we harvest them- to quote the authors, "For the first time in history, a Western nation has halted, the reversed, the decline of its woodlands. Within a generation, if current trends continue, America could return to levels of forestation last seen by the Pilgrims." So when Charles starts complaining that it's unfair we use so much more energy than the rest of the world- that's why, because we're so much more responsible and totally sweeter. Suck on that Europe, you carbonerous bastards.

Anyway, you should totally go out and buy this book before you start making statements like, "I wish more people drove hybrids", or "Let's start our own Luddite club at school. And I said buy, not thumb through at Border's like Charles.

Critical Mass, Income Inequality, and Bacon

2006-06-26T11:38:00.000-04:00

As I noted in an earlier blog post, I am working my way through Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another and here is the post I promised.

Critical Mass weaves its way through a host of diverse topics, from traffic to economics to networks to counterfactual history to reciprocity and social interactions, the whole time drawing analogies to topics in physics such as magnets, gas particles, and energy landscapes. It starts off slow, but really picks up about halfway through, and then kicks ass all the way to the end.

Coincidentally, Critical Mass also backs up a point I made earlier while discussing wage issues over an apple martini at Lenin's Sexual Utopia. I stated that income inequality is unfortunate, but may possibly be inherent in the system (sweet capitalist America) and consequently, impossible to change. Critical Mass points out that Pareto distributions (the power-law probability distribution commonly used to describe income inequality, i.e. the "80-20 rule") holds back as far as the 14th century B.C. in ancient Egypt (inferred from house sizes in the ruins of Akhetaten). Furthermore, these income distributions arise in artificially simulated environments, such as Sugarscape- a torus-shaped world where rules allow the simulated agents to fight, trade, collaborate, pass on cultural traits and reproduce. As a result, I'm willing to consider inequality inherent to any trading society.

Granted, the argument is no longer seems to be whether or not inequality should exist, but rather, how disproportionate means lead to unequal representation in democratic governments- which is a legitimate problem that I have no solution for. However, the score for the first part is Jackscolon:1, Charles: well, 1- he never really said I was wrong. So I win.

Anyway, Bacon numbers also come up briefly in Critical Mass in the section on networks. Since EAP practically made out with him in some Syracuse airport, I guess that would give me a Bacon number of 2. Sweet.

Jurassic Park

2006-06-22T14:44:00.000-04:00

The original Jurassic Park was on AMC last night, and I watched it. While the body count isn't as high as Jurassic Park 2, and the Velociraptors aren't speaking fluent Velociraptorese, building helicopters, and curing cancer like Jurassic Park 3- it's still an entirely enjoyable movie...

... until you read this. and this. and this. I became aware that instead of fearsome, scaly, death machines, dinosaurs may have been fuzzy, emasculated, wuss machines while catching some blurb on the Discovery Channel, and it ruined my day. I then emailed noted dinosaur afficiando J. Morgan with this unfortunate discovery, and he responded with this- "You have ruined my life! Feathers? What the hell is that?" Exactly. What the hell is that? I don't care if dinosaurs weren't reptilian and fearsome, we shouldn't change them into something so totally bogus as early birds just to satisfy a few egghead paleontologists. I say we should screw the truth, and other than the fact that part of childhood is being scared/oddly fascinated with pre-history, here's why-

Raptors with feathers aren't dinosaurs. They're ostriches.

Scared of ostriches? Yeah, me neither.

US Soccer Sucks

2006-06-22T12:06:00.000-04:00

Thankfully, the US team is finally eliminated so I can stop acting like I'm rooting for them. I watched most of the three games, and with the exception of the second half of the US-Italy game, they suck. All the good touches that you see world class teams make are just massacred by the mongoloids playing for us. However, to lesson the blow of losing to Ghana, I made this joke.

Q: What's better than beating the US team to advance in the World Cup?
A: Not having to go back to Ghana.

Sure that joke is in bad taste, at least I saved a turtle the other day.

Turtle Story

2006-06-21T11:03:00.000-04:00

Does the fact that I stopped my truck and blocked traffic the other day to carry a turtle from one side of the road to the other make me a hippy? and does the fact that I named him Alcibades make me a nerd?

Anyway, I told my boss I'm quitting my job, kind of. Even though I'm on salary, and work like thirty hours a week, and get basically unlimited days off, I think it's time for me to move on. Everything I'm going to do or learn at this job has already been done, and I'm tired of being underemployed. I realized that the other day when I was tagging merchandise and realized a monkey could be trained to replace me in a matter of hours. I actually told him that I was going to start looking for other things to do, and that I was most definately gone sometime this fall. The great part about the golf industry is that he is totally cool with it, and is going to start talking to people he knows to line me up something sweet. Things that may be on the horizon include:

1) The Broadmoor (unless I have to shave my goatee, in which case I wouldn't go)
2) Inverness Golf Club
3) Jackson Hole
4) Southern Hills Plantation
5) Driving a motorhome for a PGA player, and maybe caddying
6) Teaming up with a golf course architect as business manager to create a golf course design company (possible web design coming your way there Redness)
7) Something totally sweet that I don't even know of yet, I'm calling in the network from Michigan to Florida to California to see what is available
8) Maybe something outside of the golf industry, especially if I get to wear a tie.

Anyway, I really just wanted to post the story about me saving the turtle, but I couldn't figure out how to make it long enough to be its own post.

Introspection

2006-06-19T16:53:00.000-04:00

This is a turntable, regardless of the fact that there is only one and no microphone is visible.

The interesting thing about a turntable is that it can point in any direction, yet has no preference for any. In a sense, you could say it points in no direction. Thus, the turntable is oddly analogous to my life.

NR Goes Too Far

2006-06-16T12:36:00.000-04:00

I was looking through the National Review today, trying to find an article to tell me what to think about the recent Supreme Court decision that cops can now enter your house to execute a search without knocking. (I'm against the decision, although not as vehemently as I was after reading this, it's in there under Re: To Knock or not to Knock), when I stumbled across this article by David Finnigan indiciting a "crass lefty comedy tour".

Not only is this material not worthy of being published anywhere (comics making fun of the Bush administration? You're kidding!), but Finnigan goes too far in dredging up material. "San Francisco comedian Will Durst mocked California Gov. Arnold SchwarzeneggerÂs Austrian accent. Would they have done that to a Hispanic?"

Probably taking a dump that is just slightly larger than normal.

Ummm... Earth to David Finnigan, this isn't racially motivated, it's motivated by years and years of movies made unintentionally funny by Gov. Schwarzenegger. If a Mexican bodybuilder came to America, made a bunch of B-grade movies, and ended up the Republican governor of the world's fifth largest economy, then yes, they would have done that to a Hispanic, probably using a cheesy Speedy Gonzalez voice.

Either David Finnigan is grasping at straws trying to come up with something in his polemic against bad, liberal comedians, or he missed the last ten years of Arnold prankcalls using internet soundboards (including a two week run by Clay Barron back at the Grove), Hans and Frans, and the classic Mad TV Clone Baby skit. I think it's the first. If I wanted to read crap like this I start hitting up The New Republic.

David Finnigan! You're not pumped up enough to write real articles!

Near Death Experiences

2006-06-15T16:21:00.000-04:00

I almost died yesterday. I walked outside of the golf shop as the remnants of Hurricane Alberto were rolling though, and a huge piece off a dead tree fell and hit the pavement a few feet behind me. It was at least sixty pounds, and it took a chuck out of pavement where it fell. Just kidding, the pavement was fine, but it seriously could have taken a huge chunk out of my noggin or possibly melted right through my esophagus. However, it was accompanied by a loud cracking, so I did see it before it fell, and could have moved out of the way had it been directly over me. So, instead of a near death experience and seeing my life flash before my eyes, I remembered an episode of Deadliest Catch where one of the fisherman was struck by a piece of ice falling off the tower. How's that for anti-climactic?

In other news, I spent all morning roto-tilling and planting flowers and shrubs for $30 an hour. It looked like this, only instead of tangled and random it was professional and neat- plus, my arms feel like they're made out of butter.

One Horse- Evil, Two Hoi(?)- Eviler

2006-06-12T17:12:00.000-04:00

When I was quite a bit younger, a man once told me never to date a girl who rode horses, saying that a shifting saddle sets an impossibly high standard of, *cough* manliness that I could never hope to match. I used to think that was what caused me to hate horses, but I recently found out that I was mistaken. I hate horses because they are unquestionably evil, not to mention stupid looking. (A body that big on legs that fragile? More evidence for evolution, unless God just quit caring after he realized he could make this)

Anyway, I was crashing at a house my friend was house-sitting, playing poker online, watching the World Cup on the big screen, and working my way through free microwave dinners, blackberry yogurt, beer and Jager-bombs (a couple deep at the moment, a few more deep later) when I made the second bad decision of the day (the first was reraising some douche with 7-7 out of position). Since it was the responsibility of my buddy to feed the horses, I decided that I would try to do him a solid by taking care of this while he was at work. The first hint that this was a bad decision came when I walked out of the house towards the barn and both horses looked something like this--with the exception that I'm pretty sure one was breathing fire through his yellow/green Julia Roberts' (i.e. horse teeth) and the other was thinking about kicking me in the crotch, most likely with the intent of widening the gap of lady-pleasing that existed between us.

However, with the exception of listening to rap music, and the engineering program at GCC, I haven't quit anything in my life, and I wasn't going to start now. So I walked outside and in to the barn, grabbed a few carrots, and walked back outside. The actual feeding was relatively uneventful, so I decided to cut back to the house through the actual horse pasture, making the third (and most costly) mistake of the day. The horses, sensing an opportunity to spread death and destruction (the fact that they are harbingers of the apocolypse is NOT coincidental), started to chase me across the pasture at a slow walk, realizing that a trot or canter would most likely cause me to run and jump the fence, ruining their evil plans. I suspected that evil was afoot, but I fought the urge to kick them both in the knees and break their legs, since I can't afford to replace them, and because I'm opposed to hurting animals physically, although I will verbally harass them from time to time. Anyway, the horses started battering me with their lumpy, disproportioned heads in an attempt to get at the carrots which no longer existed in my pockets, creating a scene eerily similar to Jurassic Park.

I raised my hands to protect myself, and the horses, thinking I was seconds away from casting a light ball of purity a la Gandalf in The Return of the King, freaked out and raised up on two legs, most likely in an attempt to stomp me with their hooves of evil. I also freaked out, screamed, and ran across the pasture, hurdling chunks of horse poop and wishing there were children present that I could push in front of the horses to slow them down. There weren't, but I promised God that if he let me out alive, I'd write a blog post chronicling the evil of horses and warning the rest of you. So, since I'm still alive, here you go.

World Cup Sweetness

2006-06-11T12:14:00.000-04:00

So far, I've probably watched about half of each game televised during the 2006 World Cup, and I'm enthralled. Here's why-

No commericals- sports are so much more entertaining when the action is continuous. The same goes for stoppages of play, I struggle watching entire games of football or basketball because when action is most intense (end of close games), the progress of the game nearly stops, as timeouts and car insurance commercials destroy any interest I had.
Super Ethnic Teams- I enjoy watching a Dutch team full of Van Der Vaarts as much as I like watching a Mexican team with Sanchez's and Garcia's, or a German team full of David Hasselhoff clones. This could possibly be the number one reason I care so little about American soccer. Stupid diversity.
Intriguing matchups- Is there anyone out there who wouldn't be interested in a possible US-Iran game? I doubt it...
Close games- A majority of the games are decided by a one goal differential, which is far superior to previous international matchups in other sports...
Ronaldinho, Rooney, Henry, Robben, Reyna, Ronaldo, Beckham...

Marisa Miller- RSFW! (Reasonably Safe for Work)

2006-06-09T17:20:00.000-04:00

In response to this comment by Mair- "Marissa Miller is completely un-hot. She looks like a fakey-fake (isn't that a move in snowboarding??) There is nothing interesting about her. She has a boring face. Her hair is the exact same color as her skin. On a scale of 1 to really hot, she gets about a 1." - I'm proposing a close examination of the evidence. Let's proceed...

...verdict? On a scale of 1 to really hot, she makes Gisele Bundchen about as attractive as a manitee swimming in a tub of butter, or something, I don't know, but seriously, she's really freaking hot. As for "nothing interesting about her", I propose examining the boobies.

By the way, to rank as a "1" on the hotness scale, she'd have to be less attractive than this.

Tiger. Federer. Ronaldinho?

2006-06-09T11:11:00.000-04:00

Until inspiration strikes, it looks like you're all stuck getting compilation posts.

I'm borderline excited about the World Cup. To get ready, I've been watching all kinds of soccer, excuse me, football highlights (the U2 in the background made me throw up a little in my mouth) over at Google Video, including this one featuring Ronaldinho. Watch it, it is totally amazing, and the best part is that the guys in the background don't pay any attention- Ronaldinho does this stuff all the time. He's incredibly good. So good that I would rank him as high as Tiger or Roger Federer as being totally dominant in his sport.

I started reading a few pages of A History of God by Karen Armstrong. I really can't see myself getting much farther though, I can only handle so much of "according to one theory", "scholars maintain", "it is highly likely", "there is a good chance", "two out of every thousand people believe" (ok, I made that last one up)- the whole thing has the sweet stench of unsubstantiated conjecture, or is at least just way to open to the possibility of me making up my own mind as to what I want to believe in it. Give me Richard Dawkins saying, "All real scientists believe in evolution, the other ones get their pants pulled down and are spanked with moon rocks" anyday. I crave definitivity.

The stock market has totally collapsed over the last few weeks, and I'm pumped. I'm finally making money, and I can start accumulating great companies at bargain prices. Sure, I've got some large unrealized losses at the moment, but I won't forever- Mr. Softie (MSFT) at $22 a share? Count me in.

"Think you're illin? I got $50 billion!" Bill Gates serves Jay-Z.

I just found out Subway has a 3 footlong subs for $11.99 deal after 4 PM. Packing lunch for the week just got a whole lot easier. Hello Sweet Onion Chicken Teriyaki.

Why I Don't Have Anything to Post About

2006-06-06T16:00:00.000-04:00

I know I've been a bit lax about posting, even though I have lots of free time here at work. Here are my excuses-

I don't watch the news, read the news, pay attention to news, or really care about the news. Hence, no political posts. I don't care what Bush's approval rating is, I don't care how stupid the democrats are, I'm just kind of sick of politics in general. Let me know when something happens that isn't A) Iraq B) Immigration C) Partisan Bickering or D) Political Opportunism.
I've come to terms with postmodernism, haven't been reading anything deep and thought provoking, or had any enlightening conversations. Hence, no philosophical posts. I am, but I don't think- I just go play golf, and sleep out by my pool.
I don't have the internet at my house. Hence, I can't write posts about movies or watching tv shows like Nip/Tuck or Iron Chef America (no scallion souffles yet). Both of which are totally sweet, even if all the major plotlines are resolved within two episodes on Nip/Tuck and even if I've never seen any of the ingredients on Iron Chef America at a real grocery store. However, I have been getting interested in cooking, and I'd totally start making some sweet food, except Tuna Helper and freezer burritos are way cheaper than tenderloin and quail eggs.
I've been doing some GPTP (crap I need to get my Class A PGA card), watching episodes of the Simpsons and Seinfeld at work, and actually working at work... well, the first two of those are correct. How bored am I? I've been browing eBay for contemporary art, and I'm not even interested in buying, or sure of what I'm looking at.

So, that's that. Boring, but at least it wasn't about dresses.