Following up on the little victory dance I did yesterday rejoicing at the death of Reaganomics, I want to slap the "If You Read One Thing..." label on this kick-ass post by Stephen over at Cogitamus. Supply-side economics was always premised on the ridiculous idea that, if the government just stopped taxing them and getting in their way, business owners, entrepreneurs and the wealthy in general would do us all the favor of pouring more money into job creation. History has shown us that what they really tend to do is sit on their wealth. Not because they're evil or selfish (ok, not just for those reasons) but because, as professor Suh rightly points out, "demand always precedes supply", and under an economic paradigm where all the wealth is funneled to the relative few at the top of the pyramid, it's pretty damned hard for the rest of us to generate that demand.
Tags: Economics 101
Let it not be said that I am the sort of rigid ideologue who would allow my atheism to come betwixt my body and kick-ass toiletries. Case in point: Every Saturday morning I shampoo with Dr. Bronner's Magic Soap. I can't remember when Tracy first bought this, but it somehow made its way into our shampoo rotation as a once-a-week "clarifying" 'poo, and I instantly fell in love with it. Intensely pepperminty, Bronner's hemp-based concoction electrifies my scalp and my senses and serves as an awesome opening act for my invigorating Joe Grooming mint conditioner.
It wasn't until I'd been using Bronner's for a couple of months that I actually thought to read the label. When I did, what I found was a whole lotta Crazy. See, the late Dr. Bronner was what you might call a little bit of a religious eccentric, and he liked to get his freak on with his product labels. So if you pick up a bottle of his soap, you are likely to be greeted with statements such as:
Absolute cleanliness is Godliness! Who else but God gave man Love that can spark mere dust to life! Poetry, uniting All-One! All brave! All life! Who else but God! "Listen Children Eternal Father Eternally One!"
Yes, the man lurved him some exclamation points. For the full dose of nuttiness, click on the pic and survey the entire landscape of the All-One Holy Jesus Carpenter Rabbi Hillel Extreme Love and Clean Shampoo! (All-One!) It's, um, entertaining.
Great shampoo though. There's no denying that.
This opening paragraph from Slate's Today's Papers is the sort of morning pick-me-up that could put a spring in my step all weekend:
President Obama presented his budget and left no doubt that he was being serious when he promised change. The $3.55 trillion spending plan included broad goals and few details but outlined how Obama plans to finance more spending in health care, energy, and education while increasing taxes on the top 5 percent of taxpayers, the oil and gas industry, and hedge-fund managers, among others. In short: Bye-bye, Reaganomics.
We might be twenty nine years late in recognizing the folly of this thirty-year-old experiment, but hey, better late than never. Oh, and P-Krug is positively gushing about the new budget.
All of us here at the TwoGlasses home offices would like to give a big, fat, crazy, deafening standing ovation to University of Connecticut coach Jim Calhoun on the occasion of his 800th win in Division I basketball. You're the best, Coach. I hope you stick around to crack quadruple digits.
Tags: Jim Calhoun, UConn basketball
"He's trying to redefine extensive government activism as simple pragmatism, and if he succeeds, [he] might well shift the center of American politics for a generation." -- Rich Lowry of the National Review, assessing Obama's rhetorical strategy and quite rightly crapping his pants.
"I think it's insane." -- David Brooks, on the GOP's decision to have Bobby Jindal "rebut" Obama with nothing but stale right-wing talking points about the perils of big government.
Update: One more. This one's a beauty:
"This was not the speech of a man who even contemplates the possibility of using force within the next year to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons." -- Professional Assclown Bill Kristol. And yes, he meant it as a criticism.
Tags: David Brooks, Rich Lowry, Bill Kristol
tax cuts! bureaucrats!
(can't exorcise Reagan's ghost)
bureaucrats! tax cuts!
Tags: Bobby Jindal, tired and stupid GOP talking points
Just in case. Wouldn't want to leave anyone stranded out there.
Tags: Obama
Tags: Mardis Gras
Benjamin Button. Frost/Nixon. Milk. The Reader. Slumdog Millionaire. And the Oscar for Meh Picture goes to...
Some day, it is my fervent hope, the Academy will get over their hangup about only nominating "serious" and "important" movies -- you know, the stuff we're all "supposed" to like -- and get down to the business of awarding great movie-making. The fact that Dark Knight was not considered one of the top five movies of the year despite it's success both at the box office and with the critics speaks volumes to how far the Academy has journeyed up their own ass. (And that wasn't even my favorite movie of the year, which would be Iron Man; if you want to see that movie take home some hardware, you'll have to hope it wins for Achievement in Sound Editing.)
Ah well. Crappy crop notwithstanding, we'll be watching for the celebrity ogling, wardrobe evaluation, and general snarking. Feel free to join in.
Tags: Oscars
Funny story. But first, a little background: Tracy and I are both members of our local Freecycle network. Freecycle is a great service whereby members trade stuff they have around their home that they don't want anymore. You can post an "Offer" if you've got something you want to get rid of or a "Wanted" if there's something you need. I've gotten rid of a carboy, a box of synthetic motor oil, and some other crap that was taking up space around here, and I've responded to a couple of Wanteds, including giving one poor woman our old VCR because theirs had broken and - unbelievable as it may seem - her family still watches stuff on VHS daily.
Anyhow, Freecycle produces a steady stream of email in my inbox which I casually scan to see if there are any notices of interest, and as I'm sitting here working on my "25 Albums" meme for Facebook just now, I notice a handful of new ones come in, and one in particular catches my eye:
WANTED: Guitar Stand
For our Wii Fender Strat. Seriously.
Now, I'm thinking "OK, that's funny, but a little goofy. I mean, I loves me some Rock Band but..."
And then I look at the sender. It's Tracy.
Swivel around in my office chair and look at her. "YOU are a freakin' GOOBER." She gives me a smile indicating that she is very pleased with herself. I shake my head for a few more seconds of wonderment, and then find myself powerless to do anything but hug her.
Then I turn back around to my email and see:
WANTED: Guitar Stand (addendum)
Would also like one of those cups/tubes that goes on a cymbal stand to hold drumsticks. Thanks!
(...sigh...)
Yup. That's my girl.
Tags: the sublime awesomeness of my wife
I am generally not a fan of people who cede the right of way when driving. You know, the person who holds up a whole line of traffic because they want to be nice and let someone turn onto the road or the guy who gives you the wave to go at the intersection even though he was clearly there first. Sure, it might seem polite, but it creates ambiguity and that's a bad thing when you're wielding over a ton of metal. There is one BIG exception that I make to this rule of thumb, however -- one time when ceding the right of way is not only the courteous thing to do, it's also by far the safer thing to do -- and that's when someone is backing out of a parking space. Yes, the person driving down the aisle technically has the right of way, but the person backing up is at a huge disadvantage in terms of what they can see and their ability to assess the situation around them. The smart and polite thing to do is to stop and let them back out. Of course, even if you decide not to cede the right of way, it's still a smart idea to slow down until it's clear that the person backing up sees you and stops what they're doing. So why is it, given these two sane alternatives, that I so frequently have people go flying by behind me - often at speeds that aren't parking-lot safe to begin with - when I'm trying to back my car out of a space? Oh, that's right, I remember now: The DMV has no restrictions on issuing licenses to total fucking DOUCHEBAGS. That explains it.
Tags: driving
I just changed my Facebook status to read "Joe is spinning up the FTL drive and preparing to jump to the Weekend!" Yes, it's geeky, and No, I don't feel the least bit ashamed. Jumping in three... two... one... (-bright flash-) Commander, DRADIS is picking up several small, bread-like contacts. It looks like... Slices of Toast!
A soccer coach I had in middle school once opined that I ran "like a pregnant duck". He was right. And thirty years later, having just gotten back from a very short (.86 mile) jog around the neighborhood, I am saddened to report that he's still right. You know how, when a running back is blowing down the field with all kinds of momentum, they call it "running downhill"? I look like I'm running uphill. All the time. Oh, and my lungses... they burns! Stupid asthma.
I just ordered this t-shirt from Shirt.Woot. It's an artist's rendering of a bas relief statue depicting the protagonist, antagonist, and several dramatis personæ from the game Super Mario Galaxy. You say "Toast, you ain't right." I say "Nolo contendere." (Mike says "Speak fucking English!")
Big local news story in the Shire today. Looks like one of my fellow Hobbits had quite the, er, pipeweed operation going on. "Somewhere between 300 and 500 plants at various growing stages," according to the local constable. That's pretty damned impressive. Sadly, this dude will probably spend the next decade or more in prison for growing this harmless plant.
You know what's hard? Making a Barack Obama Mii. I tried to make one on inauguration day -- yeah, I know, "Brraaaaiiinss!" -- and it came out looking nothing like him. The three here don't really get him right either. I may have another go at it, but frankly I think he has the kind of face that just defies the Wii's Mii Maker. That's too bad, 'cause I'd really like to play Wii Sports as Barack Obama. I bet I'd kick ass.
Tags: jogging, Super Mario Galaxy, pot bust in Simsbury, Barack Obama Mii
This post by Michelle Cottle over at TNR is one of the most entertaining rants I've read in a long, long time. Cottle is responding to this piece in yesterday's New York Times about how college students have come to expect good grades simply for showing up and trying hard. What seems to have set her off was this quote by one Jason Greenwood, a student at the University of Maryland:
"I think putting in a lot of effort should merit a high grade. What else is there really than the effort that you put in? If you put in all the effort you have and get a C, what is the point? If someone goes to every class and reads every chapter in the book and does everything the teacher asks of them and more, then they should be getting an A like their effort deserves. If your maximum effort can only be average in a teacher's mind, then something is wrong."
Cottle responds:
No, Jason. What would be wrong is if a university trained its students to believe that they were excellent simply for getting up off their futons and doing what was expected of them. Did the reading? Attended class? Stayed up late working on a paper? Good for you, puppy! Sure, you did a craptastic job on that paper--not to mention the final--suggesting that you have no more than a fourth-grader's grasp of the material. But what the hell!? You worked hard. You showed up--even when you had that reallllly bad hangover. You may not have learned much, but you sure did try. Have a nice fat A. And here's hoping it comes in handy when your first employer fires you for not being able to tell your ass from your elbow when it comes to doing your job.
Sweet Jesus, where did such dizzying nonsense come from? Sure, it's easy to blame today's youth for being whiny, spoiled, and entitled. But the kids had to get these delusional ideas from somewhere. I suspect at least part of the blame lies with all those well-intentioned self-esteem-boosting messages that anxious parents, educators, and coaches feel compelled to spout in this era of making every child feel like a winner all the time. You know, the cheery, you-can-do-it mantras along the lines of, "All that matters is that you tried," "The only way to fail is not to try at all."
Um. No. While I understand the self-defeating doubt that we're trying to short-circuit here, there are, practically speaking, lots of ways to fail--much less fail to get an A. One of those is by not having much of an aptitude for a particular area of study. Not all of us are equipped to be rocket scientists, economists, or playwrights, just as not all of us are equipped to be actors or professional basketball players. If anything, a student who tries really, really, really hard at something and still repeatedly falls short might benefit from realizing that his talents lie elsewhere. (As could the rest of us: Not to state the obvious, but I don't want a brain surgeon who graduated at the top of his class because he had perfect attendance. I want one who is an artist with a scalpel.) Go ahead: Aim for the stars. Don't let anyone tell you you can't do something. But if you actually try that thing and it turns out that you're not so hot at it, don't whine about unfair grading. Acknowledge that you have major room for improvement and decide where to go from there. The sooner kids learn how to deal with failure and move on, the less likely we are to have a bunch of whiny, fragile, self-entitled, poorly qualified adults wandering around wondering why their oh-so-stellar efforts aren't properly appreciated in the real world.
BOO-yah! Can I get a "Hell YEAH!" in the house?
I've long had this sense that something has gone horribly wrong in the realms of child-rearing and education. It's the little clues that have tipped me off over the years. Like the first time I encountered "participation" trophies. Or the first time I heard someone talk about their kid's "graduation" ceremony. From the third grade. And of course there are the minivans festooned with bumper stickers bragging about scholastic accomplishments. The classic "Proud Parent of an HONOR STUDENT" which was later joined by the much more dubious "My child was STUDENT OF THE MONTH" and has now devolved to the point where I've actually seen ones that just say "Proud Parent of a GREAT KID". (Five bucks says every one of those is purchased by a parent who is pissed off that their kid didn't make the honor roll or win Student of the Month.)
On the more serious side, it's all the coddling and structure and the constant effort to turn every kid into a Super Kid. It's the 8-week-long SAT prep courses that parents happily shell out thousands of dollars for. Because the point of a standardized test like the SAT, after all, isn't to measure actual scholastic aptitude, it's to measure how well you've been prepped on taking a scholastic aptitude test. (And don't even get me started on the way the test was "recentered" in the mid nineties, yielding the happy effect of boosting all scores by up to 100 points over what they would have been on older versions of the test.)
I'm not trying to be a dick -- yes, yes, it just comes naturally -- but let's be frank: Not every child is exceptional, not every kid who enters a contest should get to take home a prize - that's the freakin' point of the contest - and not every student who shows up and tries their best should necessarily get an above-average grade.
Tags: America's coddled youth
Compare and Contrast.
A. Burp
Description: Gas, having bubbled up from an overactive gastrointestinal tract, is emitted from the mouth accompanied by a sound that can be anywhere from a soft burble to a loud croak or belch. On very rare occasions, a slightly unpleasant smell can be detected by those close by. Social Expectation: The burper must apologize to those around him or her, typically by muttering "excuse me" and looking somewhat sheepish or otherwise chastened.
B. Sneeze
Description: Irritation in the nasal passages triggers an explosive release of air through the nose, resulting in sounds ranging from a dainty, repressed "chit" to deafening shouts of what sound like agony. Snot and vapor fly from the nostrils, spreading germs onto the hands, tissue or - if the sneezer allowed the sneeze to escape unimpeded - into the surrounding environment. Social Expectation: Those in the sneezer's immediate vicinity are generally expected to acknowledge the sneezer with "God bless you" or "Gesundheit" (German for "good health"). Failure to do so, especially in smaller groups, can lead to brief, awkward silences.
Tags: bodily emissions
Big test coming up on ESPN's Big Monday for UConn's big man -- and birthday boy! -- Hasheem Thabeet. The #1-ranked Huskies of Connecticut host the #4-ranked Pittsburgh Panthers tonight in a battle for supremacy atop college basketball's toughest conference. Thabeet is coming off an epic 25-point, 20-rebound, 9-block performance on Saturday against Seton Hall. If he can come anywhere close to replicating that against Pitt's far tougher inside game, it will go a long way towards assuaging Husky fans who are justifiably concerned that the loss of Jerome Dyson might derail what looked like a championship-bound train. Let's Go HUSKIES!!!
Tags: UConn Hoops
"I am literally shocked that he lost the fucking Kellogg's endorsement. It's a fucking cereal. What do you think stoners eat?" -- actor James Ransone, addressing Kellogg's decision to drop Michael Phelps sponsorship deal.
Tags: Michael Phelps, marijuana, eating habits of stoners
Jesus. Assfucking. Christ. From Gail Kerr at the Tennessean:
Four Tennessee state representatives, all Republicans, have signed up to be plaintiffs in a lawsuit against President Barack Obama, aimed at forcing him to prove he is a United States citizen by coughing up his birth certificate.
Let me just say what all the world is now thinking, including their fellow Republicans on the Hill: This is dumber than a box of rocks.
Tennessee Reps. Eric Swafford, Stacey Campfield, Glen Casada and Frank Nicely now have a giant "G" on their foreheads for "Gullible." The four were so willing to drink the craziest flavor of Kool-Aid, they've gotten themselves caught up in a national urban legend that has been thoroughly debunked.
Sadly, I think Ms. Kerr is wrong about "all the world" thinking these idiots are, well, idiots. I imagine a healthy percentage of Republican voters out there are thinking "Woo Hoo!!! Go git 'im!" Because, you see, that's the problem with right wingers: It's not just that they're stupid, mean, or socially maladroit. It's not even that they subscribe to a bankrupt ideology. It's that a lot of them are just plain flat-out fucking bananas. And stranger still, that group seems to have little problem getting elected to public office.
Tags: Yes Obama is an American citizen you retarded monkeys
February 2009: Rock and Roll takes wing.
Fuschia: Drums, vocals. - Orion: Guitar, vocals.
TIME TO REFORM THE FILIBUSTER.... One of the striking aspects of the political process on the Hill is how quickly everyone has adapted to a once-rare tactic becoming routine. Senate filibusters used to be exceedingly rare -- a dramatic challenge only to be used under extraordinary circumstances. Only recently has the political world accepted, without so much as a discussion, the notion that literally every key measure must enjoy a 60-vote majority if it hopes to become law.
Take the fight over the economic stimulus bill. Early on, Mitch McConnell and other GOP leaders said Republicans would not filibuster a rescue package in the midst of a global economic crisis. Soon after, the GOP changed its mind -- and no one seemed to think anything of it. There were no demands for an "up-or-down vote." There was no media coverage about Republican "obstructionism." It was simply assumed, without controversy, that Republicans would not only oppose the legislation, but also launch an effort to block the Senate from even voting on the bill in the first place.
Indeed, what should be seen as a radical break with political and legislative norms barely raises an eyebrow anymore. An important bill will come to the floor, will have the support of 58 senators out of 100, and will fail. Every important bill is shaped with a mandatory super-majority in mind. No one finds that odd in the slightest. If 41 senators don't like a bill, it won't get a vote. It's just accepted, fait accompli.
Yes. Been wanting to point this out myself a lot over the last couple of weeks. This is exactly what pisses me off: Everyone - EVERYONE - now acts like it's perfectly normal that the majority party in the Senate needs 60 votes to pass anything whatsoever. And the bitch of it is, it wasn't but four years ago that the Republican Party had half the country convinced that the filibuster was something so evil, so immoral, so undemocratic that they were going to blow it up with the "nuclear option" because the Democrats were suggesting they might use it to block one of Bush's Supreme Court nominees. Now that same party uses it to block virtually everything the majority party proposes. It's the kind of thing that would make a nun want to kick babies in the face.
Tags: filibuster
Looks like I need to update my Top Five Hangover Albums. Angelos was kind enough to, uh, lend me his copy of Raising Sand by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss -- last week's Grammy winner for Album of the Year -- and damn is it a soothing balm for battered neurons. Just some wonderful, moody, melancholy stuff. Anyhow, the updated Top Five:
Sea Change - Beck
Brushfire Fairytales - Jack Johnson
Raising Sand - Plant & Krauss
The Trinity Session - Cowboy Junkies
The Unauthorized Biography Of Reinhold Messner - Ben Folds Five
Bumped to #6 by the addition of P & K? All Shook Down by the Replacements.
To all the happy couples out there, warmest Valentine's Day wishes from the Toast household.
Tags: Valentine's Day
After seemingly abandoning his blog for good and moving on to more worthwhile pursuits, my homeboy Aaron Kinney - the first blogger to ever link to yours truly here - has resumed emitting thoughts over at Hornswaggler. And the very first post I read from the post-unretirement phase of his blogging career? Snarking on The Mustache of Understanding:
I concede Friedman's larger point that the Obama administration, while working to pull the country out of its nose dive, needs to do more than stop the bleeding. It needs to make sure America paves the way for its next generation of entrepreneurs.
But I was nonplussed by this sentence: "We want to -- we have to -- come out of (the recession) with a new Intel, Google, Microsoft and Apple." (Emphasis added.)
So within the next 3-7 years we need to have four new companies that are comparable to the world's leading maker of computer processors, the most successful Internet company on the planet, the top software company in American history and the sleekest, most creative computer and technology company the world has ever seen?
I think most people will be happy if they have jobs, Holmes.
Just a guess, but I'm pretty sure that's the first time anyone's called Friedman "Holmes".
Friends and readers, you should drop by Mr. Kinney's place. After you sample a few offerings from his deadly keyboard you may just make it a regular stop.
And Aaron? Welcome back, dude.
Tags: Aaron Kinney
Items that have crashed the confines of my cranium since getting home from work:
Judd Gregg is a fucking douchebag, and it's hard to believe this wasn't planned from the start and timed to hurt Obama. He knew the general shape a Democratic stimulus package would take when he started making inquiries about the job. Obama offered it to him in good faith. And the motherfucker decides to back out now? I'm starting to get the feeling that Obama's efforts at bipartisanship are going to go the same way Wyatt Earp's attempt to "live and let live" with the Cowboy Gang went.
It pleases me no end to learn that a court has ruled against the plaintiffs in this case who were suing the government on the grounds that childhood vaccines cause autism. They don't. Period. End of argument. Settled. And I'm sorry, but any sympathy I might have for the parents of these autistic kids evaporated a long goddamned time ago. They and the celebrity asshats they've enlisted in their "cause" are putting millions of other children at risk with their anti-scientific jihad, and they need to fuck off in a hurry.
This story made me want to vomit all over my office, mop it up, put it in a bag, and send it to these scumbag judges in a bag labeled "homemade soup". Handing out ridiculously inflated detention sentences to kids who committed trivial transgressions for fucking money??? Jesus Christ what is wrong with some people? You have to be a moral and ethical cripple to do something like that.
Let's play a little game of Treasure Hunt. You go read this blog post by TNR's Alan Wolfe and see if you can find the assertion that left my eyeballs popped out of my skull and dangling over my keyboard from my optic nerves. Really, TNR was in their own little world during the run-up to the Iraq War. It's astonishing. The Center for Disease Control should consult with them on how to construct a properly sealed environment.
There, got all that off my chest. Anything to share?
Tags: Judd Gregg, Vaccines Don't Cause Autism, Scumbag Judges Sell Kids Freedom for Money, Alan Wolfe is a Tool
I'd like to give a big TwoGlasses shout-out to my man Chuck D on the occasion of his 200th birthday. Other scientific greats have perhaps bequeathed to us ideas that had a more significant impact on the course of human history than Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, but no one else has ever shared with us an idea that speaks more profoundly to the question of who we are as a species. To truly wrap one's brain around the concept of evolution - its sweep and scope, its myriad products, and the deceptive simplicity with which it operates - is to open oneself up to an experience of awe and reverence that surely rivals any stirrings of a more spiritual nature (while simultaneously obviating the need for same). No wonder it makes the fundies shit their undies. Happy Birthday, Charles.
Tags: Charles Darwin, evolution
"It didn't constitute change we can believe in. It was change nobody could understand." -- E.J. Dionne, Jr. on the Geithner bank rescue plan.
(Seriously, if I were tasked with writing a program to implement Geithner's plan, I'd be like "Uh, nice scope statement. Why don't you get back to me when you have some actual requirements?")
Tags: Geithner Plan
He's gone. Well, OK, for now, at least, he's gone. Brett Favre has called it quits once more, taking his love of the game back to the sandlots of Mississippi. (Wait, do they have sandlots in Mississippi? And you know what state is fun to type? Mississippi. But I digress.) Yes, with Favre it's never over until... uh... actually until history proves otherwise, it's just never over. For now, however, the Jets can assume they're going forward without the Pick Six Kid behind center. This is an unmitigated good thing, in my opinion, even given the big question mark it leaves us at that position. Losing the soon-to-be-40-year-old drama King and his sloppy, erratic play is addition by subtraction.
Oh, and hey, what's that? Gene Wojciechowski at ESPN, did you have something to say?
Maybe it was the cowardly teammate who anonymously ripped him in print. Maybe it was the absence of a game-breaking wide receiver or running back. Maybe it was the prospect of playing for a fourth different head coach in five years.
Maybe it was the realization that, despite an endless string of sports journalists ever at the ready to give him a wet, sloppy rimjob, he wasn't any good any more. Maybe that was it, you fucking clueless hack. Because Coles and Cotchery are two damned good wide receivers, Thomas Jones is a warrior, and Leon Washington is nothing if not a gamebreaker. And as to the "cowardly" teammate, you'd watch your back too if you had something negative to say about Saint Favre. Not that you ever would, what with his balls tickling your tonsils.
Speaking of stimulus -- (*rimshot*) -- it looks like we've got a deal on the stimulus bill. The final result removed a couple of tax breaks, restored a little more spending, and came in just below $800 billion. Paul Krugman will cry that it's not nearly enough (it's not, but it sure as hell won't be the last spending bill passed on Obama's watch) and many of my fellow liberals will gnash their teeth that Obama was outmaneuvered by the GOP (let's revisit that reading in a few months) but the plain fact is we're about to pass one of the largest spending bills in U.S. history and if you're a good little Keynesian that should make you happy. As to the complaint that the spending in the bill is too scattershot and there aren't enough ambitious programs and there's still too many tax cuts mucking it up, well, sit back and let Uncle Toast tell you a story...
Once upon a time this guy was out backpacking with his buddies. They had planned this awesome hike where they'd climb one peak, camp on the far side at the foot of a lake, and then hike out over another peak the next day. The next morning they got up, had breakfast, and set out. It was an insanely hot day, and because they had planned poorly they soon found themselves running out of water. Hiking up the mountain with only a few sips left for each of them in the high heat and humidity with a fifty-pound pack on, the young man felt sure he was going to start hallucinating. Later, hiking down the mountain and out the three-mile-long access road, his water completely gone, he knew death could not be far away. At long last, however, he and his companions finally made it back to their car. In the sauna-hot back seat was a single bottle of unflavored seltzer which was warmed to the point where you could steep tea in it. But as our intrepid hiker chugged one mouthful of hot, bubbly plainness after another he discovered that plain seltzer was one of the greatest things he'd ever tasted in his life. He still feels that way to this day.
Our economy is dying of thirst, people, and while this stimulus bill may be little better than an overheated bottle of plain seltzer, methinks it will be more than enough to at least keep us on our feet while we drive to town for some Gatorade.
(Scene: Driving home from work after stopping at Wade's to pick up ingredients for the awesome pasta recipe Tracy found, which included a blob of mozzarella cheese because Wade's didn't have feta...)
Tracy: If we do have feta at home we're still going to need to use this mozzarella soon.
Me: Honey, if you want to use mozzarella instead, I'm fine with that.
Tracy: No, that's OK. I know you're all hell bent on feta.
(...pause...)
Me: HELL BENT! HELL BENT for FETA!!! [bangs head]
(...longer pause...)
Tracy: You should update your Facebook status to say you have "Hell Bent for Feta" by Gouda Priest in your head.
Folks, not to put too fine a point on it, but I think our parakeets are doin' the Wild Thing.
You know the old saw about "Be careful what you wish for"? Well we've been wishing Ozzy was a boy so that our girl, 'Stonie would have a mate. It appears, based on observations over the last several days, that our wish has come true.
About a week ago, we noticed that Birdstone was suddenly very aggressively chasing Ozbourne all around the cage. It looked sort of abusive too, and given her history of being a bit of a bitch, we were kind of alarmed. On Monday, however, things began to take a different turn. I was sitting here after work on the computer and I noticed that they were both chasing each other around the cage, but in a much more friendly way. At one point they were on the same perch sidestepping back and forth towards each other bobbing their heads. For the uninitiated, head-bobbing among certain species of hookbills means "I like you! No, seriously, I LIKE you! Hey, you busy tonight?!"
This was quite the breakthrough.
But it was nothing compared to what we'd witness the next night. Tuesday, Tracy and I are both up in the office and I notice the birds doing the same thing again, so I point it out to her, and she's like, aw, that's cute. I go on doing stuff on the computer, kind of noticing out of the corner of my eye that the kids are getting unusually feisty. And then, suddenly, we hear a completely novel sound emanating from 'Stonie. Kind of like her Styrofoam warble crossed with a guttural rrrrroooooowwwwwwrrrrr. I look over, and she's hanging from the underside of the perch with Ozzy on top of her, chest to chest. Right around that time, a cockatiel flew into the room, knocked on the door of the cage, and said "Did somebody order some millet?"
So, um, yeah. Looks like we've got ourselves a bona fide budgerigar lurve connection. There are other signs as well. They're not sparring as much; they're preening each other more often and more enthusiastically; they spend a lot of time on adjacent perches with their ceres almost touching, just staring into each others' eyes (I am not making that up).
It's not all cuteness and fun, though. If we're going to let them mate - and that's been the plan - there are preparations to be made. We need to start fortifying their food. We need to get a nest box. We need to get them both checkups pronto and talk to the avian vet about what to watch for. There are potential complications both for our girl and for any chicks they have. I need to make arrangements to work from home for the first week or two in case there are any complications. Being birdie grandparents is no walk in the park. But I think we're ready for it.
Tags: Brett Favre, stimulus, feta cheese, parakeets in love
In contrast to their economic maneuvering, there is another realm where I want to see the Obama administration kept on a very short leash -- preferably the kind with the choker collar and those little spikes that come in towards the neck -- surrounded by an electric fence. That realm includes anything related to the policies and practices the Bush administration introduced in their attempt to create an Imperial presidency. I was a little alarmed, therefore, to read this post by Hilzoy on the Obama DOJ's decision to move forward with their predecessor's attempt to throw out a court case involving rendition and torture using a claim of "state secrets".
The post and related excerpts are too long to summarize, so just go read them. I'll wait. OK... You're back? Good.
This will not do.
I was pleased with Obama's prompt announcement that he was closing Guantanamo and with his Attorney General's refreshingly un-weasel-like description of waterboarding as torture. But just as important as these public denouncements of Bush's horrifying civil rights policies and egregious executive overreach are the low-profile renouncements of same; the quiet reliquishing of those wrongly-arrogated powers when the public at large isn't paying attention. In fact, the latter category of actions is clearly the more important of the two.
In a short piece on NPR this morning related to this story a news correspondent mentioned how Attorney General Holder had promised to do a systematic and thorough review of all cases where the Bush Administration had claimed "state secrets" or "executive privilege" to keep information from seeing the light of day. One would expect such a "thorough" review to take some time. And yet the attorney in this case claims that his position has already been "thoroughly vetted with the appropriate officials within the new administration." If that's true, then we are owed an explanation of the reasoning behind this dubious decision. It needs to be a really convincing one.
Tags: Obama, State Secrets
In the wake of Barack Obama's impressive and successful press conference last night, I woke up this morning eager to link to a bunch of posts that could all loosely be filed in the "come in off the ledge" category. I especially liked Noam Scheiber's piece pointing out how Obama's strategy on the stimulus bill was perfectly in keeping with the rope-a-dope approach that has worked so well for him thus far. Call me bemused and disappointed by the reek of panic and despair coming from so many liberals who seem downright eager to pronounce Republicans the winners in this battle and dismiss Obama as just another Democrat who got rolled. I think Obama is playing a much longer game than many of you give him credit for and, as such, I'm willing to give him a pretty long leash with this stuff.
I will be shocked if I even know twenty percent of the artists vying for the hardware tonight, but that's not going to keep me from watching. Let's just hope the festivities aren't bogged down with too many crappy R&B performances.
Tags: Grammy Awards
I cut a deal with Tracy for today: I will do the laundry -- four loads, soup-to-nuts, including the putting away of it -- in exchange for getting out of all the other cleaning activities she has planned. Four loads of laundry is a lot of laundry, but I still feel like this was a wise move on my part. Kind of like cutting a deal with the DA to do 18 months in the Big House as opposed to rolling the dice in court and possibly getting hit with a much heavier sentence.
Anyhow, the good news is that this arrangement gives me some quality blog time. I've got a lot of miscellaneous items queueueued up in my poor, hangover-muddled brain pan, and you know what that means: Time for some Slices of Toast!
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
And the 2009 Emmy Award for Outstanding Use of the Word "BullPuckey" goes to... Rachel Maddow!
Really, you've got to watch this. It's a wonderfully cathartic and altogether accurate smackdown of the GOP's moronic attempt to gut the stimulus package, stripping it of spending that will work to generate economic activity and replacing it with tax cuts that won't work to generate same. In typical Maddow fashion, the bit is light on the outrage and heavy on the bemused disbelief - a rhetorical stance I'm beginning to think might just carry the day for those of us on the side of Goodness and Light. My favorite part comes at the end when Maddow throws an epistemological gauntlet of sorts at the feet of her fellow Americans:
"It matters when you're wrong. A whopping proportion of the Republican rhetoric about stimulus is wrong.... It's just wrong. The time is now to take the radical step, as Americans -- as civic-minded Americans concerned about our future -- it's time to take the radical step of privileging correct information over incorrect information....
"If you are wrong, from here on out, you should lose the argument and you should lose your political potency. Form a flat-earthers club or something, where you talk enthusiastically to each other about your made-up economic ideas that aren't based in reality. But get out of the way of the people who are actually trying to save the country."
Aye, that's the nub, ain't it? That's the part that the looney right and their slap-happy enablers in the newsertainment media have completely lost track of lo these many years: If you are wrong, you should lose the argument. Hell, I'm going to add that to my bucket of banner quotes right now. What a concept.
Tomorrow night's episode of No Reservations is a special that Anthony is calling, simply, "Food Porn". To which I ask: Great idea? Or the Greatest idea?
The rules of food TV and the rules of porn are so strikingly similar, why not get STRAIGHT TO THE ACTION as they say on your On Demand menu in every major hotel chain. Forget about the "walk-in," to "set-up," the "story!" Who are we kidding? Food Net has built an empire by shrewdly and accurately anticipating that no one really cares how to make the damn dish or where it came from or why it was created. They just want to see some brightly colored close-ups of the stuff before it disappears into the face of somebody/anybody wearing a low-cut leotard.
As I get older, I find my appreciation of food is growing deeper, more sensual, more... profound. Food rocks my world. The most recent incident where I got a quasi-spiritual vibe from my sustenance? This morning, staring at this pile of bacon which I was about to have the honor of consuming.
Yeah, go ahead. Just look at it. I mean, come on. That's a sure-fire cure for vegetarianism right there. Five slices of heaven.
Oh, and mad props to the wife are in order. Tracy has changed her bacon-cooking technique, going a little lower with the heat and a little longer on the stove, and the results have been striking. Not that our bacon was coming out bad before -- (I've only had bacon that came out truly awful a few times in my life, always at a diner) -- but now it's just a slam-dunk mouthgasm guaranteed.
Tags: Laundry, Rachel Maddow, bacon
To: The Hartford Courant
Re: Sunday Comics
Message: It is absolutely ridiculous that in 2009 you are still running recycled Peanuts strips at the top of the Sunday comics section. Life moves on. Get a grip. Give Dilbert his rightful spot at the top of the order. Dumbasses.
Tags: comics, Peanuts, Hartford Courant
A-Rod did steroids.
A-Rod.
The presumed redeemer who would take back Bonds' record.
The guy who made Tracy and me cry when we witnessed his 500th home run on the radio while driving back from the beach.
Yeah. He took 'roids.
And now I know what it's like when someone who is a sports hero to you is brought low.
It sucks.
And I'm not even one of those people who thinks steroids are a big deal. I'm not the guy who runs to the fainting couch when I hear an athlete took drugs to make them play better. I personally don't think there should be a problem with guys poking themselves to repair their muscles faster. I really don't.
But I wanted A-Rod to be clean nonetheless, because I just fucking like the guy and I can't stand all the A-Rod Hate that's out there and being clean and getting it done record-wise was his chance to make them shut the fuck up. And now that chance is gone.
I repeat: It sucks.
Tags: Alex Rodriguez, steroids
I've been eyeing that last Question in the sidebar a lot lately, and it's pissing me off. Not only was the Question a flop, but it's been sitting there since before Thanksgiving. Time to freshen up.
Right. Well then, Sam Borden has been filling in for my man Pete Abraham over at the LoHud Yankees Blog while Pete takes a week to recharge prior to Spring Training. Scrounging a bit for subject matter, Borden decides to riff on Joel Sherman's piece in the Post about the conundrum the Yankees will face when Derek Jeter's contract expires in 2010. Here's how Borden opens his post:
At some point this year, maybe even soon, the big story will be Derek Jeter"s future. It is inevitable. It is also unprecedented.
There has never been a player who has made as much money and been as critically linked to a franchise as Jeter. There is, literally, no history to look back at and say, "yes, of course, this is how we handle the situation" when it comes to addressing Jeter's contract, which expires in 2010. Everyone is flying blind.
Now, I am always on my guard when people try to claim that something in sports is in any way unprecedented. More than politics or business or even entertainment, the world of sports seems to be the place where our culture focuses its energies documenting and accumulating and obsessing over history. And yet, oddly enough, given the depth and breadth of American sports history, sports journalists seem more ready than their peers in other journalistic domains to reach for the superlative; the quickest to break out "best" or "worst" or, in the present case, "unprecedented". Making matters worse for me is that I am still, sixteen years into my sports fan existence, a relative newbie, and so I find these claims harder to judge.
So I put it to you, in a two-part question where I take the liberty of carving up Borden's assertion for my purposes even as I ask you to challenge it:
1. What player has ever been more "critically linked" to their franchise than Derek Jeter? I.e. what player tops Jeter for "Face of the Franchise" status?
2. What team has faced a similarly fraught situation where they had to decide what to do with a player who was arguably past his prime and yet had indisputably achieved the status of sainthood among that team's fans?
I can think of several answers to #1, with Jordan and Favre being the two guys who immediately come to mind. Favre, furthermore, seems both a recent and a legitimate answer to #2, given the drama he created last year with the Packers when he suddenly decided to unretire. (Oh, and would that they had taken him back.) In any case, I just feel like there must be many more such examples out there which put the lie to Borden's claim that Jeter is a singular case. Care to offer some examples?
Tags: athletes, face of the team
After the fascinating, illuminating, and ad-hominem-free morning colloquium that Mike, 'Shift and I had on the nature of freedom and liberty -- OK, the segue is a little stale but I originally intended to write this during lunch -- now seems as good a time as any to address the ongoing discussion of extraordinary rendition. You see, there's something that's been bugging me. See if you can find it in the Q&A between Senator Diane Feinstein and would-be CIA chief Leon Panetta:
FEINSTEIN: Will the CIA continue the practice of extraordinary rendition by which the government will transfer a detainee to either a foreign government or a black site for the purpose of long-term detention and interrogation, as opposed to for law enforcement purposes?
PANETTA: No we will not because under the executive order signed by the president, that kind of extraordinary rendition, where we send someone for the purposes of torture or for actions by another country that violate our human values -- that has been forbidden by the executive order.
(...playing Jeopardy! theme...)
OK, pencils down. If you said "It's the way he uses the qualifier 'for the purposes of torture'" then give yourself a pat on the back.
Don't get me wrong: I think the Obama administration has already taken some bold steps to roll back the Bush administration's overzealous and unchecked use of extraordinary rendition in the War on Terruh. But I would like them to go further still.
In the stories that surfaced during our recent Dark Age about people being taken into custody on American soil and sent overseas to be tortured, the horrific focus was always on the torture angle, and I think that's what Panetta is responding to. That emphasis seems misplaced to me, however. I think by saying "Oh, we'll never rendition people to countries that torture" you obscure the more fundamental problem with the very idea of extraordinary rendition; the way that it violates our notion of "liberty" at its innermost core, evoking visions of anonymous men in black suits accosting us on our way through the mall parking lot and draggging us into an unmarked black van whilst we we scream "Unhand me, Motherfuckers!"
To put it another way: The CIA could extraordinarily rendition me to my own private Sandals resort and give me free drinks for the duration of my stay, and I'd still have a major problem with it.
What I would like to hear affirmed by this administration in some fashion -- and I say this knowing full well that it could be quite obtuse with respect to current law -- is something akin to the following: No person on American soil shall be detained under any circumstances whatsoever without due process and full recourse to the law. Period. Full stop.
That would be reassuring. That would make me feel like I was one step closer to being back in the America I learned about as a kid.
Tags: extraordinary rendition
"[Y]ou get the argument, 'Well, this is not a stimulus bill, this is a spending bill.' [pauses in disbelief] What do you think a stimulus is? That's the whole point. No, seriously: That's the point."
-- President Barack Obama, belatedly coming to the realization that your average Republican lawmaker has the IQ of a turnip. (h/t: Benen)
Tags: stimulus
I'd like to third Angelos and Furious in recommending this brilliant fantasy letter of un-apology penned for Michael Phelps by Radley Balko of The Agitator. The money quote from "Michael":
Here's a crazy thought: If I can smoke a little dope and go on to win 14 Olympic gold medals, maybe pot smokers aren't doomed to lives of couch surfing and video games, as our moronic government would have us believe.
Yes indeed. We hear nudge & wink comments all the time from entertainers and musicians about pot use, but we laugh it off because it's part of their hedonic lifestyle. What I'd like is to live long enough to hear someone like Phelps - a high achiever, a paragon of rectitude, an American hero - turn around and rain a little bong water on the parade of hypocrites singing his praises.
Tags: Michael Phelps, marijuana
AN ERA OF RESPONSIBILITY.... The last time a cabinet secretary nomination became a humiliating debacle for a president was probably 2004, when George W. Bush insisted that Bernie Kerik was the single best person in the country to head the Department of Homeland Security. (Years later, it's still hilarious.) Once the nomination imploded, the Bush White House quickly sent out word: this is all Rudy Giuliani's fault.
Indeed, the LA Times noted today that our most recent president "famously refused to admit error, at least until his final days in the White House." President Obama prefers a different tack.
Tom Daschle withdrew his nomination as secretary of health and human services on Tuesday after weathering four days of scrutiny over unpaid taxes, prompting President Obama to concede having "screwed up" in undermining his own ethical standards by pushing the appointment.
"I've got to own up to my mistake, which is that ultimately it's important for this administration to send a message that there aren't two sets of rules," Mr. Obama said in an interview with NBC News. "You know, one for prominent people and one for ordinary folks who have to pay their taxes."
Obama did a lot of interviews yesterday, and spent a lot of time accepting responsibility for what transpired here. He talked to Katie Couric about "self-inflicted wounds." He told Brian Williams, "Did I screw up in this situation? Absolutely. I'm willing to take my lumps." He told Anderson Cooper, "I made a mistake. I campaigned on change in Washington, bottom-up politics, and I don't want to send a message to the American people that there are two sets of standards, one for powerful people and one for ordinary folks who are working everyday and paying taxes."
Now, it's obviously true that it's better to have a president avoid mistakes, and I'm not suggesting Obama deserves praise for the Daschle breakdown. I do, however, believe it's refreshing to see a president own up to a mistake, candidly and unequivocally, telling the nation that if we're looking for someone to blame for an error, the buck stops with him.
Yep, that's Barack Obama: More. Of. The. Same.
Tags: Obama
Via Steve Benen, an eye-opening poll result:
Coming off a shellacking at the polls in November, the plurality of GOP voters (43%) say their party has been too moderate over the past eight years, and 55% think it should become more like Alaska Governor Sarah Palin in the future, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.
I am not a doctor, nor did I stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night, but I can tell you this: If you believe the Republican Party's problem is that they have been too moderate then your neurons are not firing correctly.
Tags: Wingers are fucking nuts
Jonathan Chait is not a stupid man, so when I read the following from him in a post titled "Foreign Radicals Can Be Reasoned With, But Not Domestic Ones?" I was nonplussed, to say the least:
It's kind of funny how, when it comes to domestic politics, many liberals employ assumptions about human nature that are wildly at odds with the assumptions they use about human nature when it comes to foreign policy. When you read the liberal blogs on domestic politics, concessions to the enemy are always counterproductive, will must be met with will, etc. When you read them on foreign policy, all those asumptions are flipped on their head. I'm not saying that these two sets of assumptions are completely impossible to reconcile, but it is pretty odd how easily they sit together.
Is this distinction really a huge mystery to Chait? Here, let me explain: The aims and goals of "foreign radicals" have no material impact on the policies that we must live under at home. However crazy their beliefs may be, they're somebody else's problem. On the other hand, if we reason and compromise with domestic nutjobs - e.g. anti-abortion zealots - we risk losing our own rights and freedoms. There. Mystery solved.
Tags: foreign policy, domestic policy
Woo Hoo!!! I just added my 100th mob member in Mob Wars. Toasty McCrumbs is moving up in the underworld, bitchez!
Tags: Mob Wars
The day is upon us. Perhaps the Greatest American Holiday of them all -- Superbowl Sunday -- is here. And while it is not the Superbowl I would have chosen to watch (Jets vs. Giants) or the one that most of the rest of you would have chosen to watch (Bills vs. Cowboys? Patriots vs. Saints?) it's still the Superbowl, and thus it is cause for merriment, over-indulgence in unhealthy food, and the imbibery of far more alcohol than would be deemed wise by any reasonable, dispassionate observer.
(Did I mention Tracy and I have tomorrow off?)
I am rooting for the Cardinals of Arizona today. Their quarterback might be an irritating Jesus Freak, but aside from that they're the better choice on all counts for me. They are predicated on a high-flying offense. They've got the two best wideouts in the game. They're the underdog (although, at seven and a half, not nearly the underdog I expected them to be). And on the flipside, I just don't like the Steelers. I don't hate the Steelers; I just find the team and their fans mildly annoying. They've got a chip on their shoulder that just rubs me the wrong fucking way. Want to know what I'm talking about? Listen to Bill Simmons' latest podcast with Pittsburgh Homer Dave Dameshek. If you're not a Steelers fan and you come away from that fifty-nine minutes of pomposity not rooting for the Cardinals, I'll be impressed. See, I didn't know that as an "objective" football fan, I should feel compelled to root for the Steelers. I didn't know that a Cardinal victory would be "bad for the NFL". And it certainly never would have occurred to me that the Cardinals don't "deserve" to win because they don't have enough "tradition" or "history". (How, pray tell, is a club to acquire those things without, you know, winning championships?) Yep, Dameshek reminded me of why I took a dislike to the Steelers in the first place. He reminded me of my old buddy Tex who I used to commute with and who couldn't say the word "Steelers" without that little dash of arrogance -- even during their down years -- that said "My team is special. Elite. Better than yours. Different from yours." That attitude - that Steeler Exceptionalism - that shit does not sit well with me. So for all the fans out there who root for all their plain old football teams that aren't special or elite or storied or whateverthefuck not, I'm pulling for the Cardinals.
I'm also rooting for some fun ads, a good halftime show from the Boss, good beer, and tasty wings.
Tags: Superbowl XLIII
Because I'm sure I'll have a thing or three crash my cranium between now and when I throw the Couch™ out there, and I'm equally sure that I'm feeling way too lazy to write a bunch of separate posts, and, well, just 'cause, you know?
Hey, look, the new chairman of the RNC is a clueless tool! What a huge surprise!
"You and I know that in the history of mankind and womankind, government -- federal, state or local -- has never created one job. It's destroyed a lot of them." -- RNC Chairman Michael Steele, talking to House Republicans on Friday
Longtime readers Anyone who's known me for more than three minutes knows that there are a lot of things in this world that piss me off. But nothing - nothing - sends me quite so far over the fucking moon as when someone states something that is transparently, manifestly, objectively false with that tone of utterly self-satisfied certainty. Really, Mr. Steele, no government anywhere in human history has created so much as "one job"? That claim is the kind of express train that blows right through Lying or Stupid station and takes us directly to Grand Central You Need A Punch In The Fucking Face.
(I finally got around to doing the "25 Things About Me" meme that's been making the rounds on Facebook. Cross-posting it here, in it's entirety, for the Facebook-deprived among my readership.)
I've been tagged by several people to do this but I've been blowing it off because I can't imagine coming up with 25 facts about me that I haven't covered in similar blog memes over the years. Alas, the propagation of memes is a sacred duty which one should not attempt to run from. So I guess I've just got to suck it up and give this a go.
Here are "the Rules": Type 25 random things about you - interesting or unusual or whatever - then tag 25 people including the person who tagged you. (Note: Some of these will not be "news" to people who read my blog, but I'm playing to a different audience here so they'll just have to deal.)
1. I did not start watching professional sports until I was in my twenties. As a youth, I was baffled as to why anyone would sit in front of a television and watch other people play a game. But I get it now. I *sooooo* get it.
2. Patrick Guerrero, former mayor of my home town and former president of the Log Cabin Republicans, broke my arm playing soccer in the third grade.
3. Right now, in the Facebook sidebar, there is an ad that says "Obama's IQ is 130. Are you smarter than the president?" If that number is accurate, then yes, I am.
4. Years ago, my ex-wife and I hiked out of Baxter State Park in total darkness using nothing but my Timex Indiglo watch to check trees for trail blazes. (See, as it turned out, hiking up Mount Katahdin, across Knife's Edge trail, and back down takes a bit longer than the two or three hours I'd planned for it.)
5. I am incapable of simply eating a candy bar like a normal person. I must orally disassemble it into its components first.
6. Related to #5: I separate M&M's, Skittles, and any other colored candy into piles by color and then eat them in a rotating sequence, starting with the color that has the most and only moving on to the other colors after each pile gets down to the level of its less numerically-advantaged peers.
7. I hate not showering. Even on those days that are perfect for lazing around in your bathrobe from breakfast all the way to bed, I *have* to take a shower at some point. Not doing so just feels too disgusting.
8. During my college years, I used to install cellular phones as a Summer job. That was back when most cellular phones had to be installed in cars and "portable" cellular phones were bigger and heavier than most of today's laptops.
9. I used to break dance in high school. Well, sort of. I could pop, do the robot, and the worm. Never could master the spin moves though, despite having a fly Puma jacket and plenty of cardboard. Later, after taking Physics II, I figured out that it was because the weight distribution between my torso (fat potato) and legs (29" inseam) was insufficient to generate the needed rotational momentum.
10. My first car was a 1979 Firebird. It cost $2K, ate up another $1K in repairs, and lasted about three months. One time, coming back from Long Island with four fraternity brothers of mine, the engine simply died after the distributor cap rotor burned through its housing. We were stranded on the Thruway for five hours before a tow truck showed up that could tow the car without ripping the nose off.
11. My cousin Tommy bestowed the nickname "Liver Man" on me at a bar in Westport, Ireland the night after my cousin Kristin's wedding when we all stayed out drinking into the wee hours of the morning. Ireland, by the way, is awesome.
12. I proposed to my wife Tracy at the exact center of the Brooklyn Bridge. While it was a truly magical moment, I was somewhat horrified that I was going to accidentally drop her engagement ring through the slats in the pedestrian walkway and down into the East River.
13. Halfway! My favorite moment on our epic East Coast Road Trip last year was visiting Conrad Aiken's grave in Bonaventure Cemetery. The inscription on his bench -- "Give my love to the world" -- still makes me tear up every time I think about it. Like right now, for instance.
14. Despite being raised Roman Catholic and making it all the way through Confirmation, I became an atheist in college. Although, "became" is really the wrong word. It was more of a passive process than a choice. I just gradually realized that all of the world's religions were essentially equivalent mythologically-based systems and that "believing" in something supernatural without empirical proof was sort of silly.
15. I am the greatest Setback player in the history of the universe. Also, Setback is the greatest card game ever.
16. My wife and I both have a tendency to develop emotional attachments to inanimate objects. I grew particularly fond of the little table she used to have in her apartment when we first started dating. After moving into our house where we no longer needed it, I couldn't bear to throw it away or give it to a stranger. So we gave it to Tracy's mom.
17. My maternal grandmother died a few weeks ago. She was my last surviving grandparent. So now, only one generation separates me from End of the Line. That feels somewhat disconcerting.
18. Our two parakeets are a gender-reversed reflection of Tracy and me. The male is all sweetness and light and friendliness and the female is irritable and moody and difficult.
19. If I could choose any profession other than the one I'm in currently - regardless of ability - my top three choices would be 1.) Rock star, 2.) Starship captain, and 3.) Political pundit.
20. If I could tell my twenty-years-ago self one thing that would truly blow him away, it would be this: "In the future, you will own a device the size of a single cassette tape that will contain your entire music collection."
21. My one big goal for 2009 is to complete a Century Ride. I've never cycled more than 60 miles before, so that would be quite an accomplishment. Oh, wait, I mean will be.
22. Despite the epistemological stance hinted at in #14, I do hold irrational, superstitious beliefs about certain things. For example, I am convinced that it was my becoming a fan of the Jets and Yankees that led directly to the success of the Patriots and Red Sox.
23. I have been blogging for over five years and I'm just coming up on my 200,000th hit now. Despite being strictly a small-time voice in the 'sphere, I treasure the community of friends and readers I've attracted more than words can convey.
24. I have GERD and Barrett's Esophagus. Yesterday, I bought a wedge pillow that elevates my upper torso by 15° or so. It's a bit awkward, but it completely eliminated that awful, persistent GERD cough that comes when one's stomach contents insist on coming back upstairs for a visit.
25. My favorite song in the whole world is "The Luckiest" by Ben Folds. From the first line -- "I don't get many things right the first time" -- to the guy passing away in his nineties shortly after his beloved wife passes on, it perfectly encapsulates everything wonderful about my marriage. I am, in fact, the Luckiest.
Tags: government, Michael Steele, memes