Everything is A-OK

All Blogs Go to Heaven

2007-08-20T16:31:00.000-07:00

This Blog is Dead, Long Live the Blog.

It's been a good run...85 posts over the last year...but i never really expected her to last, in this form, as long as she did. This was the pupae, now we're moving into the chrysalis stage (thank you Freshman Earth Science!).

I've finally built the site i wanted a year ago and if you've stuck around this long, please move over to my new site, www.adammackwright.com. There, you will find my new site, with information on my clothing line, KWblack, and you will find my new blog, The Conglomerate: The Collective Thoughts of Adam Mack Wright. (Presumptious? You betcha!)

Please update your RSS readers, Favorites and most importantly, the links on your own blogs...this should clean things up nicely for you.

See you over at Wordpress.
Adam

The World is Ending this Weekend

2007-08-17T10:40:00.000-07:00

That's it. It's all over. We've had 4 straight days of Apocalypse sightings. This is the end of days. Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies. Rivers and seas boiling. Forty years of darkness. Earthquakes, volcanoes... The dead rising from the grave. Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together - mass hysteria.

Paris Hilton allowed Near Children

Today's Sign That the Apocalypse is Upon Us

2007-08-16T10:16:00.000-07:00

Wow...plenty of these this week...this one is totally fucking ridiculous.

Today's Sign that...well, no it's not

2007-08-15T10:18:00.000-07:00

This is just too ridiculous to be a sign of the end of days, but it's also too ridiculous to not post...

Michael Vick Sued for $63 Billion; Al-Qaeda ties Alleged (no, for real, click the link, i couldn't make this shit up if i wanted to.)

Also, i'm not sure if i mentioned this but my Fantasy Football Team's name for this season is Mike Vick's Kennel Club. See how topical i can be?!?

Today's Sign That the Apocalypse is Upon Us

2007-08-14T11:11:00.000-07:00

Act like you're surprised...i dare you.

(I love Deadspin's take on this. If you like sports and you're not reading this blog, well, you're an idiot.)

Links of the Day

2007-07-27T09:38:00.001-07:00

Is it just me or have i posted a lot this week? Things keep coming up that are worth talking about i guess. Check over to Championship Vinyl in a minute because there will be something there too.

This is addictive, and caused me a raging hatred of Rhode Island (neither a Road, nor an Island, discuss.)

Saw the Simpson's Movie last night...really good. Almost every single memorable character made an appearance, including Professor Frink in the first few minutes and some classic Ralph Wiggum moments. "I like boys now!"

Also, i'm on chapter 24 of Harry Potter and i'm thinking about taking the afternoon off to finish it. Call me a nerd but i'm racing to get this done before some jackass tells me what happens. Seriously, that's an offense punishable by a swift kick to the groin. Girl, guy, i don't care. Spoil this for me and i'm giving you a crotch shot. You have been warned.

Also, i know quite a few of the readers here will be playing in our fantasy football league this year and it looks like we still need 5 people or so to play. Let me know if you're interested. Also, if you need help naming your team, here is a highly hilarious and highly inappropriate guide. My team name? Mike Vick's Kennel Club (yes, passport to hell has been stamped. i'm aware.)

Tagged

2007-07-26T16:12:00.000-07:00

This feels suspiciously like a chain letter e-mail and i'm more than a little worried about that. 8 wacky things about Adam doesn't really fit in this blog, because, well, this blog is rarely about me. Also, this blog is about things that are not A-OK, and luckily, i am A-OK. BUT, Erin sent this to me and i'm intrigued by it (read: desperately happy to be included) and i think i'll go for it.

THE RULES:
1. Post these rules before you give you the facts.
2. List 8 random facts about yourself.
3. At the end of your post, choose (tag) 8 people and list their names (linking to them).
4. Leave them a comment on their blog letting them know they’ve been tagged!

8 random facts about Adam

1. I was the fastest skater in the Arizona Youth Hockey All-Star game 2 years running. Fastest ice skater...in the friggin' desert. Somewhat of a dubious distinction/backhanded compliment.

2. I take piano lessons regularly...this would be normal if i was still pursuing a childhood talent, but no, I started as a 23-year old.

3. I want to be a lounge singer that sings dirty words to popular songs ie. Total Eclipse of the Heart becomes Totally Ripped a Big Fart, or a gay male version of Piano Man. (John, the real estate novelist never had time for a wife, was talking with Davie, who's still in the Navy...and that's probably why they seem so into each other...)

4. I also think i would be a good stand up comedian and i'm currently working on material.

5. I am colorblind. (I see color, i'm not a dog, i just don't see shades of color very well. By the way, how the hell did we find out that dogs don't see color?)

6. I had a 3.8 GPA in high school and a 3.6 in college without ever doing my homework, reading the required material (i stopped buying books completely at one point) or studying. My 3.8 in high school earned me a class ranking of 185th in my class...them were some smart mutha fuckas in mah class.

5. I have an unhealthy and unmanly obsession with the daily heroics of Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears. I call them the Trainwreck Trifecta.

6. I was in show choir in high school (singing, dancing, sequins, etc.)...and it was actually a cool thing to do. Nobody believes me but it was.

7. My dream job is to be a fly fishing guide in the summers and a snowboard instructor in the winters, drink dark beer and have a beard at all times.

8. Despite the fact that almost all of my friends are married, i'm fairly confident that i don't have what it takes.

okay, i’m tagging these folks: Ron, Nole, Kevo, Neil, Ben Blakey, and i'm only doing 5 because even these 5 won't respond.

Today's Sign That the Apocalypse is Upon Us

2007-07-24T08:57:00.000-07:00

This is horrible. And i'm not even going to write my usual little blurb about it because the link i've posted says it soooooo much better.

On The Wagon: Off, then Back on Again

2007-07-23T11:43:00.000-07:00

Officially, i made it 55 days. In that time i ran, worked out, lost about 20lbs, changed my philosophy on going out and drinking, made some new friends and launched an entire clothing line. Not too shabby.
I don't know what prompted me to stop the streak...i'm not mad or disappointed in myself and actually, i completely proved to myself that i could do what i set out to do...i can go out, have a drink or two and completely control myself. I can stop, which is what i couldn't do when i decided to stop completely. Since i had that drink (plural, really), i haven't gone off the deep end, haven't had a binge, haven't been retarded, wasted, nor did i blackout. Mission pretty much accomplished.
While i was sober, I went out on about 40 nights of those 55 -- promoting my party -- and realized that not only do i hate going out even more sober than i ever did drunk, but i realized that being wasted in those places all those times didn't make it any more fun. It was pretty much the same whether i was dead sober or completely blitzed. So if that's the case, then why kill your liver and your next day if it's just going to suck the same? These are the realizations that i have come to.
In the last 2 weeks, i had a cocktail on the golf course during "man weekend 07 in Flagstaff" (pictures here), of which all 11 of the other guys i was with were pretty much shitfaced for 48 straight hours. I had a drink at a friends birthday party, a few drinks at my launch party (hey, it was my party) and last Saturday i went on a wonderful day of wine tasting and margaritas with some friends. It wasn't about the drinking, it wasn't about taking shots and acting sloppy, it was just about being social and sharing a social beverage with quality people. It was safe, smart and for the most part, completely under control. Like i said, these are the lessons i wanted to learn.
All that being said, I think today will start a new streak. I am going backpacking in 10 days and need to get in a little bit of shape for that 30+ mile trek. In August, I am going to begin seriously training for the PF Chang's Marathon that occurs in January. And i'm going to actually try and enjoy my family this holiday season instead of making an ass out of myself. Some of them might not be around too much longer and besides, i'll have the big race coming up. I think i'll enjoy it more. The only drinking on my calendar will be the Breckenridge Oktoberfest in September...this will be in another state, with everything in walking distance and with a large group of fun people...as i've said, the wagon has a hard time making road trips.
I don't know what the reaction to this post will be. I know a lot of people were cheering for me to go cold turkey forever and i really thought i would for a while (as in longer than 55 days)...but that was never really the point. This was never about alcoholism or co-dependency. The point was to re-educate myself about my drinking habits and replace alcohol's place in my life with things a little more beneficial to my existence, and i think i've done that pretty well.

Best. Thing. Ever.

2007-07-20T12:22:00.000-07:00

This is in a prison... I'd like to see Joe Arpaio institute a Thriller policy at Tent City. Liven that place up a bit...

My Blog's Movie Rating

2007-07-10T10:08:00.000-07:00

I found this fun web site will tell you what your blog would be ranked if it were a movie. No surprise here:

Mingle² - Online Dating

Today's Sign That the Apocalypse is Upon Us

2007-07-09T09:27:00.001-07:00

This is a quote from Daniel Radcliffe, the ~~little shit~~ actor who plays Harry Potter, discussing how much he doesn't mind it when girls just want to say, "I just had sex with Harry fucking Potter!!!":

"Girls who want to go out with me just because I'm famous has never been a problem. I'm 17. I don't care. Obviously, if I wanted a deep and meaningful relationship then I wouldn't want to be going out with somebody who is only with me because I'm an actor, but if you don't a relationship like that then it's fine."

Also, this.

This is Ba-a-a-a-a-a-a-d

2007-07-07T18:24:00.000-07:00

It's funnier if you say it like you're a goat...

That's a lot of Goat-related carnage...

This Week's Sign that the Apocalypse is Upon Us

2007-07-06T09:01:00.001-07:00

I read this story, and then i looked at the dateline, and i said, "Yup, Alabama. That figures..." without the slightest bit of shock.

Links of the Day

2007-07-03T09:40:00.000-07:00

There's too much to post or classify in one area so we're going to have a little link party:

If Herpes can kill an elephant, how the hell is Paris Hilton still alive?

An interview with the always-interesting Henry Rollins.

GLAAD weighs in on the new Adam Sandler movie.

I'm working on a Top 5 songs inspired by Hurrican Katrina over at Championship Vinyl. Hoping to have that up by the end of the day.

Also, i received this Fwd'd email today that i thought you all would love:
"This message was actually written by Craig R. Smith not Jay Leno but I think he has a very valid point.

Jay Leno wrote this; it's the Jay Leno we don't often see....
"The other day I was reading Newsweek magazine and came across some poll data I found rather hard to believe. It must be true given the source, right?

The Newsweek poll alleges that 67 percent of Americans are unhappy with the direction the country is headed and 69 percent of the country is unhappy with the performance of the president. In essence 2/3s of the citizenry just ain't happy and want a change.

So being the knuckle dragger I am, I started thinking, ''What we are so unhappy about?'' Is it that we have electricity and running water 24 hours a day, 7 days a week? Is our unhappiness the result of having air conditioning in the summer and heating in the winter? Could it be that 95.4 percent of these unhappy folks have a job? Maybe it is the ability to walk into a grocery store at any time and see more food in moments than Darfur has seen in the last year?

Maybe it is the ability to drive from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean without having to present identification papers as we move through each state? Or possibly the hundreds of clean and safe motels we would find along the way that can provide temporary shelter? I guess having thousands of restaurants with varying cuisine from around the world is just not good enough. Or could it be that when we wreck our car, emergency workers show up and provide services to help all and even send a helicopter to take you to the hospital.

Perhaps you are one of the 70 percent of Americans who own a home. You may be upset with knowing that in the unfortunate case of a fire, a group of trained firefighters will appear in moments and use top notch equipment to extinguish the flames thus saving you, your family and your belongings. Or if, while at home watching one of your many flat screen TVs, a burglar or prowler intrudes , an officer equipped with a gun and a bullet-proof vest will come to defend you and your family against attack or loss.

This all in the backdrop of a neighborhood free of bombs or militias raping and pillaging the residents. Neighborhoods where 90 percent of teenagers own cell phones and computers. How about the complete religious, social and political freedoms we enjoy that are the envy of everyone in the world? Maybe that is what has 67 percent of you folks unhappy.

Fact is, we are the largest group of ungrateful, spoiled brats the world has ever seen. No wonder the world loves the U. S. , yet has a great disdain for its citizens. They see us for what we are. The most blessed people in the world who do nothing but complain about what we don't have , and what we hate about the country instead of thanking the good Lord we live here.
I know, I know. What about the president who took us into war and has no plan to get us out? The president who has a measly 31 percent approval rating? Is this the same president who guided the nation in the dark days after 9/11? The president that cut taxes to bring an economy out of recession? Could this be the same guy who has been called every name in the book for succeeding in keeping all the spoiled ungrateful brats safe from terrorist attacks? The commander in chief of an all-volunteer army that is out there defending you and me?

Did you hear how bad the President is on the news or talk show? Did this news affect you so much, make you so unhappy you couldn't take a look around for yourself and see all the good things and be glad? Think about it...... are you upset at the President because he actually caused you personal pain OR is it because the "Media" told you he was failing to kiss your sorry ungrateful behind every day. Make no mistake about it. The troops in Iraq and Afghanistan have volunteered to serve, and in many cases may have died for your freedom. There is currently no draft in this country. They didn't have to go. They are able to refuse to go and end up with either a ''general'' discharge, an ''other than honorable'' discharge or, worst case
scenario, a ''dishonorable'' discharge after a few days in the brig.
So why then the flat-out discontentment in the minds of 69 percent of Americans? Say what you want but I blame it on the media. If it bleeds it leads and they specialize in bad news. Everybody will watch a car crash with blood and guts. How many will watch kids selling lemonade at the corner? The media knows this and media outlets are for-profit corporations. They offer what sells , and when criticized, try to defend their actions by "justifying" them in one way or another. Just ask why they tried to allow a murderer like O. J. Simpson to write a book about how he didn't kill his wife, but if he did he would have done it this way...... Insane!

Stop buying the negativism you are fed everyday by the media. Shut off the TV, burn Newsweek, and use the New York Times for the bottom of your bird cage. Then start being grateful for all we have as a country. There is exponentially more good than bad. We are among the most blessed people on Earth and should thank God several times a day, or at least be thankful and appreciative." "With hurricanes, tornados, fires out of control, mud slides, flooding, severe thunderstorms tearing up the country from one end to another, and with the threat of bird flu and terrorist attacks, "Are we sure this is a good time to take God out of the Pledge of Allegiance?"
Jay Leno

Please keep this in circulation. There are so many people that need to read
this and grasp the truth of it all."

So because my stomach is full and I have a clean, safe house to rest my head at night, I should be grateful and quit my whining about the people who don't?
Because things are reasonably satisfactory here, I should be pleased that I have it so good and not worry so much about everyone who has it worse? I mean, why worry that people are homeless and starving and dying of AIDS and being murdered and raped while American Idol is on?

Sounds like a good plan to me! I don't know who this Craig R. Smith is, but damn, he would have saved me a lot of stress and concern about other people's well being if i would have just heard from him sooner. Thanks for letting me off the hook, Craig!

HAHAHA. What a bunch of ignorant shit.

Today's Sign That the Apocalypse is Upon Us

2007-06-28T10:01:00.000-07:00

I want to puke even giving her a second of my time, but this is just too good to pass up. I mean, this just says so much about our society and our way of life and our absolute ignorance about the rest of the world. Its enough to make a guy almost want to strap on explosives and start suicide bombing Hollywood.

"I've been through a lot... blah blah" Somalians and Ugandans have been through a lot. Homeless people and war veterans have been through a lot...the only thing Paris hilton has been through a lot of is blow and cock.

This is Some Darth Vader Shit

2007-06-22T10:09:00.000-07:00

Cheney doesn't like to follow rules...

On the Wagon: Day 31

2007-06-21T10:53:00.000-07:00

I'll keep this one shorter than the last marathon. Thanks to everyone who commented and/or contacted me privately. I appreciate the backup, the conversation and the support.

Speaking of marathons...i've been running and instead of doing the PF Changs 1/2 Marathon in January, i'm thinking about doing the full. 26.2 miles...could be fun? My friend Kelli is training for a triathlon and has not only inspired me to get off of my ass and do more with my life, she has also offered to go on a run with me.

Also, thanks to Ben for pointing me to this site. I have taken a cue from him and now cannot go for a run without checking it out here first. Here's a few i've done recently:

This morning:

Last week:

Tomorrow:

Sometime in the Future:

So in addition to running and generally trying to keep myself busy here are some other thoughts...

Since i discussed it last week, the adrenaline of the whole situation has worn off. Like a bad breakup or something, i'm having a harder and harder time remembering why i quit and the good times are starting to become the only memories i have. I'm starting to listen to some of the people around me who say i can get away with one drink here and there, or that i could drink one night a week or on special occasions or only when i'm out with them (yes, someone has actually said this to me...). I'm staying strong and i haven't strayed but the weaknesses are appearing in the armour. I watch people drink on TV and in movies and it seems like such a good idea to them. I walk down the wine aisle in the grocery store and think about how nice it would be to have a glass of wine with dinner and just feel a little warm and fuzzy. I'm finding it harder to tell myself that its not a good idea. Like a long-lasting war, i'm having trouble remembering why i even started this fight in the first place. It's a weird phenomenon that i didn't see coming.

Fortunately, i've had some positive reinforcement. Business is booming and i actually feel like i'm contributing for a change. I made the largest sale in K&W Promotions history (albeit a brief history), we are a month away from our fashion show and things are beautifully hectic around the office. I am continuing to lose weight, look and feel better, work out and am getting to the point where, if i keep this up, i could imagine myself almost looking half-way decent around the pool by the end of the summer (sure it's a superficial thing to point out, but it's really the only tangible evidence and daily reminder i have...).

One of the best things i've noticed in this last month is my wallet. I'm not hemorrhaging money the way i used to. I'm not going to say a ton about this right now, but i'm going to look into my financial statements from the last 2 months and compare them...something tells me May is going to look a lot different than June. (Except for the surround sound i bought myself and the new 3-wood.)

On the Wagon: A Running Diary

2007-06-11T14:37:00.000-07:00

As a rule, i don't write about myself. I mean, i obviously inject my moods, feelings and anecdotes into everything i write but the main theme is rarely, if ever, me. It was this type of public introspection that first got me into writing and then proceeded to get me into tons of trouble as people checked in on my myspace page or other forums in which i decided to unleash my mental diarrhea out of my fingertips and onto the unsuspecting world. It would just take a few clicks back in time on my myspace blog to get back to years such as 2003 and 2004 in which i bitched, complained and moaned about every shortcoming, rejection and insecurity available. Some of it was poetic, but most of it was pathetic. I wouldn't encourage you to judge me based on those writings, but i would encourage you to take a trip back, even if it's briefly, to see the context in which today's writer came from. Those were some overly-sensitive times for me and now i'm a hardened, cynical, bitter and jaded grown-up in a post-9/11 and currently war-torn world who is fazed by just about nothing and never, ever talks about his struggles, issues or problems anymore, A. Because it's none of your f-ing business, B. Because it never helped in the first place and C. I'm a dick and refuse to put myself in any more vulnerable positions.
For some reason though, i'm going to talk about this and see where it takes us. I want to say that it's for all those other people going through the same thing or having the same thoughts, but that's only partially true. It's for me and me only and who the hell knows why i'm sharing it. Oh well. What will follow over the next few weeks, months, maybe even years, is a running diary of a hopefully sober Adam.

Anyway, as i write this i've been sober for 21 days. No drinks, no drugs, no beer, no shots, no glass of wine with dinner, no beer on the couch watching TV, nothing. The only chemical mood changer i've had in my body over the last 3 weeks is Red Bull, which while it probably isn't good for me, has become my last bastion of alternate consciousness. Pretty lame really. (and ironically, the Red Bull is probably what'll end up giving me cancer and killing me in the next 5 years once they definitively discover just how bad the shit is for you...)

Here's the back story:
I've wanted to stop for a long time. I knew i could be living a better, healthier and wiser life all along. I knew that i have an addictive personality. I knew that my drinking habits affected my past relationships. I knew that i was making decisions on a nightly basis that i wouldn't have made without the help of a few beers or a few cocktails. I knew that my family are heavy drinkers and i knew that i loved absolutely nothing more than watching the Broncos with them while cracking Coors or sitting at a family event drinking even though it was Easter morning or something. I knew that when i went out at night, i was what the American Medical Association kindly referred to as a binge drinker. I knew that i wasn't going to have a few cocktails and know when to stop. I knew that i was going to be blacked out or close to it and i knew that i would feel great the next morning. I knew enough (from experience) to not get behind the wheel but i also knew that i could be persuaded to if the mix of BAC and the proper interest from the female persuasion were combined in the right amounts. I knew that i was spending hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars a month going out, having a good time and feeling no pain. It was a good place and i knew that i could justify it to myself at any time of day, any day of the week and in any situation. I knew that i was 20-25 years of age and more or less completely invincible. This has gone on for a while.

Now let's make one point completely clear. I am not, nor have i ever considered myself to be, an alcoholic. And to completely prove that point, 21 days ago today i quit drinking completely cold turkey and have not had one single physical craving for alcohol. My brain has not compelled me to pour a drink due to the chemical void left behind when i stopped. Addicts crave the substance that they are addicted to. Alcoholics crave alcohol. This has never happened to me. Social constructs (bad day= need a drink, high stress situations=need a drink, out at night = have a drink) have tempted me occasionally but thus far i have not succumbed. I have not had a single withdrawal symptom. My body has not overtaken my mind/willpower and forced my hand to pour a delicious rum and coke, despite the fact that the half-full bottle is still sitting in my liquor cabinet in full view. And i have not even sipped, despite having been purchased drinks. I have had drinks in my hand for extended periods of time in the last 21 days and have not lifted them to my mouth a single time. I don't believe an alcoholic could do this. I have. Hereto, therefore, i am not, nor have i ever been, an alcoholic. This is not one of those admissions. This is not a cry for help, a request for support or an admission of guilt. Let's not go there.

I have done some dipshit things while drunk that i will not go into here. Some people have made a living off of these stories. I am a better writer than that kid and i have much better stories (but seriously, his book is pretty hilarious. Read it, if you haven't. Just because i could do better, doesn't make his book bad...). I could have kicked his literary ass all over the street if i would have chosen that path. I guess i still could but it all kind of seems kinda trivial now.
Anyway, since i stopped some interesting things have happened that i didn't anticipate:

I eat better- This was never a conscious decision. It just happened. A month ago, i owned a deep fryer, ate red meat any chance i could get, loved bread and potatoes and wouldn't order a salad for lunch or dinner if my life depended on it. All of a sudden i'm eating salads, checking labels, avoiding certain aisles at the grocery store, buying vegetables to go with my chicken or fish dinner and i'm having fruit as a snack instead of candy or popcorn. Almost every eating decision i've made recently has been impacted by this new thought process. I have no idea where it came from or why. I mentally figured that if i wasn't going to drink then that freed up a shitload of calories in which i could eat more shit that was bad for me. Somehow that wasn't what my body had planned.
A year ago, i weighed 250 pounds. No joke. Six months ago i weighed 225. A month ago, i was 205. Today, i'm 195. Quit sitting in a cubicle and hating your life 60 hours a week and you lose 30 lbs, start working at a restaurant where you're on your feet all day, lose 15 lbs. Quit drinking, start eating right and working out with the time you used to spend drunk, lose 10 more. That's 55 lbs in a year. Fuck atkins.
ADD Disappearance - OK, it didn't disappear...but it's better. For the longest time, i've had no focus. I'm a procrastinator of the highest degree and since i stopped having a hangover, or at least an alcohol induced fog, to hold me back, my focus has improved. A bit. I won't say that it's gone, but it's better. I actually feel good enough to do the things i need to. Maybe the actual ADD is the same, but now i have one less excuse to use when i don't want to do something.
Awkward nights out - The first two have been pretty positive but this one is decidedly weird. I guess i should have seen it coming. What breaks the ice when you're meeting someone new? What gets conversation flowing? What makes you feel more comfortable and at ease? What do you drink when you get dinner? What makes you a better dancer and more willing to talk to strangers? What makes the people around you better looking and easier to tolerate? That's right, alcohol. Throw that alcohol out and the shit around you gets very fucking real in a hurry.
I've enjoyed being a DD lately. My friends have cool cars that they let my drive and they're amazingly funny drunks but really, how much going out can you take without a cocktail? My energy isn't what it used to be, i yawn in mid-sentence after midnight. Things don't seem like such a good idea anymore. And some of the things i used to enjoy are flat out annoying/boring/retarded. C'est la vie...
Meeting new friends - Jim Gaffigan has a joke about not drinking...he says, "How do you go out on a date? 'Uh, yes waiter, i'll have water and she'll have a jagerbomb. thanks.'" It just doesn't work. Here's the interesting thing though, and this i really never saw coming. Guys are completely cool with it. I mean, they're flat out awesome. Most of my buddies, my most hardcore drinking buddies, know that i've quit, and i thought they'd be pissed at me and that they'd always be buying me shots or beers and calling me a pussy for not drinking with them. Hasn't happened at all. I am shocked. Most of my buddies will fall on a grenade for me in a second if they see me hesitating or thinking about it. I've had shots and drinks (that people have ordered for me without knowing that i'm not drinking) literally ripped out of my hands by my friends who then proceeded to slam them so i couldn't drink it. They've been amazing.
Alternately, the girls have been fucking awful. "You sure you don't drink? You can have one, right? You want a sip of mine? Are you sure? Really? Nothing i can do to get you to have one? Have a shot with me? I'm going to get you drunk when you're not paying attention." I mean, i've heard it all. One friend that i went to dinner with the other night was on her second martini before she admitted that she didn't feel comfortable at all drinking when i wasn't. We tried to figure out why she felt that way and settled on a combination of social norms and vulnerability issues. Like if she did something stupid and we were both drunk that it wasn't a big deal, but if she made an alcohol-affected choice and it was all her, then she couldn't use the classic, "We were drunk..." excuse. It was very interesting and i'm curious to see how this sociological experiment continues.
The Awkward Explanation - This has been by far my least favorite bi-product of not drinking. Trying to explain to people why i am not drinking sucks. And i've told about 9 different stories depending on the person and my relationship with them. My family got the personal responsibility story, as in "I just decided it was time to lay off..." Some of my friends got the Dr.'s orders story (which is at least mostly true). And other people got a combination of "I was partying too much (true), I was hurting my business being hungover all the time (true), i was getting sick too often (true), i have an addictive personality (true), i have no middle ground. I'm either sober or blacked out (true)" Or some variation on all of those themes. Most of the time i'm scrambling to avoid the word "alcoholic" or the perception that lie their in. (To varying degrees of success of course.)
I'm not an alcoholic. Alcoholics go to meetings.
Rampant Boredom - Jesus television sucks! I mean, it's awful. I don't know what i'm going to do next TV season. I imagine the Office will still be funny sober but i don't know what else i'll watch. Usually i'm 3-4 drinks deep by the time House or Grey's Anatomy (blech) comes on. I think i'll still like Simpsons and Family Guy but i honestly can't see myself watching much else. Probably a good thing. The bad thing is that i'm so ingrained in laying on my couch and being completely entertained by the television that it is a major chore to watch movies, read a book or a magazine, or write. I mean, even writing these blogs were traditionally done with 3 fingers of beautiful amber Crown Royal melting slowly over 4 ice cubes in a crystal rocks glass (*wipes saliva from corner of mouth*). I'm friggin bored with my existence right now and i haven't, as of yet, figured out how to change that. My first attempts were to get my friends to hang out and do sober stuff with me, but that has failed miserably. Eventually i'll start knitting, owning large quantities of cats and going to movies alone. Someone just kill me now.

I think the most interesting part about this has been the self-analysis that it has forced. Why am i drawn to drinking? More importantly, why am i so hung up on altering my consciousness? Do i not like who i am that much that the only way i'm content is to get out of my own head by drinking? I think the answer is -- at least partially -- "yes," which is more than a little scary. The problem, as i see it, is this: I have a writer's personality. I have the brain makeup and personality that is absolutely status friggin quo for a writer. I see things abstractly and without personal affect. My life, ever since i can remember, has been shot from the overhead helicopter view. I've never felt inside my own head. I've never had an authentic, sincere or quality reaction to anything. (I talked about this on my Myspace blog over a year ago. This, apparently, is not new for me.) Everything i say, everything i notice, everything i write has been seen through the wide camera angle. It's really hard to understand if you're not that type of personality, but if you are, then you know exactly what i'm talking about. Some of the most emotional and gigantic moments in my life have felt completely fake to me, like i was outside of my body, watching it happen on TV. Because i don't feel like i'm looking at it from my own eyes or processing it with my own brain. When i'm in those types of situations, i feel like i'm watching myself from another person's view. It's weird and my description is probably not doing it justice. Let's put it this way...i'm not self-conscious in the sense that i'm insecure about myself (trust me, i love me a lot. i think i'm friggin great.) and i'm not self-conscious in that shallow "oh my god, my jeans aren't designer" kind of way either. I'm self-conscious in the way that i'm always thinking to myself, consciously, "How am i acting right now? Is this appropriate? What is this person going to say when i say this? How is this going to come off? What do i look like right now? Are my hand gestures appropriate? Am i smiling an appropriate amount? Am i acting authentic for the situation?" It's weird, but that's the god's honest truth. Even as i'm writing this from my heart, my mind is saying, "Are you saying too much? How are people going to perceive this?" and i'm erasing and rewording accordingly. It's an absolute gift for a writer and an absolute tragedy from the sense of never having authentic experiences in which i react and don't think or over-analyze first. And there's the rub right there. When i drink, i don't think. I do whatever comes to mind, the way most people do naturally. Alcohol lets me back into my own head (or is it out of my own head? I can't decide. If i'm in my head over-analyzing all the time, then it lets me out. If i'm out of my head seeing everything from an outside perspective, then it lets me back in. I can't figure it out. Makes sense though, right?). It lets me react emotionally the way normal people do. If someone pisses me off, i don't let it slide, i fucking yell and stand up for myself and try to fight. I feel anger with justification, i laugh without wondering what it sounds like, i tell stories without wondering if they're stupid or relevant (to varying degrees of success), i actually get to use my own emotions. I get to feel like the way i'm responding is authentic. And if you don't have my personality type, you really have no idea just how fucking good that feels. I don't over analyze, i don't weigh pros and cons, i don't wonder, i just react, immediately and instinctively. I hate to say it, but alcohol lets me be me...

Sometimes this is great. I can't tell you how many people i know, how many solid relationships that have been forged, how many amazing nights i've had under the influence of alcohol. It is the social lubricant. There have truly been some fantastic moments that i would never give up in a million years. Alternately, i, like all other drinkers, have made thousands of regrettable decisions, spoken many regrettable words and most of us are considered lucky to have avoided jail time or syphilis in our lifetimes. It is, simultaneously, the best and worse thing that has ever happened to me.

More thoughts as they come...

The Power of Language

2007-05-28T08:18:00.000-07:00

Some people call George Carlin a comedian. I've always called him a philosopher. Most comedians joke about the surface crap that happens to all of us in real life...ie. peanuts on the plane, life cereal, the Burger King drive-thru (Dane Cook sucks by the way, and his comedy is completely indicative of the increasing stupidity of the American public. Good for him for capitalizing on it though...).

Carlin jokes about the real life stuff too but often he digs a few levels deeper than most. He talks about the stuff we don't want to hear. Some say that makes him "shocking" but i just think it makes him honest. He has a platform, and a medium that intends to make people look at things in a humorous way that also makes them agree at the same time, and sometimes he uses that medium to make some very serious points. Even the seven words you can't say on TV, which ended up being a Supreme Court case as vulgar as it is, makes a commentary about what the words are, why some people don't want you to say them, and why language is so powerful that we actual have to ban some of it...

One of my favorite bits ever is when he's talking about the power of language and makes the point that in World War I, when a soldier's nervous system shut down from the strain of fighting, it was called Shell Shock. Tough words...straight to the point...lots of consonants, sounds like something pretty easy to diagnose. Fast forward to Vietnam (and every engagement since) and we're now calling it Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. We've added a hyphen, made it sound medical, and we've blamed the victim. The soldiers aren't shocked anymore, they now have a disorder. They weren't shocked by something they saw anymore. Something they saw triggered a disorder they already had. Carlin goes on to make the point that if we have kept it at Shell Shock, maybe we wouldn't treat it so lightly and some of these veterans might actually be getting the help that they need. (Let's see Mr. Cook take a break from Employee of the Month and talk about war for a while eh? Then we'll see who's funny...)

It's a pretty genius sentiment and i truly wish i had thought of it myself. But since i've listened to it about a thousand times, i've started noticing little changes in the language that just seem to slip by unnoticed in this PC world of ours (ie. prostitute becoming sex worker...what's she going to be next? an automated pleasure receptacle?) and trying to call them out when i see them.

I found this story on (who's surprised?) FoxNews this morning: At Least 21 Dead in Baghdad Homicide Bombing

And this same story on the Wall Street Journal Online: Suicide Bomber Kills at Least 21 Iraqis

Notice any difference? Think that that difference in language doesn't change the intention of the story? I would love to hear your thoughts.

I've Never Been Less Surprised

2007-05-25T12:34:00.000-07:00

Wow...a stripper from Texas stole money to buy a Nascar team? Who would have ever thought?

The only thing less surprising than this would have been if a stripper stole money to build an octagon in her backyard and scheduled UFC fights...

Also, i decided not to post on this earlier this week but i will now.
Is it bad that before i was even done reading this headline that i was saying in my mind, "You liar. You're so completely full of shit." Shouldn't one have at least a tiny iota of belief in the words of the President of the United States of America??? I mean, just a little? There's not a thing this guy could say to me from now until eternity that i would say, "You know what? He's definitely telling the truth, being completely sincere, and i for one, think he has a point..." Not a single damn thing.

This also pisses me off. Bush uses a fucking HURRICANE metaphor to describe the war?!? Is he serious? And, just like the Britney Spears thing (see below), it's not like Bush is writing his own speeches, but i can't help but blame him. At some point, he's gotta say, "Hey listen guys...i know you're trying to be dramatic and all but i was asleep in my bed when America's shores were destroyed by a friggin hurricane and we kinda looked bad... Ix-Nay on the urricane-Hay OKEY DOKE??"

But he doesn't, so it's his fault. I mean, i guess the metaphor is apt, he's fucked up both things simultaneously, so we can compare them together now...

And while we're at it, is this the only thing the CIA has gotten right in the last decade? Methinks yes.

Today's Sign That the Apocalypse is Upon Us

2007-05-17T08:33:00.000-07:00

Nothing says spirituality and Godliness more than pasting an inspirational passage thanking people for their prayers OVER YOUR FRIGGIN NIPPLES!!!!

I'm pretty sure Britney isn't in charge of her own photoshop, so she's not responsible for this... although that's pretty funny to imagine:
"Is dis one a dem newfangled 'lectric boxes, like, a TV that i can type on ya'll? Ya'll serious? Shit damn yeah!!! Ya'll get me some pork rinds while i work on this here internets fo a spell..."

But still, i can't help but blame her anyway.

(click on it to read it. I couldn't make it fit. Stupid internets and TVs i can type on.)

(Wow...second one this week. The powers that be are really picking it up lately. )

Today's Sign That the Apocalypse is Upon Us

2007-05-15T12:36:00.000-07:00

They're really going to let this happen?

Secondly, i actually posted on my sports blog after last night's terrific Suns-Spurs game. Check it out here.

Also, Neil passed this along to me today and everyone should check it out. I honestly don't think that ending the war completely is the right course because it's going to make us look like even bigger assholes than we already are, but we do need to hold the people that made the decisions responsible by voting them out of office in the next election. Check it out:

The Iraq war should never have been started, and it's long past time to end it.

We were one signature away from ending this war, but President Bush defied the majority of Americans and vetoed the legislation. He has shown, again and again, since the invasion began, that he will not listen.

But the will of the American people must be followed. If PresidentBush won't end the war, it's up to Congress -- the representatives of the people -- to end it instead. We need 16 Republican Senators to override a veto -- any 16 of the 49 Republicans can choose the people over their party and decide to end this war.

In 20 states, an incumbent Republican Senator faces re-election in 2008. They will have to make clear very soon whether they will continue to defy the will of the American people.

Now is the time to hold them accountable for their choices on the war.

Barack Obama is doing just that, and you can, too. Make sure they hear your voice too.

Learn how here: http://www.barackobama.com/16votes

Reducing Junk Mail

2007-05-02T10:14:00.000-07:00

Not only is it annoying, but it uses up a ton of natural resources. Turns out most of these companies aren't even using recycled paper. They're just cutting down trees and sticking them in your mailbox.

Here's a great link that helped me reduce the crap that stuffed my box every week.

Today's Sign That the Apocalypse is Upon Us

2007-04-27T08:23:00.000-07:00

Albert Einstein reportedly said this:
“If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man.”

And even if he didn't, the theory makes a hell of a lot of sense.

So imagine my wonder when i wake up to this story on the front page of my RSS reader:
Are Mobile Phones Wiping Out Bees?

A few more clicks and i find this story blaming genetically modified crops; and two (1, 2) more explaining Colony Collapse Disorder.

You know, my idea of the end of the world was always far more exciting than this. Something like a nuclear holocaust in which 9 Victoria Secret models and I are the only survivors and I become their fearless, bare chested leader as we hide in Aruba an begin repopulating the earth...
I never really imagined all of us just starving to death. Presidents and Prime Ministers and peasants all sharing the same immediate fate. And yet, this seems 100% more realistic.

Watching Out for Abnormal Behavior

2007-04-19T15:50:00.000-07:00

So Bush is pimping the VaTech massacre as a reason to be ever vigilant against random and unsubstantiated threats. The threats of what you may ask? Terrorism? Goth kids?

Well, as usual, he wasn't specific but one can only imagine that by "abnormal behavior" he meant being gay, black, Mexican, Islamic, an environmentalist or a democrat. Also, we can probably safely assume that by getting an abortion, not being Christian, driving a Hybrid car, not eating meat or living in Oregon (sorry guys but anyone who lives there is a pot smoking, socialist hippie as far as he's concerned...) is also "abnormal."

It's these type of blanket generalizations from the Bush administration that i'm really going to miss when their time is up.

VaTech

2007-04-18T17:43:00.000-07:00

We've all been oddly quiet about the happenings at Virginia Tech since it happened...whether it be a statement of sadness, a reflection on the fragility of human life or an angry diatribe about psychotically depressed loners lashing out in the worst of ways, i thought someone would write something. But it looks like i'm first.

I don't really have the time or energy to speak as deeply as i'd like to about this (although i'd sure like to find some of both.) but i will say that knowing people who lived through Columbine and growing up in a world where this type of behavior has become increasingly acceptable, that at no time in my entire college career did i go to sleep in my dorm room, walk through campus or attend class with the slightest inclination that someone might go apeshit and shoot me or my classmates. It never went through my mind. And now that i think about it, it was completely possible that it could have happened. It should have happened. In fact, it still might. All the ingredients are in place.

The two schools i attended, CU and ASU, had such a diverse and completely disconnected student population. There were the rich, out-of-state kids (of which i was arguably one) that walk around like their shit doesn't stink and there were the not-so-rich, in-state kids that could have come from anywhere with any type of background. These two colleges were just as cliquey and segregated and unfair as high school was. Maybe worse. I feel that i am a fairly normal and balanced person but there were times at both of those schools where i felt so alone and so brushed aside by every other person around me and so absolutely forgotten about. I'm a generally happy and decent person and if i felt this way at times, i can only imagine the thousands of other students that must have felt/feel the same way, if not hundreds of times worse. It now occurs to me that it is an absolute miracle that a similar massacre has not happened before and does not happen more frequently.

With that said, this was not my intention in this post. My intention was to call attention to this screen capture of MSNBC that i just saw:

I don't know how well you'll be able to see it (click on it and it'll get bigger) but the image above is from the main page of the Va Tech story on MSNBC.com in which 33 people, including the shooter, died. Now i'm not diminshing the loss of human life at all. A life is a life is a life. They're all equal in my book and one person being killed is one too many as far as i'm concerned but what kills me (sorry, bad term) is the story at the bottom of the column that says "Top MSNBC Stories." If you can't see it, again, i'll tell you what it says... "183 killed in a 4 Baghdad Blasts."

183?!?!?! One Hundred and Eighty Fucking Three! Our nation goes into mourning and the President drops everything to go to the college and speak when 33 people are killed, yet every single day a headline like the Baghdad one slides right by on the ticker and we barley even fucking blink. This is so typical and indicative of everything that is wrong with this country, our society and humanity as a whole.

1,200 people died in Hurricane Katrina and we're still talking about it. And we'll still be talking about it during this entire summer's hurricane season and during next year's Super Bowl in New Orleans. When's the last time you heard about, or even thought about, the 250,000 people killed in the Indonesian Tsunami? That's a quarter of a million people just wiped off the face of the earth and we declare a national day of mourning for 33?

3,000 people died on 9-11 and we've killed somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,000 times (and counting) that many, just to get even for it. That would be like us bombing South Korea because of what this kid did. Seems stupid right? Well, we're doing it every day. (And don't put it past ol Georgie to think about attacking Seoul. Honestly, would it surprise you?)

Mothers die by the thousands from AIDS in Africa. Millions of people are killed in Ugandan genocide. Hundreds of thousands of children die every day from starvation. And the U.S. is getting letters of condolence from every leader in the free world for 33?!?

I'm not taking anything away from those 32 (i'm not counting the murderer, fuck him) people who were killed this week. Don't get me wrong. Their lives were stolen from them selfishly by a sad and ignorant person who needed attention and that is an absolutely tragedy if and whenever it happens.

All i'm saying is that something isn't right with this picture. Something is Majorly. Fucked. Up.

Today's Sign That The Apocalypse is Upon Us.

2007-04-15T19:48:00.001-07:00

German Technology VS Arab Technology

Now i know this isn't really a VW commercial but someone still took the time to make this...

Not sure how i feel about it. I guess i could be mad if i want to be all PC but some part of me wants to think its hilarious and well-placed satire.

Any thoughts?

RIP Kurt Vonnegut

2007-04-12T07:46:00.000-07:00

One of my (our) favorite writers has died. He was 84.

RIP Kurt Vonnegut

Update: Check out this story about Vonnegut working at Sports Illustrated. Too funny.

Good News of The Week

2007-04-10T17:54:00.001-07:00

Because we do so much negative stuff here. This is something i can smile about: Hank Aaron tells Barry Bonds to Fuck Himself.

Holy F-ing Shit

2007-04-02T11:12:00.000-07:00

This can't be real can it? Are we really going to attack Iran? Aren't we in deep enough shit as it is? Who's running this place? (Although the site isn't the most reputable, it's still kind of insane if there is even a fraction of truth here.)

I often joke here about the world ending and i don't want to be overly dramatic, but this could really be it right? I mean, we're talking about attacking a huge country with a big army and developed weapons systems who is run by a batshit crazy leader who outwardly hates jews, western culture and has given speeches about the Holocaust being a myth. This can't end well.

If the shit hits the fan, i'm getting out of the big cities and heading to Bend, Oregon. Think you guys can get a room ready for me? ha.

Today's Sign That the Apocalypse is Upon Us

2007-03-29T10:13:00.001-07:00

This one actually makes me really hope that the world is ending. If you make it to the end of this, you might want to schedule an appointment with a therapist.

Amazing Finish

2007-03-26T14:36:00.000-07:00

This doesn't really belong here but i post on my sports blog like once every 3 months and it's pretty much what i'd call "defunct" so i'll just put it here so people can see it.

This is the ending to the NCAA Division II finals and it's pretty unbelievable. This kid scores 10 points in the last 45 seconds including two Reggie Miller-like steals for the win. I can't believe this isn't a bigger story, actually. If you like sports even an iota, you'll enjoy this:

The WTF Award of the Week

2007-03-22T15:04:00.000-07:00

Alright, the computer is stumbling along well enough to post a small entry. I'm still trying to get this week's Shuffle posted on Championship Vinyl but i think i may just push it to next week. This week's kind of a lost caust anyway.

So this is just batshit crazy. Enjoy.

Today's Sign that the Apocalypse is Upon Us

2007-03-18T23:36:00.000-07:00

Harry Potter Fan Stalks Actress, Apparently Her Magical Powers Could Not Prevent It

Listen, i think she's cute too, but she's a fucking character in a children's fantasy book for fuck's sake!!!!!!!!!

The Case Against Ethanol

2007-03-13T09:50:00.000-07:00

My Dad buys me a subscription to Fly Rod and Reel every year. I like the magazine and i flip through the pictures of big fish, but even though i am a huge fan of fly fishing, i just can't bring myself to read through most of it. I get about 5 other magazines, I am constantly reading one book or another, and usually at the end of the day i like to do something passive like watch one of my DVRed shows instead of reading about fishing a small stream in northern Pennsylvania that i'll never, ever see.

But i was flipping through it this morning over breakfast and this story caught my eye. It's a story, as you'll hopefully read, that talks about how the increase in Ethanol usage will actually be worse for local enviroments than continuing to use fossil fuels, and due to the powerful agricultural lobby, is just as dirty and underhanded in its politics as any of the big oil lobbies. Long term, Ethanol might seem better for our air, and for global warming, but is ruining our topsoils and streams (and in turn ruin our forests, streams, lakes, oceans, underground watertables and killing fish, crustaceans, all the animals that prey on them, and eventually us, etc.) really worth it?

Some good excerpts:
"It all started in 1990 with amendments to the Clean Air Act, revolutionary in that they regulated not just how we burn gasoline but how we make it. In areas out of compliance with air-pollution standards, gasoline had to include at least two percent oxygen-containing chemicals (oxygenates), the better to combust carbon monoxide, toxic hydrocarbons, and smog-producing volatile organic compounds. There were only two choices--ethanol and the petroleum-based methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE). This was precisely what the cornbelt had fantasized about and lobbied for. Suddenly the moribund ethanol industry had a future. City air would become breathable. We'd have plenty of fuel. It was going to be a win-win-win.

But instead of cleaning up America, ethanol has added to the mess we're making out of our water and air. Now the Bush Administration has decreed that ethanol replace the far more efficient MTBE as an oxygenate. But with current refining technologies and anti-pollution paraphernalia on motor vehicles there's no need for any oxygenate, a fact the powerful agribusiness lobby doesn't want you to know. Under its withering pressure, Congress and the executive branch have committed the nation to ethanol as both oxygenate and fuel."

and also this one:

"First, no crop grown in the United States consumes and pollutes more water than corn. No method of agriculture uses more insecticides, more herbicides, more nitrogen fertilizer. Needed for the production of one gallon of ethanol are 1,700 gallons of water, mostly in the form of irrigation taken from streams either directly or by snatching the water table out from underneath them. And each gallon of ethanol produces 12 gallons of sewage-like effluent.

Ethanol plants are gross polluters of air and water, and because of the exorbitant price of natural gas some of the new ones will be coal-fired, adding to the already dangerous mercury content of fish. The response of the Bush administration has been a proposal to relax pollution standards for ethanol production. Under the conservation programs of the 1985 Farm Bill and its successors, some farmers are bootstrapping their way toward sustainable agriculture, but corn production still erodes topsoil about 10 times faster than it can accrete.

The toxic, oxygen-swilling stew of nitrates, chemical poisons and dirt excreted from the corn monocultures of our Midwest pollutes the Mississippi River and its tributaries, limiting fish all the way to the Gulf where it creates a bacteria-infested, algae-clogged, anaerobic "Dead Zone" lethal to fish, crustaceans, mollusks and virtually all gill breathers. In some years, depending on seasonal heat and water conditions, the Dead Zone can cover 8,000 square miles. And it's expanding."

It's an intersting read and i'm curious to see what you all think. I know we've all been fed this huge sunny picture about Ethanol, but it's important to realize just how many dollars are being thrown at our politicians and into marketing messages and propaganda campaigns to make us think that it's the magic bullet, when it's anything but.

Hypocrisy Know No Bounds

2007-03-09T10:58:00.000-08:00

Newt Gingrich admits to cheating on both of his wives. One instance which occured while he was going after Bill Clinton about Monica Lewinsky.

Anyone surprised?

Today's Sign that The Apocalypse has Been Coming for a While

2007-03-02T08:41:00.000-08:00

This is probably the record for most posts in a week but i had to mention this.

So i'm walking through the parking lot towards my office today and i see a bumper sticker that reads, "I (heart) my Wife" buried in amongst the other obligatory bumper stickers about loving jesus and being Christian, etc.

And i know this isn't new but shouldn't i be more interested in a bumper sticker that says, "I Don't (heart) My Wife"? I mean, isn't that the point to getting married, loving your wife? I know it's probably more common to not love her and call me an old fashioned romantic but come on. Do you really need to put in on your bumper? Is that the appropriate place to declare love for one's wife? Are we in such rare and desperate times that a bumper sticker is necessary to set you apart from the divorced and unloving masses? It goes without saying that it's a sad, sad state of affairs.

An Inconvient Truth about Gore's Living Situation

2007-02-27T08:32:00.000-08:00

I've never really liked this guy and i've never seen his movie but everyone's jumping on his bandwagon about global warming and how much he's doing for the enviroment without realizing that he's still an asshole politician and will always lie, cheat, steal and bend the truth to further his own career and bank account.

I'm glad global warming and enviromental issues are getting a huge chunk of publicity but it's one thing to talk about and an entirely different thing to actually act on it. Let's make sure we're doing the right one. (By the way, my community doesn't even have recycling...a point that i'll be bringing up at the next HOA meeting.)

Some 9-11 Weirdness

2007-02-27T08:10:00.000-08:00

I don't know why nobody else is picking up on this (well, probably because Britney and Anna Nicole are far, far more important.) but i've been following this story on InfoWars and it's pretty interesting. A BBC report and reporter claimed that World Trade Center 7 had collapsed and talked about how it happened and then they zoom in, and the building is still friggin standing there. It's more than just a little suspect, especially when it looks like she's reading off of an official statement. How did anyone make that statement unless they knew the building was about to fall (or be demolished). And with the chaos of that day, what PR person or Public Information Office had the time to make a statement before something even happened.

They've been talking a lot about building 7 of the World Trade Center collapsing and how EMTs, cops and firefighters are hinting at the fact that they were pulled away from the building instead of fighting the few fires that existed inside and that the building was completely empty and then demolished in a controlled implosion. While this wouldn't seal the deal on some of the theories that the entire thing was faked, it would add to and somewhat substantiate some of the suspicions.

If you haven't watched Loose Change, you probably should. If even 1% of this whole theory is true, then i'm concerned.

Update: Story about WTC 7 and just how strongly it was built.

WTF Award of The Week

2007-02-27T08:05:00.001-08:00

This is brilliant.

Links of the Week

2007-02-20T20:30:00.000-08:00

I don't know how recurring this can be but since i'm donating a majority of my time to Championship Vinyl, i thought it would be a cool piece to show i'm still thinking about politics and world issues. I'll have a very large post about Rise Up Inc. as soon as i possibly can, but here's this until then.

1. Check out Rise Up. They are my new mission in life and i'm so glad to be apart of that organization in whatever forms i can be. Write me at adammack.wright@gmail.com if you would like more info on how to get involved.

2. We all have to buy gas. So which stations should you be supporting and which one's should you avoid like the plague? Check it out here. (Thanks to Nole for finding this.)

3. What if everyone lived like you? Take this quiz to see just how big of a footprint you're leaving on this earth. It occurs to me after taking this that no matter how much i talk the talk, i am not even close to walking the walk. I'm not even crawling the walk at this point. I use 5.5 earths and that isn't cool. It's a problem, and i'm working on it.

The WTF Award of The Week

2007-02-06T10:10:00.000-08:00

Some bizarre space station love triangle thing. Yikes. Here's my favorite part:
"At the time of her arrest, Nowak was carrying a black bag containing a steel mallet, a 4-inch folding knife, a BB gun, 3 feet of rubber tubing and several garbage bags. A wig was found in a plastic bag in a nearby trash bin."

Apparently going to space isn't exciting enough anymore. But kidnapping, that's where the action's at.

Like being turned down for a date and asking her to marry you instead.

2007-02-02T11:28:00.000-08:00

Bush now wants $300 billion.

I can't even comment anymore...it's just beyond words.

What do you want first? The good news or the bad news?

2007-01-31T11:47:00.000-08:00

We'll go with the good news, in the form of this hilarious Washington Post headline (please God, let them have done this on purpose): Bush Complains About the Size of CEO Packages. Come on George, didn't Laura tell you that size doesn't matter???

Now the bad news:
The U.S. Government has wasted tens of millions in Iraq (i would argue a much, much higher figure, but maybe that's just me.) and guess what? They're asking for more!

And also this, which may or may not be true, but i just like severe Left-wing propaganda and feel like my diet is lacking it. (Be careful, there are some very honest and awful pictures of war violence on this site. Not for the faint of heart or those with easy gag reflexes.)

20,000 troops or 7 billion dollars?

2007-01-25T09:30:00.000-08:00

This is what folks in the business world refer to as "throwing money at a problem."

All i know, is that it's a good thing Bush doesn't treat our school systems like that, just throwing money at it and hoping it gets magically better...we all know that "No Child Left Behind" is a much better plan. And besides, what do schools need money for anyway, it's not like they're buying bombs or killing people in schools.

Everything isn't Political

2007-01-19T14:51:00.000-08:00

It occurs to me that it has been a while since i've posted anything not slamming president bush so i thought i'd mention the fact that American Apparel has been sold to an investment company.

And for as popular as the company is among the young, hip and socially aware, i really thought it would make bigger news. Do you really think they're going to maintain their non-sweatshop standards with someone else calling the shots? Especially when that someone else has dollar signs in their eyes? The article says that the investment firm only had $125 million in assets but is paying 300 million + to buy American Apparel, so that makes me think they'll be looking to cut corners any way they can to get that money back.

I've never been a huge fan of American Apparel to be honest. Dov the owner goes out of his way to say how against sweatshops and exploitation he is and then pretty much sexually exploits young girls and his female employees. If you haven't read the Jane Magazine article on him yet, you might have a tough time finding it. I looked for an hour for the archive of it and it's gone. It's not even in the press archives of the American Apparel web sites, kinda interesting. The dude is kind of a scumbag at worst and a sexual deviant at best. Exploitation is exploitation.

Just a warning to those people doing business with them to keep an eye out on their standards and ethics. I have a feeling some changes could be happening soon. And most likely very quietly.

Update: Here are a few more links on Dov Charney, American Apparel's very interesting owner.
Malcolm Gladwell's take
Inc. Magazine story
20/20 Interview

Killing at a 11 to 1 Ratio

2007-01-16T15:15:00.000-08:00

The UN reports that 34,000 civilians have been killed in Iraq since the beginning of the war. Many organizations would say that this number is higher. If you remember way back when to the reasons we started this war, you would hear that Iraq harbored al-Qaeda hijackers (despite a specific lack of evidence to back this up) responsible for 9-11 in which 2,997 people died. And so we went over there to hunt terrorists. We've done the exact opposite over the last few years, actually making the problem worse by unifying the terrorists and creating new ones in the process.

So today we can celebrate that for every one person killed in the 9-11 attacks, we've killed 11 Iraqis. This doesn't count the original fighting in Afghanistan, the recent bombing in Somalia or any of the countless people we've tortured or executed in those "top secret" operations that we're so good at. (This number also doesn't take into account the 3,026 human sacrifices we've made in the form of troop deaths...which i feel now were pretty much entirely unnecessary. I think i would add them on the side with the 34,000 number to be honest.)

I've heard of an eye for an eye, but this is getting a little ridiculous.

America: Making the World Safe for Democracy

2007-01-16T12:34:00.000-08:00

Or really unsafe for Muslims...

Didn't we bomb Somalia just the other day because the Islamic govt. set up 2 years ago was starting to take hold and become relatively peaceful?

And now this. So much for those freedoms we all know and (allegedly) respect. (Check this link too for more nausea inducing fun.)

The last time we were there we caused a Josh Hartnett movie. Do we really need that again, really?

(by the way, it may be propaganda but it least it's propaganda i can get behind. Check out infowars.com, because there's a war on for your mind. It has a lot of thought- (and blog) provoking topics.)

screwed by Bush

2007-01-10T14:17:00.001-08:00

Yep, This is pretty much what Alaska feels like right now. And really that's the only response i'm going to muster. A lot of this shit makes me angry and i laugh it off, but this just upsets me entirely.

Vote Republican!

2007-01-09T20:11:00.000-08:00

And this is what you'll get: Bush Lifts Oil-Drill Ban in Alaska's Bristol Bay

What a fucker.

Now i'm not a rabid environmentalist, but fuck with an area i've spent about the most wonderful 384 hours of my life in, and i'm going to be pissed off.

Is it January 2009 yet?

I'm really too mad to process the whole thing, hopefully i'll have some more commentary on the subject later.

The Post X-Mas Reaction

2006-12-31T09:50:00.000-08:00

First off, Happy New Year to everyone. 2006 provided "Everything is A-OK" with 35 posts-worth of idiocy, retardation and anger and, although i'm no psychic, i have a feeling that 2007 won't disappoint. I get this sneaking suspicion that every year from here on out will be ripe with possibilities for cynical commentary and personally i can't wait for a democrat (possibly a black one or a woman) to be president in 2008 and not because everything will automatically become sunshine and puppy dogs. Democratic presidents have left us no shortage of comedy and embarrassment in the last few decades and i imagine this one will be no slouch, whoever it is. But alas, i digress. This particular post is a reaction the the x-mas season that we've just survived. (And no, i don't think calling it x-mas takes Christ out of it. More on this later.)

My first complaint, of course, is that it's been Christmas since Halloween. (My friend Sara gave a first-hand account about this in her blog.) The song is about 12 days of Christmas, not 47. The marketers and the retail corporations have pushed christmas earlier and earlier every year. Why? Because the earlier they get you thinking about it, the earlier you'll start shopping for it. Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving) sales were down this year, want to know why? Because all the people who usually waited for that day to shop had started weeks earlier this year. And what does that do for people who are already a little bah-humbug about the whole thing in the first place? It shuts them off. At least it did for me. I had my head in the sand avoiding Christmas up until about the 22nd, when i absolutely had to start shopping or risk offending my whole family.

And by the time i got to the mall, i had already worked myself into such a bad mood about it that the only thing i could do was walk around the mall brainstorming ideas for people and didn't actually buy a single thing. On the way into the mall, i was lucky enough to find a person backing out of a space on the 2nd floor of the garage, i had about 15 cars stacked up behind me and there were about 18 coming the other way. The people coming down the garage, either leaving or looking for spots themselves, wouldn't stop passing through to let this person back out and leave. So that left me sitting there with my blinker on, traffic backing up behind me, and nervous that someone coming down would stop just long enough to let this person out before whipping their vehicle into my spot. So while i'm sitting there, waiting for the inevitable spot steal move by someone coming the other way, i wandered off into a little day dream about what i would do if my spot was taken. I pictured myself putting my parking brake on, calmly leaving my car running in the middle of traffic, while i walked over to the freshly parked car (i mentally assumed it would be a BMW or Benz), opened the car door for the person, and without hesitation, punched them in the face repeatedly. And when i snapped out of this daydream and pulled into my spot, i consciously thought that there was little doubt in my mind that i would have done just that. Normally you have a little conscience in there that reminds you not to go insane, but mine was on vacation. I honestly didn't have that little voice in there telling me not to hit someone, and it really, truly, seemed like a good idea that i wouldn't have been surprised to see myself follow through. Upon entering the mall and thinking more about that reaction, i was truly shocked at what the "holiday season" had done to me.

My other huge frustration is gift buying. See, i'm not a super thoughtful person, i admit this. I don't know my friends birthdays, i barely know my family's birthdays, and although i'm a creative person and could definitely come up with great gifts every year, i rarely put enough time or effort into it, or start early enough to pull off the "creative, thoughtful, sometimes home-made but really enjoyable gift" thing. So i end up at the mall, 3 days before x-mas with some great ideas but no way to pull them off, and instead i wander around finding gifts that are expensive and yet just good enough for the people i'm buying them for. They're not the perfect gift, but hey, they might like it right? So i find myself in Roxy or Pacific Sunwear or Steve Madden or Best Buy or Nordstrom's or LaCoste buying overpriced things and trying to place a dollar value on my relationship with the person i'm buying for. I found a really nice sweater that i though my sister would love, but i felt myself trying to accessorize it or find something else that would put me closer to the dollar limit i felt my sister was worth. And i pretty much wanted to throw up over that feeling. I also found out that my cousins were buying me gifts personally (traditionally in my family the parents get all the nieces and nephews gifts and the cousins let that suffice, instead of buying an individual gift for all 8 cousins in the family), so immediately i felt obligated to buy them something and broke into a cold sweat over which cousins would be buying me thing personally this year and if i needed to get something for them too.

Last year during x-mas, i was a salaried employee and although i wasn't making a ton, i knew i could spend almost freely on x-mas and be alright. Well this year i'm starting my own business and waiting tables which puts me in a little different tax bracket than i was in last year. So i went into it with a little different frame of mind than usual.

But the whole thing just really turned me off this year. I hated the music, i hated the crowds, i hated that feeling of obligation to buy everyone something, and to decide which friends were "worth it." So in my mind, Christmas was cancelled. I wanted nothing to do with it. And i got that feeling from a lot of my friends and my family too. It was just getting to a point that the tens of thousands of dollars we all cumulatively spent could have been put to better use. I think next year, we'll really cancel Christmas and go on a vacation or spend the money on food and wine so we all sit around a big table and enjoy it.

And it turns out that my christmas didn't end up being so bad, but the events that made it for me weren't the presents at all, but it was x-mas eve when my family came over and drank too much together and laughed and told stories and ate a delicious meal. And it was on x-mas morning when i woke up at 10 and realized that my family had grown old enough that we didn't wake up at 6 and race to the tree anymore. We all wandered into the kitchen where we sat at the table, ate ibuprofen, drank a lot of water (and maybe a bloody mary) and put the delicious casserole that my grandma had given us for x-mas in the oven and didn't start giving each other gifts until almost noon. It was that emphasis on something else, on being friends, on being family that made it for me. It had nothing to do with my gifts or the gifts i gave.

And i propose that everyone who reads this post and realizes that they felt even the slightest bit of agreement with it, that they take a new idea to their families for next year. Let's take the power out of the marketers hands, lets take the the consumerism out of it, lets let Black Friday be Completely Fucking Dead Friday, lets stop shopping, stop being frustrated, stop throwing our hard earned money away on things that people don't need, let's stop trying to place a dollar sign on our friends and family's worth. Let's do something different next year. My family has already thrown the idea out there of taking a trip somewhere together or going skydiving together, just to name a few.

I call it x-mas because it's easier to write. Some people say i'm taking the Christ out of Christmas, and i really could care less because i don't think Christmas has been about Christ in this country for a long time. So take him out, put him back in, whatever, i could care less. But what i do think we absolutely should do is take the capitalism and consumerism out of christmas for good.

Thanks for reading. See you in 2007.

I Don't Know If This Is A Sign Of The Apocalypse or a WTF? Award.

2006-12-30T13:26:00.000-08:00

Probably both. Our fearless leader goes to bed before Saddam is executed. Obviously it meant a lot to him.

The WTF? Awards

2006-12-14T08:04:00.000-08:00

Since there's a lot of crazy things going on in the world that may not be a sign of the impending apocalypse, i've started the WTF? Awards. Whenever i find something that makes me say, "WTF?" it'll be here. And every few weeks we'll recap and award the best one a winner.

So, without any further adieu, is this what consists of surgery in China? Let's just be glad the dolphins didn't need their colons checked.

The Worst Thing I've Ever Posted

2006-12-07T20:46:00.000-08:00

Disclaimer: I've had some drinks, but that's no excuse. The best writers in the world write when inspiration hits, and this is the inspiration i had tonight. So don't consider this an apology, it's just a disclaimer. Take this for what you will. Burn me at the stake in the comments.

Discovering a Garage Sale

It’s a typical night, although not one I had high hopes for. It’s Wednesday and that’s not a popular day for garage sales. Still, I need to support my family and this is how I’ve made my living for the last 6 months. It definitely wasn’t what I had anticipated doing when I crept under that border fence. My wife and child were already here. I got her across when she was 8 months pregnant and I actually thought she would burst right there, right in the back on the truck. She had my son in a nice clean hospital, just like I said she would and now he’s a U.S. citizen, just like I knew he’d be.

So here I am, sitting in the cab of a pickup that by day carries 7 guys and a lot of palm fronds. By night, it carries me and two others and we do a kind of yardwork that is different from the one the fucking gringos pay us so cheaply for. This one is work, and takes patience, but it pays and is just un poquito more exciting.

We’ve been driving for about 2 hours tonight. Since about 11. That’s the cost of doing business. This 1997 white chevy pickup doesn’t get the gas mileage it used to. Still, it has the quietest idle of anything we own and that makes all the difference. We’ve found a few morsels that will tide us over and make good Christmas gifts for the ninos but we haven’t found “cuenta grande” just yet.

There’s a few neighborhoods we prefer. We mow and rake and weed-eat there in the daylight and we learn schedules and we learn habits. Just because we work blue-collar jobs, doesn’t mean we have blue-collar minds.

After scouting a few new places we cruise through familiar territory. Condos with closed garages. Nice places give nice people false security. White people associate ghettos and barrios with crime because of the dingy appearance, but they’re some of the safest neighborhoods in town. We bring the barrios to them.

“There it is,” I say to the driver without the slightest hint of exhilaration. The sight of the open door has become pretty routine. At this hour, there’s always one.

We can mow a half-acre lawn in 20 minutes, we can trim 25 trees, remove all the branches and rake up the shrapnel in an hour, we can clean out a garage in 12 minutes. We know where the good stuff is and we know our demographic. In Scottsdale, golf bags full of clubs fetch a nice price with half-way wealthy white people, work-out equipment, not so much. This place has a snowboard, boots and a roof rack. This town’s average temperature is 78 degrees. We’ll leave those. But we’ll take these power tools and this blowtorch and this bucket full of various nuts, bolts, washers and screws. There’s a day-laborer pick up site at 44th street that will love these. We’ll leave the couches and furniture, they might get money at a sale but they might draw attention moving at 2 a.m.

I don’t like to say Christmas at these jobs. Christmas involves Christ and I don’t think his father would be too proud of me now. But his son would. He was all about helping the poor and needy. Since he hasn’t come back yet, we’re going to help ourselves. I’m sure he’ll understand when he gets here.

Now, usually an open garage means a car is here. But evidence is not something we’re interested in leaving. We’ll leave it alone, unless…yeah, this idiot left the car unlocked. There’s change in the center console, identifying information and titles in the glove box. (Some time’s there are even keys. We’re not in this for grand theft auto, but we know people who are.) And just in case the pinche rich gringo is oblivious to the fortunes he has, we’ll arrange everything nicer than we found it. This car is nice and there’s a key here. We’re not in this for grand theft auto, but we know people who are and this will do nicely. You’d think with skateboards, an iPod, power tools and golf clubs that I wouldn’t be interested in the change in the center console. But that’s where you’d be wrong amigo. 100 pennies make a dollar makes 7000 pesos. That’s worth every penny to me. They say the only reason we’re in America is because we’ll do the work that nobody else will…if that means counting the pennies that nobody else will, then you’ve got me pegged.

In the back seat, there’s an apron. Maybe this person isn’t making that much money after all. Ah fuck him, the servers always make more than me when I bussed tables. With this much stuff, he does fine. There’s a wine key in his apron. Obviously he works at one of those nicer places. We’ll take this too, just to stick the corkscrew into the man’s ribs a bit.

He’ll wake up tomorrow and call the policia. They’ll ask some questions, mainly for insurance purposes and they’ll leave, never to talk again. Even if they find a fingerprint, they’ll never find us. They call it undocumented for a reason.

And we’re off. We’ve taken anything of value to us, but not everything of value to him. He has one of those fancy laser things that keeps the door from closing on cars and kids. If the door is closed in the morning and everything is clean and tidy, nobody will be the wiser for quite a while. This will lead to confusion for the boss, but not for the new owner.

This stuff, along with what we have found the last few nights will make a nice garage sale. And nothing will look better than I can afford. I’m selling their hides back to them and none of them will be any the wiser.

The hours are hard, but it’s worth it. My family is better off, and I’d do anything for my family.

Adam Wright is a frustrated writer and frustrated human who has been shunned and pushed aside by the writing community and then had his car and his garage robbed. He has given up on writing as a profession and embraced writing as a simple hobby, much like knitting or painting. He has no proof or basis of assumption about the perpetrator of his crime, just an idea in his head. And if that makes him a bad person, then that shoe fits.

Today's Sign that the Apoclypse is Absolutely Upon Us

2006-12-06T12:44:00.000-08:00

Today's Sign That The Apocalypse is Upon Us

2006-11-29T22:26:00.000-08:00

God help the people of North Korea, it's bad enough they live in fear of a nuclear war or barely get more than rice every day but now this?? That's just too much. I'm horrified.

An E-mail I Recieved from My Dad (that i know he didn't write)

2006-11-15T11:31:00.000-08:00

On 11/15/06, Craig Wright wrote:
United States of America!
Something to Think About

About the time our original 13 states adopted their new constitution, in 1787, Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh, had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years prior:"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as apermanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up untilthe time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous giftsfrom the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, withthe result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscalpolicy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.""The average age of the worlds greatest civilizations from the beginning ofhistory, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nationsalways progressed through the following sequence
> 1. From bondage to spiritual faith; >
> 2. From spiritual faith to great courage; >
> 3. From courage to liberty; >
> 4. From liberty to abundance; >
> 5. From abundance to complacency; >
> 6. From complacency to apathy; >
> 7. From apathy to dependence; >
> 8. From dependence back into bondage

"Professor Joseph Olson of Hamline University School of Law, St. Paul, Minnesota, points out some interesting facts concerning the 2000 Presidential election:
> Population of counties won by: Gore: 127 million; Bush: 143 million >
> Square miles of land won by: Gore: 580,000; Bush: 2,427,000 >
> States won by: Gore: 19; Bush: 29 >
> Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by: Gore: 13.2; Bush 2.1.

Professor Olson adds: "In aggregate, the map of the territory Bush won was mostly the land owned by the tax-paying citizens of this great country. Gore's territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in government-owned tenements and living off government welfare . . "Olson believes the United States is now somewhere between the "complacency and apathy" phase of Professor Tyler's definition of democracy, with some 40percent of the nation's population already having reached the "governmental dependency" phase.If the Senate grants Amnesty and citizenship to 20 million criminal invaders called illegals and they vote, then goodbye USA in less than 5 years. Pass this along to help everyone realize just how much is at stake, knowing that apathy is the greatest danger to our freedom. It's quite obvious to me that this may very well be happening to our great country right now. If you really look at the figures the two professors quote above, then imagine adding twenty million more voters to those already on government hand-outs of several various and sundry types, then realize that all these voters are going to do everything in their power to continue to protect"their rights," our country is bound to fall under the heavy burden of all the "feel-good" programs. It MUST stop somewhere, and the sooner the better!

MY REPLY:

Well, it says "Something to Ponder" in the subject line so you had to expect that i'd "ponder" it and then construct a rebuttal, hit "reply all" and then "send." I think this little piece makes a very nice point about the life span of a democracy. I would agree completely that abundance leads to complacency and apathy (and also corruption and world-changing arrogance). But the article completely loses me in a few places:

1. Discussing statistics from an election that occurred 6 YEARS AGO! You're kidding right? There have been 3 full elections since then, or did nobody realize that?Of course people on welfare and in the need of the most government assistance voted democrat, they voted for their wallets and their livelihoods. Which is the exact same thing the Republicans voted for: voting for Bush kept the most money in your wallets! Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. Let's not have a double standard here, one standard will do just fine.

2. How poor Professor Olson got mixed up in this, not even he knows. Read this: http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/tyler.asp and find out how many of the statistics and facts in this e-mail are flat out wrong and falsely attributed to Olson.

Even if completely false, taken on its face, what a negligent statement to say that the people who voted for Bush pay taxes, while the people who voted for Gore don't. That's a pretty vague, biased, generalistic and obviously untrue statement, don't you think? I think if you were to add up the amount of money the Gore voters who didn't pay their taxes owed, and compare that with the amount of non-competition bids, tax-protections, kickbacks, reliefs and wind-falls that the friendly Bush corporations got, well, never mind, it's too obvious.

3. Who are the complacent and apathetic people in this country? Is it the illegal immigrants who are washing your Hummer H2, mowing your lawn, raking your gravel, preparing your food, cleaning your house, ironing your suits, working in the factories that keep the costs of the goods you buy down? Is it the people who risk their lives again and again to come to the land of opportunity and do the jobs us snobby Americans refuse to do in order to get their own children and families out of poverty? Or is it the American citizens who after years of good fortune and "I'm king of the world" status have become the most obese and wasteful country in the world, more than half of whom refuse to vote on their own election days, who allow great injustices to happen in the world, who let their constitution and bill of rights be desecrated by a corrupt administration while they yawn, scratch their full stomachs and turn the channel to Dancing with the Stars? Who are the complacent and apathetic ones hurrying this country towards it's downfall? Really take a moment to think about that one.

One of the major symptoms of a failing empire is when the land-owning, gentrified aristocracy start blaming the peasant workers for their problems. (see: Rome, Greece, Ottoman Empire, Hitler blaming Jews for Germany's problems, etc.)

4. And finally, i know it's an e-mail that someone on unemployment probably wrote while sitting in his pajamas at 3 p.m. on a Tuesday, but come on. "Goodbye USA in less than 5 years"? Are you high? If there had been e-mail in the 20s and 60s, then I'm sure the same ignorant thing would have been said when we, as a country, decided that it was OK for women and blacks to vote. That didn't kill this country and neither will illegal immigration. Apathy and complacency will kill this country and if you're looking to the border for that, you won't find it. The only place you need to look to find apathy and complacency is squarely into the mirror.

Hope everyone has a great day!

Yay for US

2006-11-10T10:16:00.000-08:00

While we're all celebrating Veteran's Day, here's some fun. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-civilians10nov10,1,3364527.story?coll=la-headlines-world

Fox News reporter gets Tortured, but not

2006-11-08T14:55:00.000-08:00

They should do this to everyone at Fox News. I got dibs on holding the hose on Bill O'Reilly.

But seriously this dipshit reporter remarks at the end of the video that he was willing to confess to anything they wanted just to get them to stop, but it wasn't torture cuz he was all peachy just a few minutes later. Well that sounds like a great technique doesn't it asshole? We're going to get a false confession, send the person to prison without a lawyer or trial or even contact with the outside world but he should write his captors a "thank you" note for not torturing him. Aren't we a stand up country? What a bunch of friggin hypocrites.

I was so happy today because the Democrats have the majority back, Arizona didn't pass it's gay marriage amendment and it finally seems like the people have been standing up and saying they've had enough. But this just shows you how little power we have right now and that the democrats really won't do a much better job of not screwing up than anyone else.

This world is a really awful place to be sometimes.

Today's Sign that the Apocalypse is Upon Us

2006-11-01T12:18:00.000-08:00

This is by far the saddest thing i've posted lately. Maybe ever.

Today's Sign That The Apocalypse is Upon Us

2006-10-25T19:38:00.000-07:00

"Come on judge, she was asking for it?!?"

Protection from a Cranky President

2006-10-24T11:39:00.000-07:00

Alright, i've had a little more time to review this "Military Commissions Act of 2006" that was passed so quietly that "you could hear the yawn across the country as people turned to Dancing With the Stars."

I could probably break down each part and the reasons why it's unconstitutional and completely frightening but that would be 35,000 words and nobody would read it. So here is the scariest part:

Section 948a of title 10 of the United States Code, as added by the Act, defines an "unlawful enemy combatant" as:
`(i) a person who has engaged in hostilities or who has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States or its co-belligerents who is not a lawful enemy combatant (including a person who is part of the Taliban, al Qaeda, or associated forces); or
`(ii) a person who, before, on, or after the date of the enactment of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, has been determined to be an unlawful enemy combatant by a Combatant Status Review Tribunal or another competent tribunal established under the authority of the President or the Secretary of Defense.

The second section is the important one. This basically says that the President or Secretary of State (two of the most mentally unstable dudes in the country) can assign a tribunal to declare anyone an unlawful enemy combatant. On it's face, this seems like an extension of the Patriot Act and a semi-useful tool against terror suspects. Look just a bit under the surface however and this pretty much allows Bush or Rumsfeld to detain, without counsel, anyone they choose.
The writers of the constitution set in that document the idea that they would protect the country's citizens from a cranky leader. That is, the king couldn't just pass rules or put people in jail because he felt like it. That's why the U.S. has things like Habeas Corpus, due process, probable cause, Miranda warnings, the right to a lawyer and speedy trials by a jury of your peers. This new law, passed with minimal fanfare, takes all that away from us. If Bush has a tummy-ache or Rumsfeld goes completely psychotic, that they can appoint a tribunal of their own stooges and put anyone in jail at any time, for any reason and for any length of time, and without declaring them guilty of any specific crime.
Imagine this if you will: It's 2008 and Bush and his buddies decide that too many of the things they set out to accomplish when they were elected in 2000 haven't been accomplished (denying civil rights, killing women and children, ruling the world, lining their pockets with oil money, etc.). So they decide they're just going to stay in office. The people would revolt, right? (Let's hope anyway.) But any revolution or outcry this would cause could be absolutely quashed because the president and the secretary of state have the power to declare any citizen, any revolutionary, any member of any other political party as an enemy combatant and throw them in jail. The army and the police, if they valued their jobs, would have to comply. Overnight this country could become a police state with thousands, if not millions, in jail for made-up crimes, never to see a trial. They'd be political prisoners.
Now that may be an extreme example, and even my radical mind can't imagine this actually happening, but to me it's absolutely petrifying that there is even the slightest possibility. Sure, it could happen even if this law hadn't been passed but now we've basically given the fuckers PERMISSION TO DO IT! It wouldn't be absolutely legal.
What we've done is pass a law that removes the checks and balances on the executive branch. And we've torn down the things that were meant to protect us against a cranky president. If Bush is in a bad mood (he's out of fruit roll-ups, he can't beat a level on Mario Bros., etc.) and ends up reading this blog, i could be meeting some new friends in Guantanamo by Friday and he would be well within his rights to do it. Let's just hope they put me on the top of the naked-guy torture pyramid...
Good luck to us all.

The Day Habeas Corpus Died

2006-10-18T10:28:00.000-07:00

This was sure slipped through quietly. I actually read a variety of news sources during the day and i missed this completely.

I'll post a more detailed position on this when i've had a chance to digest it a bit.

Profound

2006-10-16T16:24:00.000-07:00

No wonder our sense of beauty is distorted.

Some Truly Horrifying Shit

2006-10-11T22:19:00.000-07:00

I’m on my way home from Pinedale, Wyoming, where my family has had a cabin for 10 years now. It used to be an awesome escape to a little town of 1,200 that just built their first movie theater less than 5 years ago. But recently a huge natural gas deposit was found near our house and over the next 10 years, they will drill more than 10,000 wells and completely ruin my neighborhood, the hunting, fishing and quaint little small town feeling. Actually, the small town feeling is already ruined. See, when they do these things, they do environmental impact studies and they tell everyone that despite the ugliness of the wells, it’s really not going to hurt the land that much, the animals will be fine, etc. But they don’t talk about the impact on people. When you build that many wells, you need a ton of manpower and equipment. And when you bring hundreds of men into a town without hundreds of single women, you’re absolutely asking for trouble. Crime is up, violent crime is up. You don’t recognize people in town. It’s downright scary going to what used to be friendly, neighborhood cowboy bars. May my town rest in peace.
But this wasn’t meant to be an indictment of the murder of small-town America, although we could certainly talk for day about that.
What struck me as interesting during my visit were all of the Halliburton vehicles driving around town. I guess what really caught me by surprise was my underestimation of the size of that company. They have vehicles and equipment being blown up in Iraq daily, they have contractors and employees being kidnapped, killed, beheaded and ambushed all the time and yet, on the other side of the world in Wyoming, it’s just business as usual.

And I’m trying to duplicate this conversation that I had with my dad about it. And I can understand that it’s just so hard to wrap your brain around after all that you’re taught in schools and you hear in the mainstream media and you try so hard to believe in the ideals of this country that this stuff couldn’t be true. But if you look at the facts on some of this stuff, it’s just shocking and overwhelming and completely frightening. It’s the feeling that no matter what we do, no matter how we vote or how we live, that we’re just completely outnumbered and basically, fucked. It’s a tough thing to realize that you really can’t do anything about it. It’s a horrible thing for me to say, but I honestly believe that what’s going on in this world is too big for us to stop. It’s out of our hands. Thanks for playing, please come again. The status quo is too entrenched, the wheels are already in motion.
The oil companies posted record breaking profits last year in the 10’s of billions of dollars. Exxon made $28 billion in profits alone. That’s not just revenue…that’s money they made above and beyond the massive expenses of that company. During that entire time, Americans were caught at the pumps complaining about gas prices. Now I’m a fan of the laws of economics, so I’m not saying that Exxon shouldn’t have priced competitively and made as much money as humanly possible, because that’s the idea behind business. You make as much as you can. But, what I am saying, is that when you look at those numbers, and you look at the people who stand to benefit from those numbers, it’s not a big surprise why we’re fighting where we are fighting and why we are willing to put up with death and destruction and human rights travesties and all the other byproducts of this war. Because the war is still profitable.
How many trucks does $28 billion in profits replace? How many pieces of equipment? How many lobbyists? How many government officials? How many soldiers and officers can be promised high-ranking security jobs? How many terrorist attacks can you afford? (And that includes 9-11, because it cost a few thousand lives, 4 planes and a few really nice pieces of real estate. Add that up and it was a fucking drop in the proverbial $28 billion dollar bucket. I hate to minimize that event in those terms, but that’s what they’re doing, so for the sake of this argument, I must as well.)
And most importantly, how many deaths does $28 billion in profits get you? And it may make you sick to the very core of your stomach to think of death in terms of cost, but that’s how those companies and this government is looking at it. It’s just the cost of doing business for them. It’s the reality of the situation that people are going to die. The companies (and we’ll go ahead and lump the government under the “company” umbrella from now on, because they are one.) will pay the families, express their pseudo-condolences, pretend on their faces that they’re actually upset and that something needs to be done, but in their minds, in their board rooms, in their corner offices, there is a chart, a cost-benefit analyses, a return-on-investment breakdown that puts a price on those lives and determines just how many they can lose before the profit dries up. And I don’t know if most of us even want to fathom that number. It’s high. If I had to guess, I’d say somewhere in the hundreds of thousands.
When I had this conversation and swished these things around in my brain for a while, the statement was made, “I have to believe that if there was a better way. If there was a renewable energy source, if there was a way to quench this thirst, a way to market new energies that would be cheaper, easier to use, better for our environment and would reduce our dependence on foreign oil and make us safer that we would do it.” And I can’t blame that person for making that statement. Because that thought is based in the ideals and the values that we’re all brought up with. We’ve read them in our textbooks, been told them by our parents, politicians and priests. We’ve bought into them, and none of us are at fault for wanting to believe that the people in power really are doing the best they possibly can to move America forward. But they’re not. Because there is no money in it.
And it’s too hard and scary and dangerous anyway to even think about doing it differently. There is very little doubt in my mind that the brilliant minds in this country have thought up and attempted to develop at least 50 different ways -- if not more -- to completely relieve our dependence on oil and I feel strongly that the oil companies, the power companies, the powers in this country didn’t hesitate a bit to buy that idea and bury it. Why wouldn’t they? The money is in the status quo. Always has been. For these companies, there is no benefit in them finding a new way to do it. You find me a company who has changed and adapted and grown into new technologies and new ways to do things; better, cleaner, healthier ways to do things and has stayed relevant over the last 50 years. It hasn’t happened. Sure, there have been plenty of companies in business that long, but they’re all still using the core ideas and philosophies of their original business. When someone finds something new and better, they don’t bring it up in an old company. They start (or buy) a new one. Google, Microsoft, Saturn, Gateway. All had a new idea, and did it themselves (and even now those companies are getting old and slow and they’re the ones buying the new ideas ie youtube). Research and development of new ideas takes forever, costs a lot and there’s no guarantee of any money in it. That’s a basic business tenet. So tell me what incentive Exxon, Shell, BP or Halliburton has to do it any different? None.
It’s absolutely easier and safer for them to maintain the status quo. Do you think the government is going to make them? They own the government, democrats and republicans alike. They own this war. They’re bloody fingerprints are all over it.
The only reason America is in Iraq is to maintain that status quo. Those companies and this government -- that they own and influence -- is only in that country because there is a monetary interest in being there. Their return on investment will be so massive when Iraq settles down. And if it costs billions of dollars in equipment and thousands of lives, fine. I guarantee you it’ll be worth it financially to them. Would they like it to be all settled now? Sure, but I’d like my Microsoft stock to go through the roof right now. Will it? No, but I’m in for the long haul because it’s worth it. The only difference between them and me is the scale of it.
And if you think for a second that what I’ve said about ROI being the only reason we’re there, answer me this. Why don’t we have a standing army of 100,000+ in Darfur? How about in Somalia? Ghana? The Ivory Coast? The Congo? Russia? Why aren’t we there? The same things that happened in Iraq are happening in those places. Actually most of those places are definitively worse. (The people of Iraq were probably in less danger of dying horrifically before we got there to be honest. But that’s another blog, for another time.) But the bottom line is that we’re not in those other places because there’s not enough money to be made there. In the business world, they would say that those places carry a negative cost-benefit analysis.
What I’ve said is not hard to understand, it’s not radical and it’s not all that revolutionary. It’s basic business. It’s free trade. It’s the basis for all that we accept. And that’s the truly scary part.

The NL West

2006-10-02T01:55:00.000-07:00

Ok, i know this post is only going to matter to a few people, but they are some pretty important people. Baseball is important. Maybe not to you, but to some people it absolutely matters. And if you're not one of those people, you're going to have to learn to understand someday.
The most unreasonable thing happened today in sports since Peyton Manning became the star of at least 9 commercials in a row (the one with that fake mustache being the most pathetic of them all. Seriously, is he so desperate to look human that he's begging us to like him during every single commercial break?) Two teams from the painfully mediocre NL West made the playoffs. The Padres were in 3rd place most of the year, then the Dodgers lost 11 straight right after the all-star break, then fought into first place by winning 18 of 19 and then capped off that run but losing like 9 in a row after that.
For a while the top 4 teams (out of 5) in the division were seperated by only 1.5 games...which was really amazing if only for its sadness.
For those of you who don't know, the NL (national league) is made up of 3 divisions (East, West and Central) and the west was without a doubt, the worst of the three. And yet somehow, they have contributed 2 teams into the playoffs.... It's absolutely wacky.
The AL East has the Yankees, Red Sox, Blue Jays and Orioles. Now the Orioles have blown since before the Palmeiro/Sosa steroid debacle of '05 BUT the rest of their division has still been made up of pretty amazing ball clubs on paper. Meanwhile, the NL West has been completely horrible for a good while, rarely fielding a team with a few wins over .500, but the AL East has been great, with ball clubs with winning records and relatively amazing players. So they get only 1 team in the playoffs this year, but the NL West gets 2??? It's like Jerry Colangelo (former owner of Dbacks), Jerry McMorris (maybe still Owner of the Rockies) and Bud Selig made some kind of blood pact that actually came true.
I'm going to go watch Field of Dreams and Rocky 2 and actually believe that those stories came true, because they would be as likely as the NL West fielding not one, but 2 playoff teams.
And that will conclude my first and only baseball post of this year, unless some amazing World Series ensues, like the NL West opponent beating the Yankees in the World Series with a bloop single against Mariano Rivera on the last out of the 7th game of the World Series, 3 weeks after a terrorist attack kills at least (but not more than) 5,000 people in NYC and only if Jay Bell scores the winning run. (God bless Luis Gonzales)
God bless the D-backs. May they R.I.P.

Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

2006-09-27T13:46:00.000-07:00

I recently finished reading this book by Robert Pirsig and for most of the 420 pages, i really didn't know what the point was or what i was looking for. Still it was a good book and i would suggest it to anyone willing to take the time and put in the effort to understand a pretty deep and detailed piece of work. A few passages stuck out at me and i wanted to take the time to flesh them out a little further.The author speaks of gumption, an old, underused word which he defines as the desire to complete a task in the most quality way possible. He spends a portion of the book defining the different types of gumption traps, or in other words, the obstacles in the way of you completing a task in the most quality way possible

p. 315 - Anxiety, the next gumption trap is sort of the opposite of ego. You're so sure you'll do everything wrong you're afraid to do anything at all. Of this, rather than "laziness," is the real reason you find it hard to get started. This gumption trap of anxiety, which results from overmotivation, can lead to all kinds of errors of excessive fussiness. You fix things that don't need fixing, and chase after imaginary ailments. You jump to wild conclusions and build all kinds of errors into the machine because of your own nervousness. These errors, when made, tend to confirm your original underestimation of yourself. This leads to more errors, which lead to more underestimation, in a self-stoking cycle.

This particular anxiety trap struck a chord with me, especially of late. When i left my job, i had this grand -- yet obviously delusional -- idea that i would just sit on my laptop and write. I had so many ideas of things to say and topics to discuss when i was stuck in that cubicle that i felt the only thing i had to do was open up microsoft word and it would all pour out and pretty soon people would offer me large sums of money to continue gushing about any topic i felt like writing about. I obviously thought wrong.The thing about my life so far, is that i've realized i'm really only talented at one thing: writing. That and a quarter won't get me a cup of coffee anymore. You have to be a self-starter, you have to be driven and multi-task in a multitude of mediums. You have to be able to market yourself, you have to be confident that your stuff is good and that everyone else is missing out on something spectuacular by not reading what you have to say but you also have to be self depricating at the same time. Well, from what i've noticed lately, the only thing i know how to do worth a shit is write. And i haven't even been very good at that lately. I'm not working at it, i'm not sending out samples and clips, i'm not e-mailing my blog topics to other bloggers, i'm not even working at getting a job writing. At first i thought it was laziness. Then after reading Pirsig's book, it occured to me that it was almost entirely anxiety. It's pretty pathetic to talk about, and even worse to post online for my friends and family to see, but i'm honestly so petrified that i'm doing everything wrong, or that i'll fail when i try to strike out on my own, that i'm doing nothing instead. I have fallen into that gumption trap and it is keeping me from my dreams. It is wasting a lot of time too. Moving on.
I talk about needing to find an "enabler." Someone who is the a-type personality who makes plans and executes them. A partner like that would help me enact these ideas and philosophies and dreams i have. But that sounds more like a babysitter to me, and the bottom line is that eventually you have to man up, take a chance and get something done yourself. Otherwise you get to wallow in mediocrity your whole life. No thanks.

The author then talks about inner peace which is a peace that has no direct relationship to external circumstances.

P. 295 - I've sometimes thought this inner peace of mind, this quietness is similar to if not identical with the sort of calm you sometimes get when going fishing, which accounts for much of the popularity of this sport. Just to sit with the line in the water, not moving, not really thinking about anything, not really caring about anything either, seems to draw out the inner tensions and frustrations that have prevented you from solving problems you couldn't solve before and introduced ugliness and clumsiness into your actions and thoughts.

I don't think there is any real mystery about why i liked this passage, being a fisheman and all. I felt that inner peace on my last trip to Alaska and that is without a doubt why i needed to go. So much so that i quit in order to be able to go. I had hoped that it would follow me home and remain with me for a while but the stress of travelling and the typical nonesense associated with arriving home after 8 days with things to clean, bills to pay, etc. just thrashed that whole inner peace feeling that allows good thoughts and things to happen. Of course you don't need to go fishing to achieve that feeling. Some people can do it by reading or writing or sitting quietly, but i feel like we don't do it enough at all anymore. I don't just sit and eat breakfast quietly, i have the TV on. I don't just go running or work out with a clear head, alone with my own thoughts. I take my iPod. I don't travel with just a book in hand or with a pad of paper. I take my laptop and watch movies. And i honestly think that this attachment to constant entertainment is an extension of what i spoke about above. It's an anxiety blocker. If i don't have to be alone with my own thoughts then they can't scare me, i can push away the realities i don't want to face, i can fill my mind with the useless drivel of Meet the Fockers and ignore the truths i should be facing. I never looked at it as a crutch, but it's becoming more and more obvious to me that it is. Lately i've had a strong yearning to sell my plasma TV for 30 cents on the dollar, ditch my Cox bill forever and only maintain one, small TV with a DVD/VCR combo and only really watch a movie when it's raining or there is a riot outside. I've never felt like more of a slave to an appliance then i have with this TV. It's been nothing but trouble and expenditures and i'm addicted to it and it's keeping me from the potentially good things. I'll never part with my iPod but i feel that is in a somewhat different category. You can passively listen to music and actively be thinking about better things. Or you can actively listen to great music that will make you pursue quality when you are done listening to it. I could live with just my iPod. I could live with just my laptop too, because some pretty damn good things have come out of it, but it's a matter of discipline to keep it from being a distraction at the same time.

Then the author rides his motorcycle out of a big town -- relative to where they've been travelling -- and he talks about loneliness.

P. 356 - Lonely people back in town. I saw it in the supermarket and at the laundromat and when we checked out from the motel. These pickup campers through the redwoods, full of lonely retired people looking at trees on their way to look at the ocean. You catch it in the first fraction of a glance from a new face - that searching look - then it's gone.We see much more of this loneliness now. It's paradoxical that where people are the most closely crowded, in the big coastal cities in the East and West, the loneliness is the greatest. Back where people are so spread out in western Oregon and Idaho and Montana and the Dakotas you'd think the loneliness would have been greater, but we didn't see it so much.The explanation i suppose, is that the physical distance between people has nothing to do with loneliness. It's psychic distance, and in Montana and Idaho the physical distances are big but the psychic distances between people are small, and here it's reversed.There's this primary America of freeways and jet flights and TV and movie spectaculars. And people caught up in this primary America seem to go through huge portions of their lives without much consciousness of what's immediately around them. The media have convinced them that what's right around them is unimportant. And that's why they're lonely. You can see it in their faces. First the little flicker of searching, and then when they look at you, you're just a kind of an object. You don't count. You're not what they're looking for. You're not on TV.

This one doesn't need a whole lot of explanation and it's one of the few areas in the book where the author actually takes a tone of judgement about the current state of life. But it's not the TVs and the jets themselves that are to blame. It's the way we've been conditioned to think about those things in compartmentalized ways. I was talking to a friend yesterday who has been making friends on-line. Not a dating site or a myspace, but on Craigslist. I had no idea that type of thing even happened on that site, but miraculously, just as easily as you can sell a couch or a used car, you can find a friend. Someone to work out with, couples for other couples to go do to dinner with, someone to carpool with or form a book club with. When i asked why you couldn't just strike up a conversation with someone at the gym or at the bookstore, the friend said, "That's creepy." And i'm utterly shocked but i can't say that i'm surprised in the slightest. When i was younger and AOL was paid for by the hour, it was the weirdest and most foreign thing in the world to meet face-to-face someone that you had talked to online. In fact, it was downright scary. Now it has replaced face-to-face conversation as the "normal" way to meet people. It has gone so far that if someone strikes up a conversation with you at the grocery store, or a restaurant, then they are "creepy" but someone posting an ad for themself and you answering it and hanging out with them is the most normal and safe thing in the world. How did meeting online become more normal than shaking hands and saying nice to meet you? I'm not sure i'm ready to live in that world.

The author refers to college and the university enviroment as the Church of Reason.

P. 390 - The Church of Reason, like all institutions of the System, is based not on individual strength but upon individual weakness. What's really demanded in the Church of Reason is not ability, but inability. Then you are considered teachable. A truly able person is always a threat.

Even though this book was written in 1975, this seems even more true today. Including the college comments, which i believe to be true, this seems to be symptomatic of other things in our culture. Shows like Surivor and Big Brother and other reality shows encourage contestants to band together against the strong contestants. In the business world, talent gets abused instead of cultivated and cheap distractions and overzealousness become rewarded. Politicians don't actually say what they believe, they say what keeps them in their jobs. Pander to the middle, and you'll always get paid.

If you've made it this far in the post, congratulations. That is all.

The War on Terror, and How We're in Deeper Shit than Ever Before

2006-09-24T11:49:00.000-07:00

Back in 2004, i wrote this column for the ASU State Press:

I’m not exactly sure how to say this without tempting the Campus Republicans to lynch me publicly from an umbrella in front of Einstein’s Bagels but I think that the War on Terrorism is making things worse. There, I said it and now that it is out in the open I can process it a little better. All around the world (even in Montana) our terrorist enemies are talking to God on their two-way radios and teaching their children how America is the enemy and how they will be rewarded for killing infidels, which I’m sorry to say, is all of us. These children will grow up and most likely take up arms against us because they hate us for our freedom and our prosperity and our Gucci backpacks and Burberry headbands. Something obviously needs to be done about these people and it is being done with varying degrees of success. However I can’t help but feel that all of our aggression is forming a new breed of terrorist that will grow up hating us because one of our bombs missed and hit his house while he was eating dinner and killed his mom and his little sister. Or his dad lost his job as a truck driver once Halliburton came in to help rebuild the country and he was killed at the Iraqi police station while applying for a job. This new breed of terrorist isn’t motivated by virgins or martyrdom, he’s motivated by vengeance. He’s motivated by something that we as Americans will rarely be motivated by. Unlike us, he gets to see the faces of the dead, he lives in the war and his biggest concern on the way to school is not finding parking but dodging bullets. While our government won’t even allow us the reality of viewing pictures of the coffins of dead U.S. soldiers, these people are given the privilege of digging through the rubble of their home in hopes to find enough of their family members to bury. The website www.iraqbodycount.net estimates that over 12,000 civilians have been killed in military intervention in Iraq. That is 12,000 moms, dads, brothers and sisters who have left survivors behind who now have a new reason to hate America. If someone murdered your family (even by accident) you would want justice. I supposed that is what got us here in the first place but would you feel justified in killing three of them for every one of us. That is exactly what has happened. If you don’t see their faces, if you don’t see them as people who get up in the morning and go to work and have the same basic concerns and desires as all other human beings then you don‘t have as much of a problem hearing about their deaths in enormous numbers. The people who hate this country are multiplying exponentially every time they look for a culprit and see an American flag. I’m not saying that we should leave the terrorists to their own devices and turn a blind eye but we are hurting our own cause by not doing the job the right way. Why add fuel to an already raging oil well fire?

And now the New York Times has released this report by the National Intelligence Council that confirms what i've been saying for quite some time now.

Damn, i hate being right.

2006-09-20T23:07:00.000-07:00

Jesus Camp : Today's sign that the apocalypse is upon us...

Holy shit. (Literally...)

Keith Olbermann is my favorite

2006-09-14T11:06:00.000-07:00

At first, i was sad when he quit Sportscenter, but now i couldn't be happier. His show is consistently hilarious and he puts to task the people who need it the most.

Olbermann comments on 9/11

2006-09-11T09:25:00.000-07:00

Ben Dubin Video Montage

This is only a small sample of what it's like being Ben Dubin's roommate. In reality, it's actually much, much more "entertaining" than this. (Kudos to Cameron for cannonballing Tequila at the end to ease his pain.)

Today's sign that the apocalypse is upon us

2006-09-09T11:27:00.000-07:00

Martha Stewart can show him how to take it off... Attention high school kids, don't rob the Smoothie king.

2006-09-08T15:47:00.000-07:00

"I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of 'conservatism.'" - Arizona Senator, Barry Goldwater

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." - C.S. Lewis

It's getting to be about voting time again (Sept 12) and no matter how you feel about "adult-oriented businesses," I think anyone who reads what I have to say would agree that we have to keep the government at bay when they attempt to push their "idea" of morality on us. We decide for ourselves where to spend our money and what small-businesses to support, we don't need Mary Manross (who blushed at the words "Pink" and "Taco" when placed together) telling us what to do. The Scottsdale City Council spent taxpayer money to hire a lawyer from the Alliance Defense Fund to write the ordinance that will put Scottsdale strip clubs out of business. Nothing against my Christian friends, because I assume they are all more enlightened than the people behind this, but taking a backhanded approach to putting a business you find offensive out of business is NOT the role of government, at least not a tyrannical one. (And why the problem now? These business have been open in the same locations for decades and now, all of a sudden, they're hurting Scottsdale's image? Sounds shady to me. And the alleged "image" of Scottsdale is not as squeaky clean as the politickers would imagine it to be in the first place, but that's another blog, for another time.)

Whether or not you would ever consider frequenting one of these establishments and regardless of how you view them morally, this is not a moral issue. This is about government railroading a business out of town and as Americans, as free thinkers and as defenders of the constitution, we are all obligated to vote NO on 401.

Additional reading:
http://www.azcentral.com/news/columns/articles/0831sr-roberts0831Z8.html
http://www.azcentral.com/community/Scottsdale/articles/0908churchpower0908.html
http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/index.php?sty=55141
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0831sr-stripdebate31-ON.html

2006-09-07T16:34:00.000-07:00

McDonald's. So your fat kid can drive a gas guzzling car too.

2006-08-24T12:28:00.000-07:00

Alright, here's the Andrew Thomas story i've been talking about for a while. The reason it has taken me so long to write is that i had a job. Now that that's out of the way, i have time to write this story.

Full disclosure: My dad and uncles are part owners of Ajo Al's Mexican Cafe. Without going into too much detail, they're essentially stock holders. They invest and have zero to do with the day to day operations of the restaurant. Moving on.

Andrew Thomas is the Maricopa County Attorney and has recently made news because he has issued charges against the owner of Ajo Al's, Pat Daines, as well as the investors because of "health violations." This is not only unprecedented but what he alleges is entirely unproven by scientific evidence. I'll let this article explain the rest of the details. By the way, this article was in the Arizona Republic and is re-posted on the blog of a lawyer who specializes in Shigella cases. You can't even call him an ambulance chaser, because there's rarely an ambulance involved in food poisoning. Ass.

So since Andy decided to make up laws and ways to prosecute them, i thought i'd take a look at some of his other wise decisions while acting as prosecutor to our fine county.

Andy approves lucarative contracts to his old law firm.

Andy and Joe Arpaio get into bed together.

Andy charges illegal immigrants with smuggling themselves. (And then a judge rightfully dismisses the charges.)

Andy refuses to uphold law or do his job.

Andy loves kickbacks.

In the end, the restaurant has defended itself and appears to be surviving. But still, the owners have had warrants out for their arrests, have turned themselves in and have been fingerprinted and had mugshots taken...This is the equivalent of owning stock in the P.F. Changs Corporation and being arrested when one restaurant has a violation. In other words, it's retarded.

2006-08-24T09:36:00.000-07:00

Now, i know a few things about photoshop, and they must have been working on a government super-computer to make this pig look good. Any decent computer would have made like a Dell laptop and set itself on fire before it allowed this to happen.

(I like to live my life with equal doses of intelligence and superficiality. It keeps things fresh. Like swimming back and forth from the deep end to the shallow end.)

2006-08-23T19:58:00.000-07:00

There are a few brands that have managed to become so pervasive that they have injected themselves into the common lexicon. When you have left-over food, you put it in a plastic container of some kind. What's it called? Tupperware. It's a brand name, but we use it to describe all plastic containers that hold food. My dad's company has a product that is a thousand times better than Tupperware. It's called Lock & Lock and i still call it Tupperware. When you cut yourself you get a ... band-aid. Another brand name. When i was a kid and i wanted to sugary carbonated beverage i asked for a Coke. I really wanted Dr. Pepper, but i said Coke because i thought that was the generic term for the beverage. Chap-stic, Kleenex, and recently, Google. I think the first time i heard it, regretably, was when i saw that horrible Jennifer Lopez movie, Maid In Manhattan. She told her kid that he could Google something when he got home. And honestly, at the time, i thought that Google paid for the placement in the movie...now it's something we say all the time. Even if my homepage is set to Yahoo (which it was until this week) i would still say that i had googled it.

Well, apparently Google would like us to stop doing this.

It really doesn't make any sense to me from a marketing and branding standpoint. Why wouldn't you want your company to be the only thing people say and think when referring to a product that may have huge competition (like search)?

Apparently AOL and iPod also have a problem with this...are these people stupid? And why are these once "cool" companies losing their cool?

2006-08-10T21:57:00.000-07:00

I'll have more time to post soon. Things are in motion to give me PLENTY of blogging time. Too much really.
Alright, here's today's sign that the apocalypse is absolutely, without a doubt, upon us: 30 Percent of Americans don't know what year September 11th occured in.

And if you're reading this, and you're part of that 30%, first watch this, and 2nd, get the fuck away from me.

I'm not linking it because i think it's 100% true. I'm just linking it because it wouldn't surprise me.

2006-08-04T07:06:00.000-07:00

I've been out of town and haven't had a ton of time to work on this, so here's a quick one.
This week's sign that the apocalypse is upon us:
By JOANN KLIMKIEWICZ
Hartford Courant
July 26, 2006, 12:02 PM EDT

The video clip opens with the school's mascot logo bouncing across the screen before a saccharine female voice states plainly, "The University of Kentucky Wildcats."

Out rolls a montage of cheering fans, a waving mascot and an ecstatic basketball player scoring -- all interspersed with shots of smiling children decked in Kentucky blue and cuddling Wildcat stuffed animals."Basketball," the voice-over coos.

This is Team Baby Entertainment, a line of sports-themed DVDs meant to start collegiate fans young - that is, before they can even wrap their tiny mouths around the words, Go Team! "To parents, their children are obviously the most important things to them," says Team Baby founder Greg Scheinman. "So they want to be able to offer products to their children that can potentially make them smarter or more athletic or closer to their parents. "These are all positive things. As long as they're done responsibly."Scheinman is tapping into what's proving to be a lucrative, if controversial, market of products geared to infants and toddlers.

Never mind that they can't walk or talk. This niche has tremendous buying power. And advertisers and manufacturers are homing in like never before, expecting only more market growth, industry observers say.Trendy clothing, tot-friendly snacks, educational videos, even personal-care products -- all specifically tailored for and marketed to the under-3 set.

For clothing and footwear alone, spending on infants, toddlers and preschoolers reached close to $17 billion in 2005, up 4.5 percent from the previous year, reports MarketResearch.com, a New York research firm.

Equating dollar signs with children is older than Ronald McDonald and his Golden Arches. But some industry watchers say something has shifted. It's more aggressive, more targeted. And it's younger."When markets get saturated, they have to go somewhere. And with kids, the only place to go is down," says Susan Linn, author of "Consuming Kids: The Hostile Takeover of Childhood".

The aim, say critics, is twofold: Cater to fretful parents keen on raising healthy, wholesome, brainy children; and hook future consumers by instilling early on a brand loyalty likely to continue into adolescence, and maybe beyond.

It leaves critics like Linn worried, not just about the ethics, but also the impact of having children toddling their first few years through one big commercial advertisement. Just consider, she says, the cartoon characters smiling at them everyday from diapers and T-shirts, from wallpaper and snack crackers. In many cases, they recognize these logos before they're even watching TV, before they've set a baby-bootied foot in a McDonald's."

It's all disturbing. But targeting babies is more disturbing because of how rapidly their brains are developing," says Linn, a psychologist and co-founder of Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, a Boston-based advocacy group."It's difficult enough when you're coping with a child who has been exposed to SpongeBob at school and then starts nagging for SpongeBob products. But the babies aren't asking for it."

Not all industry watchers see the reach as damaging - just good business. And, in many cases, providing consumers with products that serve them well."I don't think it's malicious in intent. I think it's a smart marketing thing to do," says Michelle Poris, director of quantitative research at Just Kid Inc., a Stamford children's marketing group."

I don't think any company feels comfortable marketing to 2-year olds. They're really marketing to moms," says Poris, a child psychologist. "But the fact of the matter is, they know that 2-year-olds are in the grocery stores with mom and that 2-year-olds establish patterns. And if they have a product that a 2-year-old likes, that 2-year-old moves with that product as they get older."And with more media aimed at this age group than in previous generations, opportunities to communicate with them abound, she says.

TV For Toddlers
It's that technological terrain that's drawing the most attention, and scrutiny. The so-called kid-vid market is booming at $4.8 billion, according to MarketResearch.com. That includes DVDs like the wildly popular Baby Einstein line, which purports to be a teaching tool, with titles such as "Baby Mozart" and "Baby Monet."Making a controversial leap into the fray last May was BabyFirstTV, the first 24-hour cable and satellite network for children under 3, purporting to educate and stimulate young minds."[Parents] want their children to be smarter, and they will bend over backwards to bring that about," says Daniel Acuff, founder and president of Youth Market Systems and co-author of "Kidnapped: How Irresponsible Marketers Are Stealing the Minds of Your Children.""But actually, they don't really need anything to stimulate their brains except to play."

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no television viewing for children under 2, with only one or two hours a day of "quality screen time" for older children. Yet, 59 percent of children under 2 watch just over two hours of television on a typical day, the Kaiser Family Foundation reported last year. It also found that 30 percent of children under 3 have TVs in their bedrooms."

There's no evidence that any screen media is beneficial to children under the age of 2," says Linn. "But parents are bombarded with marketing that says [they are]. So they end up feeling justified putting their babies in front of this media in order to get things done."The claims of educational benefits prompted the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood to file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission in May against Baby Einstein and Brainy Baby, another top producer of infant DVDs. The complaint, which is still pending, seeks to prohibit the companies from marketing their products as educational tools and to require them to display the AAP's recommendations.

Among Linn's concerns is that children are being taught to soothe themselves through digital means, rather than learn their own coping mechanisms. Even road trips in the family car can mean long stretches in front of a TV screen.

But if Linn's group stands on the argument that no studies show that these media are of benefit to children, their producers point out there's no evidence to show they are not.

"I think if there's one thing we can all agree on, it's that further research needs to be conducted," says Sharon Rechter, a founder of BabyFirstTV."

The fact of life is that babies are watching TV," she says. "We're not out to make them watch more TV. We're giving them a better alternative."At $9.99 a month, the commercial-free network, created with a team of child psychologists, it says, aims to inspire learning and interaction between parents and their children. Many programs are built for joint viewing, so parents can guide their children through lessons on colors and shapes, for example.

"Parents are looking ... to give their kids an educational advantage. And high-quality content might help," she says. "And sometimes parents just need a quiet moment for themselves to stay sane." Leaving them with 20 minutes of children's programming, she argues, is better than plopping them in front of standard prime-time television.

Rechter wouldn't give figures but says subscriptions have exceeded expectations. Plans are to expand offerings into Spanish and include parent-oriented programming.

Scheinman, of Team Baby Entertainment, also argues that it's a matter of balance. He doesn't purport that his products are educational tools. Used thoughtfully and in moderation, he says, his 30-minute videos, made in consultation with child psychologists, are just good family fun.

"We don't want children to be placed in front of a television watching anything for hours on end," said Scheinman, himself a father of a 3-year-old son, with another child due next month. "What we want is for ... parents to be pointing things out to their children, watching with them."

Founded last year, the Houston company is taking off. With 20 collegiate videos on the market, it's launching a line of professional sports DVDs with organizations such as NASCAR, Major League Baseball and the National Basketball Association. Last month the company announced its acquisition by Michael Eisner, the former CEO of the Walt Disney Co. and now head of Tornante Co., a media and entertainment venture firm.

Still, the notion of teaching children to associate with a sports team from the crib is lost on some, including Acuff.

"To me, that's just silly," he says. "I just don't get it."In his own marketing business, Acuff won't take on clients whose products concern him. That means videos that are violent, snacks that are too sugary. He admits he wouldn't necessarily take on clients today that he took on years ago.He recalled one major toy company that recently wanted his firm to help market action figures to inner city youth. "We declined vehemently," said Acuff. "We don't want to contribute to the problem. We want to contribute to the solution."

Joann Klimkiewicz can be reached at jklimkiewicz@courant.com
Copyright (c) 2006, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

2006-07-19T09:13:00.000-07:00

There are two signs of the apocalypse in this article about the cruise ship off the coast of Florida that rolled, can you find them? I know it's not funny to make fun of people getting hurt, oh wait, yeah it is.

Cruise ship rolls.

2006-07-17T08:08:00.000-07:00

Still working on Andy Thomas. A gun is smoking somewhere...

Until then, Seth Godin,one of my favorite marketing geniuses, has pointed to the Snakes on a Plane problem, which happens to be written by one of my favorite writers, Chuck Klosterman. Chuck always has a way of saying exactly what i'm thinking (and selling it to Esquire for $7/word) before i get a chance to write it.

Oh well.

2006-07-14T19:06:00.000-07:00

Fox Reporters Shot at by Israeli Forces in Gaza

I'm working on a piece about Maricopa County's fucktard County Attorney Andrew Thomas, but it's not quite ready yet. I'm currently putting all of my investigative reporting skills towards diggin up dirt on the afrementioned a-hole but until then, enjoy this moment of Fox News' stupidity. If you point at troop positions and identify where the military is, you get shot at. If there's any military that will not put up with that, it's the Israeli army.
Journalism schools across the world need to teach a full week on what not to do and use Geraldo Rivera as an example.
My favorite is the words "skeddadle" and "boogie." Stupid white people and your lingo.

2006-07-09T21:23:00.000-07:00

2006-07-07T21:57:00.000-07:00

A lot of people have been talking about this so called "quarter-life crisis" lately and i just want to talk about one section of it that is pissing me off. Yes, we're all in transitions with our lives, jobs, relationships, responsibilities and everything else, but i really fear that it's becoming an excuse for a lot of people my age. I got caught up in for a little while and it's no good. This is life, it doesn't matter how old you are. You create your own circumstances and you teach people how to treat you, don't hide behind this excuse. I'm working on following my own advice and it's a struggle but when you start to think of it as an out, then you never escape it.
The thing that pissed me off the most about this "transition" is something that was/is out of our control for the most part. All through high school, teachers said, "You have to do A, B and C to get in to a good college. If you don't do this, you won't get into a good school." So those of us that wanted to go to school and get what they told us was a good education, listened. We did what we were told. We became "yes" men at a very young age. Join this club, do that charity work, take that AP test 20 times and we all sold our souls just a little bit each time.
Then we get to college and we do it all over again. "Join a fraternity/sorority," the said. "Take this class, study this hard, get these grades, take some business courses, keep up the charity work, do this many internships for no pay, no respect and no actual on-the-job experience because if you don't, there won't be a place in the real world that will hire you." That's what they tell us. And then we get to read the news and hear on the TV and the radio how horrible the job market is, how our generation is immature, anti-social, unprepared and generally retarded. So after 4, 5, 7 years of that, some of us are completely convinced that an undergrad education still won't do it and we spend another 2, 3, 4 years at grad school because we still don't think we're sufficient enough.
Eventually we all go out into the job market and take the very first thing offered to us for as little money as they'll offer us. And we thank them. We thank them and we're fucking grateful for the opportunity. And it doesn't stop there...we get to hear how we need to stay there for X amount of years to get enough valuable experience so that we can quit and get a slightly better job at a slightly better place where we can still be working as hard as possible to make money for somebody else. And for what? So you can wake up when you're 65 and barely have enough money to live comfortably for the last 10-15 years of your life? That doesn't seem appealing to me at all. Maybe i'm alone, but i doubt it.
And I know how it happened too, I saw it happen and I can look back and trace every advisor and every teacher, but for some reason we all sat there and let it happen. We let these "authority figures" sit there and devalue us and tell us that no matter what we did to prepare and mature and educate ourselves that we still weren't prepared enough to be trained circus apes in a cube/cage. And i'm not saying they did it on purpose, they were just doing their best, just doing what they were trained to do, but it's really all wrong. Who were they to say what quality is, who made the rule that you were supposed to tell young people that they weren't worth a shit? Is that the point? That the worse we feel about ourselves, the more work we'll do at a lower cost?
Maybe it's just because i'm a writer and we're notoriously paid like shit, but I have a feeling that i'm not the only one in this boat. Maybe the engineers don't know what the hell i'm talking about and they can go fuck themselves. That's all for now. Maybe i'll deal with the other shit later.