Someone Cue up Rockapella

Thanks in part to seeing a link from Mike Degnan I started playing around with Flickrs new mapping feature. The tool lets you geocode your photos. It uses GoogleMaps open source and with that you can select a point on the map and link your photo to that spot. It's really pretty spiffy. You can be as accurate as you want. For instance my photos of Lake 22 are linked to the particular side of the lake where I took them.

It then gives you this nice little map indicating where you've taken photos. And then to make it even cooler you can search your photos and anyone in Flickr's photos. For instance let's say I want to find all the photos of Ultimate in the US. I can search for ultimate and I can find collections in NJ (Wildwood) in Vancouver (Furious) etc. It's all pretty sweet. It's like a photogallery version of Where in the World is Carmen San Diego.

My map

UPDATE:
Another super cool feature, you can enter a location and see all the photos from that area. So you can put in Westerville Ohio and see everyone's photos from that place. Or Topeka Kansas or wherever. How fantastic is that.

Of Fractions and Factions

So one of the truisms of my childhood is that "Knowing is half the battle." Various members of the military services told me this, often after saving a child who had gone swimming too soon after eating, or who had inadvertantly set fire to his sisters bedspread with napalm. You know stuff like that. Then the GI Joe hero, who was as we all know, a "Real American" would counsel the wayward child about why you shouldn't do dangerous thing XY or Z. This after an episode in which people shot at one another with laser guns that appear to have the lethality of the gun they use for price checks. But I digress.

So I, and nearly everyone in my age cohort knows that knowing is half the battle. However, it was only today that I realized this helps to explain just why we've been struggling in Iraq. The neo-cons were not fans of GI Joe. They didn't and still don't believe that intelligence (either in its CIA or IQ forms) matters. Hell, they wouldn't have to be GI Joe fans, they could have read Sun Tzu the ancient Chinese general. "Know thy self, know thy enemy. A thousand battles, a thousand victories." See there's that word "know" again.

So we find ourselves commiting too few troops to a country where we don't know the culture, didn't know the politics, and still don't know what we hope to achieve--apart from electoral success; sadly Republican electoral success not Iraqi.

But then I got to thinking, if knowing is half the battle, we're starting out in an awful hole, but we're tough we've got great weaponry. We can win a full battle despite that kind of deficit. Then I remembered the words of the great General Woody Allen (you remember Bananas, clearly he must know something) who once said that "80% of life is showing up." So that further taxes our plan, because not only do we not know what we're doing, we don't have enough people there to not know effectively. I'm not really good with fractions, in fact I'm as good with fractions as the neo-cons are with identifying the rival factions. If my math is right we should only be fighting 10% of the battle. (1/2 of 20%).

I like those odds. Now if only Roadblock could have come into the White House just as young George and Dick were about to send troops into battle, and explain in strangely compelling yet overly simplistic terms why that was invasion was a bad idea, and how to make diplomatic allies using things you can find around your house. Instead he was out somewhere making sure that little Timmy didn't open a Swiss army knife incorrectly. Fucking Roadblock.


UPDATE:
Maybe the administration did watch GI Joe. In the episode where Scarlett gives the "Now you Know" tip she explains that "You can learn to water ski if you keep trying" And when he fails to water ski she tells him:"That's because you quit trying... You'll never win if you give in." See if you cut and run, you'll never be able to water ski. Or win the hearts and minds of a divided and complex nation. Same skill set really.

UPDATE II
Man, GI Joe is filled with mixed lessons. While Scarlett says that you'll never win if you give in, Lady Jaye explains that: "There's nothing chicken about being smart. If you stop and think there's almost always a better way." Ahh, the revealed wisdom of GI Joe. See George and Dick, you wouldn't have been chicken, you'd have been smart. Oh, and avoided thousands of deaths, a billions of wasted money. That too.

I saw this spoof ad, "Congressman, call me," posted on Daily Kos (I think). Usually these sorts of spoofs are pretty bad, and beat one joke into the ground. This is really pretty solid stuff. It gets the timing and pacing down of the Harold Ford ad and really works with that. A little heavy on the Mark Foley stuff, but still, it's nice to see some people can make funny parodies, given that SNL has abdicated that role.

Photos Galore!

I'm going to write a post-party recap, soon. But until then, I'll share a bunch of photos from the evening.

It was a great time. Singing, dancing, drinking, general silliness. Various groups of friends got along swimmingly. All in all you could hardly ask for a better time.

Again, I will post more later, but till then enjoy the photos. Be sure to check out JJ's photos, he has nearly 5 times as many posted I as do. A must see for participating in the voting below.

In the comments feel free to vote on the following things

1. Best costume (you may vote even if you didn't attend)
2. Costume that best fit the person wearing it (ie, the costume that seems the best extension of the person it covers)
3. Costume you wish you came up with.
4. Costume or photo most likely to end the wearer's hope of a political career.

Sour Caroline

Aaron, and the assembled guests of this year's Halloween Party offer a stirring rendition of the Neil Diamond "classic."



Shockingly, I'm not drunk here. I am just that attrocious a singer.

My voice never seemed so bad
So bad, so bad, so bad!
I'm inclined to think it never should...
Be heard.

UPDATE
Apparently, at least according to Liz this video is not without a bit of controversy. Like the Zapruder film and the film of Big Foot this is important both for what it captures but also for the debate it can inspire. Is the really awful voice mine? Liz believes that the videographer, JJ may be drowning out my similarly bad voice with his own? Could this be true? Am I really Pavorati-esque and this video captures errant notes from another source. Or am I really that loud and that off-key. You make the call.

What am I to make of this interaction

Yesterday as I left my office to go grab lunch and otherwise empty sidewalk was suddenly occupied by a well-bearded man (I'm guessing at least two years of effort) wearing a fairly nice seater, riding a bike with one hand and in the other flailingly pointing an expensive digital camera and seemingly random sights. As I approached the corner, I paused to allow him to pass without risking a collision. He turned to no one in particular--I'm fairly certain he wasn't talking to me--and said, "Of course they should go, only a truly passive-aggressive person could engineer such a meeting." As he said this I noticed another woman walking toward him. I'm not sure if he was talking to me, or about me. Though he rode on and made lazy circles in the driveway of the parking garage snapping unfocused (in all senses of that word) photographs. Then he shakily pedaled back the direction from which he had come, and continued to take photographs.

What on Earth am I to make of this? Art installation? Crazy guy? Eccentric? Highly functioning schziophrenic?

Comcast Update

While our server is being rebooted and refitted and hell, maybe recycled, I figured I'd take a second to update the status of our Comcast woes. After talking with someone in Corporate Marketing, a person with a direct line (always a good sign when a person answers the telephone with their name instead of the company's name) my woes are no more. Our heroine in this case, Tracy, sorted things out. We're only being charged for the service we initially signed up for and are, I must say, quite pleased with the resolution of the matter. I'm still annoyed at the process I had to endure to get here. But, I have to give credit to Tracy and others in the organization for working through the byzantine org chart that must confound them daily to get something done. Kudos.

The crazy on this one goes to 11

In response to the Michael J Fox ad where he talks to the voters of Missouri about the importance of stem cell research for finding cures for many diseases, a group opposed to such research have put out a new ad. Apparently they're recruiting religious folks with some connection (sometimes) to Missouri to explain why it's a bad idea. And focus on the fact that science can't promise you a solution quickly. Yes, that's exactly the point, if it's going to take years to solve the problem, not acting today will not hasten the solution. It's not like God has sent a memo to the scientists promising them a cure in X years, and if we just wait till then we can save all this money on research. To say nothing of the fact that I cannot fathom an honest reason why any of these people care about this issue. Fox, suffers from Parkinsons. This seems to me a person invested. Why does Kurt Warner care? Oh right because he's incredibly religious and we're supposed to believe that somehow these embryos which are not life now, are being killed because they're being prevented from sitting around and not being life later. To me it's so painfully Ludditic that it makes me wonder whether or not the Amish look down upon them. Do you figure they say, "Man, I fear zippers, but Holy Shit Ephraim, that guy is the intellectual heir to Lucy."

And is it me or does it look like Kurt Warner is being interviewed in either a church basement turned comedy club, or a mimimum security prison. Really, you make an ad with all these "celebrities" and choose to film it in front of a background that makes the Westerville North AV Club Greatest Hits look like Crouching Tiger? That's certainly a strange choice.

Another thought, why on earth do I care what Patricia Heaton thinks. Newsflash, just because You Loved Raymond doesn't mean I care. First the notion that anyone, let alone everyone loved him is faulty. So let's not pretend you get to speak for, or in any way share a single opinion held in common by "everyone." Okay.

Mike Sweeney weighs in on this. I'm sorry if you don't have the requiste sense to quit any sport that forces you to play for the Kansas City Royals, then you have lost my respect. If you don't immediately start honing your bocce ball skills, and searching out strange Guinness records that you can achieve the very moment you are assigned to play for that team, you are definitionally lacking the basic sense to make let alone share anything resembling an informed judgement. You have to imagine that continuing to play for the Royals may well be one of the diseases for which stem-cell research promises a cure. Come on Mike, you're shooting yourself in the foot here. Also, and I realize this is, as so much of this rant is, largelry unrelated to the ad...but seriously, how are you going to be a DH and only hit 8 home runs. I'm taking political advice from a religious zealot batting .258 with 8 home runs. Has anyone contacted Sid Bream to see what he thinks?

Finally and most skull crushingly, neuron-assailingly, viewer-as-dog-with head-tilted-and-a-blank-expression-inducingly there is Jim Caveziel. I don't know of anything that Jim Caviezel has done apart from star as Jesus for Mel Gibson's flog-a-thon. And I'm sure for the target audience he's a good fit. "Hey, if Jesus is against this, then it's gotta be bad." Fair enough. But the ad starts with Caveziel speaking to the viewer in Aramaic. Are you fucking kidding me? Is there some huge enclave of long suffering speakers of Aramaic tucked into the Ozarks?

Is this some new faddish term created by Frank Luntz. Is this like Soccer Moms, and NASCAR Dads? Aramaic Advocates. Is this really a voting bloc that's not motivated. And if so, is there really any question of how they're voting? My head hurts just contemplating the moronic ideas that were rejected so that this little gem of idiocy could live out its life. I only wish that this idea might have been sacrificed to science instead of growing up to be what I can only, and too generously describe as full-on nuts.

Comcast Customer Service Model

I've spent a decent portion of that past 3 weeks on the phone with various representatives of Comcast. Without rehashing a story that I can now tell in my sleep, having presented it to everyone in Comcast, and potentially a fairly sizabel portion of the shareholders, Jess and I continue to be screwed over. We're being charged an amount I can only assume is comensurate with a package of channels that would include one that, like Clarence in It's a Wonderful Life, details the world that would exist were you not born. Maybe another channel that accurately predicts PowerBall numbers. Whatever the array of channels that Comcast believes is justified by these charges does not and has never appeared on our television. Sadly the package for which we did contractually agree to pay, does not exist in their world. Amazing that.

So needless to say it's been a lot of frustrating calls. These calls are made all the more frustrating by the endless litany of options, press one for this, press two for that. It's a fucking choose your own adventure book, except without a plot. It's like a giant senior art installation by some lame no talent conceptual artist who hates me. So I press and I press and I press and I follow endless decision trees only to talk with a person imbued with very little capacity to focus on the matter at hand or aid me in gaining any resolution to it. Each of the people with whom I have spoken has just enough information or authority to be tantalizingly close to solving the problem. And yet each is formally and permanently unable to acutally do something. Somewhere, the people who wrote the telephone flow chart must have also written the Comcast org chart. I can only assume that it's an org chart that they borrowed from Al Qaeda. How else can you explain a system whereby everyone has just enough information to carry out their minute task, and yet no one, in the entire organization understands the roles and responsibilities or even the field in which the others works. It's perfect, when we find that Comcast has Channels of Mass Destruction the entire organization will have impenetrable plausible deniability. And at that time, at that very moment, I just hope I'm able to be watching the Food Network. I'm doubtful of that.

Who Let the Dogs Out

Since when were puppies such a key feature of political ads. It's odd. I can think right now of three ads I've seen that feature puppies this cycle alone. And that's without even searching for them. I mean I guess there is the grandaddy of them all, the Nixon Checkers Speech but this year there have been a profusion of ads predicated upon candidates like and treatment of puppies. Seriously, someone call up Arby's and tell them to give Baha Men the afternoon off because this political season it's all about: Who Loves the Dogs Most, Woof, Woof.

Dick DeVos

The best is this anti-Dick DeVos Ad

Michael Steele
There's a Michael Steele ad about puppies.According to the ad he loves puppies. And a DSCC ad in response.

Harold Ford
And now in response to the awful ad against Harold Ford (about which I blogged below) there's a Ford ad where he invokes the threat of injury to the canine class. Amazing stuff.

You'll note that no one invokes attacking a cat as a sign of evil. I hear it polls very well to be a cat kicker.

====
UPDATE. I checked for legislative score cards from the ASPCA. Turns out Ben Cardin (Steele's opponent) scored a 83% from the Humane Society of America in the most recent scorecard I could find, and that Harold Ford was only at 50% agreement. No information on Dick DeVos, or Michael Steele

October 25

Today is the fourth anniversary of the plane crash that killed Paul Wellstone, Sheila Wellstone, Marcia Wellstone, Tom Lapic, Will McLaughlin and Mary McEvoy as well as the two pilots. Some were friends and coworkers of mine, people with whom I shared jokes, work, and laughter. Many were and are sources of inspiration. And, especially for Paul and Sheila these weren't just people whom one deems inspirational because they've died. Paul would be no less an inspiration to me were he sitting in St. Paul doing a crossword puzzle. He was an inspiration in his life, not just a man elevated to that status by an untimely death.

It's always a bit of a tough day for me. I remember where I was, what I was doing, the momements that came after and it's a natural day for me to think of where my life is and where it's heading. For the past four years it's been a vaguely religious holiday, not in the sense that I elevate those people or that moment to something beyond the regular, but rather that I take the day to think about my life, to think about my choices, to think about fate and fortune and my friends. It's a day on which to be thankful, contemplative, and most of all a day on which to rededicate myself to action on issues of justice and democracy. It's a day to remember what's worth fighting for.

It's a day, though not the only day, when I choose to reread Tom Harkin's speech from Paul's memorial. I've excerpted parts here below. If anyone wants the full speech I can email it or post it in the comments.

He was my best friend in the Senate.

But, in truth, Paul Wellstone was one of those rare souls who so many saw as their best friend. He had a powerful authenticity that made a miner in the Iron Range know he was as important to Paul as the President of the United States.

He never had to proclaim his decency. It shone forth in great acts of political courage and small acts of human kindness. He never had to say he cared.
...
The hard-working folks he cared about most didn’t have lobbyists or influence. But they had Paul Wellstone. And he truly was their best friend.
...
Paul may have talked a lot, but he meant every word. He showed the way to lead is by following your conscience.

And when injustice was proposed, or unfairness was advancing, or selfishness was on the march, Paul would go into battle and he did not care if he was the only one. He may have suffered from a bad back, but he had a spine of steel.

Everyone called him Paul. Not just his colleagues, but staff and citizens alike. He wouldn’t have it any other way. No one ever wore the title of “Senator” better – or used it less.
...
Paul was the soul of the Senate. Sometimes he cast votes that even some of his friends disagreed with on war or on welfare. But when he did, he was the mirror in which we, his colleagues, looked at ourselves and searched our own hearts.
...
Paul Wellstone didn’t just dare to imagine a better America – he helped build it.

Because of what he did, family farmers will have a better future. Because of what he demanded, mental illness will someday soon be treated equally in our health care system. And because of who he married – and because of Sheila’s passionate charge – more women and children will find safe harbor from the scourge of domestic abuse.

Paul was a hopeful man. Green was his color. The color of springtime. The color of hope. And the color of that bus he climbed aboard 12 years ago as he set out on his way to a better America. But Paul never meant it to be a solo voyage. He wanted us all on board. Now we must continue Paul’s journey for justice.

So tonight, I ask you: Will you stand up and join together and board that bus?

For Paul Wellstone, will you stand up and keep fighting for better wages for those who mop our floors and clean our bathrooms; for those who take care of our elderly, nurse the sick, teach our kids, and reach out to the homeless?

For Sheila, will you stand up and keep fighting for our families so women and children will be safe from domestic abuse?

For Paul, will you stand up and keep fighting for cleaner air and cleaner water – to protect the environment for our children and our future? For Paul, will you stand up and keep fighting for peace, understanding, and an end to exploitation of women and children around the world? For Paul, will you stand up and keep fighting to end discrimination based on race, gender, religion, ethnicity and sexual orientation? For Paul, will you stand up and keep fighting for the poor, the homeless, those left on the roadside of life?

Let’s get on that green bus together. Let’s keep moving to a better America. Let’s stand up and keep fighting – and keep saying yes. For justice. For hope. For life.
For Paul.

Pontius Pilates

I met Liz today for a mid-day pilates class. In the past I've jokingly derided the class as being for girls and teased her about it. Mostly I was afraid that I'd go and be in really awful shape and embarass myself.

I went today and was surprised by a few things. 1) My "core" is pretty strong. I have decent abs. They're relatively strong and seem to do the job. 2) It's odd to have someone barking out commands for which you have literally no idea the context or meaning. I was told to suck, and tuck, and swivel, and elongate, and who knows what else. Steve the teacher was enthusiastic and kind of like a good gym teacher. Gruff, but he cared about making sure people did things right. It was nice. It also reminded me that it's the first time I've ever taken an athletic class, or dance class. I cannot make my body look like someone else's without a lot of thought. So not only was I contending with foreign words and largely foreign movements, I was fighting my basic prediliction to fuck up anything requiring rhythm and spacing. I breathed at incorrect times, I rocked up when I should have gone back. I move right instead of left. I was a man with two left feet and three right arms. It was like playing twister in a foreign language with a brutal case of AD/HD. That said, it was quite a bit of fun, and I'm sure I'll be sore tomorrow.

Part of the reason I broke down and went is the constant hectoring from Liz, but more of it is related to my goal of getting rid of my tummy. As I said, I'm really quite strong in the core. None of the sit-upish movements were hard. I can crunch like Big Foot driving through a peanut brittle factory. And yet I have this little tummy. Reminds me of what small boys have, a rounded little belly--though mine is covered in hair, which makes it exactly 100% less cute. I'm not by any objective means overweight, or out of shape, but I'm in a strange shape. I have no arms or legs or chest, and yet and semi-strong. And then I have this tummy, this silly little bulge. It's quite odd. So I'll see what pilates has to offer me in this regard. I'll bend and twist and turn and caper and maybe I'll end up with a six-pack, if not, I'm sure I'll end up amusing my classmates. Nothing so funny as a hairly gangly man trying to pose and rock and suck in his belly.

Know when to run

So Kenny Rogers is by all observable evidence a big cheater-head. Granted, he's cheating in a time-honored way. In baseball cheating by doctoring the ball is common and it's given a tsk-tsk and ignored. But that's because people are rarely caught, and certainly even less frequently caught, uh..."mud handed," in the World Series.

Now, according to nearly everyone the substance on Kenny Rogers' hand is pine tar. It's useful for getting a better grip on the ball, and allows a pitcher to generate a little more velocity because of a tighter spin on the ball.

Rogers' claims that it was a patch of mud. Just simple mud that happened to be there and you know he never noticed it. Surely that explains the matter. I mean I was a pitcher in little league and many were the times when I'd be shocked to find out that I was wearing boxing gloves while pitching. Or I'd look down and realize I was holding a parasol. Things like that happened basically every start. Because how on earth could a pitcher be expected to know what was on his hand. They're rarely used in the performance of the duty, and surely in a game as important as home start in the World Series, Kenny Rogers wouldn't be focused on details such as his pitching hand. Instead I'm sure he was calculating the bond rating for the City of Boise, or crafting a rebuke to Nietzsche's notion of the ubermensch. You know things like that. But mud, or pine tar on his hands, never.

And then there is the little matter of the fact that he's had the same mud on the same hand in the same place for at least three starts-- including his last two. I have to strongly caution Kenny Rogers to avoid all contact with dirt. I suggest placing his hand in the case used by David Duchovny in Zoolander.

I guess there is another explanation, one that's so obvious that it's sad. Maybe the Detroit Tigers have been tragically skimping on their dugout budget and have a terrible shortage of toilet paper. I guess that's another explanation. I wonder if we'll hear that one. I wonder if Moises Alou can offer insight on these matters.

Ain't No Valley Low Enough

The RNC attacks Harold Ford. It's an emerging strategy. The RNC or similar committees release ads that are so offensive, so salacious, so ridiculous that the media covers the ads, gives them free air time. The media then has two talking heads on and tries to present the ads as a balanced news story. With one person arguing for logic, decency and truth and the other simply saying, "Well, it makes you wonder what kind of a person, so and so is." Then the reporter says, "Well, I guess it'll be up to the voter's to decide. And now for a check on your local commute..."



I wonder what it would be like if other news were covered like this.

REPORTER: A recent claim by Mr Williamson that what many call his "dog" is really a 140 million year old Apatosaurus has certainly inspired some lively discussion and worried the town of Oak Grove. Here to debate this matter are two experts. First Ellen Anderson, a person with eyes and an IQ capable of processing the information transmitted by their functioning rods and cones, and formulating into coherent mostly-syntactically correct English the observations they inspire. And on the other side a potted plant. However it should be noted the potted plant does have a Post-It note with the words, "sure it is, I mean look at him," written in crayon.

REPORTER: Ms. Anderson you claim that Mr. Williamson's pet, is a "dog." While he maintains that it is in point of fact an ancient dinosaur. What evidence can you muster to prove him wrong?

SANE PERSON: Well, let's see. Um, I looked at the dog. And it sure looks like a dog. In fact it looks exactly like a standard poodle. Oh, and I know that when I went to school we learned that the dinosaurs were extinct. And then just to be sure I wasn't misremembering I went online and looked up information about dinosaurs and sure enough, yup extinct. I did however learn that it's now an Apatosaurus and not a Brontosaurus, but either way, his dog isn't really what you'd call a dinosaur. It's more an eye-sore.

REPORTER: Interesting, and yet, Mr. Williamson has made the claim. And we've done some research about it. According to The Center for Being Clinically and Irredeemably Bat-Shit-Howl-at-the-Moon-Crazy, "Six out of toenail claims of dog-dinosaur transubstantiations are real by both objective and reactive as well as subtractive measures and additionally a still larger popcorn out of fishing lure percent of people who fail to see dinosaurs do so because they lack the unicorn gene which allows them to see in an extra dimension. Now to our other expert, a potted plant.

PLANT: (silence)

REPORTER: Let me see if I understand, you're saying, or rather sporting a Post-It that says, "sure it is, I mean look at him." Well clearly it's an assertion that has both sides very excited. I guess we'll have to leave it up to you to decide. There's just no way for us as a news organization to ever identify and publish objective truth. It's only through a back and forth debate between two opponents given equal credit and creedence that truth can ever surface.

How come?

How come, "It goes without saying" never actually results in "it went unsaid?"

Some geeky data analysis

So I took some time after work to analyze the various responses to the Color-Song challenge. Incidently, David G pulled out a remarkable 41 songs. Now, did he stick to the 5 minute limit, I don't know. He's an honorable guy, I figure it's unlikely he violated the rules.

So a couple of fun pieces of data from these songs and my little analysis:

Top 10 Most Commonly Listed Songs
Yellow submarine (13)
Paint it black (9)
Orange crush (8)
Purple haze (8)
purple rain (8)
Blue suede shoes (8)
Back in Black (7)
Mellow Yellow (6)
Yellow -Cold Play (5)
Yellow Ledbetter (5)

I also took a little bit of time to analyze the overlap between various people's lists. For instance the people with whom I overlap the most are: Michelle (9), David (9), Melissa (9)and ABJ (8). It makes sense that Michelle, Melissa and David would overlap a lot with me as they had the three highest scores, and therefor have the greatest likelihood of overlapping. But ABJ scored 19 which is in the middle tier. The mean being 21.4, and the median being between 19 and 22...making the mean and median pretty close. I guess being friends all these years, and living together Sophmore year might explain the overlap between ABJ and me--hell we even overlap initials, and sisters' names.

More fun facts
Of the 147 individuals songs listed 11 of them also included the word "eye." For those of you keeping track of the relative popularities of eye colors w/r/t song titles: Blue (5), Brown (2), green, red, black, and mixed all get one.

Another interesting thing to note is that certain colors are far more likely to inspire songs, or at least ones that we can remember. As you might imgagine Blue and Black lead the way, by a good margin. Here is a silly little bar chart indicating the number of songs for each color.

ROY G. BIV

Libby and I were chatting today and she mentioned that a friend made her a mix cd comprised (composed?) exclusively of songs with colors in the title. I shot back a couple of guesses as to the mix contents, turns out I didn't get a single one correct. Which means that there must be a lot of songs with colors in the name. So here's a little challenge for each of you. Open an email browser or word document. Give yourself 5 minutes and no other resources, and see how many songs with a color in the title you can come up with. In cases where there are several songs with same title indicate the artist. Then copy those songs and post them in the comments. I'm trusting everyone will be on the honor system and not spend extra time researching, asking for help or thinking about it. And I certainly trust that no one will read the comments before they make their list. It'll be be interesting to see which of my friends has the best range of both song recall, and color recall.

I'm betting on Brian or JKD. I think one of them might break 35. Then I'm betting on JJ, if he reads this, I'd figure he gets 30.

For what it's worth, in five minutes I came up with 24 (though I think some are likely no good). I think some of them may be erroneous. It's much harder than I would have expected.

If anyone gets above 30, you can color me impressed.

Negative.

I don't know that I'm particularly well versed in science. I think I have a passing understanding of some of the ideas. So I'm really dubious of this product. The product, Enviga is marketed by Coke and billed as being not low calorie, not no calorie, but negative calorie. The implication being that drinking this soda increases metabolic action and so three cans a day will burn between 60-100 calories.

I have a couple of problems with this. My first concern is scientific/semantic.
The claim that this beverage has negative calories, suggests that this product unlike any other concept I know of can possess the absence of something. Bread doesn't have negative cholesterol, rather it doesn't have cholesterol. You cannot state it affirmatively. It's the absence of a real thing, not the presence of a fake one.

Secondly, the name Enviga is just misleading. I assume it's supposed to be pronounced like envigorate, but as a friend of Silberman points out, that's exactly wrong, because given that calories are energy, this product will “help you lose energy!”

That's right, it's the opposite of RedBull. It's a Lethargic Drink. It's Lazy-ade.

Like Green Vegetables

So I'll admit that for most people making calls for political campaigns is not a hobby. It's not a recreational activity. It's something you do because it's good for the country. It's the equivalent of eating leafy green vegetables. You do it because experts tell you it will help you lead a better life.

Well I went to the DCCC (D-trip, if you're cool) last night and I piled on the veggies. Several of us decided that as DC residents we have to do something, and calling for candidates in other states is a good start. Now usually I'm a Senate snob, but with the Foley stuff, and the general momentum I think is spreading around the country more and more House races are in play than ever before. And thankfully a certain someone had the foresight to structure the DNC to focus on 50 states. Who could that be? Oh, right Howard Dean. How about that. So smart. So now that we have competitive races popping up like mushrooms on the shit of 6 years of Republican control---we need to get the volunteer army up and moving. There are new races being added to the list of competitive ones every day. We're making progress. But like good teams, good campaigns know that the best time to push harder is when your opponent is weakened. We need to capitalize on this energy and make it stick, otherwise the next two years will be even more awful than the past two.

All of which is to say...if you have free time go here and sign up to call. The calls are easy, the staff is well prepared (I say this with more than a little prior experience). Several friends and I are going this Tuesday. It's important stuff. If you don't live in DC, I'm sure there is a place near you that needs your help. If ever there was a time to become a band-wagon progressive it's now. Come aboard, volunteer, get yourself a button. Get invited to the victory party--but first make some calls and ensure it's a victory party.

Apparently in Iowa he Warner-ed out his welcome.

So even before he declared his bid for the Presidency Mark Warner is undeclaring. Man, that's a crummy exploratory committee. When you have to send a search party out for the exploratory committee, that's bad. Here's the thing, when you form one of these committees, you gotta get Marco Polo not Chris Columbus. Get someone who can do some real exploring, not wandering around.

But Mark Warner not running doesn't seem that bad to me. He's got a ton of cash he can spread around to other Prez candidates, or other races. He's still in the running for VP and he may well run in 2008 to fill the seat then vacated by John Warner. So that means we have a well funded, rational guy who decides to run for Senate. That's a fine thing. And it makes Virginia a more purple state for the Democratic Presidential nominee. These are all good things. In the end it looks like no one loses in this deal.

Maximus Ridiculous

While chatting with Shamik about his incredible desire to heckle a friend's email I wrote: On my command, unleash heckle. A sort of oblique reference to Russell Crowe in Gladiator: On my command, unleash hell.

So after Shamik admits it's a reference with which he is unfamiliar I decide to translate it for the MIT-inclined: On my command prompt, unleash DOS.

My pride at coming up with this little joke reminds me of a fitting Modest Mouse lyric, one that seems to apply to the situation-- "You should be ashamed to be so proud of what you've done."

The challenges of fitness.

"The trouble with jogging is that, by the time you realize you're not in shape for it, it's too far to walk back." Franklin P Jones

As though additional distractions were needed

As though I needed additional distractions, Rob just sent me a link to a website where you can play tons (250) of old Nintendo games. I played a little ExciteBike. Turns out it's far harder than I remember. And I'm quite bad at it. I guess it's a challenge to overcome.

I can see both my childhood and my workday flashing before my eyes. Sad, really.

I was always pretty bad at video games. I'm sure I'll still stink at TecmoBowl. I'll be bad at DoubleDragon. Though maybe I'll have retained my skills at MegaMan II. That and BaseballStars are the only games I was ever any good at. We shall see.

Hair today...gone tomorrow

So while trimming my beard this morning, I accidently went from taking 1/8th of an inch off to having just 1/8th of an inch left. Basically I was using my electic razor to clean up some stray hairs, and slipped up and lost a patch of beard about 1 inch wide by 2 inches long. This prompted my "decision" to shave the beard off. This means I again look like I'm twelve years old. Coupled with my new childish haircut I look awful. But what can you do. So I'll go barefaced for a while, and probably before too much longer I'll neglect the facial hair and it will grow into a might roaring torrent of beardly excess. But for now I'll accept getting carded and asked whether I'm in Cub Scouts and how my Tee-ball team did this season.

Alas.

Limbo in Limbo

The Pope just "abolished" (strange choice of words) the concept of limbo. Now unbaptised babies don't go to hell. Like dogs, all babies go to heaven, which is great, I'm all for it.

Pope Benedict XVI, after deliberation by Vatican theologians, is abolishing the concept of Limbo that put the souls of unbaptized infants at risk.

While it was never a formal part of the church's doctrine, the existence of Limbo was taught until recently to Catholics around the world, The Times of London said. Limbo was described in Britain as "a place of rest where the souls of the just who died before Christ were detained."

So this begs a couple of questions in my mind.

1. What does the church believes happens to all those good souls who lived before Christ. They used to be stuck in limbo. Is the church saying they never were? Is the church saying that now that the Pope has made this decree that they're all rushing up to Heaven? Won't that make it tough for St. Peter to sort through everyone. Do they get a handstamp for re-entry in the event the next Pope re-establishes limbo?

2. So all babies go to heaven. Doesn't that erase original sin? When do babies start sinning now? Is it the first time they spit up on mommy's new cashmere sweater right before she and daddy go to the Opera? Is it the first time they pee on the person changing their diaper? How about when they start singing the Wiggles?

3. Limbo a concept based on no tangible evidence, a notion created through faith is now overturned. How does that argument work? It's amazing to just decide that something based on faith doesn't exist. What evidence do you use to argue that something that never had evidence in the first place is no longer true. Turns out our belief that God has a beard is wrong. Now we believe that God must have a goatee and an eyebrow ring. Why? Um, because it was revealed through careful reading of ancient scriptures, and our local tattoo artist screwed up my girlfriend's tat and that's what the God looks like on her lower back.


UPDATE

4. From Liz's friend Paige:

And Liz, before I read the article, I had this great image of the pope standing next to a limbo line screaming, "No! No! I prohibit you from seeing how low you can go!"

I wanted to make a joke about that kind of limbo and just couldn't. This is perfect.

Regionals

I'll try to write more about Regionals. It was an amazing weekend, filled with emotion, laughter, highs and lows. It was everything I love about this sport and the people who play it. These two photos from the weekend seem to best encapsulate why I love the sport.

The first is Chris Shulze making an amazing catch over, under, around the through defenders. He eventually comes down with this score. He's an incredible athlete, and a really swell teammate. It's nice to have him around, to be sure.



The second photo, also from the game against Hooray is of me hugging Liz. Those who know me will appreciate the image. It's the emotion, the friendship, the concern and the love of your teammates--that's the fundamental part of the game for me. That spirit, that community, it means everything. I think this photo captures that feeling pretty well.

Not okay.

This is not okay.

It's not immoral, I can't go that far. But wrong, oh yeah, it's wrong.

Chocolate and sausage do not go together. Sure, Austrians might disagree, but they too are wrong.

The Weekend to Come

So it's promising to be another hectic weekend for me. Tonight I go to Jacob and Suzanne's for a Rosh Hashannah meal (L'shana tova). Then Jess and I are going to go down to the mall and walk around the monuments at night. We did it on one of our pre-dates last year and I remember it being just beautiful. It'll be nice to see the city at night, it's often best then. Tomorrow I'm planning on doing some reading (trying to finish All the King's Men so that I can allow myself to see the movie). I want to avoid simply placing Sean Penn's face into my image of the lead character, but the more I see the previews the more he enters my mental picture. Must read faster.

Tomorrow afternoon I have a double header with Ambiguously Gray my A league team. We're really good. It's some of the most pleasant ultimate I've ever played. Every cut is crisp, every throw seems on target. We flowed through defenses like Sherman going through Georgia. Which is to say what we lacked in efficiency we more than made up for in gusto.

After the double header Jess and I are have a bunch of friends over for games. Because what is more cool than games on a Saturday night. What's the point of being a nerd if you cannot share it with others. So I expect some Settlers, Apples to Apples, Things, Celebrity, Boggle, Taboo, and who knows what else.

Then Sunday we have BRDM practice, followed by a scrimmage, followed by a BBQ out in Stirling, which I believe is still technically within the boundaries of the state of Virginia, though I'm not sure, it feels like it's more a metaphysical place...the place you reach when you drive west out of DC and cannot fathom driving any further to see friend or foe and are ready to turn around...that's when you get to Stirling. Sadly, it's never any closer than that.

A busy weekend. And then next weekend is Regionals. Exciting stuff.

Sectionals Photo

Here's a photo of me laying out...I'm the one with the hat. I'm the one about to crash into this guy because he sealed me off effectively before this play. I'm also the one about ready to receive his leg (the one off the ground) in my upper inner thigh. I have a fine tennis ball sized bruise as proof of my poor timing.

Faces along the bar

Back in September of 2001, after the "tragic events...." (tm) I first heard and later read what became my favorite poem. I am not one for poetry. I'm not good at it. I can't recite it. For god's sake, I can't really count out syllables. So poetry and I have an uneasy relationship. But something about this poem, September 1, 1939 has always worked for me. It's something I can understand, the images stick with me and every so often boil to the surface.

For years, I figure the poem was just a general lament about the problems of life a sort of whiskey soaked diatribe about how things suck these days. You know, the sort of thing that transfers well from generation to generation. And it seemed to work pretty well as a post TEoS11 (Tragic Events of September 11) poem. Then today while reading the Writer's Almanac I finally got it. Or rather had it explained. The poem isn't just some general lament, it's a specific response to Hitler's invasion of Poland. Now, clearly not recognizing this doesn't make me stupid...but it sure doesn't suggest a whole lot of skill at analyzing text, or hell even reading the title. But still, it's a fantastic poem and one of the few I know and like.

So here it is: W.H. Auden's September 1, 1939. (Incidently there are two sections that I find particularly breathtaking and I'll italicize those).

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
and darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

Accurate scholarship can
unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.

Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism¹s face
And the international wrong.

Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
who have never been happy or good.

The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.

From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow,
"I will be true to the wife.
I'll concentrate more on my work,"
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the deaf,
Who can speak for the dumb?

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages;
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

Suggestions?

As I've done in the past, I'm using this blog to solicit suggestions. This time, it's for reading material. I just finished Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. It's beautiful, tragic, and lovely. It's a hard book to read at times, not because the writing is bad, rather because the writing and the ideas are so powerful. There are moments of sadness in the book that feel overly real, I'm not used to feeling as affected by a book. So while I liked it very much, I think I'll have to wait on reading another of his books for a bit.

So this brings me to the question, what should I be reading? Usually the way I figure this out is I go to Kramer Books and Afterwards and wander around and something leaps out at me, I buy it and am rewarded. This time I figured I'd be a little more intentional.

Right now, as I wait for your recommendations I'm rereading The Corrections. It's the first time I've reread any book of fiction since I was in high school. I just, as a matter of course, don't do it. And I'm not certain I'll finish it before I skip off to some new book. Other books I've really liked: Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay, everything by Franzen, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, Devil in the White City, Snow Crash, Pattern Recognition, Catch-22, stuff like that.

So I await your recommendations--and please if you could, let me know why you think I'd like it...or why you did.

TSA bans snakes

According to BoingBoing TSA is following up on it's recent decision to ban gels, and liquids and is addressing a larger more deadly threat--carry-on snakes.

The order includes a list of snakes banned: vipers, asps, garden, pythons. However the agency remains silent about whether the snakes have to be "motherfucking" or whether this applies to any snake.

It's unclear whether Solid Snake from Metalgear Solid is banned. He's neither a gel, nor a liquid. So I'd figure he might be allowed as carry on. However, Jake "The Snake" Plummer is most certainly banned, for the all to real fear that he'd readily turnover the plane to terrorists.

Best Idea Ever or Worst Idea Ever

Brian sent me a link to a record company that makes lullaby versions of the greatest hits of rock bands.

For instance, lullaby versions of Nirvana, or Pink Floyd. Some bands make sense, I could see Coldplay as lullaby material. However, Led Zeppelin harder to conjure. Do you moan like Plant at key points?

Also Nirvana seems a risky choice. Heart Shaped Box: "Throw down your umbilical noose so I can climb right back" Or hell, even including Sliver, seems odd. Talking about mom and dad leaving, how is that a lullaby. Kicked and screamed said please don't go. Not so calming.

Though in the interest of full disclosure I was eased into sleep by parents singing Leavin' on a Jet Plane, so maybe loss and change is fit material for this stuff.

But still, I'm really conflicted, is this the best idea ever or the worst idea ever. Is it introducing kids to amazing songs that parents can tolerate and planting a seed for good musical taste. Or is it bastardizing music and potentially ruining their ability to appreciate Led Zeppelin's raucus bad-assity.

Stepping stone or barrier. Put another way is this Fisher Price my first cd collection or is it like Gerber pureed sushi--a bastardization of something great.

You make the call. Vote in the comments.

====
UPDATE:
So I guess the lullabys are only instrumental, so no fear of your child being "the first against the wall"

To listen to some lullaby radiohead go here

Oh, and Metallica's One is still scary as hell even with glockenspiels and lullaby pacing, listen for yourself

Wildwood, preliminary post

More on Wildwood sometime soon. Things have been really hectic this week, so no full Wildwood recap. Quick summary-- Team Dinner Party won 5 games, losing just once--in the semifinals of the Hops 2-2 Division. Good times, good team, good weather, good games.














Team Dinner Party Wildwood 2006 (5-1)

(back row L-R: Jared, Aaron, Jay, Bob)
(front row L-R: Amy, Paul, Megan, Liz, Irene)

On the road

I'm writing from the Clarion Inn at the Milwaukee airport. And it's just as sexy as you might imagine. Mismatched, or poorly matched furniture and partially functioning lighting. We're doing focus groups in Milwaukee tonight, having just come up from Chicago this morning. We did groups there last night. I say that I love to travel, but that's someting of a semantic error. I love to be in different places, the actual process of getting there is often just a bit stressful for me. Consider the following: I don't like lines, I don't like waiting, I don't like forms, I don't like the feeling that I might have forgotten something and I don't like being late. So those things mean that air travel can be a little taxing. Now, on the plus side there are some things I really love about travel. I adore falling asleep on planes. I'm good at it. I can fall asleep and remain asleep during takeoff and often during landing. I love looking out the window during flights and trying to use the land forms and roads as a clue about our geographic location. I love looking at mountains and contemplating the vastness of the US.

This trip has been long on the first list and shorter on the second. Aisle seat. View of tonsils of business traveller next to me. Flying over Ohio, not so thrilling.

But all the same it's nice to be out of DC. Travelling for work is a strange thing. My food is paid for, I stay in a room with air conditioning. I go to the gym every morning. I always eat three meals. I dress up. It's a lot like being a real adult. But it's awfully taxing. I return from every focus group to my giant hotel bed with a splitting headache. Something about watching 8 people talk about issues and trying to figure out what they're saying, what they're thinking, how we can use the information to help clients. All of that is oddly taxing. I went to bed last night with a migraine. I couldn't sleep so I stood the shower for 40 minutes trying to relax.

This morning we drove up from Chicago to Milwaukee. The work part of the trip has been great. I've been with my boss and a coworker. I'm learning a lot, and think I'm really contributing. good things, both.

I get back to DC tomorrow, and then leave again on Friday. This time for Wildwood. This time for fun. Paul, Liz and I are bringing a whole mess of friends to New Jersey for the Wildwood Beach Tournament. It's this giant fete on the beach. Silly stuff, and wonderful times. One of the best weekends of my last year was spent there. here's hoping for more of the same. Upon returning from New Jersey (Sunday) I pack my bags again. Because on Monday morning I fly to Denver. Do groups in Denver. Then fly to Fresno. Which today was 110 degrees. Thrillling. Then fly home. So much time on the road. And frankly I have such poor luggage for the task. A hiking backpack and a duffle bag. I look like I'm going to spring break not focus groups. But such is the life of the ill prepared.

The sad thing is that all the time of the road means I have less time to enjoy my new apartment. By which I mean our new apartment. Jess moved in this weekend and we set about fixing the place. We've been painting and carpeting (well, getting carpet, not actually installing) and cleaning and the like for about a month now. Last weekend we got her things into the place, got cable, rearranged the furniture (score 2 points for Aaron's persistence) and bought several metric tons worth of furniture and products from Ikea and Bed Bath and Beyond. The end result being a really stellar apartment. It looks so well put together. it's such a treat to look at and live in. Considerably nicer than my current location. I would be remiss if I didn't mention the capable and generous help of Ann, Shamik, Anne and Michelle in schlepping things from Jess' place to our new apartment. Hooray for good friends.

A couple of fun things from the Ikea/BBB trip:

Bar stools. Pretty sweet.

A new Poang chair. Red, reminds me of my grandma, really. I love it. Very cheerful and comfortable. Fitting, I guess.

New towels--though the towels were hard won. We spent what I believe I consider a Geneva convention violating 45 minutes in the towel section of BBB. Now, contrary to sexist stereotypes this was not because Jess was fretting and fussing. Though there was some of that. A good bit of that. The primary reason we spent 45 minutes there is because BBB seems to hate us. We picked out towels we liked, then tried to find another towel to match it. Nope. Sold out. Sold out of this kind of towel throughout the metro area. Picked another towel. Nope, no good. Another. Nope doesn't match the shower curtain. And so on. Eventually we found towels and are now really to be both clean, dry and well coordinated. Good deal.

All in all a productive trip to the stores. We contributed a good deal to whatever growth gets reported in the next economic analysis. Having nice things that match--apparently is pricey. Who knew.

Minor belly-aching aside--life is treating me well these days. I'm in a nice apartment with a great girlfriend and my job is getting better and better. I'm not feeling as good as I'd like, but certainly better than I was this time last month. I can't say I'm done with those feelings. And while the journey to get to feeling good again has been rough, I sure do love the destination. I guess I don't mind travel so much.

Potlatch

The first of what I hope are several Potlatch photos have started to trickle in, and are being emailed/posted.

Here's one of me hucking.



This huck is to Matt. Just after this photo, and 50-60 yards further downfield, he skies someone for a score.

More Seattle Photos

Jess and I at Lake 22.




























Seattle, the classic pose.

Preliminary Seattle Photos

Visiting Seattle was amazing. I miss the West. I miss the topography, the pace, the places. It was physically painful to fly over the mountains of Wyoming and Washington and know that I was only visiting. That these were foreign sights. I was a tourist, not a local.

That said, it was a great trip in some ways. The worries I had before I left remain. They were my second carry on, and followed me throughout. But I feel better now, and am mildly hopeful about the future. I want to feel more of that. I want to be my own previous/best self. But right now the breakthrough is slow to come, so I'll settle for progress, in any form, at any speed.

On Tuesday (July 4th), frisbee friends, Jess and I hiked Lake 22. It's a 5+ mile hike in the Glacier Peak region (Mt. Baker/Snoqualmie National Forest). It's incredible. One of the most beautiful places I have ever been. It made me sad to realize that such beauty is just an hour or so from Seattle, and seemingly much further from DC. Given the choice between mountains and monuments, I'm a sucker for topography.

Here are some photos of Lake 22. More to follow, as well as more about Potlatch--the very reason for the trip.



Someday I'll get back there. In the meantime, I'm grateful for the experience and glad I have the photos to conjure the memories.

Updates

So some basic updates:

Since I last posted I've been to a wedding. Aaron Bonner-Jackson got married and everything went off without a hitch...except well, you know Aaron and Kia. They got hitched, but in that good way. Jesseca and I went Greyhound up to Philly, met up with Dave and Neil. The four of us then piled into Dave's jetta and drove to Rochester. Dave's car lacks air conditioning, as did--we later learned--the states of PA and NY. It was hot as blazes, nearly 90 degrees. So long drive in small car with no AC..we were exhausted when we arrived. But the weekend was only just beginning. There was tux testing. Dinner. Go karting (ABJ lost, but you know that's alright). Paint ball (Cricket watches as you sleep). Good times. Rather than give a detailed summary, I'll give a very vague one. The weekend was great. ABJ looked, and was incredibly happy. Kia looked radiant. People drank and danced. No one made a fool of themselves. No one burst into tears and lamented that they'll never be married. All in all, good stuff.

So that was two weekends ago.

This weekend Jesseca and I began painting our apartment. I say ours because, well that's the appropriate term for something held in possession between or among two or more people. Dave moved out this Saturday and she's moving in. I think it'll be nice. We're struggling with painting, and recarpeting, and figuring out where to put all the stuff. it's daunting and tiring. Hopefully those things will be taken care of soon enough, and we'll get a chance to share a nice, pretty space together.

Sadly, at present we're sharing the place with some funk. Not the good james brown, george clinton, stevie wonder kind of funk. We're talking dank, stank, rank...funk. The torrential rains of the past few days have finally overwhelmed the not so impressive foundation of the basement and the back bedroom is soaked. The carpet is awful and reeks. Thankfully we were planning on replacing the carpeting already, so this just gives further impetus.

As for what's to come: tomorrow we leave for Seattle. I'm going to play at Potlatch (largest co-ed tournament in the world) and Jesseca gets to see family. I'll also meet some family members and generally get to putz around Seattle with good friends from DC, Jesseca, and others. Should be quite a week (we're back on July 5). I haven't been back to Seattle in more than a year. Given the weather we've been having here in DC, I'm excited for the dry forecast in Seattle. How strange is that, I'm flying to Seattle to escape the rain.

All in all good stuff. And yet, all that said, I've been, of late, somewhat anxious, unsettled, nervous, worried. I have this sense like I'm not really moving towards things. I feel, as I have before, like I'm drifting not rowing through life. I don't know what I want to be different, but I get the sense that soon I'll find out. Or at least that's the hope. I want to feel motivated and excited again. I think that's when I'm most happy, most fun to be around, and most fully "Aaron." Maybe this trip, the new living situation, some distance from home, or discovering some new hobby (artisinal cheese making?) will help get me "out of this rut and back into the groove." Here's hoping.

Expect photos of Seattle, and maybe a few good stories about Potlatch, Mt. Rainier, and the various wonders of the West.

Grills

Jess and I went shopping at Ikea and HomeDepot this weekend. Many purchases--couch cover, wine rack, magnetic knife rack, new dishes, urethane, basil, potting soil, but really the best purchase was a semi-fancy new grill. It was odd the degree to which buying a grill made me feel manly. Or at least, man-like. Charcoal, of course. I'm not some sissy who cooks with gas. I'm a man. Give me a dead tree pressed into a brickette, and doused in liquid rocket fuel.

Unfortunately for my sanity, as we walked into the aisle with the grills and supplies a certain song jumped into, and has remained locked in, my consciousness.

Grills, all I really want is grills
And at dinner it's grills
Cause for the cooking it's grills

I like the way that they look
And it's great to use 'em to cook
And I can always make them hot
Piling brickettes in one spot

I bought one just the other day
Mockin' A-Leav to my dismay

Grills - to do the chicken
Grills - to make steak tips
Grills - to heat up salmon
Grills - and in the backyard
Grills, that's all I really want is grills
Charcoal not gas, I want grills
With new attachments I want grills
I ought to whip out my grills, grills, grills, grills, grills!

Neither a borrower...

On the way into work today I was listening to NPR (my new phone gets FM reception--pretty spiffy) and heard an excerpt from Hillary Clinton's acceptance speech of the Democratic nomination for senate. Pretty standard stuff, really. I found an article in the New York Daily News that quoted the speech, see if you can guess what part(s) set me off:

"We need new leadership," she declared. "We're going to see that this November. We're going to start electing Democrats. America's going in that direction. If we stand together as Democrats, with hard work we will take our country back."

If you guessed the part where she completely ripped off Howard Dean, you win a prize. Your prize is a festering righteous anger at mainline Democrats marginalizing Dean then when politically convenient scooping up his ideas and running with them--all without recognition of the act. Here's the thing, for Hillary Clinton to talk about taking our country back is somewhat skewed. She's not taking her country back, she's getting it back from her neighbor to whom she lent it. She eagerly offered up power and support to bad ideas and bad bills because she thought it expedient. Neither a borrower nor a lender be, Hillary.

And besides, it's not taking our country back, it's more like when you bug your neighbor to return your weedeater.

The New York Daily News goes on to explain:

In what often sounded like an Iowa stump speech, Clinton trashed the Bush administration on everything from the environment to the deficit to foreign affairs to energy policy to the gutting of FEMA.

It sounded a lot like a specific Iowa stump speech. Let's see, I think I remember who said that, oh right, Howard Dean, whom Clinton fans disparaged and tried to derail.

One of Two Things.

I can't claim to be an American Idol viewer. I've seen all of 30 minutes of the show, ever. I understand why it's popular.

There's a fading Laker girl, a man who calls everyone "dawg" and a cruel British guy. Makes sense, that's a good start for entertaining the masses. Oh, and there are people embarrasing themselves singing songs everyone knows. It's like karaoke meets MST3K. I get it.

But not being a viewer I miss out on a lot of the details. Recently I heard there was a guy (who now I learn has won) Taylor Hicks who talks about "Soul Patrol." First the term "Soul Patrol" seems like a shitty buddy cop/CHIPS movie staring Ice Cube and Cedric the Entertainer. Like Soul Plane, but you know...with cops. So this Hicks fellow irks me for that reason. Also troubling is the stipulation that contestants must be younger than 28. While I grant that Taylor Hicks has been --at one point in his long life--only 28, I doubt that is the case at present.


28, I think not. Also am I the only one who thinks that Taylor Hicks looks like the love child of Jay Leno and Benny Hinn?



So that's one of the odd things about American Idol.

The second for me is the voting. I'm astonished by the vote totals this show gets. And every season there's some "scandal" about rigged voting. People get more upset with rigged voting for a show about the next Big Singing Star* than say a Presidential election. Thrilling.

This quote from a Fox executive in the Washington Post addresses concerns about voting:

"Fox, of course, vigorously defends 'Idol.' "The producers and network have gone to great lengths to ensure the integrity of the voting process, Fox spokesman Scott Grogin said in a statement. 'America votes, an independent company calculates the tally, and the show reports those results. While acknowledging that dedicated fans may be unhappy with the outcome, 'American Idol's' process -- the most sophisticated voting system in existence -- only reports the decision of the voting public.'"[emphasis added]

W/r/t this statement, one of two things is true: 1) American Idol's vote process is the most sophisticated voting system in existence and therefore the world is a depressing and horrible place. If that's true, why are we paying Diebold this money? Shouldn't we just have America text message some company with our presidential selection. 2) The other option is that Fox is lying and the process isn't the most amazing one in existence, in which case they should seriously just shut the fuck up. It's a show, and not a very important one at that. They're determining who will get signed to a record contract. Time was that these things were settled by young aspiring singers sleeping with producers or sealed over a line of coke. It's not some great holy process. You'd think American Idol was the new version of the conclave. Instead of white smoke it's text messages from pimply teens and disturbing karaoke fans. The process doesn't have to be perfect--you're picking a singer, not a pope or a president.

Pitchers.

Over the weekend BRDM played a tournament up near Philly. Actually we were closer to Kennett Square, which also, we later learned served as the location of the hospital for Barbaro. Thankfully none of our injuries this weekend were so severe that we had to consider putting anyone down. Paul hurt his hamstring, but I think we'll just put him out to stud.

We lost more than we won, but we improved dramatically this weekend. We started to make more and better cuts, and make better decisions. All in all a really rewarding weekend. I managed to avoid any great injury, so I was pleased in that regard.

As with every tournament there was a lot of random chatter and bizarre (or bizaro-charles) comments/commentary. My favorite line from the weekend came from Keith (also of RAZE). We're ordering drinks and so forth at this Italian restaurant near the hotel and Keith asks if they have "pitchers." The waitress eagerly says, "Yes." Keith asks for a pitcher of Miller Lite to which the waitress replies: "We only have wine in pitchers." Now I have to imagine she means caraffes, because I can't imagine a place that would be so low class as to serve wine in a beer pitcher. Though I guess I'd have to admit I'd like to go to just such a place. Tired from a day of ultimate, and just looking to get some beer, Keith asks with some frustration creeping into his voice, "Well, then can I just have a couple of beers."

I don't know that "can I just have a couple of beers" will seem funny to anyone else. But to me, it's this wonderful line. It's forlorn, and earnest, hopeful and pathetic. Congrats to Keith for the line of the weekend, in my mind.

Iran.

Iran is considering forcing all non-Muslims to wear cloth that indicates their faith. Christians get red, Zoroastrians blue...and in an obvious homage to attrocities gone by, Jews would wear yellow.

I don't believe in comparing people to Hitler. I think it's a useless analogy and one that simply prevents rational discussion. But I don't imagine that's going to stop a great many people from invoking those comparisons here.

Decisions based on poor analogies are dangerous, and considerably moreso when the analogies are drawn to reinforce a pre-existing political goal. I would love to believe that in the face of such awful human rights violations that our government would work together and try to solve this problem. What I do believe is that the administration will use this to further its electoral goals. They will paint Democrats as weak, as having not learned the lessons of the Holocaust. In 2002 Democrats were compared to Osama Bin Laden, now it'll be Neville Chamberlin, and images of death camps.

I would like to believe that our national goal will be to solve the problem--to see to it that religious minorities in Iran are not singled out and persecuted. That's a goal worth working toward, but I imagine this may simply be a tool to futher bludgeon one another.

Here's another thought: it's been in the parliament for 2 years. where has the Bush administration been those past two years. where was their concern then? where was their pressure then?

Where should I go.

For the past 5 years I have been a proud owner and a frequent user of a Northwest Airlines VISA card. I've been dutifully using the card to earn miles and after living in Minnesota and Seattle--both NWA hubs--I've earned a goodly number of miles, roughly 77,000.

So now that I have all these miles, what should I do with them? I'm trying to think of places that I could visit. I don't really want to use this (these) free ticket on something mundane, or something that would under normal circumstances be a small fee. So flying to Boston, or even Seattle seems pointless.

Assuming (unrealistically) that getting time off for travel wasn't a concern where should I go? Why should I go there? Would you want to come along? What would I do?

London?
Anchorage?
Hawaii?
Rome?

It costs 25,000 miles to travel in the lower 49 (not Hawaii)
35,000 to Hawaii
50,000 to Southern South America
50,000 to Europe
60,000 to Asia

English

So last night during the speech Bush talked about immigrants learning English, and in some respects I agree with the concept. I think learning English is a good step to improving one's life here. But I find it silly this notion that there are millions of people who are actively trying to avoid learning English.

But declaring that everyone should learn math, or everyone should learn how to use a PC isn't the same thing as making that possible. I think that many people's lives would be improved if they spoke and wrote English, could balance a check book, could prepare healthy meals, could write poetry, etc. But to assume that the millions who don't know English will learn it because we have decreed it seems moronic.

Wouldn't it be great if instead of bluster, Bush had said he was going to build upon AmeriCorps and encourage/incentivize 50,000 young people between 22-26 to serve their country by taking a 1 year training program, and then pledging to teach English and civics to immigrants for 2 years. The classes would be free and available nights and weekends. And in return the AmeriCorps members would receive tuition reimbursement and a stipend.

Black or White.

It appears I'm on some sort of a color kick with these last two posts.

This weekend RAZE (my clique team) played in the second round of the WAFC playoffs. Generally an unpleasant experience. I found the other team annoying, generally unpleasant. Our team came out flat, and played poorly. The weather threatened rain all day...basically it wasn't much fun. It was, however, made that much worse by the asshole-ity of the other team. Several examples come to mind the most illustrative is this.

They chose to wear white and so we were red. One person on our team wore a black jersey because he didn't have a red. Midway through the first half one of their guys puts up an ill advised throw and it gets D'ed by our guy who is wearing a black jersey. The thrower comes up to me and says, "Can you have him change into a red?" I was incredulous and asked, "Because it's too hard to tell his black jersey from your team's whites?" and he said, "Yes."

To recap, this guy was having trouble distinguishing between his player's white jersey and my teamates black. Granted, I'd rather that we were all in red, no doubt about that, but to complain that you turned it over because you confused a black jersey for white is just moronic.

The other telling instance from the game came on game point. One of their players fell and caught the disc, and thinking he was in the endzone sprinted around, spiked the disc and began screaming and gesturing like he'd won the World Championship of Greatness and the Nobel Prize for Awesomeness in the Field of Coolness. Several problems:

1) COORDINATION He fell down while catching the disc, no layout, no jump. Dude was barely able to manage the dual tasks of motion and catching without great failure.

2) COMPETITION He caught the winning score in a quarterfinal game in clique B league, in Washington DC. A quarter final game in a secondary level league, in a tertiary or worse level region. To further illustrate the arrogance, think of the clip of Jordan celebrating his game winning shot over Craig Ehlo. But instead of it being the NBA playoffs, imagine if you acted like that when you beat your friends playing miniature golf in 7th grade.

3) RESPECT You don't spike in Clique League, and certainly not in a game where the final score is 15-10. It was neither close nor terribly dramatic. But to spike and galavant around is just poor sportsmanship. This is the same player who earlier in the game grabbed and took hold of the disc when I faked a throw. He just reached out and grabbed the disc. A clear violation. I called him on it and his response was (maybe he was joking, I couldn't tell) "You put it in my hand."

4) REALITY He wasn't in the endzone. That's right, dude decides to behave like a moron and disrespect everyone...and doesn't have the courtesy to actually score. Instead he falls down, gets up and runs around, spikes the disc and carries on like a crazy man -- only, he never, at any point, reached the endzone, didn't even run into it. So our sideline calls turnover. He did, afterall, drop/throw the disc so we gain possession where he spiked the disc.

To further explain how annoying his team was, their sidelines were shouting that we shouldn't get possession because before spiking it he travelled. I called back, being a bit saucy myself, "It's alright, we never called travel, so we'll just take the turnover. But thanks for your concern."

All in all a frustrating game and a sad one. I love ultimate. I love the idea of ultimate. But I find myself playing more and more games with people who behave rudely, crassly or are just plain violent. It's sad. I don't know what I can do about it, but I miss the game I fell in love with. The game where there's more pressure to do the right thing than to win. I still get yelled at by my sidelines for calling myself out of bounds too often. I figure I'd rather win without any qusetion as to my honor, and if I can't win that way then I guess I have to train harder. Sadly that ethic seems in danger. Makes me sad.

I guess as games become more competitive and players more aggressive it becomes harder to see that line. It's harder to tell when you're in bounds (literally and metaphorically). The line is being blurred, what was once as clear as black and white is now harder to see.

Red or White...

One of the most basic tests of wine knowledge is matching wine to food. From what I'm told certain foods are best paired with certain wines. White wines go with fish, red with heavier meats--things like that. Knowing when to order a red vs. a white is something of a testament to ones sophistication, a mark of at least some understanding of viniculture, etc.

American politics seems to have a similar test. For the first year or so after Congressional elections the Republican Congress seems to focus its energies on delivering benefits and monetary rewards to the affluent and well connected. No bid contracts, expensive and pointless projects. There are many names for it, corruption is a popular one, greed works as well, some people like to use the term pork. The other white meat.

But then there's a moment where the focus changes. I think we're at that moment, again. It's right about this time of year when Republicans go from pork to beef, from white meat to red meat. For the next few months we should expect great anguished cries about the denigration of Christian values. Should be a whole lot of hating the gays, a whole lot of talk about the flag, and 10 Commandments.

In fact, it's not even a secret. From today's Christian Science Monitor

"GOP leaders are gearing up to bring a number of issues on the Christian conservative agenda to the floor of the House and Senate in the next few weeks, including gay marriage, broadcast decency, the 10 Commandments Act, a cloning ban, and laws protecting "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance."

Yup, it's red meat time again. Let's bash some gays, defend the millions of horribly oppressed Christians--you know the people who run and have run the government and other institutions of power for the entirety of our country's history.

Neat.

So Liz just emailed me. Apparently there is a photo of me laying out from Fools Fest.
Neat.



Yes, I catch it. In some ways it is among the most startling catches I've made. Just after this photo, the disc caught a wind current and moved closer to my body. I couldn't get my fingers under the rim, but I scooped and cradled the disc against my chest. I managed to catch this one without using my fingers. It'll never happen again, and I can't tell you what made me think it would work. It's pretty cool to see yourself on film. I guess there's a lot of ego wrapped up in that, and maybe that's wrong. But I love ultimate. I think I play pretty well and frankly it's one of the few places where I like seeing photos of myself. Normally I hate it, but I love photos of me playing. Mainly because I love playing. So now I have one.

Progress

Small but real victories....

Walked into a local CD store and was easily able to find both Built to Spill's newest album and Josh Ritter's. How's that for progress.

In other news of progress, all this going to the gym seems to be having some sort of effect on the shape and capacity of my muscles. Namely they are more bulbous...it's like they're getting larger. And a corresponding discovery seems to be that they can exert more force. Strange things, both. No complaints. Just strange to look at myself in the mirror and wonder whose arms I'm seeing.