Some Words

With the departure of several cover letters, I think that it is time to acknowledge that some of you might be finding my page. Hello. I’ve not bothered to use any real effort to hide myself. Of course, the flip side is that I don’t know that you’ll find anything very interesting. I think I swear a few times on here, and you might not like my taste in music. Other than that it’s mostly me talking about other people’s bad driving and a few little rants. Oh! I almost forgot, there’s a bad short story on the other page. I’m not taking it down, because it could probably be dug up in some archive somewhere or another on the internet. If, for some reason, you want to read any of my short fiction, just ask. I have a few stories that I have been sending out recently, and which I would be much happier to show you.

Politico reports on Obama getting irked by the ridiculous media exposure that presidents are exposed to, and the consequent loss of the next four years of his daughter’s childhoods that might come with it, and manages to have exactly the sort of over intrusive overly detailed reporting that they are writing about. In what world do I need to know that the future president ordered a tuna sandwich on twelve grain bread? Other, lesser, men might have settled on a mere eight grains. I know that’s what I just bought at the market today. Obama is bringing the kind of change that means and extra four grains? I honestly don’t even need to hear what he ordered, or that he ordered. He’s at a restaurant, I can infer that he ordered food. Hell, I can infer that he eats, he’s human after all. I don’t really need any information at all about him taking his kids anywhere. But I appear to be in the minority in thinking that his ability to deal with a bunch of guys who long ago gave up on real investigative journalism has nothing do do with future duties as chief administrator and commander in chief.

Unless someone wants to write an article claiming that it was irresponsible of him to get tuna, because the increased popularity of the fish after he eats it will put further strain on already depleted stocks of tuna, teetering on the brink of extinction. If we’re going to invade the poor man’s privacy to this degree, let’s at least pointlessly saddle him with the blame for the extinction of the blue fin. I prefer my political reporting with a side of impotent rage.

Generally I have been avoiding saying much about current events, because this is a small private blog that about six friends read. It just doesn’t seem like there is much point to giving my opinion about this or that national issue here, and people could just be reading Ezra Klein in that time anyway. But this was too much.

When the history of the past eight years is written, it will not make the official records that a Walmart temp was trampled to death in a rush of customers yesterday but it serves as a tragic little coda to my impressions of the Bush years. When the President told people that it was patriotic to shop in the face of a recession, he did not cause this. Yet the elevation of blind spending as a pass time has gotten so bad that yesterday people crushed a man to death so they could save eighty dollars on an LCD TV. To my mind that deserves at least as much soul searching as the current financial crisis.

Shown to me by a friend of mine, I could not help smiling when I saw this. Kudos McSweeny’s, kudos.

Belief that I would be able to concentrate on my studies without distraction today was shattered when I found myself reading a few NY Times stories.

As Shea said in the comments, sports metaphors are often obnoxious, and yet I cannot help that when I was reading the paper today, I found myself thinking of one. The article mentioned the possibility of terror attacks during the transition, because God knows we can’t go a day in the media without raising that specter. And I started thinking that with our forced so over committed, how could a president express that we needed to pay less and not more attention to the perpetrators of a terror attack, so that we could get to the business of governing that they had hoped to interrupt. The first thing that came to mind? Shaking the tackle. It’s inescapable. I don’t even really watch football.

I don’t like to think that I’m so locked into my political views that I can’t switch parties if the Republican’s field someone compelling. In my eyes, that hasn’t happened this cycle. But just for fun, I found myself thinking, what would the man have to do to earn my vote?

The Republican National Convention is causing all sorts of havoc for friends of mine in the Twin Cities right now, and that means McCain will be in the Twin Cities too. In order to get my vote, I’ve decided he will need to do the following:

He must go to the C.C. Club, with minimal escort, and order a Premium Grainbelt. Beer in hand he must then go to the jukebox and select “Time” by Tom Waits. When the song comes up, he will then have the secret service clear out the two mobile tables near the jukebox, where he shall proceed to dance a sad little shuffle as the song plays. That will earn my vote. If he manages to mumble the lyrics in a plaintive and half heard sort of way, I’ll even like doing it. Also, as long as he’s there, he should get the jalapeno cheese burger, because it’s damned tasty.

If he were to go to The Bulldog kiddy corner to the C.C., I’ll donate another $50 to Obama. If he goes to Common Roots across the corner, and gets the organic bagel? Well, then we’ll know the end times are upon us.

Ah, to dream that it could happen.

Cross posted at

It looks like I left the Twin Cities just in time to miss them going all police state. It was bad enough that many of my friends are having their commutes completely destroyed, making it hard for them to get in to work and, you know, keep their jobs (just what the Republicans should be doing you know, they don’t already lead to enough job loss). The idea that these people are having their houses raided… I mean, at least it’s a creative end run around the 1st amendment I suppose. They haven’t yet freely spoken, or peaceably assembled, so you can’t just go in and complain about it in court. Also, holing them up in their house before you get the warrant, and then getting one only for the house next door seems a pretty easy one to knock down.

For a more qualified assessment, here’s someone who actually already has his JD.

I spend a lot of time, way more than is effective, getting angry about police taser abuses and run ins with cyclists. It is refreshing to see police men messing up in such a silly way.

I also like that some UK news agencies refer to the guys working on terror related cases as ‘terror police.’ It’s like calling the vice squad the sex police. You just get a whole different image in your mind.

So, K and I have moved to Portland, and I had the obligatory ‘revelation’ that I was totally hooked to the internet and get a little lost when I don’t have a connection to it. I also learned that there is no DSL available for my apartment. It actually ends on the other side of the street, so I’ve got a cable modem now, which I don’t know how to feel about. It’s not that I think cable modems are bad, but 1.5 mbps for about $33 a month is the price point and speed that I feel suits my needs. I don’t really need the 4-6 mbps that cable modems provide and I don’t want to pay $20 more to get it.

Today was the first significant interaction I had with fellow first year law students at Lewis and Clark. Two of them were from Montana, which seemed pretty impressively against the odds, as the whole state has a population of under a million. It also brought back memories of the trip through Montana, which seemed like it would never end. We drove from Bismark, ND to the edge of Idaho in one day and the Montana part dominated that. It was also flat, and pretty boring, getting really pretty only at the end, when things were getting dark.

The highlight of that was when I got to shout, “Look honey! A testicle festivle!” I got to shout this because we were driving by a billboard for a testicle festival. The billboard had a bull holding the spot from which some enterprising individual had stolen his nuts. At first we couldn’t believe the thing existed, but the signs kept coming. I was unable to snap a picture and worried that without one I would have no proof that people had such a thing as a testicle festival. The internet did not disappoint me though. Kudos to Rock Creek Lodge for having one of those small town festivals, but coming up with something better than another damn cherry festival or something.

So, I was working on the big project, and realized that I’ve been so focused on it, I haven’t really gotten a lot done on the short stories that I had planned to finish up. Well, that’s no good. I’m rapidly running out of time. I went back and didn’t like much of what I had planned, which probably means that several of those ideas weren’t very good to begin with. Ah well. So where does one find inspiration? Perhaps this absurd list of people who Barack Obama has supposedly had killed, much of which reads like synopses of D grade political thrillers?

No. But it was tempting… Change a few names, give it a little plot… It was tempting…

I would love to hear one day that the right had farmed out one of these bullshit conspiracies to a ghost writing John Grisham. At least then we’d get a couple of really creative deaths.

While randomly moving around the internet today, I found this lovely littler article about brides and the ‘beauty’ industry. Asking your bridesmaids to get breast implants? Very tacky. I am glad to be well and done with the wedding industry. There were some nice people, like our photographer and the woman who made the cake, but there are always those people who want to elevate their bridal experience to that of a J-Horror film.

I know that most of our fellow citizens live inside the chamber of silence when it comes to international news, but fucking eh! When one of your closest allies in your largest war front is releasing studies about how you’re full of shit and can’t be trusted for anything… When other people have to start distancing themselves from you on torture, it’s time to start some serious self appraisal. Too bad this one isn’t getting reported on CNN or anything. Also too bad we don’t have ‘British Fries’ or something we can rename to show our defiance in the face of international law.

Also, as a dual citizen, with family in the US and Canada, the next time someone tells me about how the Canadian health care system sucks, I’m pulling out this little anecdote. That’s a gem, that one. I love how people who argue this with me are always people who have a third cousin who they’ve never talked to who had to wait for an elective surgery like a face lift. I’ve had relatives die in Canada, and they sure didn’t want for medical care. I loved them, I was devastated by the loss of them, but I never wondered if they had been tricked into not being given care by the medical equivalent of DSL tech support.