Some Words

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.

Saturday of this last week was one of the best days in ages. I got my first response from a law school and it was an acceptance letter. I got some chores done, wrote a little, hung out with Kelli and had a really good Old Fashioned and a pretty darn good Manhattan to finish off the day, also just a taste of my 16 year Lagavulin, because if you don’t drink your single malts on celebration days…

Anyhow, that has all been balanced out by the crazy this week. The highlight so far has been managing to walk into a door while going through my apartment in the dark. After two years, I feel pretty comfortable moving around without the lights, but the door was halfway open and I slammed right into the site of it. There was a blue flash, and it was time to break out the ice. Nothing like icing your head at one in the morning. You should try it, really.

I’ve also gone on one hell of a run at work. Today alone, I’ve had one guy ask me to change a password, and then get mad when I didn’t change a different username he’d never mentioned. I also had to explain the concept of windows in OS X to another customer. He had been doing everything with his right mouse button.

Someone managed to take out the driver’s side mirror on my car. They didn’t get the whole mount, just the glass of the mirror itself. I was stupid enough to think that this would not cost much to repair. It turns out that replacing the glass means replacing the entire mount. So, it’s a four hundred dollar repair all of a sudden, for a small piece of glass.

Why does the car have to be designed so that replacing the glass of the mirror mean replacing the whole mount? Shouldn’t this just be something we pop into place? I could even see the spot where it would pop into place with two clips. I wondered if I could have just popped out a mirror at the junk yard and fitted it.

Upon getting home with my repaired car I decided to hop onto my bike and go to the grocery store. When I took the first turn I realized that a screw had come loose, and my baskets were floating half free. If the other one came loose it would drop onto my tire and I’d be walking it home. Total cost of repair? 16¢ And I could do it myself. Actually 9¢ because I already had a locking nut of the right size. In so many ways biking seems like a better option. I’m down to under 40 miles a week in my car. The rest is done on the bike.

Of course winter will come soon, and I’m not that hardcore yet.

So, a little bit ago I saw a post by Ezra Klein. That linked back to this post by Brad DeLong.

The hilarious Laffer Curve graph that DeLong was ranting about got me thinking. I’m not really good with image editing programs, but I figured, “Hell, that graph is amazing. I could do my own Laffer Curve.” Here it is:

Now gimmie an op-ed someone.

My iBook died last week. I’ve had very little free time with a connection as a result. Yesterday, on my way to pick it up from the shop (the logic board had died, I’m so glad I got the 3 year warranty) I started thinking about what I’d done with the time I didn’t have the computer.

It was shockingly well spent, causing me to think, for the 800th time, that computers are as much a curse as blessing when it comes to getting things done. Sure, it’s easy to say I couldn’t write as fast without one, but I would almost certainly be writing more. The worst is the RSS feed. That thing just kills my free time.

What did I do while you were all writing your Slash/Slash fiction? I read, a lot, mostly the pile of magazines and half finished books that sit in the living room. I also planned several things that I wanted to write. In general, I just felt that my time was getting sucked away less. That might also be because I’m no longer on the night shift. And then the computer came back, and it was back to life as usual on the highways that man built…

I’d love to say I’m back, but me saying I’m sitting down to write more is like the Russian roulette scene in The Deer Hunter.

The depths of “writer’s block” appear to be assailing me again. This is odd, as I don’t really believe in writer’s block, but I am here, posting. I’m also not posting about novellas like I planned. But the most telling thing of all? I’m thinking about the fact that there are almost a hundred entires on this blog tagged ‘Me.’ This one might even end up tagged the same way. That’s frightfully egocentric. In other news, blogs are frightfully ego centric.

Twitter!

I’m late to the party again. This post I’m linking is old. Thankfully most of this party, the twitter part, is not one that I want anything to do with. If twitter really does take off, it might just be a sign that we should let global warming or a meteor strike step back in, so that nature can go back to the drawing board.

Seriously, are people that insecure about their own actions? I know I post some banal stuff on this blog, but at least I take the time to think through the banality. And does someone really need to know if I’m doing my laundry? If they did, wouldn’t it be faster to just call me? I have a cell phone, now.

The perceived utility of this thing is such that even if it did only what it was supposed to, and human nature will make sure it won’t, it would still be destructive. We don’t need to make the cultural signal to noise ratio worse.

Q: “Did you hear what Bush said he would fight the subpoenaing his aides?”

A: “No! I was reading that one of my friends was going to the store to buy cat food, and another was going to see 300, and another had a strange pain in his left side that he didn’t think was serious. He probably pulled a muscle. Oh! And my roommate just twittered that he’s leaving the apartment…”

Dear God. Please, all of my friends, do not use this thing. I will write you a letter, I will read your blog/myspace/live journal page. I promise. I’m only half lying.

Ah yes, it’s also worth mentioning that the EPA is set to end lead standards for air quality. Ah led, maybe you grew up in a house that had lead paint two layers down? You’ve heard somewhere what lead can do and why we don’t use it much anymore? Since signing meaningless online form letters is the new doing nothing/protesting, here is a prefab letter for you. This one is from the Union of Concerned Scientists. Personalized letters, though they take longer, have been shown in studies to have more impact on policy makers though, so you might want to make one that’s truly your own.

And one other note. The GF’s bike was stolen from our garage. This is vaguely farcical, as to do this the person had to open the gate, walk into our back yard, enter from the door at the back of the garage, hit the door opener, and take the bike, leaving the door open, and my bike there. The bike was not visible from the alley, or the street for that matter. We had been asking the landlord for the key to that door, but hadn’t really agitated for it, because who was going to look in there anyhow? Well, the answer is clearly the guy who ganked the purple huffy “Nightvision” from my garage.

The tourism council of Mexico would like to remind everyone that Mexico, unlike Minnesota, is not cold. As I drove in to work today, moving through the warped streets of St. Paul, I saw rise before me an enormous green truck. This truck, which announced its intentions by telling me to visit Mexico, had glass, or more likely plastic, panels on the sides. Inside was a beach scene with three people, two women, one man. The man used oil to massage one of the women, who was lying on the table. The other woman, in a small black bikini, danced for the amusement of the passers by. I wonder what she thought of herself. As I drove off, she was trying to adjust the bikini, so as not to pop out.

It’s fairly warm here, as Minnesota winters go. That being said, I don’t think that Mexico needs to remind me that it gets warmer the closer you are to the equator. Nor does it need a traveling bikini and oil massage bus to do this, unless they want to give me a massage. I doubt that’s in the guy’s contract: Must give massages to random pasty Midwesterners, happy endings not required. Mexico, if we have to bail your currency out again, I better not hear that it was because you blew your money on trucks full of dancing girls.

Update: Pictorial evidence that it was in Minneapolis the other day. Thank you random flicker user.

I got this from The Poor Man.

Warning. Do not listen if you understand fractions, basic math, are pregnant, or are thinking of becoming pregnant. I had to pour myself a drink to finish listening. It makes me want to go stab people. It also makes me so happy that I am not with Verison. If you have Verison please do listen. You should hear this.

I would love for one of these people to let this go to collections. It would be great to see one of these reps dragged into court, where they will be dealing with a judge, who we can assume will understand fractions. Having gone through law school, I think its safe to assume that they got out of elementary school.

Well, thank God I’m not in college any more, I don’t know that my heard could handle all those tazerings, and the threats of tazerings. I have a fragile constitution. I mean, I know they’re for my safety, but after my doctor ordered three martini lunches, I just don’t know how my system would respond. The saddest thing is that this story is the second time I’ve found myself ACTUALLY THINKING that L.A. would be better off with vigilante justice. Here’s an article on it from people closer to the source. I’m not going to link the video from YouTube, as it makes me sick to watch. No one I am related to will ever go to UCLA, or maybe even vacation in L.A., if I can help it.

It was a nasty looking day outside. I went and bought four kinds of bitters from the liquor store. I had intended to buy six or more, but they didn’t have all the brands that I wanted to try. It’s sad when you don’t have all the bitters you want for winter.

Mark went with me, and he bought some lillet. When we both got home we mixed drinks, 20th Century coctail, Sazerac, and Manhattans. It was good, except for the drink I mixed with amaretto. I don’t know why I bought that. It really did seem like a good thing to get. Then I wasted scotch mixing it into this horrible drink called a godfather. Mark poured it down the sink when I wasn’t looking. That man saved my life.

I also went to see Stranger Than Fiction, which was pretty good. It didn’t change my life, but I did enjoy it. I was a little intoxicated while I was watching it, see the previous paragraphs, and there were a couple of moments where I had ideas for things of my own to write, but alcohol swept them away in the great mass of other thoughts, that probably weren’t worth writing in the first place. I was frustrated for a moment when I was walking out of the theater. That was followed by me remembering how many of my ideas I did remember had not been fully written yet.

I did at one point lean in and chat with a friend of mine who’s at the University of MN for creative writing. We agreed that the movie made writers and publishers look hunormously more wealthy than was realistic. I wish I lived in a huge apartment with wood flooring and modern furniture. No, wait, I like my apartment. It’s cozy.

OOPS