personal statement

here's a sentence i just wrote in my personal statement on a law school application that i am certainly NOT leaving in there:

I became alarmed by the practices of certain industries, which seemed to be guided by iterations of the mantra “exploit, rationalize, repeat.” 

my essay so far is mostly about kayaking.

obama

i just watched obama on the daily show. now i know two days is an eternity in this, the digital age (is that what age this is?), but it got me thinking about the state of affairs in this country and my feelings for president obama, a little less than two years on. anyway, here they are...

i'm a firm believer in incrementalism, and by that measure i think this has been a successful legislative session. you know that say saying don't let perfect be the enemy of the good? well can't we agree that to this point, the obama white house has certainly not been perfect, but it certainly has been generally good.

 

(now close guantanamo and get us out of afganistan, president o.)  

i still trust obama, and it sure is nice having a president who is thoughtful and capable of thinking critically about issues. and who can communicate complex ideas. even when i don't agree with him, i still find myself saying hmm, i see your point. and thank you for taking the time to explain yourself.  

anyway, i guess i have come to terms with the fact that president obama isn't the paragon of progressive ideology that many of us hoped he would be. now i am just grateful to have a president in office that I'D like to have a beer with.

(note: i realize that that last sentence should have read: now i am just grateful to have a president in office WITH WHOM i'd like to have a beer, but i just couldn't bring myself to write that.)

can it, ross!

ross douthat, you imbecile.

when someone who is creating a sample has an obvious bias, as in A FUCKING INTERN FROM THE CATO INSTITUTE, you have to take their findings with a grain of salt. now, you also say that 5% of 250 tea party signs referenced president obama's race or religion. that is 12 1/2 signs. how does 1/2 a sign reference race or religion? you ass. and also, the fact that 5% of the signs referenced obama's race or religion and 1% (oh, 2 1/2 signs?) questioned his birth certificate's validity is all well and good, but you have to take into account the fact that THE PERSON ASSEMBLING THE DATA HAD A CLEAR AGENDA and the fact that NOT EVERYBODY WRITES EVERYTHING THEY BELIEVE ON A SIGN. for example, i don't have a sign suggesting that you are a pasty catholic wingnut, but i believe that you are in fact a pasty catholic wingnut. 

now let's take a look at your broader points. I DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU ARE TRYING TO ARGUE, WHAT IS THIS ARTICLE ABOUT? you go through some of the complaints that people make about tea partiers, that they represent a fringe movement that will be the undoing of the republican party, that they're an "astroturf" movement bankrolled by the creepster koch bros., that they're a rehashing of old ideas, and that they're views contradict themselves. for each of these concerns, you say no, this issue does not define the tea party. they might have some dingbats, but there are some candidates that the tea party supports who are not dingbats. the rich weirdo koch brothers with their empire of low-cost, foreign made goods are not responsible for creating the tea party movement, but they are subsidizing it and stand to reap its benefits. oh and sure a radical conservative breed of thinking takes root whenever a democrat is in office, but there has never before been a mainstream message attached to this radical thinking. (nevermind the fact that the mainstream tea party message is just exactly the mainstream republican message and not a new paradigm of conservative thought). and lastly, you say that it remains to be seen whether tea partiers are hypocrites who support entitlements while preaching smaller government.

i'm not in law school yet ross, so excuse me if i am missing something here BUT YOU BASICALLY ACCEPTED ALL THE PREMISES BUT DENIED THE CONCLUSIONS. where are your alternate conclusions? what the hell are you trying to say? the tea party isn't racist/islamophobic , because only 5% of its signs are racist/islamophobic? they aren't a bunch of loud, confused white guys who have NO UNDERSTANDING OF HOW OUR GOVERNMENT OPERATES? that the fucking nutjob kochs along with their opportunistic deregulation/privatization-craving upper class cronies aren't responsible for the rise of the tea party? THE TEA PARTY AGENDA IS BEING COOKED UP IN THE SEMINAL VESICLES OF FOX NEWS AND EJACULATED OUT INTO THE ETHER 24/7 AND YOU HAVE THE AUDACITY TO CLAIM THAT THE TEA PARTY IS A GRASSROOTS MOVEMENT. you sad, doughy knob. what other grassroots movements take their cues from television executives and barons of industry? what other grassroots movements enjoy free airtime?

ross, own up to it. these pest riddled tea leaves were picked by an exploited child overseas, roasted in the bowels of fox news, packaged in the whitest of white tea bags and sold to us unsuspecting, angry, out-of-work americans at a premium. shit...

 

parsley

i always wondered why i like parsley so much. 

turns out it is jam packed with ketamine! in fact, 153.8% of parsley is ketamine, which by my calculations means that other things make up -53.8% of it. this is why i like science, 'cause it helps me understand why i like parsley, so if you'll excuse me, i'ma go pick a sprig and nod out in my backyard!

andy sanborn

i once ran a political campaign for an honest and kind and all-around amazing person named harold janeway. he is really wonderful and the new hampshire state legislature will be losing a class act when senator janeway retires when the new class of senators is sworn in after the 2010 elections.

but that is not who i am here to talk about. i am here to talk about andy sanborn, senator janeway's opponent in 2008 and the republican nominee for nh district 7 again in 2010. 

in the interest of full disclosure, i gotta say that andy sanborn did file a police report against me for vandalizing his yard signs. i also gotta say that i never once touched his signs, as certain readers of this blog will attest. i went to the police station and cleared up the matter, filing a counter report with them, end of story. but not really. see, after presumably knowingly filing a false police report, mr. sanborn knowingly filed a press release (rife with grammatical, nevermind factual errors) stating that i was arrested for the aforementioned offense. this was the day before the election, this just reeks of someone who is trying to fabricate a scandal. the news outlets that picked up the press release quickly obliged in removing it when i called offered them the phone number for the hillsborough police department for clarification and pointed out that not only was it false, but it was also a pretty clear cut case of libel. so, even though senator janeway won, i have a bit of a bone to pick with andy sanborn.

there was an article published about mr. sanborn in my hometown newspaper, the concord monitor, entitled "Candidate says he 'took it on the chin' in bankruptcy filing" (june 30, 2008). this article lays out the unsavory details of mr. sanborn's checkered businessman past. you should read it, he comes across an almost comically cliche conniving politician. to honor mr. sanborn's resurgence, i want to present you with a hypothetical here. 

say you want to make some money, pretty much everybody does, right? where do you draw the line? 

see, the way i figure, a person can start a business selling, oh, i don't know mittens and socks. now when you start a business, it is wise to start it as an LLC, which, as i understand, shields the owner(s) from being personally financially liable for any debts the business incurs, should the business be incapable of paying. and now you can start another business (LLC) that gets mortgages and acquires real estate. say your interest is not in running a business per se, but just having money. if you wanted to, your real estate business(es) could rent space to your mitten and sock business for over the market price of the space. you could operate the mitten and sock business with the loan you were given and your mitten and sock suppliers ship you their goods net 30, meaning that you have 30 days from the receipt of the shipment to pay for the goods. now, your mittens and socks might be flying off the shelves, maybe you've priced them to, but your assets are diminishing 'cause you can't really afford the space you're in. fortunately for you though, your real estate company is doing great! that mortgage is getting paid off super fast, and it is a 15 year mortgage so your interest rates are really low! now say after 14 years or so, your mitten and sock business starts lagging on its payments, in fact you are placing new orders that you need to sell real quick in order to pay off the previous supplier. you just keep paying that rent though! eventually, your supplier might get sick of getting paid late and start asking questions. at that point you assuage them by telling them you are going out of business and the proceeds from the sale will be used to pay them back. but all throughout the sale your mitten and sock business is paying the rent you owe yourself. you keep telling the suppliers you'll have the money after the sale. eventually they might get sick of it and force you into bankruptcy, which will certainly ruin you. but no, when the court comes looking, you have no assets! hooray! your mitten and sock business can pay back literally only 5% of money they owe to creditors! but surely they will seize and sell the property to pay back creditors? they can't, it is a separate and unrelated LLC and it can't be touched! and your mortgage is paid off. you have no personal liability to the creditors, as it was your LLC that incurred the debt... you did it! if you're feeling really frisky, your real estate business can even file a claim for back rent against your mitten and sock business! 

i'm not sure how i thought up this idea, but i think it might work! it just depends on where you draw the line? are you ok with personal gain at the cost of others?

funreasonable!

hi friends, 

bet you didn't know i had a blog still! well i do and in the months and months it has been since i posted anything, i have been doing nothing but preparing for this blog post. 

it the best when people don't pay attention to the implication of the juxtapositions they create, it is like puns for my eyes! also, there are some images here that just don't seem like good ideas. exhibit a: 

josh hamilton (DRINK BOOZE) made a very mature decision to (DRINK BEER) abstain from his baseball team's revelry (GET DRUNK ON RUM) celebrating clinching a playoff (HAVE YOU EVER TRIED A RUM & BEER MIXED DRINK, I THINK THEY CALL IT THE UNIMAGINATIVE SAILOR) spot. hamilton has a checkered past of (LOOK AT THE LONG HAIRED MAN STANDING ON A BARREL OF RUM DOESN'T THAT MAKE YOU WANT TO GET LOADED ON RUM) substance abuse.

exhibit b: this isn't a juxtaposition so much as a REALLY TERRIBLE AD.

but hey, i'm glad we're far enough removed from our proud country's dark past of ACTUALLY TORTURING PEOPLE that we can laugh about it. or at least use it as a means of getting people to a website where we FUCKING SELL BATTERIES.

(yes, i watched sam kinison recently, no he's not funny, but he's SO OUTRAGEOUS AH AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!)

a thought, part two

today i sauteed some asparagus in bragg's liquid aminos and dr. pepper and my first thought was now this is why i don't smoke weed. i'm already dumb enough. (for the record, however, the asparagus was a success.)

but the thing is that some of the smartest people i know smoke pot and some of the fittest people i know eat like garbage disposals. and i knew an actuary who was an interesting guy. so what i am thinking is that maybe we are less defined by the choices that we make than we'd like to think and maybe that's a good thing.

i am t-pain

(full disclosure: i am actually t-peña.)

jesus and wade boggs

i don't mean to offend anyone or anything but i was just sitting around thinking about thinking and how our brains make connections between seemingly unrelated things and specifically i was thinking about wade boggs and jesus.

(now before you get all "they aren't hardly unrelated because all humans' DNA is 99.9% the same and so wade boggs is more closely related to jesus than he is to his 1983 topps rookie card ($17.95, near mint) and blah blah blah..." i wasn't like trying to identify the most dissimilar things i could think of, so back off and stop interrupting me, or i'll never get to my point.)

anyway, i was quick to make the obvious connections between jesus and wade boggs, being that they both are said to have done things that no ordinary human is capable of. (though, to my mind, wade boggs drinking 32 or 36 beers on a cross-country flight and willing himself invisible during a knife fight at a night club are the more believable of the feats ascribed to each figure. after all, the man won 5 batting titles and was notoriously compulsive about his routines, waking up at precisely the same time every day, eating fried chicken before every game and starting his windsprints exactly 7 minutes and 17 seconds before the first pitch. i am willing to give a person like that the benefit of the doubt.) 

oh, and also they are both known for their superstitions. jesus believed that there was a god who was all-knowing and also that he was this god's son, and wade boggs believed that his success hitting a ball made of horse skin would continue only if he hit the same number of balls on the ground during practice every day. i guess those two are kindred spirits, no wonder they both popped into my brain.

bitch i'm i.m. pei

that's all i gotta say.

florida

i have seen two cars upside-down on the highway in my life and another time i saw a helicopter on the roadway, blades spinning, blocking all the lanes of traffic on I-95. i'm not sure what happened. and when i think about things like car accidents, i think about the events that must have led up to that moment and i think how these minor decisions that we make in our lives can have huge consequences, you know? i mention this because i was down in florida visiting my grandmother who lives there and my parents who don't live there and who also left a day before me, so i had a morning to myself before i was supposed to return the rental car and fly back to portland. 

now i hope you'll indulge me for a minute while i veer off-course, but there are some things about florida that you should know. first of all, on the way there you'll be sitting in an exit row with the largest man on the flight. and you, being broad-shouldered yourself, will be unable to sit with your back flat against the seat and so for the duration of the four hour flight from vegas to orlando, you will sit cock-eyed against the wall while the electrician next to you burps up the beer and sausage he had in the airport, and you might find the slowly-evolving scents of his digestion interesting if you hadn't given up meat two years ago. then you will wait for your bag with a woman wearing red knit hand warmers and an ed hardy tank-top in the 82 degree florida evening. then after four hours in the orlando airport (where they mercifully have wireless internet) waiting for your parents to arrive, you'll pile into a rented chevy malibu that costs $148 per day and drive down the coast for an hour and a half to your grandmother's house along a route that used to be lined with fragrant orange trees, but is now a series of strip malls, your favorite of which houses a restaurant called "beef o'brady's". ah, irish cuisine, the pinnacle of culinary achievement! (ah, strip malls, the pinnacle of commercial achievement...!) but hey, it's not all bad, there are still some open spaces left along the drive, though they are principally gated communities abandoned by their developers with solitary gatehouses guarding hundreds of acres of paved cul-de-sacs and crab grass. 

(and in defense of florida and to avoid coming across as something of a sourpuss, i did have a nice time. my dad and i caught (and released) a bluefish, a sea trout, a mullet and a bar jack, i got a few laughs out of my grandmother who has all but succumbed to her alzheimer's, i cooked some dinner with my mom and played golf with my aunt and uncle. oh there were manatee and dolphin and an egret i saw eating a rat, there was body-surfing and a rocket launched from cape canaveral that we all watched from the backyard. florida, i don't love you and i am still upset about 2000, though i am pretty sure you voted for gore, but as long as you have people i care about in you, i will put up with you.)

but so, my original point was something about the way things work out and how our insignificant decisions can have profound effects on our lives and the reason i brought that up in the first place was because i was driving from grandma's to the airport back along that gauntlet of floundering commerce and i was driving pretty slow in the fast lane, which i don't usually do unlike the drivers from the states of california and massachussetts, who seem unaware of the fact that the left lane is for passing and not traveling the same speed as the cars next to you. but anyway i was in the left lane, slowly gaining on a truck that was a couple hundred yards in front of me and mc hammer's "you can't touch this" came on the radio and something flew off the truck. i don't know what reason any radio station could possibly have for playing mc hammer in 2010. but what flew off the truck in front of me was a windshield from one of the junked cars it was hauling. the entire windshield, 30 feet in the air. it landed a few feet in front of my car in the right lane and the malibu was pelted by pea-sized bits of shatterproof glass. now what if that windshield had landed on my car? would i have boarded this plane safe and sound, or would i be upside-down in well-rated american car, wheels spinning on the side of highway 520 outside of orlando?

thoughts on the politics of the day

i was reading about the democratic house leadership's strategy to bring health insurance reform to a vote. i don't think many people understand parliamentary procedure. sometimes i like to read articles about politics on the internet all day and inevitably when i get to the comments, i read things like 

"A single member bypassing a vote by calling something 'deemed" passed without a vote is in violation of our Constitution and NOT indicative of a Representative Democracy." 

first of all, the house will mold the senate bill to their liking and then a vote will be held on their "fixes", with every house member understanding that their vote on the house revisions is an implicit vote on the senate bill as well. there is a reason this strategy is called "deem and pass" and not just "pelosi sez".  voting twice,  once on the passage of the senate bill and then on the house's revisions would serve no purpose other than to give opponents of the bill greater opportunity to rant and rave and express the health insurance industry's qualms about reform. and bloviate, my god the bloviation!

second of all, for all the cries of fascist and dictator and traitor, you would think that these people were trying to include zyklon b in school lunches. the libertarians, always entertaining, but never ones to engage in reasonable discussion without introducing hyperbole and creepy threats, are screaming for revolution. offering to introduce house leadership to hell and make speaker pelosi "@#$@ her pants".  don't you realize that our democracy works in such a way that if you don't like the policies of the people who have been elected, you have the opportunity to vote them out of office? if they happen to be reelected, that is more or less an indication that your fellow americans disagree with you. 

armed revolution? limited government? no health care? from the sound of it, you might enjoy sunny somalia!

but then again, i cannot see the appeal of malls, suburbs, the black eyed peas, ed hardy, SUVs, mcdonalds, i think thomas kinkaide is a miserable artist, i think michael pollan and paul krugman are generally right, growing and raising your own food is a rewarding, healthy, economical and beneficial activity, bicycling is a fun and healthy means of transportation and money is not a measure of success. that said, i believe everyone should have the opportunity to succeed (however they define success) and the government can and should be a catalyst for that success. i guess i'm a fascist too.

little-known health insurance reform facts

there has been to-do made recently about the democrats efforts to reform the health insurance industry, but many americans do not know how the proposed reforms will affect them. to help clear things up, i have compiled a list of the key elements of "obamacare":

- insurance companies will be required to insure those with the preexisting human condition.

- taxpayer money will be used to subsidize "obamabortions".

- in order to keep costs down, your in-network doctors will all be high-school biology students.

- under the new "compulsory sponsorship of an illegal immigrant" system, each health insurance customer, in addition to their own insurance costs, will pay for "the regular doctor's visits and necessary and elective procedures of an illegal immigrant" and they will also receive a photograph and letter of thanks (in spanish), from their sponsoree. 

- all STD tests will be performed on semen/vaginal secretion samples mailed directly to rick santorum

whether or not these reforms will bring about the sweeping change promised by barack hussein obama is unclear.

oh newt

so i watched newt gingrich on the daily show the other day, right, and it struck me that he will just say things, regardless of whether they're true or not, if they serve to prove a point he is trying to make. to wit (and pointed out on TPMmuckraker and whitehouse.gov), gingrich states (very confidently) that richard reid, the shoe-bomber, was read his miranda rights during the bush administration because he was an american citizen. that is false. it is ok to be wrong sometimes, but it is not ok to be wrong when the validity of the point you are making (the obama administration is radical for reading umar farouk abdulmutallab, the underwer bomber, his miranda rights) is contingent on the false "facts" you are presenting (the bush administration also read the shoe bomber his miranda rights, but only because he was an american citizen).

also brought up by gingrich was the infamous quirin case of 1942, in which 13 nazi saboteurs were given military tribunals and executed by the roosevelt administration. the problem with using that case as a precedent (which the bush administration did when they suspended habeas corpus for detainees), was that at least one of the saboteurs was an american citizen and at least two of them had no plans of attacking the united states and acted to turn themselves in to the FBI. in fact, it is likely that many of the saboteurs were using the clandestine nazi mission to repatriate themselves to the united states. there is a fascinating "this american life" episode about the case and the events leading up to it, found here (one of the most amazing and heart wrenching stories i have ever heard). gingrich uses this as an example of a president (and a liberal at that!), taking swift action to ensure the safety of his country. nevermind the fact that his swift action was morally abominable and that he was on the wrong side of history.

now, and this really pisses me off, the obama administration has changed NONE OF THE FUCKING PROTOCOL FOR HOLDING AND TRYING DETAINEES! so not only is the obama administration shitting the bed in terms of human rights, but gingrich is either ignorant of this important position, or so focused on bringing the obama white house down that he is ignoring the facts.

and lastly (according to his wikipedia entry), gingrich is a former history professor whose area of expertise is modern european history. he also once taught a class entitled "renewing american civilization". i don't know many history professors who can be successful when they are so glaringly wrong (and apparently utterly unconcerned about a factual understanding of their areas of expertise), but maybe that's why he went into politics.

questions for the late pope

dear pope john paul,

please disregard the fact that you are dead. please also understand that i am writing to you because i am still feeling a little bit uneasy about pope benedict's ties to nazi germany, although everyone makes a point of stressing the fact that he was unenthusiastic about the whole affair. anyway, i am more comfortable talking to you.

well, i got to thinking the other day about the catholic position on birth control and i know you have a very clear, zero-tolerance position on contraception, but so what i was wondering was whether or not it would be alright to poke holes in condoms and then use them? because that would make them totally ineffective and then you aren't engaging in any form of birth control. do you see where i'm going with this?

oh and i was also curious who transsexual people can and can't marry. can they marry either sex? neither? or only other transsexual people?

so i guess you probably won't get back to me for a little while, but i just wanted to thank you in advance for taking the time to answer my questions. or if it is god who is answering through you or whatever, thank him too. he seems like a good guy.

sincerely,

n

hey

hey nbc: if i could say that you're replacing the new guard with the old guard, i would, but that wouldn't be true so instead i'll say you're replacing an innovator with a tired purveyor of mindless schlock. 

hey massachussets: scott brown is no prize, but martha coakley didn't deserve it. health care reform will pass and you'll have an opportunity to replace brown in a few short years. (2012). and haven't you heard that axiom, that you get the government you deserve?

hey democrats: pass health care reform.

always have been, always not anymore

just when you think you're an apple fritter man, just when you feel confident in elevating that heavenly mound of dough above all others, you will discover the marion berry fritter. glorious be the tulip bakery!