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.