December 2011 Archives

magical fairy dust.

as long as one doesn't take it too far. my next drink is dedicated to christopher hitchens.

when was the last time American Muslims organized to pull advertisements off the air from shows that do not conform with their faith values (and trust me there are many)?

i'm (i guess) some kinda flaming liberal. and yet the only person who has even remotely represented my liberal interests in the past several presidential races? ron paul.

good wholesome liberals point out that he's a religionist, and anti-abortionist, a monetary-fantasy-land-ist, and a racist. i won't bother linking to the evidence, it's easy to find, and some of it is pretty conclusive.

but the perfect is the enemy of the good. ron paul isn't perfect. he may indeed be a racist. but he's not going to get into office and set up extermination camps for illegal aliens. nor is he going to get into office and appoint klansmen to the supreme court.

what he will do is stop sending billions of undeserved foreign aid dollars to undeserving foreign countries. he will stop the wars (for real, not just fake endings like bush and obama). he will not start stupid wars. he will cut back or end as much as he can the wasteful drug wars. he will expand the freedoms of the 99%. he will not fight for the 1%.

ron paul is a man whose tune has not changed. he stands for the same thing today as he did fifteen years ago. when he says he'll do something, he means it. only the severely uninformed could possibly believe the same about ANY of the other candidates, no matter their party.

all the other choices we have, or have had in my voting lifetime, have been liars, by commission or omission. ron paul -- whatever his stances on race or abortion or religion -- does not seem to be a liar or a sneak. and when you look at what he has said he will do as president, these are things he CAN do as president, without help from the useless and freedom-hating congress. contrast this to the pie-in-the-sky crap from the other candidates. contrast it to the warmongering towards Iran. contrast with the clever schemes from obama and newt to funnel money to the bankers.

i really don't get the liberal hate for RP. ultimately we are judged by our actions, not by our thoughts or our writings. as president, ron paul may think whatever he likes about black people, mexicans, and arabs. if he avoids war with iran, he'll be remembered more favorably than any of his recent warmongering, freedom-hating, waterboarding predecessors and opponents.

a vote for anyone other than RP is a vote for more war, more weapons contracts, more mercenaries, more torture, more secret prisons, more assassinations of american citizens, more money for the bankers, more guantanamo, and more money for overseas oppressive regimes of all kinds. i don't see how a good liberal could support that.

that's how long it took for the fantastic fluenz french program to tell me:

oh by the way, nobody really uses the "nous avons" style conjugations, that you've been studying carefully all this time, you'll want to use "on a", which means the same thing, but is informal.

wha??!?!

nous ne comprenons pas!

also, gratin de poisson? l'eww....

i am happy for the hard work of labor unions worldwide that gave me the five day work week. thank god it's the weekend.

Stop being ungrateful. - No matter how good or bad you have it, wake up each day thankful for your life. Someone somewhere else is desperately fighting for theirs. Instead of thinking about what you're missing, try thinking about what you have that everyone else is missing.

i'm pretty happy i live in an area where gun violence (whether it's person-on-person or involving police) is rare.

a chain email popped into my inbox this morning, about a charming little old lady who packs heat so she can be afraid of nothing. i replied with some statistics showing that gun owners are 30% more likely than non-owners to die from guns, whether suicide or homicide. statistics relating gun ownership or concealed carry to crime are not so easy to find, apparently the data is not collected.

but one thing is clear to me: i've had guns (loaded? probably) pointed at me twice in my life, both by people that I am absolutely certain consider themselves "responsible gun owners". the first was by an idiot redneck who couldn't cook a steak but wanted to show he wasn't scared of any badge carrying women. the second was last month by a grieving drunken redneck who was basically just trying to say "nice to meet you".

in both cases, i would not have felt safer had i been armed. but i would have felt a lot safer if the rednecks HAD NOT been armed.

this year about five blocks from my home, a "responsible gun owner" went off his meds and waved his gun around in the drugstore that I frequently visit. he was shot dead by police shortly after.

the entirety of human history, from the slaughter of innocents at jericho and troy, to the slaughter of innocents at dresden and my lai, to the slaughter of innocents at columbine and VA tech (twice now) shows that the concept of "responsible weapon ownership" is a complete farce. it is possible that individual humans are capable of not shooting me dead, but collectively, and on average, the human race is entirely incapable of owning weapons responsibly.

i have no policy proposals (short of personal proposals like moving to a place that understands that the proliferation of tools of violence is algebraically simplifiable to the proliferation of violence itself). it is not possible to make policy when the people at the table bring their own sets of "facts" or rely on false assumptions like "responsible gun ownership".

were all gun owners responsible, we'd have peace and rainbows. and if my aunt had wheels she'd be a trolley. but easy access to weapons ensures that our noble armed overlords will continue to militarize against us, and it's hard to blame them from seeing "us" versus "them" when "us" could be waiting for "them" with a military arsenal.

i have no policy proposals, but i do propose that people question their assumptions and prioritize solutions based on facts. it is a fact that i've twice had my life clearly threatened by firearms, and it is also a fact that in neither situation was i being robbed or carjacked or kidnapped or any of the things which concealed carry people think they're going to stop with their guns. in one case I was paying my restaurant bill (and those motherfuckers got no fucking tip that day) and in the other case I was hanging out in my sister-in-law's home. i would much prefer to live in a world where I don't have loaded guns pointed at me than in a world where I have the right to point my loaded guns at other people.

and you know what? when I'm not visiting my relatives, that's exactly the world I do live in. until I run into the next "responsible gun owner" idiot who wants to have a little fun with me.

think it couldn't happen in the USA?

theocracy is theocracy, whether it's "islamic" or "christian" (or the hilarious "judeo-christian").

unrelatedly, the iraq war ended today (or was it yesterday?). anyhow, i for one welcome this new era of peace in the middle east. hooray for the war is over. see the cat? see the cradle?

well, that's what I get for enjoying excellent food lo these many days. my team voted to have our xmas lunch at the cheesecake factory. if I am to enjoy it, it will have to be ironically.

thank the FSM for hipster food. no, really. since monday, i've eaten:

every day breakfast: home roasted coffee (i was a home roaster before it was mainstream)

M lunch: artisan smoked pulled pork sangwich at The Ravioli House in San Mateo

M dinner: pork buns from the artists formerly known as Chairman Bao, the food truck. i declared at the time and maintain that the large pork bun I had that night was the best food I've ever eaten.

T lunch: hipster belgian beer and hipster pastrami steak with fries at the Refuge in San Carlos. it is called The Refuge because it's a refuge on the peninsula for hipsters who are too hip to live in the city.

T dinner: hipster kathi roll indian food from curry up now, where the hipsters know my wife by name. then off to rock climb with hipsters.

W lunch: hipster artisan pizza followed by hipster cannoli.

W dinner will break the trend.

thank the FSM for hipsters or i'd be forced to eat el torito for lunch and mcDonalds for dinner, every day.

as soon as i declared so loudly how great my coffee was, that i doomed myself to never really knowing what I was drinking.

i went and checked my roasting log, and of course i was drinking a leftovers blend: a bunch of different beans left over from other roasts, mixed together then roasted. i recall that most of them were central/southern american and only one was african, but otherwise, I have no clue.

good coffee, like good life, is fleeting and impossible to reproduce.

step 1) listen to this
step 2) send an email to someone you haven't spoken with in a long time

repeat as necessary.

GOP presidential front runner newt "child labor" gingrich said:

On moon mining, Gingrich doubled down -- "I'm happy to defend the idea that America should be in space and should be there in an aggressive, entrepreneurial way".

the notion that "entrepreneurs" could have anything whatever to do with moon mining is absurd. the costs involved with just getting to space, much less doing something while there, much less bringing stuff back, are so (pardon me) astronomical that your friendly neighborhood lemonade stand has absolutely no chance of getting entrepreneurially involved.

the costs of space exploration are so high that presently only first-world governments and gigantic corporations are capable of doing it, and this is not going to change within the next 8 years.

but that won't stop a serial-philanderer like gingrich from spouting nonsense about small businesses in space. there are no small businesses in space. there won't be any in the next 8 years, no matter who is in the white house. it's total fantasy couched in GOP code words.

of course, I could be wrong. newt does have a plan for lowering labor costs in this country: "What I suggested was kids ought to be allowed to work part-time in school," he said.

perhaps if school kids were employed by "entrepreneurs" to build space mining equipment, the costs would be lowered enough to be feasible.

hey, great idea, newt "i was kicked out of the congress" gingrich!

i am thankful for good coffee, and i frankly don't care if this is a duplicate. this has been (and will continue to be) a month of hotel coffee, so when i get the chance to have a cup of home roasted blueberry creamy i-don't-even-remember-the-origin-because-i-roasted-it-before-i-left, well, it's a little overwhelming.

excuse me while i kiss the sky!

i started this life out with really good hearing, and i've protected it jealously all my life. my parents always told me to turn down my headphones, and i did, and even today, though i listen very frequently to headphones, apparently i do it at much lower levels than most people.

i've been to two concerts this year (okay, one was more like a blues club), which is actually a record for me (and will likely be exceeded next year), and both times i wore earplugs. not only did i feel like i lost nothing, in both cases the un-plugged version was so terribly overdriven that all i could hear was interference. only with the plugs in could i hear the actual melodies.

so i'm happy and lucky that i've been given good hearing and the wisdom to protect it so that i can enjoy it to the fullest.

as i sat upon the porcelain throne today, i considered how fortunate i am that i have never shattered a toilet while sitting on it. materials fail, and it is entirely possible for a toilet to shatter into a million pieces while one is upon it doing one's duty. such an event would be a tragedy on so many levels, i am fortunate that it has never happened to me.

The third, and perhaps most challenging, issue arises when people cite religious or cultural values as a reason to violate or not to protect the human rights of LGBT citizens. This is not unlike the justification offered for violent practices towards women like honor killings, widow burning, or female genital mutilation. Some people still defend those practices as part of a cultural tradition. But violence toward women isn't cultural; it's criminal. Likewise with slavery, what was once justified as sanctioned by God is now properly reviled as an unconscionable violation of human rights.

In each of these cases, we came to learn that no practice or tradition trumps the human rights that belong to all of us. And this holds true for inflicting violence on LGBT people, criminalizing their status or behavior, expelling them from their families and communities, or tacitly or explicitly accepting their killing.

vs.

But there is a troubling trend here beyond the national security nonsense inherent in this silly idea. This is just the most recent example of an administration at war with people of faith in this country. Investing tax dollars promoting a lifestyle many Americas of faith find so deeply objectionable is wrong.

i am willing to believe that a texan is stupid enough to believe that speaking out against shit like this is the same as promoting homosexuality.

i just don't believe that rick perry is that stupid texan. he's a stupid texan all right, but i'm sure he's also a liar and knows the difference between condemning murder and condoning a "lifestyle". he just chooses to conflate the two to confuse other "people of faith" to vote for him.

also, what's an "America of faith"?

and finally, the most recent polls show that opinions are evenly split in the USA regarding gay marriage (which is a far cry from what the SecState was talking about: not murdering people for being gay). i don't give a crap what "Americas of faith" find objectionable. what matters is what 51% of all Americas, of faith or not, find objectionable. i think rick perry will find that he and the frothy mixture are what 51% of Americas find objectionable.

i think they cause me to overpronate, but really, wtf do i know any more? i have not yet measured but subjectively i feel that i am going quite a lot faster than on the 5fs -- but i'm also only going half as far (because for once in my life i'm behaving like a non-idiot and easing into my new shoes).

monday's run left me with pains in all the places that used to hurt when running in shoes. pains that i'd totally forgotten about once i started running barefoot (or fake barefoot). today i think i avoided most of that, but only time will tell.

overall i am very mixed about the new shoes. i feel like i've descended again into the pit of frustration that comes with finally adjusting to running in a particular shoe, only to have it go obsolete and off the market (which is exactly what happened with the 5f model i liked -- 5f's, however "unshoelike" they try to be, are still shoes).

but at the same time i can maintain some downhill speed, which i never figured out how to do in 5fs, much less truly barefoot. and on the flats, i feel faster as well. the keys to speed when running barefoot are cadence and forward leaning, but no matter how i tried i never could equal the (modest) speeds i managed with shoes.

i am fortunate that my parents encouraged me to develop my aptitude for working with computers, otherwise, i might have had to get a real job.

i managed to stumble into the riddle of steel at an early age, and though it took me a long time to learn its lessons, one thing i got right early on is that i can turn my weaknesses into strengths. or, maybe a little more accurately, i can harness the power of my bad habits, arrange them properly like pieces on a chessboard, and force myself to get better like a chess piece forces moves on the enemy.

my faults and foibles still get the better of me more often than not, but at least i'm conscious of this. and when i'm ready to do something about it, i've got the tools.

the easiest example of this is my commitment to exercise. this stems directly from my superhuman need for a routine. i don't really like spontaneity, i crave repetition. so rather than repetitiously drink beer and play video games, i channel my craving for a routine into biking, running, lifting, and hiking. et voilà, i'm in pretty good shape.

it's a neat little trick that has made me what i am today. at some fundamental level i have weaknesses that i can't get rid of. given that i'm stuck with them, why not bend them to my will?

but neither am i ready to hate my new running shoes.

since i began running again several months ago, i've been using my original 5finger KSO's, the old one-tone soled model that isn't made any longer as far as I can tell. this, of course, is my main reason for hating shoes: by the time i figure out that i like a particular shoe, it's no longer made, and i have to constantly start from scratch to find a shoe that i like.

over thanksgiving i looked at the bottom of my 5fs and found the toes had holes in them. so i switched over to my other pair, a more recent model of the KSO which has stiff, thick rubber on the bottom. i don't like the shoe very much.

also, i noticed that even in my favored 5fs, my times were so slow as to make a mockery of the term "running". back in the old days when i was young and fast, i wore regular running shoes. but i like the "fleet footed feel" of barefoot-ish running, even if i am not in fact fast. so i wanted a happy medium.

the new shoes seem to maybe be that happy medium. i don't hate them, though my feet and one knee feel a bit funny after today's short run. i guess i must get acclimated to them. i did feel faster but had no numbers to back up my feeling.

time will tell.

i bought a pair of running shoes. any second now i'm going to try them out and remember why i am the shoe hater.

is proof of the existence of a malevolent creator.

god exists, and he's an asshole. there's no evolutionary explanation for butt hair.

there haven't been a lot of ladies in my life, even counting mom and inanimate objects like silvia. but my old espresso machine gave me a lot of joy for a while, and then she sat and gathered dust.

once upon a time i asked someone what was most important in my life, what i'd run back into my burning apartment to retrieve. the answer she gave was "silvia", and while i remember that i thought this was the wrong answer, i can't remember what the right answer was, and really, if the people around me thought that was the answer, it probably was, regardless of whatever cryptic secret answer i had in mind.

i don't like selling crap on craigslist and i don't like stuff going to waste (one of these days my dislike for waste will overcome my dislike for craigslist and i'll sell some more brewing junk...).

i was lucky enough to have someone in my circle of friends that could provide a good home to silvia. in fact, i'd say she's better off with him than with me, he throws parties where she gets to perform for a crowd.

i'm fortunate that my life took a path where i could afford to buy silvia, enjoy fine espresso for a time, then find her a worthy new home when my caffeine needs changed. craigslist would have been more than just a pain, silvia might have gone to someone who wouldn't really know what to do with her.

i'm pretty sure humans are hardwired to like music. sure, we don't all like the same music, but there are damn few of us who don't like some kind of music.

i've managed never to become a musician, though i gave it the good half-assed try a couple of times. but i've always been a consumer of music, and a user of music. my whole life, i've used music as a tool: in college i'd study to music, then mentally replay the music during a test, and recall what i'd studied. it was a neat trick and it worked.

without music, i wouldn't run so far, i wouldn't enjoy my evening walks, i couldn't work, and sometimes i wouldn't be able to sleep.

i am fortunate enough to live in an era of incredible musical diversity and abundance, where people like me have ample access to a significant fraction of all the music that's ever been made, and an incredible array of technology to make that music available, in audiophile quality, pretty much anywhere, no matter how remote.

for a music lover, it's a great time to be alive.

there's a struggle going on now between greedy and otherwise useless middlemen, the makers of music, and the listeners like myself. as an optimist, i hope that this struggle will be resolved in favor of everyone but the middlemen, and hopefully within my lifetime. it is easy to view technological advancement in general as an arms race between freedom and greed/repression. in the short term, technology is developed for or twisted toward repression, but history seems to show that freedom wins out in the longer term.

in the meantime, hexstatic goes great with coffee.

on giving thanks

i always hate the period between thanksgiving and xmas. it's several weeks where i never get anything done and feel harried and stressed the whole time. i've been meaning to give it a name, and finally i have:

bonch month: n. the span of time between thanksgiving and xmas

this year i've packed bonch month full of travel, travel prep, and freezing my tuchus off. in the old days bonch month involved a lot of video games but this year i think i'm too busy. which is to say i'm not busy at all, but the enveloping insanity and busy-work-i-ness of bonch month makes me think i am.

my folks have had, and still have, a sign up in their laundry room:

  it's better to be rich and healthy
  than to be poor and sick

i've always loved that sign. i have been fortunate enough to have rich and healthy handed to me on a silver platter. i don't expect either to last forever, nor do i believe i've got the maximum level of either one. but for now, i've got what i've got and i've stopped (for now) freaking out about how either might go away at a moment's notice.

it didn't take me long to realize that good health can vanish quite suddenly, but it did take me much too long to realize that one should "don't worry, be happy" in the interim, instead of constantly assuming every cut and scrape is a vector for cancer and AIDS.

someday, like everyone else, i'm history. but for now i'm grateful that i'm not, and happy that i've got the opportunity to keep on living.

part 1

the next day was a little more straightforward. hops and i woke up, watched what passes for news on the tele, had a breakfast sans bananas, and went to her folks house to see what was happening in the world.

after a good deal of back and forth i convinced hops to go for a run before lunch, which we did. i'm very glad to be back in running shape. it takes so little to get an exercise fix when you're an uninjured runner. just some warm clothes, a pair of shoes (or not), and off you go. that's what we did, with some laps for distance. back to the hotel for a quick shower, and hops revealed her brilliant plan for lunch: dr. phil's catfish and ribs, on account of their catfish is friggin awesome and her mom doesn't eat meat on fridays.

so we packaged up the old folks and drove to dr. phil's. hops stayed outside to call our hotel in STL and cancel a night, so we could stay with her sister a bit longer. i went in with the old folks to order. i ordered two catfish plates, and then it was their turn.

"ooooh, there's nothing i can eat!" exclaimed the mother-in-law. i pointed out the catfish, which was (surprisingly) hard to see on the menu, and told her we came here just so she could have her friday fish.

"i see it, but i hate catfish!" she said. oh crap.

so, eventually we ordered three catfish plates and one side of green beans. i'm sorry to say dr. phil's ribs are not worth ordering, but the catfish is perhaps the best i've ever had, and he didn't let us down. the side of green beans was pitifully small and pathetic, but had no ham in it.

then it was back to the sister's house to hang out. Earl stopped by at some point and gave me a pair of camo hunting moccasins a-la-wal-mart, just like his. ha! very nice, and very warm. i wore them later to the funeral, as they were nicer than my flip-flops and they were greatly appreciated by all the hunters in attendance.

after an afternoon of really just hanging out, we went to a local korean food place that was surprisingly good. we had fun hanging out with the nephews. in all, a decent distraction from the stresses of the previous day, but things were not really over yet.

i'm rather glad that i got to see shpongle live. raja ram is getting old. i suspect he'll live past 100, but perhaps not. either way, i got to see him perform with simon, in the comfort of my own home town (more or less :D).