last night i listened to great music, grilled some excellent chicken and veggies with my wife, then ate it all with some literally (literally!) unbelievably good california olive oil into which we dipped some literally (literally!) believably great olive bread. once my mojo returns fully, i'll pair that meal with a fantastic california red wine, but for now, i guzzled down a hipster artisan ginger beer.
my life is filled with good stuff, and days like yesterday show it's possible to drown out the bad stuff.
i had a little help from my friends, of course. for whatever reason, months ago hops said we should watch Neil Diamond in "The Jazz Singer". It arrived the other day, and we watched it last night. When I was a kid, the folks watched that movie with me many times, and we sang the songs all the time in the car. I'm not sure if it was just the fond memories, but hops and I both agreed that Neil has an incredible voice and presence, and even though the acting was horrific and the plot silly (it sure is lucky that Jess has so many second chances! everything wonderful falls into his lap, except for his horribly unsupportive family), we enjoyed the film.
this morning, i went for a nice 5 mile run, and soon i'll have my weekly cannoli run.
it almost sounds like i've already got my mojo back. what more could i want?
]]>no small feat, that.
]]>Anyway, there was a big fake blowup yesterday when Hillary Rosen said Ann Romney's "actually never worked a day in her life." Republicans promptly clutched pearls and pulled out their smelling salts. "Why, I never!"
oh well.
edit: actually, it's not what I was going to say, but it's close. old RP missed what was bugging me.
whether or not being a stay-at-home mom is a "job", the problem that this whole pathetic episode exposes is this: we can't have a serious conversation in this knee-jerk sound-bite future of ours. hillary rosen, whom I despise for her work at the RIAA, said something very simple and clear: it's idiotic to call someone who has never held a job your economic advisor. that's all she said.
but instead of addressing this, the right wing smarties de-contexted what she said in order to enrage stay-at-home moms. and the idiots on the "left" took the bait and rather than saying "that's not what she said, your distorters", they went straight into apology mode, blah blah blah, moms work hard, etc.
it's truly pathetic. and because of how this country's media works, we can't have an actual conversation on anything, because "both sides" would rather pander than address the factual content of what anybody has said. i haven't heard anybody address the outrageousness of the obamas responding to the right wing distortions rather than addressing what was actually said. the obamas are plenty smart enough to understand the actual point rosen was making. but they'd rather pander.
it's stupid, and because our popular media engages in it, it enstupids us all.
]]>you can bet your magic underwear the president comes from a different world than the founders. we all do, willard, and it's about damned time we stopped pretending this country is frozen in the 18th century, or even the 20th.
this nation of ours has undergone a number of rather significant changes since our slave-owning founders drafted a constitution defining a representative government for land-owning white men. i'm sure that even the dullest quitter in all of alaska can name at least one (newspapers!).
i read recently that my main man and most favorite of all the founders, thomas jefferson, thought this:
this is very, very important: the world belongs to the living, not to the moribund warmongers in the halls of power. jefferson, the second most french-loving of our founding fathers (from the same letter: "This principle that the earth belongs to the living, and not to the dead, is of very extensive application and consequences, in every country, and most especially in France.") did not think our constitution and laws should be set in stone forever and unchanging, nor did he think that 5 assholes on the supreme court should get to decide how we live our lives.
now, i'm all in favor of striking down unconstitutional laws. let's start with the ones that actually directly impinge upon our freedoms. let's strike down all the laws that the SCOTUS has upheld expanding broad police powers. let's update our laws to spread freedom throughout the internet, the airwaves, and in our airports: three things that thomas jefferson never dreamed could exist, but three things the regulation of which would appall our freedom-loving founders.
in 1776, the US population was roughly 2.5 million. the challenges, freedoms, responsibilities, and daily lives of a nation of 2.5 million is drastically different than the crowded lifestyle of the current 300 million. yet we are still governed religiously by the same founding document. is it because it is such a work of revered brilliance that it has endured so long? no, not really. the founders were men, and men make mistakes. the roman empire lasted thousands of years, and THEN it was judged. our tiny little history is barely beginning, and quite possibly ending, unless we acknowledge that the needs of 300 million free americans in 2012 are dramatically different from the needs of a handful of slave-owning dirt farmers in 1776.
as healthy, free adults of wild imagination, we do not live under the same rules that governed us as children. the world changes, and we change with it, and the rules and forces that we use to arrange our life change with the situation. as a nation, we must do the same, and it must never be a mark of shame to aspire to adapt to the changing demands of life. whether you believe your grandmother was a monkey or you don't, it's eminently clear that the dinosaurs are no longer around. why not? they stubbornly refused to adapt to changing environments, and the dinosaur supreme court struck down universal health care which could have led to preventative measures to resist ash clouds.
let's not let the same thing happen to us.
(Anyways, the whole thing is ridiculous because everybody with half a brain knows that the ACA is simply Romneycare, and our president will certainly remind the lobotomites of this fact during the general election.)
]]>oh... barf, cough, bleh....
]]>having been through the PR airport twice, i can imagine PR's response to frothy's demands: "besa mi culo!" only with better spanish grammar.
not only is PR mostly bilingual, english is the backup language, used only with tourists. at least, that was my impression after 2 hours in the airport. all the signs were spanish first, with english subtitles. even with my pale skin and my not-hispanic wife, we were often addressed first in spanish, then disappointedly in english.
what's so astonishing about frothy is that he's got an uncanny ability to single out the most irrelevant issue on any topic and focus on that -- and better, rally his base around it. of all the obstacles to PR becoming a state, who teh fuck cares about the official language? how many frothy supporters have ever even been there? how many have ever left mississippi (and I don't mean to spend time in a federal pokey)?
republicans are all about state's rights, until it comes to ridiculous wedge issues. i would love to see PR join the union as a spanish-only state. i heartily support their state's right to do so.
the people I met in PR were extremely proud of their home island. I would in fact say that I've never met airport employees who were so enthusiastic about their homeland (you could tell which employees were shipped in from the mainland, they wore TSA outfits, were fat, pasty, didn't smile or speak spanish, and didn't constantly stop you to tell you how great Puerto Rico is).
What a terrible insult to the proud people of Puerto Rico. I imagine there is very little danger of them wanting to become a state, even prior to frothy's ridiculous language demands. I really don't see why PR would agree to surrender its culture in exchange for paying higher taxes, and I don't think the people of PR see any good reasons either.
We let Boston become a state, and they don't speak English there. Where's frothy on that one?
]]>That is, if we want to survive as a species. If we think that humans are just another form of pollution, then there is no reason not to haul down the flag of procreation and party until the last person turns off the lights. Which seems to be the game plan for some.
yeah dude, that's the ticket. the WHOLE FUCKING HUMAN RACE is at risk because most people in the USA use birth control. that's right, if the USA stops breeding, the human race is doomed.
because there's not 6 billion other breeders on this planet. oh no.
of course, this is thrown in for a bonus:
But when radical feminists publicly demand that their right to worry-free fornication be subsidized via a new government-enforced entitlement aggressively shoved down the throats of religious institutions in direct contravention to their principles, heedlessly trampling the First Amendment, it's time to use scorn and ridicule to fight back.
hyperbolize much?
I recall the first amendment forbidding Congress (not the president, if we want to get technical here, and why wouldn't we?) from establishing religion or limiting the free practice of religion. that was easy to look up. now, show me the part of the Catholic scriptures that says charities funded by the Pope are forbidden by God from participating in insurance plans that provide coverage for contraception.
Gee whiz, that's a bit tougher, isn't it?
Now, the United States has laws against murder, which directly infringes on the religious liberties of Satanists and Thugees, not just minor infringement by-proxy of unwritten and hitherto unmentioned "freedom of conscience". Where's the outrage in Forbes?
Anyways, government-enforced entitlements aggresively entitle me to worry-free driving on state-funded highways, worry-free eating of state-inspected eggs and milk, worry-free walking around my neighborhood without being shot, and worry-free turning on of my lights. why should my fornication involve worry? talk about spoling the mood.
edit: ah yes, in the comments the author goes on to fearfully dismiss a "socialist utopia" that "people like you" want to bring about. well, damn right i'd like to bring about utopia. utopia sounds a lot nicer than rapture or armageddon or whatever it is Forbes is rooting for (hint: in the same comment the author complains that employers should not be forced to provide healthcare. on this we agree: the government should be forced to provide it). it's clear that capitalism is incapable of bringing about utopia. in fact the stated goal of capitalism is not to bring about utopia. why is utopia not a worthy goal? by definition, it's nice. so now this guy wants to ensure we never have utopia and we must worry while fornicating. what a sad life.
]]>we were pretty sure that the coffee did not come from some allotment of unroasted coffee to sell. we're pretty sure it came from the "display" unroasted coffee that was laying around all over the plantation. yep, we suspect they went outside to the "here's how the slaves used to hull the coffee!" display, loaded up our bag, and sold it to us at a premium over their roasted coffee. we bought it anyhow.
when we got home, it took dozens of hours to remove the parchment, bean by bean, by hand. then it took a month for me to refresh my roasting skills to the point where i was confident that i would not ruin the coffee by over or underroasting. then i roasted it.
and... it sucks. it's the worst coffee i've ever had. i can't stand it. on guadeloupe they said it was the best coffee in the world, of course, and that huge coffee producers add it in small quantity to improve their blends. so that's what we tried today: a tiny amount in a proven good blend of light rwanda and dark indonesian coffees. even worse than by itself. what a horrible aftertaste. bleh.
]]>it got to the point where my 210 eventually wouldn't get satellites right outside my door, because there's a large tree and a 4 story building.
so i got a 410 from rei, fully intending to take it back if it didn't perform. well, it performs. it's fantastic as a gps watch. it gets satellite lock quickly, even when it's cloudy or an airplane passes (snort), and once it's locked, it's actually locked, in the sense that it doesn't get unlocked easily. that's great! it tells me my instantaneous speed which is a great heuristic.
but.
garmin just can't help but to suck. despite the wonderful functionality, the watch has an idiotic, inexplicable, totally avoidable design flaw: it will run itself down. i think i am not alone in the running community as being NOT a daily runner. that means my gps watch will have stretches of downtime -- if i'm traveling, or just don't feel the need for a watch, those stretches may exceed two weeks. so i would expect that a dingus designed for running, which KNOWS when it's been immobile for two days, would turn itself off. but no, instead, it will merrily eat up its own battery and THEN, when i am ready to go out for a run, i grab my ridiculously expensive gps watch only to discover it's unusable.
great.
so, why not just power it down after each run?
aha! what a great idea! the watch has two buttons and a "we're so clever!" touchscreen type interface. no amount of button presses will power the watch down. no, instead, i have to long-press the screen to get to the menu. then i have to swipe to "settings". then swipe more to "system". then swipe more to "shut down". THEN i have to press one of the two buttons. and then i have to swipe, and press the button AGAIN to confirm shutdown!
that required reading the manual, and i bet i'll have to re-read it next time.
it's the stupidest design possible, and it wouldn't even matter if garmin hadn't stupidly made the thing a battery suicide machine.
]]>Fight your little battles,
Join in thickest fray
For the Greater Glory,
Of Dis-Cord-I-A!
i remember being a windows user and seeing not a single reason to move past windows XP. as a mac user, i now see no reason to get involved with the iphone-ification of my PC. i realize that at some point i will no longer have a choice. that'll be a sad day, because i'll be too old and tired to put up with the bullshit of running linux, and i can't ever go back to windows. i wonder what i'll do? perhaps quit computers altogether. or maybe go work from apple and fix things from the inside (ha ha ha).
]]>- Michel de Motaigne
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