Lugnut

2009-01-16T13:59:00.000-06:00

I've been walking the 2.5 miles to and from work lately. With temperatures dropping below -20°F, I've taken to doubling up all of my cold weather acoutrements. Wool socks inside boots, gloves worn inside big wool mittens, and a stocking cap under a hoodie under the down-lined hood of my jacket. Every weathered Minnesotan knows that the secret to living in the cold is to dress in layers. It has worked so well for me that when I go outside with this kit it feels like a 85° where I've just come inside and positioned my face in front of the AC. Except in this case the AC is -60° with wind chill factored in.

Tits Up News

Two big items of tits up news today:

Circuit City has announced that it is closing its remaining stores. No big surprise because they were on extremely shaky ground heading into the holiday season, but this is the first in what will surely be a long line of retail failures we'll witness this year.

Segway—not really tits up yet, but I want to get a preemptive strike in on the exceedingly expensive scooters. Get a damn bike, fatasses! (link to CNN story)

Buyshit Elves Profiles: the Heroes of the Buyshit Season #2

2008-12-23T11:02:00.000-06:00

Here is the second installment of the Elves profiles. This time we learn about Sharon Lundegard, a fatass who sells craft shit at malls.

Name:Sharon Lundegard
Hometown:Fridley, Minnesota, USA

Background:
Oh nothin' much, I just grew up on a farm down by Albert Lea. I got married 12 years ago and moved to the big city with my husband Greg. Now we have two boys, 11 and 12, and a cockapoo. I got into craftin' when I was pregnant with my first. My mother would bring over some supplies and we'd watch the baby and make ornaments and things.

What Do You Make?
Oh lotsa things. Every Christmas I look through the magazines for ideas and then go to the store to get some supplies. This year I made cute little Rudolph ornaments out of pretzels, pipe cleaners, little bells, and red candies. I sell those for $1 each at the craft shows. I also made some nativity scenes out of Chex Mix, craft moss, wood shacks that Greg made out in the garage, and little plastic figures. Those ones are $12 but I lose money on them. Most of the stuff I make I lose money on, but it keeps me busy.

What Is Your Job Like?
I love it. Me and the girls get together to sell our wares at Northtown and its a hoot! I shouldn't be tellin' ya this but there's one woman who sells there, I can't repeat what we call her here, but every year she steals our ideas and we see her selling them for less than us. Ooh it just burns me up. So this year Greg took a dried up poop from our dog Skeeter and glued it on some Ritz crackers with some little "Noel" sequins and then I snuck 'em into her Chex Mix nativity scene that some lady bought. The lady came back and yelled at her and she thought her kids did it. It was the funniest thing when Amber the Dumb Sow (oops that's what we call her) went over to the KB Toys where her kids were playin' and started yellin' "who put the poop in my nativity scene?" but she was saying the s-word where I said 'poop.' I don't know maybe we were too mean to her but she deserved it.

What Do You Do for Fun?
Besides craftin'? Watch TV.

Thank you Sharon for sharing your story with us!

Buyshit Elves Profiles: the Heroes of the Buyshit Season

2008-12-19T13:59:00.003-06:00

With the Buyshit season nearly at an end, I thought it would be appropriate to profile some of the underappreciated elves who make it all possible. If it were not for their hard work, we would not awake this coming Christmas morning to a plethora of goodies under the tree. Here is the first installment of Buyshit Elves Profiles: the Heroes of the Buyshit Season.

Name: Weidong Liu
Hometown: Foshan, Republic of China

Background:
I started as an agrarian worker at a factory farm outside of the small southern Chinese city Foshan. In 2006, I moved my wife and son to Guangzhou to seek a better life in one of the city's growing number of factories. There, I found work at Guangzhou BYD, Ltd., a plastics molding company in Guangzhou Industrial Park, where I remain employed to this day.

What Do You Make?
I don't really know what this shit is. Guangzhou BYD is a contract injection molding and assembly company. Most of our shit is exported to the USA. Actually, I have a funny story about that. I was working a line where we would make these clear plastic apparatuses that look like test tubes. I would imagine scientists in the USA mixing chemicals in them and inventing amazing things. I wanted to go to the USA to work with them. One day I was goofing around, wearing my white factory worker smock and some safety goggles and pretending to mix chemicals in two of the tubes. The guys started laughing at me, but after I stopped the joke the laughing didn't stop. All day they were teasing me and giggling behind my back. So the next day I come in and they're still laughing. I didn't get it. Finally my buddy Changye put me out of my misery. He was walking a stack of pallets back to the shipping dock and when he passed my station he leaned over to me and said, "it's for your pecker, dude." I was so embarrased. I looked on one of the packages and saw the silhouette of a sexy man and woman and realized it was some kind of sex toy. I later found out they call it a "penis pump." That is supposedly what the package says, but I don't know English. Anyway, I was embarrassed but I laugh about it now.

What Is Your Job Like?
It beats the farm job I had before. Sometimes I just don't get it though. I mean, I can go home and fuck my wife and I don't need a special pump or a thing stuck in my ass. But if someone somewhere in the world wants the shit I make so they can get off, I will continue to make it. We're making these things now where there's this rubbery shit with glitter suspended inside. I work the glitter injector. I don't know what it is for, they say they are called butt plugs. What the fuck is a butt plug? I drink tea to unplug my butt, so why would I want to plug it with a glitter thing? So I can drink more tea? I tried searching the internet to see butt plugs or penis pumps in action, but the government blocks all the sites that would have that sort of thing. I took some butt plugs home to see if my wife had any ideas, and she just gave them to my son and he chews on them. I hope they don't have lead paint on them, but I'm sure the government would warn us if they did.

What Do You Do for Fun?
Before I got the job at the factory, I liked riding my bicycle and painting. I also liked to take my son to the carousel in the city. Now I mostly just work late and watch TV.

Thank you Weidong for sharing your story with us!

2008-12-03T09:46:00.000-06:00

Have you ever wondered what the world would be like if the Macintosh had turned out to be the dominant PC platform? To get an idea, take a look at the situation with the iPhone. Its proponents are unable to see the faults in the product. Every new phone that comes along gets compared to the iPhone and invariably fails the test. And iPhone owners seem to have this air of superiority about them. What we end up with is a nice phone with a slick interface and a user base that is so smug that it turns me off to the product. Thankfully there is no single dominant player in the cell phone OS field. Can you imagine what we would have to endure if the iPhone held a majority market share?

With the way the world seems to be going tits up lately, I feel bad being negative about anything. I am usually optimistic about things and I like to look at troubling situations as opportunities for improvement. But yesterday I read a trajic story in the StarTribune. It was about an elderly woman who was hit by a car near her home in Northeast Minneapolis. As if that isn't bad enough, the really tragic part is the reaction from the woman who hit her: "The driver, a 46-year-old Minneapolis woman, stopped after she 'heard a thud,' according to a police report." I can't help but imagine someone yackin' on a cell phone or munching on some potatoes and lard. I spend a lot of time walking and biking, and I notice a lot of people doing things other than focusing on their driving. With as clueless as most people are about how cars, gas mileage, and traffic actually work, it is further insult that they don't devote enough of their attention to driving. And so I am going to conclude that the elderly woman died because someone wasn't paying enough attention. That makes me sad, and I decided that I am going to pay extra attention to cars when I am out walking because I don't trust them any more.

Tits Up News: Kick 'em When Their Tits Are Up

It is a bit premature to be calling tits up on Chrysler, but after reading a Jalopnik report on their "bridge loan" proposal I can't help but extrapolate a path to their ultimiate demise. To recap Chrysler's recent history, the company was bought by an investment firm named Cerberus in 2007. If you read between the lines in what CEO Bob Nardelli outlines as the company's recent accomplishments, you might summarize that he has cut costs and positioned the company for resale at a profit, as investment firms often attempt to do.

The problem is that in the middle of their plan, the auto industry really, truly has gone tits up. Chrysler is a ship lost at sea. There are no substantive product plans for the next couple of years. I have no doubt that Cerberus had intended to sell Chrysler off, either as a whole or as its individual parts: Dodge, Chrysler, and Jeep.

Sadly, I don't think it is worth saving. The Chrysler brands have been tarnished and the current lineup doesn't really make sense. I say let it go. Even if the government gives them an $11 billion bridge loan, the company could still fail. Or Cerberus could try to take the money and run. There are too many automotive marques in the world and this one is not worth $11 billion. Let Chrysler fail.

Johnny the Farting Bear

2007-08-31T13:00:00.000-05:00

"Flism flasm," said Bill Cosby. Here's something a little more inspiring than the last post:

Top 5 worst sports injuries:

Missing ear

Strained nut (British: dead nut)

Rotated knee cap

Deflated anterior cheek

Beckman hair

So I was biking home a week after the bridge collapse, and I'm in a traffic lane dedicated to cars turning right. There was a Minneapolis cop directing traffic at the intersection because there were so many cars. I was behind a car in the lane, and there was a car behind me. I do this so the car in front can see where I am and not turn in front of me, a strategy that I think drivers appreciate. Anyway, the car in front turned, I advanced to the front, and I moved to the left so the car behind could turn behind me. Instead, I hear the blip of a police siren and a Hennepin County deputy guy (read: not a cop) pulls up next to me. He lectured me about being in the turn lane and told me to get over in the straight lane. Before I could respond, he pulled away. So I yelled "jackass" at him, and the people in the other cars heard it. Let me tell you, I try to give cops the benefit of the doubt because I know they have a stressful job, but it sure felt good calling the fake county cop a jackass. I hope he heard me too, because a fake cop has no business being an asshole. Armed with the knowledge that county cops don't really have any authority, I'll probably be more bold if one of them ever tries that shit again.

At least once a month, I get that stupid song "when the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's amore" song stuck in my head. Every time, it degenerates to "sleighbells ring, ding-a-ling-a-ling, that's amore," like a weird fusion of the Christmas song and the amore song. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it.

All rules are negotiable. If someone tells you it can't be done, they are lying. Your cell phone company can reverse charges. The guy at the government office can pretend you got your papers in on time. You can feed the mogwai after midnight. It is all in how liberally you interpret the rules, and of course how prepared you are to deal with the consequences. But people who stand behind rules and say "no" should loosen their grip on their Bible or their copy of Mother Jones magazine and live a little. Or at least get the fuck out of my way.

When I was in 4th grade, I invented the word "dickslap." No one believes me. It is possible that it was invented independently of me and prior to my discovery, but the fact is I invented it and my own utterance was the first I and several of my friends had ever heard. This was probably around February of 1980. I distinctly remember sitting in Mrs. Banbury's class and telling my friend Chris Dirksz he was a dickslap. If anyone can prove that dickslap was invented prior to this, please speak up now. Otherwise, I will take credit.

2007-08-31T11:22:00.001-05:00

I don't know if I can post here any more. I want to, but I can't get my head straight any more. I don't think I have the energy.

Something I've learned in the last few months is how important it is to have a support structure in your life. I've always been one to support other people and rely on myself, but lately the burdens of life have been so great that it has become a chore for me just to care for my basic needs. I can't support myself any more, and I feel like I have no one to turn to any more.

It got really bad last week when I met with city officials over an addition project I am proposing for my house. People with nothing better to do than whine and get in the way managed to derail the meeting, and the city denied me permission to construct the addition. It is a fucking box that is attached to the side of my house, how hard does this have to be? Anyway, I went home and fumed for a while, the stress overwhelming me. I decided to take it out on my lawn. As I was outside pushing the lawn mower across the rows of weeds and grass, ready to hurl the lawn mower at some undeserving inanimate object, I looked up and my neighbor was standing there.

He asked me how the meeting went, and he doesn't know it but his words snapped me back to sanity. He was seriously interested in how it went, and after I told him how bad it was he was sympathetic. It turns out he had gone through a similar bureaucratic mess a few years earlier. He offered me some documentation to help my cause, and later his wife offered to attend meetings in support of my case if it would help. I told them how thankful I was just that they were supportive, because up to that point everyone I had worked with had put obstacles in my path.

It is amazing, but just as I was ready to give up and sell everything and move to a cave somewhere, someone talked me back to reality. And they were just being their kind selves. And thanks to them I started formulating my next move instead of giving up on myself.

2007-04-04T14:28:00.000-05:00

Today on my way to work I saw a dude wearing those old stone washed type of jeans that had the elastic bands at the ankles. Then I saw another dude wearing a Hard Rock Cafe jacket. Then I had a premonition that the band Glass Tiger was planning a reunion.

When I sat down at my desk and started reading email, one of the messages was a cc from a co-worker who always accidentally addresses this guy named Doug as "Dough." It is hilarious because she's done it a few times, as in "Dough, I've gone ahead and installed blah blah blah..."

I sued this tire distributor down in Rochester, Minnesota because he had refused to pay me $250 on a warranty claim I had made after having agreed to pay twice. It was a big clusterfuck the way it all ended up down in Rochester, when the shitheads at Cooper Tire and Rubber should have been the ones to pay. After acting really angry and agressive for 15 minutes, the distributor guy finally agreed to pay me $250 and deal with Cooper through his company channels. I don't know why I am bringing it up here, other than to have another chance to get a dig in on the shitheads at Cooper Tire. Defective tires can cause loss of life if they fail at highway speeds. I don't think many people really consider how important the rubber on their cars is. Apparently Cooper Tire feels it is a risk worth taking, given the treatment I received when I tried to get them to act. I'll never take tire purchases lightly again.

It cost me about $100 to file in Olmsted County conciliation court if you include fees and gas money. So I am ahead on it in the end, but I think I will just donate the $250 to some cause like an animal charity.

2007-04-02T15:46:00.000-05:00

Today I learned that the long hose that firefighting helicopters with onboard tanks use to suck up water is called the "donkey dick." Obviously the name comes from the appearance of the hose, but I tried to come up with an acronym for it. There was an interview on the radio this morning where the interviewee pronounced the acronym WRFA as "werfa." It reminded me of how some people pronounce all acronyms as words while others do only if it sounds good. I'm sure the guy got tired of saying W-R-F-A all the time and had to switch to werfa, but he sounded kinda dorky. He sounded like he was trying to warn everyone in the room that he was about to fart or something. Anyway, so what does DONKEYDICK stand for?

The best I could do was DNKEDC - Dirigible Nautical Kit for Extinguishing Delinquent Campfires. Usage example: If it weren't for the donkey dick, our vacation would have been ruined.

Perhaps you can do better...

Speaking of acronyms, the latest TITSUP (Tantalizing Information Tidbit on a Sad, Unfortunate Passing) news is about Pope John Paul II, who went tits up about two years ago. It seems he is on the fast track to sainthood, in part because of a miracle that was attributed to his buried corpse. Some nun prayed to him and found herself cured of parkinson's disease. Now there is a dossier about it and committee meetings to discuss the beatification and canonization of the former pope. WTF? A miracle? If there is such a formal process with dossiers and shit for canonizing people as saints, does it include investigation into the validity and feasibility of the claims? What if they make him a saint and she gets her parkinson's back? Shit, I'm going to start praying to the tits up pope to see if my hair will grow back.

To All the Girls I've Loved Online Before

2007-03-26T15:20:00.000-05:00

It was something like two years ago that I appeared in a feature in a women's magazine called Jane Magazine. The feature was about single men you would not mind taking to meet your parents or something. They had a web site set up where I went and answered a few questions about myself and uploaded a picture. I didn't know for sure at the time what they were going to do with the information, but I figured it was for something like that.

I first heard about the article when a receptionist at my place of work exclaimed to me as I walked by, "you're in my magazine!" Over the following few weeks, I would get emails from various women, starting from US addresses and then the Caribbean, Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Pacific, in that order. Many of the messages were from women looking for a husband, but I got one from a local writer who wanted to meet for drinks. We did, and she was cool, but nothing came of it.

I thought I had received the last of the messages about a year ago when I got something from a Nigerian woman, but a week ago I got another message. This on was from a Filipino woman and she wrote a long message about herself and how she would like to get to know me. How bizarre, two years after the original publication people are still finding copies of that thing.

All told, I would estimate that I got about 30 messages from women who read about me in the magazine. I responded to a few of them until I figured out they were mostly unsatisfied with themselves and didn't really have a lot to say.

2007-03-21T14:32:00.000-05:00

I made a poster for a retirement party for a mythical retirement beast named Gladys and hung several copies at work. The idea was that I would be at the cafeteria on the day of the party and see people coming in looking for cake and punch. I was there, but I didn't see anyone looking for cake. I did see a few people looking at the posters during the day with a "WTF?" look on their faces, though. A copy of the poster is below.

2007-02-22T12:28:00.000-06:00

Sometimes a good samwidge really hits the spot. I particularly enjoy the Quiznos bin 83 sauce, too.

Tits Up News: This isn't really "news" so much as it is "olds." Two years ago, Interstate Bakeries filed chapter 11 bankruptcy. IB is the company famous for making Hostess brand products such as Wonder Bread and Twinkies and Dolly Madison Brand products such as Zingers. As of January this year, the company is still in bankruptcy, however. So maybe this is just temporary tits up.

I remember as a kid watching the Peanuts cartoon specials on TV and they were always sponsored by Dolly Madison's Zingers brand snack cakes. Zingers always seemed exotic to me because for some reason my parents only ever got us Twinkies. And Twinkies, as I remember them, kinda sucked. Zingers had the delicious frosting and the cake had a more dense, interesting texture.

Someone once asked me which future technology I thought could benefit humankind the most. My answer was cheap space travel, accessible to the masses. The reason I think it would be the greatest benefit is because of the humbling effect it would have on people as they looked back at the Earth from space. To see it from afar, as the place from where you came, and to see the blackness of space in the other direction, it must be such a humbling experience. I know that wasn't the intent of the question. I know they were looking for something more like "solara powered cars so people can go anywhere without using gas." But if we could go to space, I think there would be a lot fewer assholes (myself included) in the world.

I watch developments in commercial space travel for this reason. Tickets cost $100,000 and there haven't even been any flights yet, but I hope this is just the start. I hope to see $1000 space flights in my lifetime. When I am 65 and retired, I think I will forego the RV and take a space flight instead.

2007-02-14T14:54:00.000-06:00

I believe that, with the increase we've seen in the number of sexual predators and sex offenders in this country, it is time we elevate their status. From now on, these people should be referred to as sex pests. The new term is less offensive, so it recognizes their growing contributions to our society.

Isn't it amazing how far the Bush administration has fallen? Without the partisan yes-men controlling Congress, may we actually see some progress in this country after six years of backward slide? So much of this country has gone tits up, it will take a long time to reverse the trend.

It's funny, it seems like there is a retirement party going on at my place of work every other week. I've never worked at a place with so many retirees. Nothing against them individually, but I think it is hurtful to an organization to have such homogeniety. I'm 36, and I'm one of the youngest people here. If I stick it out long enough, I'll be running this place. Then I'll hire a diverse workforce.

The Ol' In and Out

2007-01-08T09:12:00.000-06:00

When President Bush publicizes his plan for moving ahead in Iraq this week, it will not include a plan for full near- or long-term troop withdrawal. There is a historical precedent for this. The US still maintains a military presence in Germany, Japan, and South Korea 50 years or more after their respective conflicts ended.

I don't believe there ever was an intent for withdrawal. With the dubious reasons given for the initial invasion and occupation, it is obvious that there was a hidden motive. As I have written before, none of the reasons cited by the President stand up to scrutiny. He wanted an excuse to establish a military presence in the Middle East.

The Korean conflict is the closest example to Iraq. It was an imperialistic war and it was fought internal to that nation. In that example, it took 40 years for political stability to take root and democracy to take hold. And technically the Korean conflict is still taking place. There is no peace treaty between the North and South, only a suspension of hostilities.

Iran could be seen as the North Korea to Iraq. At least in the US's imperialistic view, a military presence will more than likely be maintained in Iraq to balance Iran's power in the region. Iraq is a back door to influencing power in the region for the United States.

2007-01-05T10:26:00.000-06:00

Why is it that every "jam band" station on the internet uses the phrase "eclectic rock" in its description? I go looking for eclectic rock and I find bullshit. Fucking jam band bullshit has somehow been eking out a genre status for itself, even though it sucks.

I work in IT, and I've tried over the years to keep my passwords secure and safe. Yet the concern with security with most administrators of late has caused a trend that is making it harder for people to have good passwords. My really strong 15-character password takes a back seat to my eight-character junk password that I rotate through all of the systems that enforce changes every few months.

Password policies are constantly being made more restrictive in the belief that more complicated passwords are harder to crack. Of course this is true to some extent, but the complicated rules tend to discourage users from using anything but the bare minimum password.

Start requiring password changes every three months and it gets worse. There are password policies that do not permit reuse of old passwords in later forced changes. There are policies that require the new password to differ from the old by some minimum number of digits. The result is that users devise the simplest, easiest to remember scheme to get by. They find ways to minimize the pain of having to devise a new password that meets the requirements every three months.

Take your kid's name, add a "1" to the end, and increment the number each time you change it. Add a period or an exclamation point. Use a "0" in place of an "o." Do whatever to get the stupid warning to go away. If you forget which ridiculous combination you used last, call the helpdesk. Some helpdesks don't even ask for identifying information, which leaves open the possibility for the password hackers we are trying to discourage to call and get a password reset for someone else.

IT administrators don't seem to understand that password crackers know all the tricks people use to obscure words in their passwords. The password "Angela1" is identical to "4n9e1a1" to a password cracker. It is no secret that people use "4" for "A," "9" for "g," and so on. So the efect of the password policy is to cause hardship for the users but provide nothing in terms of increased security.

IT Security is about prevention and mitigating risks. An argument could be made for adding complexity to password schemes to make the task of hacking passwords more difficult and more time consuming. I question, however, if the payoff for these policies is greater than the amount of headache it causes for people.

The biggest threat to computer security isn't weak passwords, it is human error. It is leaving sensitive data on a laptop that gets stolen. It is with users writing passwords on a post-it note and putting it under their keyboard. It is with people sharing passwords or information over the phone that can be used to gain access to a system. Complicated password policies encourage users to be lax on all of these things.

Delicious Poop

2006-12-18T21:10:00.000-06:00

Today on the bus ride home, I witnessed something that was so brilliant I didn't recognize it at first. It was a meeting of minds where the individuals were complete nincompoops but somehow as a collective they represented pure genius. It was a scenario of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.

I sat in the front row of the seats that face forward (as opposed to the ones that have their backs against the sides of the bus) and I watched events unfold.

The bus driver was stout, if not chubby, and he had a big ol' beard and long hair that blended together so that they appeared as a single mass of hair, like Santa's shitass hair. Except this guy's Santa "mane" was pepper-colored. (Fuck pepper-colored.)

The bus pulls up to a stop and three people get on. The first is a woman with two bags of groceries and she can barely get her big butt up the steps. She's all bundled up but I can tell she's got to be in her 60's. She's sporting lovely tight purple spandex pants and no doubt she's got some 'gina action going for anyone unfortunate enought to be sitting across from her.

The other two getting on are men in their 50's, like the bus driver. One is cackling about scrooge to the bus driver and both he and the bus driver bust out laughing. The second man is waiting behind the first babbling "merry Christmas" like he's fucking Santa Claus.

All three people sat in the side-facing seats, but it was clear to me that none of them was traveling together. Somehow these clowns all happened to be in the same place at the same time. The scrooge guy, clad in giant blue coverall jeans from the Fleet Farm, continues talking to the bus driver. I hear the bus driver talking about Jared, the Gallery of Diamonds. This is where the genious begins.

Bussy suggests to Scrooge that he should go to Jared's to buy his Christmas gifts. Scrooge knows the game and starts talking like the people in the diamond commercial. He's saying crap like, "I shoulda gone to Jared." Bussy is eating it up. He says all he's getting for Christmas is a lump of coal, but maybe if he had Superman power he could compress the coal into a diamond.

That little exchange itself was worth the ride, but then Bussy and Scrooge move on to Superman and how ridiculous it was that Superman would compress coal and it would turn out as a perfectly cut diamond. The topic eventually morphed to Westerns and the other two folks started joining in. Suddenly I realized that I was witnessing a mobile roundtable discussion of the history and culture of Westerns.

It was the sort of meeting of minds that reminded me of a story you might see in the New York Times, like a hypothetical story about Paul McCartney and John Lennon writing songs together, or a recounting of the "Miracle on Ice," or an article about the early years of Apple or Sun Microsystems or Hewlett Packard. This setting, however, was too simple and Midwestern for the Times.

Bussy, Smoke on the Water, Scrooge, and Lumberjack Santa brought the bus to life with their insightful discussion of Westerns, old and new, and racial and political issues. Bussy and Scrooge were clearly leading the discussion, but Smoke on the Water showed her wisdom by interjecting bits of knowledge and inane insight. Lumberjack Santa was the quiet thinker of the group, but his presence fortified the mental tower that the four were constructing in that place. His articulations of "yes" and "hehehe" were flaming balls of dung aimed at the doubting minds of the other passengers on the bus.

Before I got off the bus, the roundtable had imparted me with the following gems: 1) 1950's Westerns were innaccurate and racist because they portrayed Native Americans as idiots; 2) at least 50% of all cowboys were black, but no Westerns are realistic enough to show black cowboys; 3) Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven is probably the best western ever, and if it is Eastwood's last Western it is a good one to have as the last one.

BTW, I watched the Star Wars trilogy (the episode IV-VI one) out of boredom this weekend and I have discovered the beauty of Princess Leia. I never thought it too much before but she was gorgeous!

2006-12-07T12:52:00.000-06:00

I love food. Yesterday I scored some "Masala Munch" from an Indian grocery. It is actually a product made by Frito Lay called Kurkure. It is precisely the same thing as Cheetos except it has masala seasoning instead of globs of greesy cheese crap. It was quite tasty.

On the back is listed the other available flavors: Red Chilli Chatka, Green Chutney Rajasthani Style, and Tamatar Hyderabadi Style. It reads, "The perfect combo for chai-time masti with the entire family, now in an all new pack." Sounds sorta like a chai-drinking masturbation festival with the whole family. Of course, the picture on the back has the mother figure holding a bowl of Masala Munch with the dad and kids reaching eagerly for handfuls.

2006-12-06T13:54:00.000-06:00

I made an apple crisp and whipped cream sandwich and it was delish! I threw the sweet potato leftovers out because they had some weird juice forming in the container and I don't really care for sweet potatoes anyway. So no sweet potato sandwich.

Candy is a treat. Please consume in moderation.

Speaking of candy, I went to Rainbow Foods to get a half gallon of milk and some bread and walked out with a bag full chips and pizzas and stuff. They put fucking junk food at every turn in those stores. You can help but be tempted by treats. I never really noticed it before, but since I switched to shopping at a small co-op the junk food thing at supermarkets really stands out to me now. No wonder there are so many fat Gladyses who can barely walk in this country.

Another funny thing I saw on TV recently was about how children's cereal boxes have the characters looking down. Adults never notice it, but kids walk up to the shelves, look up, and see these frogs, tigers, and elves with big eyes looking down at them. It's hilarious to think about it. Just think what could be done to sell crack and guns to kids with that tactic. Imagine a Catholic priest drawing a face with big eyes on his special area to entice the little boys!

2006-11-29T11:32:00.000-06:00

I've been making sandwiches out of Thanksgiving leftovers. I started with turkey, but added Busha Browne's Jamaican Jerk rub to jack it up a notch. Last night I made a pumpkin pie with whipped cream sandwich. It was decent. There's a container of apple crisp, some whipped cream, and sweet potatoes still to go, so I'll report back on those. And hey, if you think this is ridiculous maybe you've never seen the sandwich offerings in a British convenience store.

I switched to a different department at my employer in the last month or two. With that, the fact that I am enrolled in a master's degree program, and a laundry list of quarrels with friends and city inspectors and people who seem only to want to make life harder for no reason at all, posting here has not been a priority. It is hard to be inspired when the only thing going through your mind is "fuck this" and "fuck that."

Memo to the night cleaning or security person who has been enjoying my cubicle while I am away, just in case you happen to be reading: when you play with the c. 1962 squeaky toy plastic cat with bobbing eyelids that is on my desk, please return it to where you found it when done. When you are done using my phone, please return it to the position in which you found it. And don't use that Sun Microsystems note pad. Bring your own fucking paper. Lastly, I hope you enjoy the tacks I am putting on the chair when I leave tonight.

2006-10-10T14:19:00.000-05:00

I started a new job a week ago - same company, different department - and now I am in a place where I swear I am on the young side of the age dispersion. Most of the people here are within 10 years of retiring, and some have been working at this place for 30, 35, even 40 years. It makes me wonder what happens when they all retire, with there be a hiring rush?

I guess if I had to describe how the new place compares to the old, imagine a Snickers™ Bar. Each bite is packed with peanuts, nougat, and creamy caramel. The new place is like that except the creamy caramel is actually hard, like dog poop that has been baking in the sun for a couple of weeks. At the old place, the caramel actually was dog shit.

Speaking of candy, when I am in the mood to "taste a rainbow of fruit flavors™," the three candies that could satiate my craving are Skittles®, Starburst™, and Jolly Ranchers®. I would choose Jolly Ranchers almost every time over the chewy bullshit.

2006-09-21T13:05:00.000-05:00

I've been thinking a lot lately about the hypothetical single welfare mother of eight. In a Darwinian sense, her reproductive foresight is what will save humanity when armageddon arrives.

Think about it, she fucks a lot of guys and then the guys ditch her when they find out she is pregnant. The dudes she fucks may have diverse backgrounds and traits that will be passed along to their offspring. This is where the real power of the hypothetical single welfare mother of eight comes in. Through the diversity of her offspring, she increases the odds of survival of the human race.

"Survival of the fittest" isn't just about passing along the single traits that are most effective for survival. There is no way we can predict how the end of civilization will come to pass. It could be a meteor, or nuclear war, or global warming. It is through diversity of our population that we can assure there will be enough people with the right combination of traits to pull the human race through the crisis. By spreading out the gene pool we are increasing the odds that, in the face of any disaster, there will be people on hand who are able to cope.

It is high time the government revisit the issue of welfare reform. We need to be subsidizing the hypothetical single welfare mother of eight so she can spend less time working and more time fucking. Next time you meet a hypothetical single welfare mother of eight, be sure to thank her for fucking so much.

The Marginalization of the Progress Meter

2006-09-06T13:03:00.000-05:00

Back in the late 80's, when using computers was fun, I remember installing software on my Amiga 500 and a progress meter would keep me informed as to the current state of completion of the installation routine. That was when progress meters were "progress meters" and wizards were characters in games.

Recently I've had the pleasure of installing or uninstalling a number of different pieces of software on various computers: Intellisync on a workstation at work, DSL software on my parents' computer, and Windows updates on my work PC. The fucking progress meter is useless. With Intellisync, the meter reaches 100% several times before it is actually done. With the DSL software, it went through two cycles during an uninstall and then there was a long pause with no progress meter while the hard disk was still churning away. And with Windows update I got a progress meter for downloading and then another for installing, but the one for installing didn't start moving until several seconds had passed. Progress meters suck shit.

Clearly the progress meter is a useless tool in software installations these days. It has become a requirement for all software installers, but the reason for this is lost.

A progress meter should start as soon as the "install" or "start" button is clicked. It should indicate the relative amount of time for an installation to complete. There should be one and only one progress meter for all installations, with individual steps of the installation using only a proportionate share of the meter. And lastly, it should hit 100% at the moment that the installation is done, not ten seconds before and not before any final summary pages are displayed.

Watching a progress meter is like watching water boil; it takes forever because you seem to be hanging on each little blip of progress. With progress meters, unlike boiling water, sometimes you have to watch it five times before it is done. If they have to be so irrelevant, stick a fucking game or a movie on there.

2006-09-05T10:16:00.000-05:00

I stole a tomato from my neighbor's garden and ate it. Then, to complete the cycle, I shat in their flower bed.

There were no al Qaeda operatives in Iraq when Saddam was in power. The President has no right to take credit for capturing al Qaeda people in Iraq when he is responsible for creating the conditions that brought them there.

When Saddam gassed the Kurds, killing 10-30,000 people, the Reagan Administration featuring Donald Rumsfeld looked the other way. Why does Rumsfeld have a woody for getting rid of Saddam now, almost twenty years later?

One thing I hate in life: opening and closing curtains and windows. There is hope. From CNet News, an article about OLED lighting and, specifically, windows made out of OLEDs. "By day, it would function like a regular clear plastic window. Flick a switch and it becomes a light fixture. Besides the novelty factor, the transparent window could cut energy costs by switching dynamically when sunlight will suffice."

You Will Have Soccer, and You Will Like It!

2006-08-29T23:02:00.000-05:00

Soccer, I am convinced, has the potential in this country to equal, if not surpass, football in popularity. That is quite a claim to make, I know. But if it were possible to buy sports futures, I would put all my money into soccer.

Dig a bit deeper, past the arguments about beautiful game vs. sissy sport. There are some things that soccer can claim in the USA that no other spectator sport can claim, and in many cases will never be able to claim.

Big on this list is growth in internationalism and the role that technology plays. The cultures of the world are coming closer together, whether the American xenophobe or the Muslim fundamentalist cares to believe it. Communication and transportation are changing the world. People are connecting all over. And people all over love soccer.

In the business world, it is becoming necessity to build connections abroad in order to open up new markets, create international partnerships, and gain access to resources and labor. Television programs, music, and movies from other countries are more and more common in the US. It is hard to imagine these business and cultural connections developing without soccer sneaking in.

Elsewhere in the sporting world, American leagues are setting up shop in foreign countries both as a way to develop players and to develop new fans and markets. With limited success, MLB has set up in Mexico, the Caribbean and Japan, the NFL in Mexico and Europe, and the NBA and NHL in Europe. Whether it be setting up a full fledged league, marketing team gear, or hiring international talent, these leagues see the business need for connecting abroad.

The fact is, in the US we are doing what we have always done: absorbing foreign cultures into our own and exporting the result back to the home countries. This process has been accelerated by internet and communication technologies. It should be no surprise then that soccer is becoming more prominent in everyday American life.

A second big claim that soccer can make pertains to youth participation. Kids love all sports, of course, but the fact that soccer has risen to the top in terms of participation indicates that there is a whole generation of young people coming into their own who have at least a familiarity with the sport. With that, the claim that soccer is for foreigners can be laid to rest. The marketing problem of trying to teach Americans a game that they don't know or understand has vanished. Sports journalists who have been dissing soccer for the past 30 years are having their last hurrah now because they realize they are dinosaurs. The future is with the youth.

American youth are increasingly exposed to soccer through cultural and student exchange programs at schools and universities, television, music, and movies, and friends who come from another country or whose parents come from another country. Strangely, it almost seems that some people believe that companies will ignore soccer and continue to market traditional American values such as baseball and the fucking Hardy Boys to kids. On the contrary, companies will increasingly see soccer as a gateway to connecting with those valuable demographics, teens and young adults.

The growth curve of soccer in the US is not a linear trajectory. Technology will play a big role in the growth of soccer, and the rate of change in technology is exponential. As technology makes it easier for people to watch, talk, and share, for companies to more finely tune their products to customers, and for new niches to be discovered, the vast diversity of the soccer world is perfectly poised to take advantage. What seemed like a miniscule trickle of interest in soccer back in the 60's will accelerate to a flood in the coming years.

2006-08-16T10:50:00.000-05:00

I hope no one ever invents solid explosives. This business about liquid explosives on airplanes has got my undies in a bunch. Just imagine what would happen if someone came up with solid explosives that could be put inside a laptop battery or something. They'd have to ban all carry-on luggage. I think people would just stop flying and the airline industry would go tits up.

Speaking of tits up, my lawn mower went tits up last night as I was mowing my sidewalk. There are so many weeds in the cracks in my sidewalk that I have to mow the shit. So the wheel came loose and kinda turned sideways, thus inhibiting the forward motion of the mower. Rather than quit, however, I pushed on to finish the yard. It ripped things up a bit, but I got it done.

Everything has gone all tits up here at work too. Everything I was working on has been put on hold while they sort out this big scandal that involves theft, blackmail, and backstabbing. Four people have been told not to come back to work and at least one of them will end up in jail. One person in a high up position has resigned and the director of the department that spawned the scandal is likely to get the boot. I'm currently negotiating a book and TV movie deal for the story. I've narrowed my working title to "Tits Up" or "Undies In A Bunch."

The Importance of Being Earnest

2006-08-07T00:31:00.000-05:00

I wrote this a couple of months ago but never got around to publishing it.

China has recently reached an agreement with Nigeria to loan $1 billion for repair and upgrading of their dilapidated national rail system. The Chinese have been forging ties with third world countries lately to solidify their access to natural resources. Venezuela signed a deal with the Chinese recently to supply them oil and give them rights to operate refineries in the country. There have been other such deals in Angola and Algeria.

For the record, the largest oil producers and exporters in the world are listed here.

If and when the US and China meet on the battlefield, it will be in places like Iran, Venezuela, and Nigeria. The Chinese understand that in order to sustain their growth they will need to control energy resources. While most Americans are looking at China as a source of cheap labor, the Chinese are quietly building the military and political structure that they will need to kick the USA off the block.

Ironically, while politicians here in the US complain that China is offering aid to countries without stipulating human rights reforms, the US government engages in wars in the name of human rights but with imperialistic goals. Although it is said that we tamper in places like Panama, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and North Korea in the name of human goodness, the fact that we ignored East Timor, Rwanda, Haiti, and Liberia and are currently ignoring Sudan, Uganda, and Myanmar (Burma) is proof that there are more than our noble humanitarian causes at work. It would seem that US officials who criticize Chinese involvement in countries with poor human rights records are engaging in hypocrisy.

The names involved in the US picture go back to the Reagan administration. Gentlemen such as Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld realized that control of oil was going to be critical in maintaining US economic power and they started laying the foundation for military buildup that would ensure control. One of the reasons now, in 2006, that our military is still spending billions on equipment to fight large scale ground wars when the published threat is terrorism is because the underlying situation has not changed. We still need to assert our dominance over countries who try to hinder our oil supplies.

It is, in fact, imperative for us to invade places like Iraq to control the flow of oil. Without oil, the US economy is nothing. This makes China as big or bigger a threat than the Soviet Union was. We are engaged in a battle for oil with China now. Without political favor in Iraq we needed a military solution. Iran must be next or China will step in and pull yet another critical supply out from under us. As we continue to consume more and more oil, growth in China and India will ensure the same in those countries. Given the emotional response most Americans have to high gas prices, the showdown over oil is likely to result in emotional responses rather than diplomacy and non-military resolutions.

It would certainly help if we could start using less energy. The hardest part is convincing people to make sacrifices. Expansion is easy and fun. Contraction hurts. People will not give up the luxuries and comforts in their lives once they have come to expect them as we have. Indeed, the American sense of entitlement for wealth and independence could get in the way. More troubling, however, is the addiction to power and money of the ruling class. The people who give the money to the politicians who get elected are not about to give up their elite position at the top of the heap. They will push the politicians to fight the wars that give them access to the energy their companies need to be profitable.

Cars are the scapegoat for our dependence on foreign oil. It is said that if we drive less then we'll have to import less oil. While this is obviously true, oil is used for a lot more things. If it became too expensive due to short supplies, people could always start taking the subway or the bus to work. But oil is the main ingredient in plastic, which is used in the manufacture of just about everything these days. Oil byproducts are used in electricity generation and to power the trucks, trains, and planes that bring products and services to their customers. If oil gets to be too expensive, prices for everything go up and economic growth slows.

Economic growth is the key here. Without growth, stocks do not make money for their investors. While the working class American might want to take a step back and try a different tack, the money behind our politics will stop at nothing to keep things profitable. So we have a situation where the majority of Americans do not approve of the President and the majority do not like the direction the Iraq war is taking, yet the President will not alter his course nor will he even consider compromising. There is too much at stake for the people with the money.

Airline Travel

2006-08-07T00:29:00.000-05:00

I never finished this like I said I would. As a seXXy world traveler, I think the world needs to know what I think about airline travel.

This thing is, I flew to Frankfurt, Germany on June 10 of this year by way of New York JFK airport. My luggage, it seems, decided to stay behind.

I had to talk to a nice fellow in an office in the airport to track down my bag. He put in a note to have it shipped to Cologne, where I would be staying for three days and then gave me a claim slip and a phone number to call the next day.

Well, after three days of calling, borrowing t-shirts, not bathing, and trying to coordinate the delivery of my bag to the apartment I was staying in, I finally got the bag four days after arrival.

Inside the bag I found that everything had been unpacked, a plastic travel mug had been shattered, and the friendly folks at the Transportation and Safety Administration (TSA) had left a little note explaining what had happened. The TSA is the outfit that ensures your safety everytime you board a plane in the USA. Somehow they deemed my luggage to be safe leaving Minneapolis for New York, but the New York guys decided they needed to take a look as I was boarding my Singapore Air flight to Germany. The note they left was actually a 4" wide by 10" tall printed card with the usual BS about security and a phone number I could call if I wanted to complain.

I really got the sense that the TSA cared about what I thought. First, they didn't bother to send any notification ahead to the airplane so that someone could tell me not to expect my bags. Instead, I waited an hour at the conveyor and then another half hour in line at the claims office. Over the following four days, no one was able to tell me if my luggage was lost, where exactly it was, or when it would arrive. And ultimately it was Lufthansa, the German airline acting as an agent for Singapore Air, that came through for me and delivered my bag to Cologne.

I had put a small padlock on the bag to thwart curious baggage handlers. One of my travel companions explained to me that there is an official TSA padlock one can buy at Target that will thwart the baggage handlers but allow the TSA to use a master key to open it. I've used the same little lock on my baggage on trips dating back to 1998, but they cut it off and thoroughly used and abused my bag this time around.

So what did I learn about airline travel and security? If you are a terrorist, put an official TSA lock on your luggage. An unofficial lock will draw attention. In the event that your luggage does get confiscated, you've got four days to make your getaway after touchdown. Most importantly, though, it is probably best that you don't put your bombs in your checked luggage because they could end up blowing up the airport instead of the plane. And we all know that use of wireless detonation mechanisms is not permitted while in the air. So take your bombs along with you in your carry-on bag.

Seriously, what could I put in a checked bag, other than explosives, that could pose a threat to security? A gun? A grenade? A missle? None of these things would get past the x-ray machine and none of them is useful if I can't be there to operate them. Timed or remotely detonated explosives are really the only thing. Did the TSA really think that is what they were going to find? Did something at the JFK x-ray station catch their attention, and if so why did MSP miss it? And if something did catch their attention, why wasn't there a security team waiting for me at the airport in Frankfurt?

Airline security, my friends, is a fallacy.

Now that I've gotten myself added to whatever ridiculous Homeland Security Terrorist Databases that may or may not exist, I'll switch to the actual flying experience. I flew on NWA to New York and then switched to Singapore Air. I had heard Singapore Air was nice. This arrangement allowed me to use NWA miles to get to New York and then take advantage of the ridiculously low fare of $640 to Frankfurt on Singapore Air.

The thing that distinguishes Singapore Air is the in-flight service. The planes and the gates and the departures and arrivals are the same as any other airline. But they have several meal choices, including such exotic things as Japanese, Indian, seafood, and vegetarian options. I chose seafood for my flight there and got some sort of steamed whitefish and vegetables. For the flight back I chose Indian vegetarian and got a bunch of bland vegetables. I guess it is great that they had options, but the stuff wasn't any better than any other airline.

I'd estimate that over the course of the trip the flight attendants made a trip down the isle at least once per hour to offer drinks and crap. After the meal was done, they handed out bags with slippers and toothbrushes in them (both of which I had saved for some reason and which came in handy given my checked bag was delayed). When you consider all the time spent collecting trash and handing out headphones and meals and drinks and slippers and customs forms, the interruptions were too much. I suppose it is nice to be loved, but after a while it started to get annoying.

As for NWA, I don't see what the big deal is when people complain about the service and the fact that they are in bankruptcy. Sure they have cut back on service, but in a country like the US where the standard of living is so high, I think we need to get used to it. As for meals, I wish they would start serving all food and drink a la carte as they do in a train. Maybe they could set up a little snack stand up front and improve the quality to the point that one would actually be inclined to buy it that way. I think as long as the fare prices are lowered and the food quality was better than the stuff they have now, people would be receptive.

2006-08-06T22:12:00.000-05:00

I've been meaning to write this for a while now, independently of Mel Gibson's idiotic drunken tirade of the last week or so.

Fuck Israel.

In the US, that statement is one notch below "fuck America!" But I could walk out on the street and yell "fuck Mexico" and people would cheer me on. So what the fuck about Israel, the tiny little desert shithole in the Middle East, puts it beyond criticism?

I think the main reason is the lobbying and PR activities they promote in the US. They've bought our sympathies.

When you consider the money we've given Israel over the years and the influence they've had over our politics, it is sort of sad how self-defeating it all looks. Really, why should we care about a bumble fuck country with only 7 million citizens? Why do so many American dollars get wasted on them? Isreal is the sort of country that we should forget exists except the one time every ten years something happens there. How often do we get to hear about Lithuania, Wales, New Guinea, Nicaragua, Uzbekistan or Suriname? Hell most Americans have never heard of those places. Israel should be one of those places.

Don't get me wrong, the fact that many of the Muslim countries of the Middle East do not officially recognize Israel and would like nothing better that to destroy it is equally inane. But there has to come a time when we have to stop and say, "sorry dude, you're on your own. We've got our own problems."

With respect to Israel, the country has been a model democracy and a remarkable source of scientific knowledge. Frankly, I think countries like Iran, Iraq and Syria should aspire to be more like Israel. But there is no reason something so insignificant as Israel should garner so much of our attention.

Unfortunately, we've got our own problems here at home to tend to. And I say it all the time, the entire continent of Africa needs our help more than anyone in the world. If Israel can't make a go of it on their own, maybe it's time to let them sink. It would be sort of like telling your nagging girlfriend to fuck off. For a while you might miss the sex and companionship, but after a while you'd realize how much better off you are without someone spending your money and using up your time. Plus, Israel isn't the only fish in the ocean.

Logs and Parfaits In the Park

2006-07-31T20:32:00.000-05:00

Why is it every piece of mail I receive arrives in pristine condition except for the one that says, "do not bend?" My 8x10 print of Estadio Azteca from Snapfish.com has a nice crease through the middle. What in the goddam fuck does a guy got to do to get a break? I just need to stop buying things.

If I had a million dollars, I would sue the fuck out of people. I would sue companies too. The reason? People are assholes, and assholes deserve to be sued. I would sue my neighbor for being an asshole. I would sue my boss because he wears pleated dress pants that make his ass look like a fluffy pillow. I would sue every phone company for their bad customer service. I would sue Debbie Gibson for ruining my teenage fantasy of her by becoming a Bible thumper. It turns out I can shake your love, baby.

Ha fucking ha ha, it finally happened! Today we had a mandatory meeting at work to explain to everyone that some of our servers had been sabotaged. This is on the heels of two of my coworkers getting fired this week for undisclosed reasons. I have warned people here at work several times that the biggest security threat to our systems is not hackers in China like they think, but people here in the building. Within the last two weeks, we have had an intern accidentally shut off our database server, a Windows server that was compromised in such a way that a dude was fired (you pretty much have to be serving kiddie porn or something equally bad to get fired around here), and now a disgruntled employee or two have allegedly sabotaged a server. What's funny about it all is that one of the major projects I am working on is to build redundancy into some of our systems so that they can tolerate hardware failures. No amount of redundancy can cover up for bad physical security. So I can spend the rest of my life making sure that a server can withstand a network failure, a power outage, or a hard drive failure but it can all come crashing down when someone walks into the server room and unplugs the server.

I'm not pissed though. It is hilarious seeing everyone running around being secretive and gossiping and stuff. I feel like Jack Nicholson's character in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, watching with glee as all the crazies run around and make a mess.

I take my dog to an off-leash park after work every day. Every day there, she poops twice. The first time it is the standard dog log. The second time she makes more of a parfait, gooey with maybe a green or yellow dollop on top. I call it "Logs and Parfaits In the Park."

The World Cup

2006-07-11T14:27:00.000-05:00

The World Cup this year was, in my opinion, the most underwhelming tournament in a while. The reffing sucked, of course, but for me the biggest blight on the 2006 World Cup was the diving Italian wankers. They took the flowing game of soccer and reduced it to minute-long snips of action punctuated by diving and fouls and stretchers. Except for the final and the semifinal against Germany, every game they played in was an insult to the fans. And it wasn't just the Italians, but they were certainly the worst.

The American media have been a lot better at covering the World Cup this time around. I think the old-guy sports writer rant about low scoring and foreigners that used to be published in every newspaper in the country has finally worn out. There were not nearly as many of them this time around. The future of sports in America is in the youth, and soccer will figure prominently in that future. Let's take a closer look.

Start with ABC/ESPN play-by-play analyst Dave O'Brien's comments in a USA Today article. Dave O'Brien's first comment about soccer fans is 100% correct. "There's kind of a petulant little clique of soccer fans. There's not many of them, but they're mean-spirited." Most soccer fans who read that seem to have stopped after the first sentence, because there are a lot of them who are all up in arms about it. I guess that just proves the point. But on to the relevant part of the article, where I think O'Brien has completely missed the point.

"Should I explain what (soccer governing body) FIFA is? My 11-year-old daughter doesn't know. If I do that, the clique will say I don't know soccer. But we're putting on a TV product, not a soccer clinic," says O'Brien. That's an old guy response. His 11-year-old daughter, if she cared, would either deduce what FIFA is from hearing "the 2006 FIFA World Cup" repeated over and over during the broadcast, would piece it together after watching games and recaps and reading articles, or as a last resort she would just Google it. The people watching the games do not exist in a vacuum. They don't restrict their World Cup consumption to the ESPN broadcasts.

Maybe O'Brien was referring to how the game should be marketed to old guys. I haven't seen detailed demographic breakdowns of the World Cup viewership numbers, but an article at Media Life Magazine's site indicates that the majority of the growth in viewership over 2002 was in the younger age groups. Keep in mind that the growth viewers are the ones who supposedly need the educating. The people who watched in 2002 presumably know what FIFA is. So O'Brien's educating needs to focus on the youth, and I think he is underestimating them.

As far as viewership numbers go, the New York Times had a piece on the subject. What is exciting about this is that with that sort of growth and the fact that most of the growth is happening at the lower age brackets, the 2010 World Cup is sure to be even bigger. If I knew of a way to invest in soccer media futures, I'd do it now.

I watched the Italy-France final at the Nomad World Pub in Minneapolis. The place was packed, and as I looked around I noted that most of the people in attendance looked to be in their early 20's. Sure, the older folks were probably at home watching or something, but it is the youth who set the trends. In four years, old sports writers complaining about low scoring and hooligans will appear even more antiquated.

Bits On Germany

2006-07-05T21:06:00.000-05:00

One of my favorite things to do while traveling is to head out on my own with a destination in mind but no firm plan as to how I will get there. Invariably I wander into areas that tourists don't usually see. I like to rely upon myself to figure out the transit systems, the culture, and the food.

For two and a half weeks in Germany this past June, I didn't get to do as much of that as I had hoped. The only time I had alone was a day in Berlin, where I took a commuter train up to a northern suburb of the city that was also the home to Sachsenhausen Death Camp.

I like to take present observations about people and geography and consider them within a historical context. I expected Germany to have a lot to offer in that vein, but at times I got the feeling something was being withheld from me. More on that below...

Here are some random thoughts about Germany and the German people:

I can do without most of the comforts of home. In fact, that is a big part of travel for me. But when it is 84°F outside, open the damn windows. And in all the time I was in Germany I saw only two fans, and one of them was not turned on. Open the windows and turn the fan on. It is not much to ask.

Deutsche Bahn - the national railway operator of Germany is a for-profit that is owned by the national government. It has all the feeling of a government bureaucracy with ridiculous high prices. There are benefits afforded by having a stable, centralized railway, but it is a monopoly and monopolies suck. Those 300km/h trains rock, but figure out a way to get some competition in there.

Food - I suspect a lot of people find German food bland and boring, but I had some outstanding rahmschnitzel (a breaded pork chop), puten geschnetzeltes (chicken medalions with gravy), and spätzle (egg and flour noodles with gravy). The bratwurst mit brötchen (bratwurst in a little bread roll) was always good, but predictable. The problem was that it was hard to find the good stuff. I thought I'd find spätzle everywhere, but I saw it only once in Stuttgart.

The people - almost everyone I encountered was polite and friendly. There were a few who seemed to be tired of all the tourists everywhere. Others went out of their way to help. Most people, however, seemed to avoid eye contact unless you were speaking with them. Walking down the street, I found few people looking my way as I passed. So that's where Minnesotan's got that behavior...

Women - wow, I saw some damn hot women in Cologne and Berlin. Not so much in Stuttgart, Heidelberg, and Hamburg. In Cologne especially it was fun just to walk about and see all the beautiful people.

Dyed red hair and blond highlights - WTF? There were middle-aged fraus with dyed reddish-purple hair. There were college-aged chicks with black hair and a hideous swath of blond on the front or to the side. Additionally, I saw some pretty bad fashion ensembles. It seemed to be a subset of the population that was afflicted with this disease.

Cars - I visited the Porsche and Mercedes museums in Stuttgart, the latter of which was pretty good. I like the style of European cars. Now it looks like DiamlerChrysler is bringing the Smart forTwo here to the States. As always, Alfa Romeo is threatening to return to the US. If only we could get Citroën and Puegeot as well. Ever since Saab was GM'ed and Subaru added a marketing department we've had a dearth of quirky automobiles here.

The whole Nazi thing - I know we're not supposed to talk about this, but I'm going to bring it up anyway. The thing is, as an American who loves history I wanted to get a view of Germany's past up close. For the most part the Hitler years are easy to find in museums and the like. But I found most of it to be sterilized, and probably rightfully so. I remember being moved as I walked through the holocaust museum in Washington, DC. But the places in Germany seemed more matter-of-fact about it all. Maybe I have just become desensitized.
I think the thing that I had trouble understanding was the big gap in the German psyche that was in place. I don't expect people to embrace this part of their history or flaunt it, no way. That's what makes it hard for me to interpret it, however. History is evident in every person and every country on Earth, so when I looked at the people hoping for a glimpse of their shame or shock of their past I was surprised not to see something. My mistake, of course, was expecting people to dwell on it in some way. They seem to have coped with things and moved on. In a way, however, I think the Nazis stole something from the German people. There is a period of their history that they cannot deny but for which they cannot claim pride, hardship, perseverance, ingenuity, tragedy (this is well beyond tragedy), or patriotism. All of the things that are great about history are missing, so it almost seems as though the Germany you visit today skips from Mercedes and Benz pioneering the automobile to the fall of the Berlin wall and everyone finally getting on with life. The ugly period in between is documented in the museums and on the monuments, but it doesn't live on the streets. Or at least they kept it concealed while I was there.
I really hope that all makes sense. I like that the German monuments stress that we should never forget what happened. I wish I could have taken something tangible home with me because I think we could use some of that reminder here in the US.

The man-shaft - ha ha, the German word for "team" is "mannschaft." It was good for a few jokes. Seriously, though, it was good to see Grinsi Klinsi (national team coach Jürgen Klinsmann) overcome the fear, uncertainty, and doubt and put together a team that inspired the country to a new sense of national pride. People were wearing the colors and waving flags everywhere. Germany is a beautiful country. I hope the German people learn from their team to open up and have fun. The only things holding them back is themselves.
A woman I spoke to on a train told me that the Germans are not usually as open and friendly as they were since the World Cup had started. She said that they were usually more cold and reserved. I could see it in them too. There seemed to be some apprehensiveness in them about how to deal with the attention of the world and the presence of so many people from all over. I wanted to take them all and shake them and say, "it's ok, have fun and be proud." You could really see the younger people taking up the mantle as Germany advanced through the tournament. It reminds me of France in 1998 and South Korea in 2002. In 1998 the French had a bit of an identity crisis with all of the immigrants and the political tension it was creating. They still do, actually. But the sons of immigrants on the team that took them all the way to the final were suddenly national heroes and a few barriers were broken down. In Korea, the country had a huge inferiority complex and wanted desperately to show the world that they were viable and prosperous. For both countries, it was fun to see the people come together, put their problems behind for a time, and share the moment. I hope, even though the Germans were eliminated in the semifinals, that the World Cup will help them open up a little more to the world.

Americans do not hate soccer - on a few occasions Germans tried to tell us that Americans do not like soccer. I suspect that their media portray us as a bunch of Super Bowl loving freaks. But I don't think they understand what it is like in a country as big and diverse as the US. There are a lot of people who like soccer in addition to football and other sports. Additionally, a large portion of the fans supporting other teams were Americans. Many of the Mexicans and Brasilians I encountered spoke perfect US English. They're Americans supporting another team for any number of reasons. And who can forget the thousands who showed up in red, white, and blue to cheer the US? There are a lot of soccer fans in the US, but no one has figured out how to market to them on the whole.

George W. Bush - a funny question I was asked on a few different occasions was, "You do not like Bush, do you?" They seemed embarassed to be asking it. They couldn't seem to understand how anyone could support the guy so they wanted to ask. Germany, here's your answer: Americans do not like Bush either. He gets something like a 31% approval rating in the polls, which for practical purposes is the same as zero in the real world. That 31% includes his friends, ideologues, and American Idol fans, and they cannot be counted on to form rational opinions. So Germany, please understand: America Hates Bush!

I think my next post is going to have to be a rant about airlines and the TSA. The fucking TSA.

Auf Wiedersehen, Deutschland!

2006-06-29T14:33:00.000-05:00

I just got back from two and a half weeks in Germany, so I've got a fresh bunch of ideas that I'll be posting here in the next week or two. Most of them are centered around critiques of Germany, airlines, and the 2006 World Cup.

I contracted a cold on Monday or Tuesday and it unfortunately peaked on Wednesday, when I had 10 hours of flights ahead of me. During the descent into New York JFK airport, my sinuses were clogged and my ears wouldn't pop. The pressure in my head was agonizing. It felt like someone was stabbing pencils into my forehead, but from the inside.

For those who don't know, humans have four sets of sinuses. There is a good diagram of them on this page. I guess with the nasal congestion from my cold the whole pressure adjustment thing wasn't working out. On the ground, my ears still hadn't popped and I couldn't hear too well. On the second flight to Minneapolis, the ascent was relieving because the pressure in my head was still set for 20,000 feet. The descent was, again, an agonizing experience.

A day later and my ears still haven't cleared up. Hopefully things will clear out as my cold subsides and my sinuses clear up. Anyway, that is my story of travel hell.

So I come back from Germany to find that I have fewer rights than when I left. President Dickslap is furious that the media reported a story that the government has been searching a bank transactions database for clues to "fight terrorism." This issue is another gateway into the government invading the personal lives of its citizens. The definition of who is a terrorist is not something you look up in the dictionary, it is an arbitrary term that the government itself can define. Even more, the definition can change and it can be set after the fact. So, for example, you've been transferring money to a European account to pay for your secret rendezvous with Laura Bush and the President finds out through his terrorism searches after the fact, all he has to do is label you a terrorist and throw you in jail.

Our Bill of Rights exists to protect our rights from infringment by the goverment. The second amendment doesn't guarantee our right to carry a gun to defend against someone coming into our yard, it protects our right to bear arms to defend against the goverment. That might sound drastic, but there are plenty of examples in history where governments have used military force against their own citizens. That is supposedly one of the reasons we invaded Iraq, because Saddam Hussein gassed his own people back in 1987 when Reagan was president.

I call issues like this "gateway" issues because they offer a gateway into bigger, more invasive things. Ever since 9/11 the President has used gateway issues and fear to control people. He justifies violating human rights conventions, false wars, phone tapping, tax cuts, just about anything in the name of the war on terror. It is not that we need to back down and be soft on handling our problems, but the President and the Republicans have gone too far. The use of gateway issues to scare people into compliance is just a step away from fascism. If you've ever wondered how a government like Hitler's Third Reich can get away with something so crass and evil, here's your answer. It didn't happen over night. It started with small issues that seemed harmless to the public at large.

And what about those "fiscal conservatives" who are silent now about the huge money being spent on Iraq? Where are the advocates of tax cuts in the name of getting the government off our backs when it comes to phone tapping and bank transaction monitoring? The government is more of a problem in your life now than it was on September 10, 2001 even though your taxes are lower.

I shouldn't be so negative so close to the 4th of July. I've just gotten back from singing the national anthem at the top of my lungs in three German stadiums. Germany was great, but as with any trip abroad I always come back appreciating home more. I feel that being critical is the most patriotic thing one can do. It proves that you want to make things better.

Really, what set me off was a silly test I found on the blog of a dysfunctional chick I dated late last year. Shamefully, I read her blog once in a while because I find it interesting when I'm bored. I took the test and scored 34%. How ridiculous. Anyone who scores more than 50% on that thing has got to be a moron. I'll say it again, what makes America great is its diversity. Someone who scores 1% on that stupid test is just as American as someone who scores 100%.

2006-06-05T16:35:00.000-05:00

Every year I try to kill my lawn, and every year it grows back.

I saw a funny bumper sticker the other day. It said, "guns don't kill people, people kill people." It's true, it is actually the people who possess the intent to kill, not the guns. I think the intent is that gun control laws should be outlawed and we should instead focus on outlawing people. I mean, if you outlaw guns they're just going to go and get a knife or something, right? And what's next, outlawing knives? How about poison, lead pipes, napalm, spears, battering rams, nuclear missles, cobras, cars, rabies, tall buildings, the President, and rocks? Are we going to outlaw those too?

Goddammit, "the point is mute" is improper vocabulary. The fucking word is "moot," as in, "the point is goddam moot."

2006-06-02T21:17:00.000-05:00

Ever since the illegal immigration issue popped up I've had this feeling that it is another political scam. I couldn't put my finger on it though. It just seemed like another gay marriage type issue that was brought up for political gain. In the case of gay marriage, an institution that would affect some miniscule portion of our population, the issue seemingly came out of nowhere during the 2004 elections and was used by those on the right to divide and polarize people who otherwise might vote for their opponents.

Really, gay marriage, after the initial novelty effect, would affect, like, less than a million Americans. If the worst it can get is to have 100 gay couples in a city the size of San Francisco waiting in line to get a marriage license, it is not that bad. Now divorce, there's a real threat to the institution of marriage...

So now I think I've figured out what is fishy about the illigal immigration issue. It is the same deal, a meaningless issue that gets people mad enough to vote for fascist politicians.

Why are the politicians focusing on the southern border? Well, for starters I guess that is where the biggest problem lies. Mexico has a much larger population than Canada, and Mexicans are typically poorer than Canadians and therfore more likely to want to come to the USA seeking a better life.

Fuck that. If a dude wants to come to the US, all he has to do is buy a plane ticket, get a tourist visa stamp at customs, and then fucking stay here. A plane ticket may seem out of reach to the poorest of the poor, but someone who saves his money for a few years could pull it off. Is it that Mexicans are not smart enough to figure that out, or is the illegal border crossing thing the scapegoat issue here?

It is a matter of the path of least resistance. Mexicans are not dumb (sorry racist fuckers, it's true). While it may be easiest now to cross the border in Texas or Arizona, close the borders and people will figure out other ways to get in.

Go ahead and close the fucking borders. Show INS and FBI and ATF and Militia Men and hard working white guys and every other bona fide asshole patrolling in the desert on the evening news and the politicians who pulled it off will have themselves a re-election.

Remember the controversy about the terrorists who were crossing into Washington state from Canada? Oh shit, close the border crossings on the Canadian border! Meanwhile, guys from Mexico were walking across the desert unchecked. Why didn't anyone worry about terrorists coming in from Mexico then? If I were a terrorist looking to sneak bomb making materials into the US, especially if I had brown skin, I'd take my chances in Mexico before I'd try Canada. What a fucking scam.

People have been crossing the border from Mexico to the US for decades. Illegal immigration is another issue that has been brought up to divide people along ideological lines and get them to support politicians who are not otherwise viable. Xenophobes and racists will vote for politicians who will turn around and fuck them because the politicians passed some token legislation to send meatheads to patrol the Mexican border. Godammit people are dumb. Nothing will change, except politicians will take more freedoms away from us in the name of fighting terrorism and immigrants and gays and whichever other supposed threats they can shove into the spotlight.

Creative Block

2006-06-02T13:11:00.000-05:00

I've had a creative block lately as I prepare for 18 days in Germany for the World Cup. I'll post some from Germany, though. I leave on the 10th and return on the 28th.

2006-05-18T14:20:00.000-05:00

One way to save gas is to make sure your tires are properly inflated. You can even go so far as to sign up for consumerreports.org and search for tires that have low rolling resistance. The idea is that the easier your tires roll, the better mileage you get. Tires that are underinflated do not roll as well.

Another way we could save gas is to revisit the timing of traffic signals in this city. The fact that you can drive 20 blocks on Washington Avenue and hit a red light every two blocks is ridiculous. A lot of these semaphores haven't been adjusted for decades and they hinder traffic flow. Cars burn most of their fuel when accelerating, and idling at stop lights doesn't help. And don't forget the additional noise of accelerating engines and the additional stress and drive time of waiting in traffic. The city of Phoenix has already spent millions to adjust their traffic signal timing and the result is that you can time your driving to hit only green lights; it is time the Twin Cities likewise invest in adapting the timing of our traffic signals to current demographics and traffic patterns. Maybe after the small-minded Pawlenty is out of office we could start investing in the future again.

Back to tires, I bought a set of Cooper Zeon 2XS tires for my car a couple of years ago. I had no experience with Cooper, but that was the only brand the service shop I took the car to had. I decided to take a leap and try them. At first they were fine. They handled nicely and all that. But a year in they started losing air pressure and I would have to put air in them weekly. Lately I've noticed cracking and bulging in the sidewalls and the road handling is nowhere near what it was or should be.

Well coincidentally I read about a recall of 288,000 Cooper tires, including some Zeon 2XS's. The reason for the recall is exactly the same problem that I have, but the size on my car is not among the sizes they are recalling.

The reason for this tire rant is because I have since registered the tires with Cooper in hopes that they would somehow be including them in the recall. On Saturday, May 13, 2006 I sent them an email asking how to go about making a warrantly claim to get them replaced. So far, no response. Unfortunately, I am losing confidence in the tires and, at $150 each, I don't want to pay to have them replaced. Given the lack of response and the difficulty I have had in finding proper contact information (anyone have a fukkin phone number for warranty claims?), coupled with the fact that the tires are failing prematurely, it will be hard for me to find a reason to buy Cooper tires again. I guess I'll have to try working the phones after I get back from Germany in June to see what I can accomplish.

Yeah, so I am really familiar with gas station air pumps now. Holiday Station is the only chain that has free air any more it seems, but the problem is there is always some dipshit there trying to work the thing. It is not uncommon to wait 15 minutes for someone to fuck around with the hose and a pressure gauge before you can get in there. Shit, high gas prices aren't a problem, it is fuckin air that I need.

Now I'm in a bad mood. Let me get back to something new and interesting. I've been reading about hybrid cars lately, since Consumer Reports released their review of some of the models. I've been waiting for this because there has been a lot of marketing hype but very little in the way of actual analysis.

No surprise, but the Honda Civic hybrid and the Toyota Prius are the best hybrids. What I suspected and what Consumer Reports confirmed is that the price premium you pay for a hybrid may not be worth it. Something like a Camry or Accord hybrid is actually marketed as a premium model, with the electric motor providing for additional performance. The Lexus RX400h, an SUV, sees very little benefit from it. I think this is why the German and US automakers have not jumped on the bandwagon yet. A luxury car has so much weight and electronic gadgetry that there is little juice left for an electric motor. A big American car would need a bigger electric motor and more heavy batteries to make a difference.

With the Prius and the Civic hybrid, the additional cost of the car offsets all or most of the savings in gas. This does not include the cost of replacing the batteries, which could run $3000. Just like the battery under the hood of your conventional gasoline car, the hybrid batteries have a life span. Considering that hybrid models cost $3000-$5000 more than their conventional counterparts and 5-10 years in you will be spending $3000 on new batteries, only the smaller models make sense to buy and only if you drive a lot in the city.

Hopefully the economies of scale will improve with hybrids, but in the mean time it is worth looking at the more efficient Japanese gasonline-only cars or the TDI (diesel) models from Volkswagen. There is talk among some other manufacturers, maybe Volvo or Mercedes, in bringing some of their diesel models to the US market too. Diesel engines are a bit more efficient than gasoline engines. Toyota and Honda have outstanding fuel economy in most of their cars too, so personally I would stick with one of those or a TDI and try to drive less to save gas.

I really should get back to work, but one more bit about hybrids. There are people who outfit their Priuses with extra batteries and charging circuitry so that they can plug the car in at night to charge it up. This costs on the order of $20,000 to do. The car then runs mostly on electric power, with the gasoline engine serving only as a backup for long trips. In cold weather I would expect the gasoline engine to kick in more frequently, since batteries have lower capacity in cold weather. But in the long term I hope cars that can run like this will be available directly from the manufacturer. With improved battery technology, it could become viable. It would be possible to charge your car at night when it is sitting in the garage (sorta like running your waching maching all night as far as power consumption) and you'd only have to fill your gas tank every couple of months or so. Yak yak yak...

My Diversity Speech, Again

2006-05-11T17:55:00.000-05:00

A recent article in the New York Times went on about how Microsoft and Google are gearing up for a battle and how talent will be the key. It cites the examples of GM losing to the Japanese auto makers, Sears stomping Montgomery Wards, and the individuals who guided each to success or failure in changing times. I like to think of things in these terms but on a bigger scale. The USA has seen so much success because of the diverse people who have come here looking for a better life.

This country was built on the backs of immigrants. From the Chinese out west who worked on the railroads, to the Germans and Scandinavians and Poles who farmed the midwest, to the Italians and Irish out east who worked the docks and factories, to the slaves who were brought here against their will to work the plantations in the south, we owe the first 200 years to these people. And now we want to shut the next wave out. The illegal immigrants who make 1,000 calorie Chipotle burritos for office workers, the Africans who clean up the 200 calorie shitlogs left behind by those office workers, the Indians and Chinese who teach our college students because we don't produce enough scientists, the Central Americans who work in construction - these people, whether here legally or not, are filling the roles that most Americans do not want to fill. They do it willingly and for less pay, and everyone wins.

America is strong because we have the best, hardest working, most diverse people. It is necessary for our prosperity that we continue to import the people who want to live here. We do not procreate enough to replace our native population and we do not turn out enough world beating engineers and scientists any more. But we don't need to, we just assimilate the best from other cultures into our culture. Like Google hiring the best software engineers away from Microsoft, we hire the best people away from other countries as we always have since 1776.

The Amish peoples in the eastern US have had problems with genetic diseases. Some people think it is from inbreeding, but more accurately it should be attributed to the small size of their reproductive gene pool. There simply is not enough diversity in their population after so many years of isolation. Everyone is carrying the same sets of genes around, increasing the chances that two with genes for a particular disorder will procreate and thus proliferate the disorder. With diversity in the gene pool, the more dominant, favorable genes will prevent the undesireable ones from winning out. Diversity ensures that a population will be strong and healthy.

Similarly, with a company like GM we see that after years of sitting on the top of the heap doing things the GM way, the company has rendered itself incapable of designing anything with original styling and innovative features, let alone employing modern techniques of quality management. The bean counters at the top are the main culprit because they simply don't see beyond the accounting. GM is a company in need of some fresh new talent, from both Japan and Korea but also even from non-automotive American companies who understand style and efficiency and modern trends. GM needs diversity.

When I hear or read about the efforts to limit diversity by closing our borders, deporting illegal immigrants, ignoring what our allies tell us, outlawing gay marriage with consitutional amendments, and declaring an official language, I worry that we are moving down a path to self defeat. Fortunately most of these efforts have failed, but there is a cloud of closed-minded thinking sweeping over the country. When something like 9/11 happens there is a temptation to scapegoat people of another ethnicity. We want to throw up barriers to shut the bad guys out, but instead we are closing ourselves out from the rest of the world. In World War II, we were reluctant to get involved but eventually we stood with the world and took the problem head on. America is great for its diversity, and we can't let that go.

2006-05-09T14:48:00.000-05:00

Dear peacocks: why so sassy?

2006-05-05T13:30:00.000-05:00

Posts bitching about one's employer or boss suck so I try not to write them, but here I am going to bitch about my boss as an individual, not as my boss.

I was in a meeting a few days ago and it was decided that we needed to set up a meeting with some dudes downtown. Since the dudes were going to be helping us with a project, it was suggested that we go to a place close to them and pick up the lunch tab. My boss says, "I don't want to go downtown. Is it safe to go downtown?"

It is safer to go downtown than to drive to and from Apple Valley, where my boss lives, every day in rush hour traffic. There was a murder outside a club downtown a few weeks ago and all the suburbanites are scared of Minneapolis now.

Goddam suburbanites. Tens of thousands of people live and work in downtown Minneapolis every day. A suburbanite sees that someone was murdered there on the evening news and is galvanized with fear at the notion of going there for lunch. Jesus fuck, my boss voted for Bush too, and he's never been outside of the USA, he's probably one of the dorks who can't find Iraq on a map, and he makes six figures running operations at a college that prides itself on its internationalism and diversity.

It would be like if I were afraid to go to Burnsville because I heard some kid chopped his parents with an axe while they were asleep. As though the kid would come looking for me if I set foot in that city.

Goddam fuckcheese.

2006-05-05T09:02:00.000-05:00

Silicon is the most abundant element on the planet. It is used to make solar cells, computer chips, and glass.

At times it seems like the motivation of the human race is to reorganize the planet into something more orderly and hospitable. From a telescope on another planet, the Earth would appear the same now as it did thousands of years ago. It is just a big ball of water and silicon and carbon and so on. But we take all the minerals and elements and reorganize them into cars, paved surfaces, and buildings.

On one side we cherish nature for its beauty and purity. On the other, we destroy it to make way for the orderly system of roads, sewers, gas lines, electricity lines, and houses of our neighborhoods. We want to keep nature in our back yards, but we want to control it. We don't want alligators and bears to come in our yards to eat our puppies and babies.

When the oil runs out, we'll have solar panels made of silicon or germanium or some other substance to give us power. It is as though we were given just enough oil to figure out how to make a cleaner form of energy. I was talking to Jesus in my dream the other day and he told me he isn't coming back until we clean things up and come up with some solar panels that are cheap and efficient, or maybe cold fusion or something like that.

If you have any doubts about where the world is headed, just keep in mind that from a telescope on Mars it still looks the same as it always did. Rising energy prices and rising temperatures are starting to motivate people to come up with better solutions. Fascists and religious extremists such as George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden are always defeated because their plans leave too many people on the outside looking in. We may be shuffling things around down here on the surface of the planet, but it is still a big ball of water and sand and oxygen.

By the way, I've been thinking about technology lately and the one thing that I think will benefit humanity most of all is space travel. Can you imagine what it would be like if every person could experience what it is like to rocket away from the surface until it becomes a giant blue ball outside the window, and then look the other way and see nothing but blackness? Being able to see the Earth from that perspective has to be the most humbling experience one could have. I hope everyone gets to do it some day.

2006-04-20T12:29:00.000-05:00

There are two triangles near my house, and no squares that I am aware of. One of the triangles has a park in it and is called "Washington Triangle Park," while the other has an apartment building called "Spring Hill Highrise." The Spring Hill one is actually a trapezoid because there is a road that cuts through the tip. So the point of the triangle is actually separate from the rest. I still count it as one triangle rather than a triangle and a trapezoid, however. The cut off point has one of those community gardens with prairie plants in it, which is a good thing to spruce up the neighborhood a bit.

Now that I think of it, there is one square called "Chute Square" with a historic old house that is sometimes open for tours on it. So there is one square and two triangles.

2006-04-07T12:54:00.000-05:00

Oh shit, I've pissed off one of the potheads here at work. Prepare for passive-agressive email attack!

2006-04-06T14:07:00.000-05:00

The Germans. I've heard things about them but have tried to withhold judgement until I've seen it all first hand.

I've been dealing with the German FIFA World Cup ticketing organization lately trying to work out a problem with tickets. I was awarded one ticket to the USA - Ghana match at the World Cup this summer. Then, a few weeks ago, someone contacted me asking if I was interested in his tickets since he would not be able to go. He had three sets of tickets that included the three first round matches and the second round match if we make it that far.

The problem is that I need to offload my Ghana ticket before I can receive one of the ticket sets. The online ticket system only allows one ticket per match per person. FIFA has set up a transfer and resale portal for those who have tickets they don't want or can't use - people like me, in fact. But there is a complicated set of rules and procedures in place dictating who and when and why tickets may be transferred. I thought it was all designed to limit the ability of ticket brokers to sell tickets, but maybe not...

I submitted a request to transfer my ticket to a friend. IT was rejected because the reason I gave for the transfer was not good enough. The fact that I need to get rid of one ticket so that four may be transferred to me was not good enough! Worse yet, when I tried to contact customer service via an online form, it bounced with the message, "this address does not accept incoming messages." WTF?

This all comes after a process of months of signing up for ticket sale lotteries online, faxing applications, FedExing packages, and crossing fingers to get tickets in the first place. I feel like after all of the trouble I have gone through, a mere ticket transfer should be the least of my worries.

I've spoken with a few people who have gone to Germany or lived there and they all agree that the Germans are strict about the rules. I have German ancestry. I drive a German car. I follow rules. I was looking forward to going to Germany as a sort of return to my roots. But I am having second thoughts about the Germans. It seems like they have rules for the sake of having rules. I'm planning a trip to their country, where I will spend a lot of money on lodging and beer and trains and crap. They need it, no doubt. But some fascist in customer service rejected my ticket transfer and put my entire trip in jeopardy.

2006-04-04T11:32:00.000-05:00

In the future, our home and work lives will intermingle. We will always be at work. Our social time will be spent in the workplace. Socialization will be a part of work. Work will be a part of personal life.

In the 20th century a job was a place one goes to work. You get in a car and drive to your job, and when you're done at work you drive home and switch to family mode. That was necessary when most work was of the manual labor sort. The equipment that was needed to manufacture a product was housed in a building somewhere. One had to be physically present to do the work.

Now that we are moving away from manual jobs to service jobs, we can do our work from almost anywhere. Portable technology is accessible to the masses. A person is no longer bound to a $5000 IBM PC on a desk that only an employer can afford.

If you can imagine a portable device with internet and cell phone capabilities, a color video screen, and a bunch of storage, then think of how it will change the way we work. Rather than maintain two systems of organization, we can store all of our files together or access them remotely via one device. It is more efficient that way. There is no need to remember which computer a file is stored on. We can have access to our stuff at any time.

We want to be more mobile and more dynamic. In fact, we can be more productive that way. We can do work while waiting in line or riding the subway. We can make social connections that are important to our work more effectively in a meeting place than in an office park somewhere. We can share our work via portable devices more effectively as we sit next to our colleagues than we can if we are separated by miles and email.

The notion of a job will change too. We may not be employed by a single entity any longer. We may not be bound by time sheets and benefits packages. A time will come to pass when we can complete a set quantity of work as we operate as a sole entity, a company of one. We will pay people to work for us too. We can sell our time on eBay. We can write a computer subprogram and sell it to the highest bidder. We can design a video advertisement in trade for product. We can meet a friend of a friend and provide them with job counseling, marriage counseling, or legal advice for a fee. Our friends will be our business contacts and our corporate partners. Our job will be to go out and socialize.

So say goodbye to your old job and hello to your new life. Your work will come to you and you can do it wherever you want to be.

Look It Up

2006-03-31T11:44:00.000-06:00

Birds begin chirping in the morning at different times because of the height at which they are perched. Birds higher in the trees see sunlight over the horizon sooner than those lower down. They wait until they see the light because singing in the dark would attract predators to them when they can't see as well. Look it up.

If there were a Swiss cheese flavored corn puff snack, that is, if such a thing were viable in the snack foods marketplace, it would be called Swissitos.

As an employee of a public university, I work with a number of potheads. Lately they've been pissing me off. Potheads are in this eternal state of slow dumbass. I'm tired of explaining things twice. I'm tired of the mood swings. The impatience. I think someone wished one time that all of the potheads would just go away somewhere and get the hell out of the way. The public universities of the USA are where they all went.

2006-03-28T10:12:00.000-06:00

It has been a while since I have written anything about outstanding treats. Today I walked to work. I stopped at Dunn Bros. Coffee along the way and picked up a cup o' coffee and a peanut butter brownie. I'd been looking at those brownies for some time wondering how they'd be. They're made by French Meadow Bakery so you almost cannot go wrong. Well, I am here to say that the peanut butter brownie is another outstanding treat. It is the sort of thing that is worth going out of your way to get. And if you do, bring two or three friends to share it with you. Not only is it amazingly smooth and chocolatey, it is so rich that you start feeling a little sick after only a few bites. Holy shit what a treat.

Walking down University Avenue I crossed paths with an interesting character. She was a normal looking woman of no more than 4' 6" in height and she had a longsword strapped on her back and a laptop case over her shoulder. The sword was strapped on at an angle so that it wouldn't drag on the ground but also so it looked like it was at the ready. The best part was that she was walking with confidence and a slight smile. I don't know why she had a sword, but I could tell she had a sense of humor about it.

2006-03-23T12:29:00.000-06:00

Controlling your money gives you power as a consumer. You decide when and on what you will spend it. One of the most powerful things you can do as a consumer is to have some money saved up but to not spend it on anything. Instead of going to the companies because they have something you want, you make them come to you by lowering prices, making better products, running sales, and so on. One of the reasons Apple is so successful with the iPod is that they have a seXXy product that everyone wants but not everyone can afford or find in stock at a store. They have the upper hand. Now if people were to start saying to themselves, "I want an iPod, but I think I'll just sit on my $500 for a while and think about it," Apple would be forced to look for more ways to entice customers to spend. It is a better position to be in, on the side where you call the shots.

If you eat at Don Pablo's, the terrorists have won. I cannot understand why so much of the population considers places like Don Pablo's, Olive Garden, and Cracker Barrel "good eatin'." Bullshit. It is contrived crap that comes off a Sysco truck. Go out and try something new. Maybe your mommy didn't cook anything other than bland meat and potatoes when you were growing up, but you're an adult now and you can try new things. Italian food doesn't always have to have red sauce. Mexican meals don't always have to start with a basket of chips that have been cooking under a heat lamp for hours and served with watery bland salsa in a little brown plastic "adobe" bowl. In fact, any place where you get a blinking pager and have to wait 45 minutes to an hour for a table is cockslobbering bullshit. There are so many good places to eat out there. Small places with great Mexican, Indian, Thai, Middle Eastern, Italian, French, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, or even African food. If your idea of great pad thai is the shitslop they serve at Noodles & Company, get the hell out of here, right now. Go bother this guy instead. I never want to see you here again. If you are afraid to eat at a place where the wait staff speak English as a second language, the terrorists have won.

Here I Go With the Childish Crap Again

2006-03-14T11:47:00.000-06:00

I like to characterize processes with steps, so here are the steps to losing respect for your boss:

You give him/her the benefit of the doubt, but you start to question why.

You start complaining about him/her with certain coworker friends. You start trying to get other coworkers to see his/her mistakes.

You cross the line of no return: you start to make jokes about your boss and maybe even doctor some pictures of him or her to look funny.

You've come a long way, kid. When you start making jokes about your boss's bodily functions, you've reached the pinnacle of boss denigration.

Here's the childish part. My coworkers and I have come up with some names for some of the boss's body parts. He has a turtle, a cheeseburger, and a peanut.

I think I am getting dumber.

Food for Thought

2006-03-08T11:42:00.000-06:00

Since I've taken to buying food locally at small shops, I've been having a great time putting together my own recipe ideas. I've been telling anyone who will listen that the best stuff is not at the local supermarket, it is in those small stores that white people are afraid to go into.

My most recent shopping trip found me at the Eastside Food Co-op for some of the basics and then to Patel Groceries (an Indian grocery shop) for some paneer and nan and a box of cardamom cookies. Other places I like to go are the restaurant Mexico y Mexico for some frozen tamales, Kramarczuk's Polish deli for brats, a Korean grocery on 44th and Central, and Morey's Fish House in Motley, MN for some smoked lake trout and marinated salmon steaks.

What do you get for all this trouble? First, there is no temptation to buy Doritos and Coke because they don't sell it at these places. People never want to believe me, but I spend about half as much on groceries since I stopped going to Cub because I don't buy all the junk food that ends up in your cart after a trip through the store. I spend less despite the fact that much of the stuff you buy at a co-op costs more.

Second, the food is better for you. The Co-op has better quality stuff. An $8 pack of bison stew meat is much more lean and tasty than a $6 pack of beef stew meat at Cub. I eat better as a result of going to the Co-op because I don't buy so much junk food any more. I never walk away from a meal feeling like I've got a gut bomb in my stomach.

Third, and this is the best part, is that I have taken an interest in the stuff that I prepare for myself. With a block of paneer cheese, some yogurt, masala paste, peas, potatoes, and cashew bits, you've got yourself an amazing Indian mutter paneer dish with leftovers. It takes like 10 minutes to prepare. Kramarczuk's brats or Morey's salmon on the grill are unbeatable. Pizzas with cornbread crust and freshly grated mozzarella from the Co-op are just as fast and taste better than a frozen deal from the supermarket. When you get involved with the preparation of your meals like this it really adds to the pleasure.

On an ending note, I've been buying bison meat in place of beef, first because I never really cared for beef and second because I believe bison is a more viable livestock here in the midwest. It costs more, but I see it sorta like buying the higher quality beef cuts. It is more lean, of course, and the flavor really comes out when you grill it over wood or with hickory or mesquite chips and charcoal. Now when I eat beef I always notice the greasy texture and it is a turnoff. There are health benefits to eating more lean meat. To me it is a matter of putting your money where your mouth is. Someone has to buy the stuff to give it a foothold in the marketplace. With time, the prices will come down.

The 20/80 Rule

2006-03-02T11:05:00.000-06:00

I've been working on a theory about the way things work. It is based on some loose and sometimes unverifiable numbers, but bear with me.

The 20/80 rule is a basic rule of things pertaining to culture and marketing. I came up with it when I was debating beer with a friend. His beer of choice is MGD Lite and he tried to justify himself by saying something to the effect that 80% of all beer drinkers choose Bud, Miller or Coors. The major brands of those three breweries do in fact hold some 80% of the beer market share. This guy travels a lot and portrays himself as some sort of international savvy traveler, so I knew my response would strike a chord. Somewhere I had heard that only 20% of Americans hold valid passports, so I explained that those same 80% who drink shit beer have also never been outside of the country. It worked.

I've been applying the 20/80 observation to other aspects of culture. If I cared enough I might go out and dig up some statistics, but as a general idea it is fun to just apply the rule to things that you hear or read. I know that independent music labels have somewhere around 20% market share. I guess the rule is a way of quantifying something I've always known. There is a minority alternative culture of people who seek out the finer things in life. They are the progressives. The people who like to try new things.

The 80 percent-ers would call those people snobs. They would tend to stick to things that are safe and familiar. They are the bread-and-butter customers of network TV, popular music, chain restaurants, and so on.

This is not a political thing. Although there may be a political tendencies among the groups, I think it is mostly a division between the 80% middle of the road people and the 20% liberal/conservative extremists. Some people prefer mediocrity and complacency, others prever adventure and challenge.

Let me know what you think. I'd be interested to hear if anyone else has some similar observations.

Scratch That, the President Is a Fucking Goddamn Liar

2006-03-01T23:01:00.000-06:00

You gotta read this. Be sure to watch the video on the left side too. This is proof that the President is a liar, and a fucking poor one at that. How many families have been destroyed by his lies? How many children has he killed? We have a crisis in the White House.

Let the spin begin. You know they're going to blitz the media with "talking points" attacking their foes to try to cover this up.

Clinton was impeached for getting a BJ from an intern and lying about it. No one died. No families lost their homes. No corporations were awarded billions of dollars in government contracts. Gas and oil prices did not go up. Why is Bush still in office? Because we're all afraid of how terrible Cheney would be as president.

I feel it coming. My faith in our democracy is being restored. I think Bush will go down in flames and order will be restored. I just have not been patient enough. I need to be patient. The democracy will soft-correct itself in time.

The President Is a Liar

2006-02-28T13:20:00.000-06:00

Not that you needed it, but I've found more evidence that the President is a liar. Remember that the original reason he gave for invading Iraq was terrorism. That was a lie, so he switched to weapons of mass destruction. That was a lie. He switched to liberty and democracy. A lie.

The crisis in Sudan is more significant in every way than Iraq.

"But Saddam was gassing his own people," you may have heard. Well, that was back in the 80's and the casualty number of 5-20,000 still doesn't come close to the 200,000 civilians killed in fighting in Darfur over the last year or two. The US did nothing to condemn or stop Hussein when he was doing it, so why would we wait almost 20 years to take him out and why didn't we do it in the Persian Gulf War? This is not an acceptable reason to be in Iraq but not in Sudan.

"But Saddam was harboring terrorists." A lie. Saddam was a tyrant. Maintaining strict control of his borders and the people within them was critical to his position. With the Kurds and the Iranian war, he had his hands full. There are more terrorists in Iraq now than there could have been when Hussein was in power. There is no evidence that Hussein ever had contact with someone like Osama bin Laden. Interestingly, bin Laden is known to have lived and worked in Sudan for six years. Now there is an obvious link between Sudan and al Qaeda.

"But he must have been supporting terrorists with money and weapons." Another lie. There is no evidence that Hussein supported terrorists.

"But the President is supporting UN efforts to send peacekeeping forces to Sudan." Indeed, the man who championed the cause of going it alone in Iraq wants to get behind other efforts to help the Sudanese. How many billions of dollars will he pledge to the cause? How many months will it take for it to happen? How many more people will die? How many government contracts will he award to American corporations to rebuild the country?

"But Iraq is just the beginning of democracy in the Middle East." Yes, and Korea and Vietnam were just the beginning of democracy in Asia. It took 40 years to establish a stable democracy in South Korea, and North Korea didn't turn out so well for our efforts. Democratizing the world is a deep subject, and one that doesn't begin with simply invading countries and implementing a democracy. Before democracy, there must be security. There must be a long-term plan.

"But Iraq is strategically located, and is a rich source of oil." Why yes, it is. It figures prominently in long-term plans for containing the likes of Iran, Russia, and China. In fact, Iraq is quite critical to maintaining control of oil supplies. Even though we get most of our oil from countries outside of the Middle East, it is nice to know we will have a say in where other countries get theirs. That, and the military bases we will locate in Iraq will relieve us of having to beg Turkey and Uzbekistan to let us land our planes in their countries when we need to take on another Middle Eastern country. The democratization and de-weapons-of-mass-destruction-ification of Iran will be much easier now that we own Iraq.

So it is not about democracy, or killing of civilians, or harboring of terrorists, or weapons of mass destruction. If it were, we'd be sending troops to Sudan tomorrow. Iraq was less of a threat when we invaded than Sudan is today. Africa needs democracy more than any country in the Middle East. The President lied to us about Iraq. It is about imperialism.

That Old Guy Better Watch Out for the Wrath of God

2006-02-24T12:44:00.000-06:00

Have you ever fucked a religious crackpot? Not that you would want to, but what if it was an accident? Have you ever accidentally fucked a religious crackpot? I suppose it is unlikely, given that religious crackpots usually have some sort of rule against fucking. Maybe you accidentally fucked the religious crackpot before their pot cracked.

I think this story is outrageous, but it is hilarious on another level. There are people who travel the country and protest at funerals of American soldiers who were killed in action. God hates America and kills our soldiers because we tolerate homosexuality, they say. I'd say god also hates the protesters because they live in Kansas, but I don't really believe in god. I guess I'll meet them in hell some day.

The absolute best cookie ever made can be bought at North Country Co-op on the West Bank in Minneapolis. It is called a monkey cookie and I think the bakery that makes them is called Third World Bakery. This cookie is loaded with all the good stuff. If you think it would be good in a cookie, it's in there. They run $1.75 each and they are big enough to be a full lunch. Incidentally, the second best cookie ever made is the shortbread with maple creme frosting that is on rare occasion sold just down the street from NCC at the Hard Times Cafe. Fukkin cookilicious, man.

Spring is just around the corner.

2006-02-22T07:46:00.000-06:00

If humans walked on four legs like all other land mammals, each person would need to wear two pairs of pants instead of just one. If that is not proof of intelligent design, I don't know what is.

2006-02-21T20:50:00.000-06:00

For the first time, I agree with something George W Bush said. I've agreed with some of his policies on some level before, but never with his words or justifications. In defense of the deal allowing Dubai Ports World to take over management of several US ports, he said, "This is a company that has played by the rules, that has been cooperative with the United States, a country that's an ally in the war on terror, and it would send a terrible signal to friends and allies not to let this transaction go through." If we expect places like Iraq and Afghanistan to adopt our standards of freedom and justice, we need to start adapting to a world where transactions with countries in the Middle East involve something other than oil. Next up, expect Bush to embrace the Qatar-based Al Jazeera news network as a shining example of democracy at work, use economic and military power to force democratic reforms in several African countries, and to announce initiatives to improve safety and benefits at foreign factories that make goods for American companies.

Cheezball Breakfast

2006-02-14T08:01:00.000-06:00

I stopped at Menards recently and they had these gigantic clear plastic canisters of cheese balls, the little corn puff balls covered with cheese powder (and salt and greese). I bought one for $4 thinking I would take it to work and place it in the middle of the table at a meeting the next day over the lunch hour. Well I took it to the meeting and everyone looked at it suspiciously while they ate their sandwiches and things. No one ate the balls.

So I've had this giant can of chee-z-balls sitting on a table in my office for a week now and I can't help but scoop out a handful now and then. I've had four or five handfuls for breakfast this morning. Last week, I saw four of our highly paid information technology professionals down in the atrium of the building fixing the information kiosk. I brought the cheezers down for them and made the group five. Over the course of two hours, they managed to eat half of the canister's contents. Moreover, that two hours probably cost my company upwards of $500 in lost productivity. This was a job some kid from the helpdesk could have fixed in 15 minutes but we had four and five guys down there wasting away two hours.

The Cheese Ball Canister now stands at about one quarter full. That thing could feed an entire town in Africa for only $4 per day.

Send Her Flowers to Show Her You...

2006-02-13T11:31:00.000-06:00

With the marketing push of Valentine's day in full motion and since a few friends asked me this weekend, "what happened with that one girl?" ...here you go.

Since around the second week of January, every time I hear or read about sending people flowers I am reminded of this insane thing that happened to me. I sent some tulips to the workplace of this woman I had been dating. I figured it was probable that she would react negatively; it was a calculated risk, but I never expected this.

Just understand that 99% of what she wrote is fabricated. Her way of telling me that she didn't want to date me was to feed me lines like, "I get the impression you're annoyed by me," "you think we don't have chemistry," and "you're not interested in me." She never said anything like "no" or "I do not want to date you." She could have saved herself and me some trouble if she had. Instead, I wanted to show her that all of those negative statements she was projecting onto me were not true and I sent the flowers. The plan was approved by a female friend of mine.

After the flowers were delivered, I sent her a followup email asking for another chance and explaining why I did not want to be "just friends" (a suggestion she had made). Her reply was so amazingly insane that I can still see the words framed in my email reader: "...maybe you're not aware of the extent of the law, so this is your one freebie...I know my rights...I am not threatened by you." Threatened by flowers?!?!

She had mentioned on several occasions that she had a blog, so I sought it out expecting to find posts about her lifelong struggle with schizophrenia or something. At first it was distressing to read some of that stuff, but I kept up on it for several days because it became so ridiculous as to be entertaining. As if some crazy 35 year old virgin who had been dropped on his head as a baby was obsessed with her, and she played an entirely passive, innocent role in the whole ordeal, right!

I guess I should have heard the alarm bells ringing when she asked me during one of our dates, "have you ever hit a woman?" She's got issues with male figures in her past (she hinted about them a few times) and she was going to paint me as the victimizer whether I wanted to play that role or not. "You're not interested in me" was her way of telling me she did not want to date me and making it look as though I was the protagonist.

On the bright side, I spent $50 on flowers to basically get her to air out her baggage. If I could spend 50 bucks to get women to air out their baggage up front I would do it every time. Her reaction was a bonus in that way, and I got 1,000 Worldperks miles from the flower company for my troubles too. Still, I guess I'll be thinking twice before I send someone flowers again.

For the record, the part about the Oscar Wilde quote on the flower note was the 1% of truth in her post. It was, "Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives." Ha.

Expedient Delivery of Snack Foods for Immediate Gratification

2006-02-07T07:58:00.000-06:00

Several years ago there was a movie called The Insider where it was suggested that the tobacco industry was researching ways to deliver nicotine to the brain more quickly, providing for faster gratification of smokers. The movie was out around the time of the big tobacco industry settlements that were sweeping the nation. I remember thinking about how the food industry and the alcoholic beverage industry were guilty of more or less the same thing, but they were not being sued.

Take, for instance, soda pop. Some time in the late 90's the canning companies started marketing soda can and bottle designs that had wider openings. I believe it was Mountain Dew that first took on the new design. It wasn't long before every can or bottle of soda had the bigger mouth. The days of waiting for your soda to fill your mouth so you could take a big gulp and deliver it to your belly were over.

To be fair, it was probably fast food and microwaves that started the trend off. They reduced the time it took to get one's food out of its packaging and into one's mouth. The junk food industries took it a step further and not only made the time from shelf to belly shorter, but they did so by finding ways to deliver the greasy calories through the facial orifice more quickly.

For example, another trend is the boom in the "bites" technology of the candy companies. Where once there was a candy bar, there is now Heath Bites, Reese's Bites, Mr. Goodbar Bites, and so on. The round little bites of candy flow into the mouth faster and are easier to chew and swallow. In the same way that a bucket of ball bearings has properties that approach those of a liquid, so too do "bites" as they are dispensed into the mouth. If they could make liquid Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, I'm sure they would.

If you watch a Pringles commercial you'll see happy youths pouring the chips out of the canister directly into their mouths. Why get the hands involved when you can cut the middle man? If only they could find a way to eliminate the need to hold the canister to the mouth, the happy youths could enjoy their snack without physical exertion.

With booze, it's the Bacardi Mixers and Captain Morgan's Rum and Coke type of drinks. No more mixing the drinks yourself. No more waiting for a bartender to mix them. Just pop the cap and guzzle.

The obligatory conclusion is that this snack food craze is making our nation fat. Our teens are bursting at the seams because they are addicted to snacks. I'd like to point out another effect, however. This instant gratification has shortened the amount of time that we spend eating and socializing. Meals are a race to the finish. Sometimes it would be nice to sit for a meal with some friends and just enjoy their company while eating for a couple of hours.

Planning for Your Future: How to Invest in Foreign Wars

2006-01-26T13:32:00.000-06:00

When Congress authorized the President to invade Iraq, I remember thinking, "has anyone specified a means to an end and considered the cost?" What struck me most is how willing the "fiscal conservatives" of the Republican party were so willing to write a blank check. It is further frustrating now to hear of politicians calling for an exit strategy when that should have been discussed to some extent prior to invading.

Think back to the President's original justification for the invasion: terrorism. He never really said that Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda were linked, but he used both names in the same sentences so as to give people the impression that they were. Now there are millions of people walking around still believing that Hussein was somehow helping bin Laden crash those planes.

When the al Qaeda link was debunked, "weapons of mass destruction" became the reason for the invasion. We don't know what kind of weapons they are, but they sure sound bad. No WMDs were found and a claim by the President that Hussein had sought plutonium from Niger was debunked. Finally, in his 2004 state of the union address, it was all about democracy and fighting the people who hate freedom.

It took 40 years for a stable democracy to take hold in South Korea after the Korean War. We're still maintaining a presence in the former Yugoslavian states ten years after the US-led NATO invasion. The prospects for stable, democratic governments in some of those states are few. Unlike the situation in Iraq, however, we've got the help of NATO to help defray the burden.

Where is it going to end in Iraq? How many lives? How many dollars? Is there a point where it gets to be too much? These are questions that should have been addressed before the invasion took place. Anyone who considers himself a fiscal conservative should have been debating these things before he supported the invasion. A war is not the sort of thing you rush into without considering the cost and the consequences.

Parallels

2006-01-25T09:46:00.000-06:00

Married men and gay men
The married man sits at home and watches Desperate Housewives. He goes out to theater and orchestra, drinks wine, and takes the toy dog for walks. He realizes on some subconscious level that if he didn't do these things his wife would do them with her gay friends instead. So the married man competes with the gay man by, in effect, becoming gay. And then he overcompensates by making gay jokes about other men and voting for Bush (pun intended).

Women in their 40's and male crossdressers
Here's one that's sure to offend. Both have a facial hair problem and both struggle to maintain a feminine physique. How do you tell a crossdresser from the woman? The crossdresser has a better wardrobe.

Catholic priests and computer geeks
Whenever you see one of these people, chances are it has only been a matter of minutes since their hand last touched their peenie. When you shake their hand, you are one very small step removed from having had sexual contact with them. Both have fetishes, and I'm not talking about Jesus. With priests, it is young boys and girls. With computer geeks it is women dressed as warrior princesses or elves from a fantasy game. The next time you grasp the hand of one of these individuals, remember that you are grasping the hand that grasped the boner that erected itself under the stimulation of a pornographic picture of someone in costume.

Cappucino Considerations

2006-01-24T11:51:00.000-06:00

Finding a joint that knows how to make a proper cappiccino is like taking your Subaru in for service and getting a loaner car whose radio won't tune in MPR. Who do they think they are kidding?

I think it has something to do with America's taste for the bland. Budweiser is bland and weak. Pop music is bland and repetitive. Chain restaurants like Noodles & Company and Applebee's are bland. Movies and actors are bland copies of other movies and actors. So you go to the coffee shop and your espresso drink is bland, like a glass of warm milk with foam. I heard another coffee snob say once that Startbucks is not in the coffee business, they are in the milk drink business. Milk with chocolate, milk with sugar, milk with caramel. Milk with flavor shots. Anything but coffee.

In a good cappuccino, you should be able to taste the coffee. Part of the problem, I suppose, is that at 20 ounces the whole milk plus froth plus espresso equation doesn't really work out. The froth doesn't stand a chance. A 20 oz cappuccino, which is the size of the Starbucks "venti," should have 7 oz of froth. By the time you're one third done with the drink, the froth has reduced to liquid. At that point, you're drinking just milk and espresso.

The local chain Dunn Bros is the only place I've found that consistently makes good cappuccinos. They use more espresso and sometimes they even ask me if I like it "wet" or "dry" (more espresso or more milk). I'm not a big fan of coffee jargon, but at least they care. I think I'm going to switch to ordering small sized drinks. I like to have a big one to carry around with me and the caffeine never really affects me, but maybe I'll find the taste to be better.

Corporate Welfare

2006-01-23T11:42:00.000-06:00

The New York Times ran an article today that illustrates how natural gas production companies may have underpaid the federal government in royalties for drilling on government land. On page two of the article there is also mention of "lucrative new incentives to companies that drill in the Gulf of Mexico and other high-risk areas." So not only are they ripping us off on royalties, but they are getting paid by the government to do it.

The Bush administration has created the largest government this country has ever seen. I don't care if the money is going to contractors in Iraq, gas companies, or overstaffed government agencies. The fact is that the government is spending more money than it ever has before. How can anyone who considers his or herself a fiscal conservative support this government?

In addition to subsidizing gas production, the government subsidizes the mining and timber industries (google it, there are several links). Depending on where you live, you pay for trash removal either through city fees or taxes or directly to the sanitation company. Also depending on where you live, you may have recycling services and they may or may not be government subsidized. Either way, you're paying for trash removal and you're probably paying for recycling. Both involve the removal of waste materials from your home. Yet recycling is often considered the wasteful government program while trash removal is considered a necessary evil. The worst part is that without government subsidies, virgin materials would be more expensive and recycled materials would therefore be more cost competitive. Recycling might actually be a profitable operation for a government to administer.

2006-01-22T21:27:00.000-06:00

I just got back from Northern Minnesota, where I've been helping my parents build a house for their retirement this summer. I've got at least 40 hours of tiling work into the place. They've got two big bathrooms and two entryways with tile on them. The real appeal of going up north is for my dog, however. She's a springer spaniel so she loves a jaunt in the woods looking and sniffing for birds and rodents in the bushes. It has gotten to the point where when I get up on Saturday mornings she sits in the kitchen looking at me and then looking at the top of the refrigerator where I keep her travel bag. It's as though she thinks she can convince me to just get in the car and take her up north!

I've been trying to get a sinus problem diagnosed for the past couple of years. I've figured out from researching on the internet and talking to people that it is sinusitis, a bacterial infection in the sinuses. The doctors at the clinic believed it was allergies and gave me Claritin and Allegra D, both of which did nothing for my symptoms and the latter of which knocked me out so much I could barely get out of bed in the morning. I finally got a referral to an allergy clinic and they've asked a lot of questions and done some tests on me. I fully expect them to tell me I have sinusitis when I return for the diagnosis next week.

Every time I go to a doctor appointment I am reminded of a trip to France I took back in 1998. One of the doors at a Metro station was malfunctioning and it swung back and hit me in the forehead after someone ahead of me had pushed it open to go through. I had a big bloody gash and I stood there applying pressure for five minutes trying to figure out what to do next. After the blood stopped running down my arm and dripping on the ground, I made my way back to the hotel and asked the concierge where to go. He pointed out an emergency room down the road, so I walked there. A nurse had me fill out a form and told me that since I was a tourist the national health care program wouldn't cover the cost. She then told me to go into a waiting room to wait for another nurse. I entered the room and the nurse was waiting for me. She took me into a room with various medical equipment and a doctor came in and put in some stitches. They were both very friendly, and they were curious about the battle between Pepsi and Coke. After the stitches, the doctor gave me a prescription for a tetanus shot and told me to walk across the street to buy it from the pharmacy there. I did so, returned so he could administer it, and left. It turned out to be a great experience because I got to see a part of France that most tourists do not. The bill was $60 for the stitches and another $3 for the shot. My rating for France's health care system: A+.

Cultural Boycotts?

2006-01-20T08:18:00.000-06:00

The recent crisis with Iran and its nuclear research program has got some people calling for "cultural and sports boycotts" against the nation. Read more about it on CNN.

I was in Lyon, France in 1998 to see the USA - Iran World Cup match. The Iranian fans there were the warmest, most enthusiastic people I have ever met. It would be a crime to lock them out of another World Cup because of what their government is doing. No one punishes us for having a shitass president!

Soccer and government should remain separated. Governments divide people, the World Cup brings them together.

Looking Back to Understand the Present

2006-01-17T13:33:00.000-06:00

There's an interesting series running on the History Channel this week about great American leaders. Monday night was about Lincoln, tonight is about Ben Franklin, and the remainder of the week is reserved for three parts about the presidents.

I watched the Lincoln part last night, and in the back of my mind two questions were lingering: 1) how does Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation compare to Bush's authorization of eavesdropping by the NSA without court approval and 2) how does our civil war compare to the one taking place in Iraq?

First, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, thereby freeing slaves in states that were rebelling, i.e., confederate states. Under normal circumstances he would not have had authority to do so. But since the country was in a state of war he used his executive powers as "...warranted by the Constitution upon military necessity." Obviously there is a parallel with Bush using similar military argument for authorizing NSA eavesdropping on American citizens without court approval. Gore Vidal, as author of Lincoln: A Novel he was a guest on the show, explained it in a humorous way when he explained that the war on terrorism is not really a war, it is like declaring war on dandruff. I would tend to agree with that statement, but any way you look at it it is interesting to have a historical perspective through which to view current events. It really outlines the severity of the situation back in 1863 as opposed to now.

That brings me to the second question. In light of what I wrote in a previous post about the Second Ammendment, what if another country had tampered in our civil war? Unlike the Revolutionary War, where the USA received supplies and naval support from France and the Netherlands (yes, they saved our asses once before we saved theirs in WWII), the Civil War was an internal conflict. I'm not trying to accept imperialism only where it is convenient here. I think there is a big difference between tampering in Britain's affairs with the colonies and tampering in the internal affairs of a nation. Britain and France and the Netherlands were imperial powers, Iraq is not.

If Lincoln had received aid from abroad, for example, he may not have issued the EP. One of his reasons for doing so was to free slaves so they could volunteer for the Union Army. 200,000 of them did so. With foreign aid, Lincoln may not have felt he could justify the EP and ultimately he may not have even suggested after the war that blacks be given the right to vote. John Wilkes Booth assasinated the president in reaction to things he said after the war in 1865, not in reaction to the EP (in 1863). On the opposite side, the case for aid to the rebellious states from foreign entities has obvious implications as it could have meant Union defeat and the destruction of the USA.

At the end of the Lincoln show, Gore Vidal was describing Lincoln's death and he actually began to cry. At first I thought he was just being dramatic, but it was real! How odd, to weep for someone who died sixty years before you were born.

The Lincoln episode will re-air on Saturday for those who missed it. I would also recommend an article in the current issue of Smithsonian Magazine about Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation. I've got a copy of the magazine with the full article if anyone wants to see it.

2006-01-16T11:53:00.000-06:00

I was watching "The Matrix Reloaded" last night and I noted how in the scenes that took place in "Zion City" reflected the racial diversity that one might expect to see in the USA in the next 100 years. Most sci-fi movies are dominated by white actors so I found it interesting that the movie's creators had the foresight to include so many different and diverse actors. I say it all the time but here it is again, my favorite thing about living in the USA is the diversity. A lot of people are afraid of it, but I think increased diversity is the only way the USA will remain competitive in the face of growth in Asia, South America, and some day Africa.

The fact that the words "seven" and "heaven" rhyme is useful if you are a song writer.

If you want an easy, clean way to make omelets, go to Target and look in the cookware section for a Nordicware omelet tray. It is a plastic tray consisting of two semi-circular halves hinged so that it folds over. You mix your eggs and stuff and pour one half of the mix in each side. Microwave it for three or four minutes and out comes a tidy omelet. Easy.

I've been hauling scraps of wood out of my basement and burning it in a chiminea I've got on my front deck. This violates Minneapolis housing code. My house is clad in fiber-cement siding so I am not worried about it catching fire, and I keep an eye on things while it is burning. Anyway the fun part is that I cook kabobs or bison burgers over the flame. Somehow I get a kick out of burning parts of my house to make dinner. Most of the wood is miscellaneous stuff that I've pulled out during remodeling or 2x4's and boards that were used in the basement for shelves. The house is 90 years old so the wood is really dry. It flares up like paper when you put a match to it.

That reminds me, a couple of years ago there was a rental property in Minneapolis over by the U of MN that went up in flames. Three students died in the fire and the neighbors reported that they didn't know there was a fire until they started hearing windows breaking and screams of pain. That sounds so horrific. It got me to thinking, however, about how 100 years ago dying in a fire wasn't so unusual. Houses these days have fire detectors and flame-retardant materials and fire crews can make it to the scene much more quickly. An old house like mine would go up in flames pretty quickly, so I had expanding foam insulation blown into the walls and flame-proof fiber-cement siding installed. I have a monitored security system in place so if a fire does break out, the fire department will be notified the second the smoke alarms go off. My parents' house had a fire in it years ago while no one was home, but the family dog died of suffocation. That is a large part of why I am so careful of protecting against fire. The cause of the fire was spontaneous combustion of some rags my dad had used in finishing some of his woodworking pieces. There's another lesson, spread out chemical-soaked rags in a well-ventilated area or outside if possible.

2006-01-15T10:22:00.000-06:00

I recently met this great woman. She was attractive, funny, and we had a lot in common. Then she flipped out on me. Since then I've gotten some really good advice from some unexpected friends. I don't think I've valued my friends as much as I should.

To those who helped me out, thank you. You know who you are.

In other bad news, I was unsuccessful in my second bid to acquire World Cup tickets. FIFA has a most complicated process in place for ordering tickets and I have applied twice and been denied. Today I applied for what they call the third phase lottery, and there is still a fourth phase after that. What a fukkin mess.

Toaster Troubles

2006-01-12T10:24:00.000-06:00

What the hell is the problem with toasters these days? It used to be one would put something in a toaster and it would roast the shit out of it regardless of what the darkness setting was. Now it seems the new generation of toasters try to kiss the bread with golden goodness. The people designing toasters have been eating too much fukkin creme brulée. The new toasters try to be accommodating to everything from bread to pop tarts to bagels. So what you get in the end is a very long wait for your shit to pop up only to find that it hasn't been abused nearly as much as you need it to be. I think I am going to hang on to the 1970's Westinghouse model I inherited from my grandma for a while.

A few months ago when I was driving through northern Minnesota, I got an idea to make the image below. I know it is harsh and provocative, but I like the irony. I wish that if people really believe they are pro-life that they would apply it across the full spectrum of life. So after a few minutes in Photoshop I came up with this thing.

2006-01-11T21:18:00.000-06:00

Today I spent a few hours at an allergy clinic, then a few at work, and then a short time at the off-leash dog park in Northeast Minneapolis. At the clinic, which was shared with a bone marrow transplant clinic and adjacent to a hospital, there were a lot of old people and people who have trouble getting around without the assistance of a device or another person. The staff and doctors were all very friendly and caring. The place had an air of routine business and people going about their daily lives. I couldn't help but feel sympathy for the people I saw who were in a lot of pain or discomfort.

At work, there was the usual mix of mistrust, people taking themselves too seriously, and people acting as caricatures of themselves. They all want to be good people and do good work, but they are ill-equipped and ill-supported by their superiors. I find it unfortunate that people must resort to suspicion and backstabbing because they feel threatened in their jobs, and it all ultimately is the fault of the leadership. The boss doesn't know how to deal with the problems so it creates more stress for everyone.

The people at the dog park are a more humble lot. They smile a lot and they love their dogs. They have nothing to give or lose. One does not see the stress of a job or a strained relationship in their expressions. The park is a stop along the way to their other things to do and they get along just fine.

Work people, meet hospital people, and try to be a little more like park people over there.

Travel Therapy

2006-01-09T13:07:00.000-06:00

Traveling has a way of bringing one back to the things that are most important. Last summer I went on a road trip through Canada and around the great lakes. It was just me and my car for a week and a half. I crossed Canada along the north shore of Lake Superior, then went down through Michigan and south around Lake Erie, through Niagara to Toronto, and straight back through Michigan, across Lake Michigan on a carferry, to home in Minneapolis. As usual when I travel, seeing the city upon my return reminded me how much I appreciate the place in which I live. There is no better way to know how good you have it than to return home after a trip and see it with new perspective.

When I set out from Thunder Bay, Ontario on the second day of my trip, I experienced a feeling of invincibility. I had eight hours to go before I reached Sault St. Marie. The scenery was stunning, with amazing views I would only have expected to see along the ocean or in the mountains. I felt I was in control of my destiny and I could do anything I wanted to do.

In the end, 2005 turned out to be a bit of an off year for me. I felt like everything I had touched had turned to shit. People seemed to be conspiring to make me fail. Women were mean to me. I started to feel like I needed to do something to break free of the slump and get my mind working again. I did not want to lose the feeling I got from that road trip.

Shortly after I returned from the roadtrip, in early September, I thought about getting involved with a springer spaniel rescue program after reading about it on the internet. I thought about getting involved with charitable work in Africa after reading about Grassroot Soccer. I needed to do something to offset the terrible feeling of defeat that was creeping over me.

I've started planning my trip to Germany in June and that is something to look forward to. This past weekend I started work on some revisions to a web site I set up, blueskysoccer.com. And I initiated the process of setting up a not-for-profit company organized around that site with some friends, the purpose being promotion of soccer and hopefully some fundraising for Grassroot Soccer.

Sometimes it is hard to appreciate home when you are always there. I forget that I've got great friends and family who are behind me and I've got better living than most of the people in the world. Before I started traveling I was ignorantly blissful of my situation. Now I can barely get by unless I have a trip abroad to look forward to. I wish I could experience the feeling of coming home every day.

The Second Ammendment

2006-01-08T14:04:00.000-06:00

A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

How would the second ammendment to our consitution (that's it in its entirety above) apply to what is going on in Iraq? What the media refer to as insurgents and the Kurdish militia that are cooperating with the US and Iraqi militaries would probably enjoy some protection under our second amendment. Yet the insurgents are, in the words of the president, people who hate freedom and liberty. Meanwhile the Kurds, who have desires to establish a state of their own, are cooperating in the military effort because they realize it will help them establish legitimacy and gain power.

The fact is, the insurgent groups would have the right to use arms to fight a foreign occupying force such as the USA if they were governed by our constitution. Ironically, we are trying to spread our values of freedom to the Middle East but the widely held view is that the insurgents are misguided and opposed to democracy.

The Kurds operate semi-autonomously in the northern part of Iraq. They provide for their own military security.

Both the insurgents and the Kurds have rights to participation in Iraqi democracy. The fighting that is taking place there is in effect a civil war. The insurgents are not like some bumblefuck militia in Montana. They obviously have enough power and numbers to warrant regular media attention and influence public opinion both negatively and positively. As difficult as it may be for the US to withdraw and let the Iraqis work things out on their own, this is a question of democracy that they must work out without US imperialism in the way. If we want to export our values of freedom, we must start by honoring them ourselves.