Entry 59: Politics and The Fridge

Whew! I almost wasn’t able to post this entry tonight. I was just about to shutdown, but then I had some last minute negotiations with myself (no, that’s not a euphemism for anything), reached a deal, and was able keep this blog going.

This whole U.S. budget quagmire is turning into a bit of a farce, isn’t it? The Republicans just want to reduce spending so that they can cut taxes for the already filthy rich, and the Democrats just want…, well, I’m not sure what they want exactly. I think they want to oppose the Reps, but they do such a bad job of it that I have trouble believing that that really is their goal. They do put up a fight over some things, mainly social things, which is good and all, but when it comes to the big economic issue of producing a sustainable federal budget, they seem content to let the Reps control the conversation.

The thing I find funniest (in a dark comedy way) about this is that I think the Dems have a winning hand in the economy with the American people. If I were a Democratic politician I would repeat the following again and again and again, “They don’t really want to balance the budget, they just want to finance tax cuts for the super rich.” I think this could resonate with voters in the same way Obama’s “Your taxes will not be affected if you make less than $250,000 a year” did during the 2008 election. For one thing, that the Reps aren’t serious about balancing the budget is absolutely true as Paul Krugman (my new man crush) has been detailing in his recent excoriations of the Ryan plan. For another, it’s completely unintuitive to talk about reducing the deficit and cutting taxes simultaneously. This would be like the head of a household trying to balance the family budget by taking a pay cut. Now, the Reps would counter with supply-side-esque economic theories (that don’t actually work in practice) and Heritage Foundation studies, but these are complicated arguments from partisan sources. The intuition is against tax cuts here. I would exploit this as a hypothetical Democratic politician.

And then, just to prove a point, I would support 95% of the proposed Republican spending cuts, but refuse to support any tax cuts. Then I would turn to my opposition and say, “C’mon, bitches, if it’s about balancing the budget, then let’s balance the budget.” When they inevitably denied me, I’d say, “See. That's what I thought.”

OK, enough about politics. (Out of my four readers, three have probably already quit reading.) Instead I’ll talk about a few Yahoo! stories I clicked on recently (I’m a total sucker for their headlines when I go to check my fantasy baseball team, “What? ‘Gaga danced until feet bled.’ I have got to check this out.”) The first is a short article about a “shocking” youtube video showing a “teen ‘fight club’” in the Sydney suburbs. The only thing I found shocking about it is that people find this shocking. This is what knuckleheaded 15-year-old boys do (I know, using knuckleheaded and 15-year-old boys in the same sentence is redundant). In the video, the kids don’t seem to be doing much more than boxing, wrestling, skateboarding, and being general jackasses (pushing the couch on the skateboard ramp is quintessential pointless jackass-ery and made me laugh). I used to do shit like this all the time. (Although, I didn’t drink at that age and I never skated.) At least they have a “referee” and are wearing gloves when they box.



When I was that age, I used to get together with the neighborhood kids and play “football” on this piece of crap field that was more weeds and rocks than grass and dirt, and it was basically just a giant royal rumble. The only real reason for the football was so that we’d know who to try to jack up. Every now and then somebody would break or tear something serious (I remember a kid breaking his collar bone once), but usually the injuries were things like a bloody lip or a jammed finger, so you’d go home for the night and then come back the next day. In retrospect, it does seem pretty brutal, and it seems amazing that most boys even survive their adolescence, but at the time somehow it isn’t, and they do.

The second article is about a 10-year old boy Cliff who gave former Chicago Bear football player William “The Refrigerator” Perry his Super Bowl ring back. Apparently, Perry had to sell it when he hit tough times financially. It’s just a feel-good fluff piece, so it’s probably pointless to criticize it, but there was one part of it I found funny. Cliff’s mom Tracy is talking about how Cliff obtained the ring in the first place.

"When Cliff saw the ring, he said he had to have it," Tracy said. "Once I saw the price, I said, 'Absolutely not. We're not buying the ring.'

"He ended up taking money out of his savings account. We told him it was money for college, but he ended up getting the ring."

Right, he just took the “money out of his saving account” and just “ended up getting the ring.” Because, you know, 10-year olds can just walk into a bank and withdraw money that’s set aside for college. They don’t need adult permission or anything like that. Hey, if your prepubescent kid wanted to drain their college account on video games and candy, you would be absolutely helpless as a parent – nothing you can do. Still, I guess it's a nice gesture to give The Fridge his ring back.

In other news, my work in going pretty well. I’m mostly through the bottleneck that was really slowing me down. I should be able to make good progress for a while. I will have to start working closely on some things with somebody who’s difficult to work with, but whatever. He’s a nice guy, but he’s impossible to communicate with. His English is really bad (I mentioned him in a previous entry), and he just says “yes” to everything.

“So x is taken care of?”

“Yes”

“And y as well?”

“Yes”

And then, of course, I find out – when nothing is working for me and I’m utterly annoyed –neither x nor y was done, at all.

In other, other news I went to the store today and was disappointed that they only had salted cashews. I love eating cashews, but the salted ones are too salty, so I usually also buy a bag of the unsalted ones, which are too plain, and then mix them to get the perfect salt to nut ratio. But they didn’t have the unsalted ones, which is annoying. Actually, it’s annoying that I even have to mix them in the first place, and that the manufacturer doesn’t offer a lightly salted variety. Why are the only two options Dead Sea and Negev Desert? How about something in between?