Entry 107: Senator Sanitorium

I had a joke that I was going to put on Facebook. I was going to say, "I'm completely with Rick Santorum on this birth control issue... I hate wearing a condom too!" But then I thought better of it. Some people simply don't have a sense of humor about things, and you never know what might get back to somebody with some power over you. I actually know somebody who was fired from her job for comments she made on MySpace, and while something like that is extremely unlikely to happen to me, why risk it? I don't care that much about voicing my stupid jokes on Facebook (I'll just voice them on my blog, where at least I have a thin veil of anonymity). Some years ago, I heard Jello Biafra give a talk and he said something that has stuck with me, "Sometimes it's best to chicken out."

[A side-by-side of Rick Santorum (right, fittingly) and Dan Savage, the sex advice columnist (and Seattle resident) who coined the other meaning of santorum. If you want to see a very interesting image of Santorum, click here, and look at each pixel closely (warning: for adults only).]

Speaking of Santorum (a.k.a. Senator Sanitorium), his numbers are down in key states, and it seems as if his moment in the sun has past, and the GOP Primary continues to play out as Mitt Romney vs. Flavor of the Month. Romney, for his part, does what he's so good at doing -- saying or doing something completely reasonable and then backpedaling from it. I read an article saying that Santorum could potentially be a tougher opponent for Obama than Romney, due to the break down of the Electoral College, but right now I'm guessing Obama will win reelection against either one, perhaps easily. I mean, the economy could go down again and erase some very modest recent gains, or something else could happen, but as of right now, I think Obama's the safest bet.

This would be a huge boon for the Democrats -- having their incumbent win during a time of severe economic recession -- and a small win for rational thinkers. The Republicans are moving further and further away from the mainstream and adopting very strange anti-science, anti-compassion, anti-compromise, anti-sanity positions, and it might be the case that the country is going to mostly reject this shift. Sure, there are always going to have people who support them, because a lot of people see politics like sports, and the Republicans are "their team" the same way the Seattle Mariners are "my team", but most people don't really care about which team wins, and don't really care about politics at all. They just want to go along and get along. I think there is a legitimate chance the Reps are "righting" themselves right of the map with many voters, and we're going to see a push back to the center over the next few years. But maybe that's just wishful thinking. They're certainly not an option for me. True, they never really were, but they're such a ridiculous party now that I almost certainly will vote for Obama in November, when in the past I would probably have voted for a third party candidate. So there's that.

[This is what sane people are up against.]

In lighter news, S and I have started watching Friday Night Lights. It's pretty good so far. I am admittedly a sucker for any sort of sports-themed show or movie. I find myself getting genuinely excited during the football scenes even though they are super silly and usually end in a ridiculous, unbelievable last-second decision. S doesn't like the football scenes, but tolerates them, because they're actually pretty short. She isn't completely sold on the show, but there's just enough non-football drama to keep her interest. I've heard that the show is kinda cheesy the first season or so, but gets legitimately good later, so I want to keep watching. Plus, it gives us something to watch together. It's certainly better than Teen Mom, which is one of S's favorites.

[I, myself, played half a year of JV football in high school. I never really liked it. The worst part about it was just wearing the helmet. It hurt my head more than getting hit. I ran cross country the next year, which I didn't really like either. I should've gone out for the fall play. That's one of my regrets from high school.]

It was funny. I went to Best Buy on Valentine's Day to buy S the original Star Wars trilogy, because she's only seen A New Hope and has been wanting to see the other two (you know, like every other person in the world). But, they didn't have it, so then I was going to buy her Sex and the City, but they didn't have that either, so then I was just going to leave, when Friday Night Lights caught my eye (it was on sale), so I bought it on a whim. Then I stopped by the grocery store and bought a piece of cake for us to share and a bottle of sparkling cider. When I got home, she didn't want any cake and drank a few sips of sparkling cider, before complaining that her stomach hurt. So, for Valentine's Day, I got my wife the first season of a TV show she had no interest in watching, a piece of cake I ate myself, and a beverage that gave her a tummy ache. Oh well, it's a bullshit holiday, anyway.

Well, that's it for now. I have to do some work on a paper that will hopefully be published. It's residual work from grad school. Until next time...

Entry 106: A Walk-in Closet and Other Tales

My wife has left me. Not for another man, but for a walk-in closet. We recently purchased a rather elaborate Elfa shelving ensemble, and the installer came yesterday and turned half our attic into a chrome wire paradise (at least by S's account). She spent all of last night and much of today organizing this thing.

Personally, I'm not that into closets of any variety, but I will say that it's a nice enhancement to our house. Plus, I get the closet in our bedroom to myself. Now I can actually see some space between my hanging dress shirts. They aren't packed into a tiny silver at the end of the closet like they've been put in a trash compactor.

[This is the shoe and long hanging section.]

Actually, it turned out to be a bit of an ordeal getting this closet set up. You have to go to The Container Store (yes, this is a real place), and work with an employee there to draw up a schematic, which they then deliver the pieces for and install (it's not cheap either). So first S did this without knowing the precise dimensions of our attic, just by guessing (which I'm on the record as saying was a bad idea at the time), and of course her estimates were way off, so she had to cancel the delivery and build a new schematic. This time she measured everything, and yet somehow still the plans called for shelves that were six feet too long (six feet!).


So the installer shows up and is like, "Uh... this isn't going to fit." I was the only one home, so I had to work with him in finding a place to install everything. Luckily he was pretty cool, and he more or less ditched the plans, and we kinda ad-libbed it. (I know that he's not supposed to do this. The proper way is to go back to the store and redraw the plans, which would've sucked ass, so I'm grateful he wasn't a stickler.) In the end, I think what we got is better than what was in the original plans anyway (S agrees), so all's well that ends well, but still... six feet off?! How does this happen? (I told S her punishment for making me deal with the installer while I was supposed to be working from home is that I get to mention this on my blog.)

In other news, I got a parking ticket a few weeks back that I'm fighting. DC has a system where you can challenge tickets online. The thing is, I probably (OK, definitely) was parked illegally, but, and this is a big but for me, I wasn't blocking anything. I was parked with the very tail end of my back bumper in a crosswalk (or rather where a crosswalk would be, one of the lines was partial wiped away), but everybody could still use the crosswalk. Pedestrians could easily get by, and the wheelchair divot / ramp in the curb was completely accessible. It's a case where I violated the letter of the law, but not the spirit, and it's my intention that a) the spirit is more important than the letter, and b) DC intentionally makes the letter of their minor laws difficult to follow and enforces them stringently, because it's a huge source of revenue for them.


Above is the diagram I submitted with my explanation. We'll see what happens. I have to admit that I exaggerated the position of my car a bit, I was more obviously in the crosswalk, but screw it. I wasn't hurting anything, I didn't do anything wrong, DC just wants my money. This is exactly the type of petty crap governments pull that pushes people toward things like the Tea Party and extreme libertarianism. Maybe I should start supporting Ron Paul.

Although, on the flip-side of that coin, I spent a solid 10 minutes yesterday bitching at the woman from Capital One about my credit card statement, not because it was wrong, but because the way they present everything, it is practically impossible to follow your credits and debits and easily see where your balance comes from. They just list your charges and then there is a balance at the top. There is no running balance for each of your charges (like in most statements), and there is no line giving your previous balance.

So, if you want to verify your balance is correct, you have to go back to your previous statement, get your previous balance, then go your current list of chargers, and add everything on it to your previous balance. But, even if you do that (which I did), it still doesn't add up! Because some of the charges listed might not have been applied yet to your balance (of course, there's no indication of which charges these are), and on top of that, there are small pending merchant fees that have not yet been applied to the charges that have not yet gone through, but have been applied to your balance. It's absolutely absurd.

The woman I talked to about this was actually pretty nice, at first she was in full-on placate-and-get-off-the-phone mode, but after she realized that that wasn't going to work, and that I was actually making sense, she shifted to apologetic, you're-right-I-know-our-system-sucks-but-I'm-not-in-control-of-it mode. I asked her two questions that she just couldn't answer: 1) How would I ever have known which charges were applied toward my current balance if I didn't call you? 2) Even if I did know, why should I, in today's day and age, need a calculator and 30 minutes of free time simply to verify that my balance is correct?



But of course, the answers are really quite simply. We all know why credit card companies do this. They don't want their customers to be able to easily calculate their balances. This way they can tack on bullshit fees and hike up interests rates without getting a rash of complaints. (Both of which have happened to me. And of course it's perfectly legal, because, you know, the GOP says that this type of thing creates jobs, or something like that, and they demonize anybody who speaks out against these types of predatory practice, like, say, Elizabeth Warren.)

The upshot is that I'm going to write a letter to the Capital One corporate offices in Utah, and if I don't get a satisfactory response, I'm going to stop using this card. (Although, I doubt any of the other major banks are much better.) Thankfully, I have the luxury of doing this because I'm not saddled with debt like a lot of people. I've always been pretty smart with credit. Or perhaps I've just always been pretty lazy with credit. It's hard to rack up high credit card bills when you'd rather do just about anything than go out and buy things.

Anyway, on the topic of economics and politics. Playboy did an interview with Paul Krugman, which I recommend everybody read in full. I'll post a few passages that I like, because they sound like things I've been saying. Part of this is because I read Krugman daily, but some of the things, like the stuff about Obama, I was saying to friends in 2007, years before I even really knew who Paul Krugman was. I guess my point is that I should have my own column in the New York Times. I mean, the only difference between me and Paul Krugman is 25 years, two Ivy League degrees in economics, several dozens publications, and a Nobel Prize.

Until next time...

Krugman on Obama:

Obama is very much an establishment sort of guy. The whole image of him as a transcendent figure was based on style rather than substance. If you actually looked at what he said, not how he said it, he said very establishment things. He’s a moderate, cautious, ameliorative guy. He tends to gravitate toward Beltway conventional wisdom. He’s a certain kind of policy wonk, the kind that looks for things that are sort of centrist in how Washington defines centrist. He was talking about Social Security cuts during the 2008 primary. That’s how you sound serious in our current political culture. He wasn’t sufficiently distanced to step back and say that a lot of our political culture is completely insane.

A lot of people who were normally like me didn’t like me because I was saying, “Obama’s really not the progressive you think he is.” And now they’re all saying, “He’s not the progressive we thought he was.” He came in prepared with the wrong set of instincts, and it’s taken a while to get past that.

Krugman on the lesser depression (his term for our current financial woes):

How about “Let’s get this country moving again”? I’m as prepared as anybody to preach root-canal economics under the right circumstances, but this is not the time for it. The problem with our economy is people would like to buy stuff, but they don’t feel they have the income.

Environmental regulations could actually be creating jobs right now, but people say, “Oh, that’s crazy. How could that be true? Regulations add to costs.” My answer is this: Does the story about the world that underlies what you guys are saying allow for what we see all around us? Do your theories explain nine percent unemployment and this monstrous economic collapse?

Krugman on taxing the rich:

Even some very wealthy people, like Warren Buffett, are more or less saying that. Bill Gates Sr. used to say this: Suppose you were given the choice of being born in America or in Ethiopia. What proportion of your eventual fortune would you be willing to give to be born in America? Given the great good fortune of getting to live and run a business in this country that has all the advantages an advanced country with a decent system provides, how can you think it’s all you? And then, how can you feel you don’t have any obligation to pay it back?

Entry 105: Another One Doesn't Ride The Bus

[The title of this post is a play on Weird Al's "Another One Rides the Bus", which itself is a play on Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust". This is actually a fantastic song -- terrific bass line. Sadly, it's been so overplayed that it's impossible to really enjoy now.]

I went out drinking with my friend RT last night. It was pretty fun. Now that we live in the city again, it's pretty easy to get to U Street, which is a big bar scene in DC. In theory, I could just take the bus, it's only about a 10 minute ride, and there is a stop right outside our door, but I didn't last night. S gave me a ride there (she didn't feel like going out, herself) and then I took a cab back. I was going to take the bus back. I was standing at the bus stop, and the bus came, and then the bus went, and it didn't stop. It was almost completely full, and there were like 20 people waiting with me, so I think the driver just did the math. It was just as well, as I immediately hailed a cab and it was only $7. If I had known it was so inexpensive, I would've just taken one in the first place.

I met RT at a place called Nellie's, which is a huge place -- a weird kind of sports bar / night club hybrid. It's ostensibly gay, but there always seems to be a decent dusting of heteros in the mix. I met a bunch of RT's coworkers as I came in at the end of an informal happy hour get-together. They were all really cool. There were a few attractive, 20-something, single women there, which to a middle-aged gay guy like RT doesn't mean much, but which I appreciate, even though I'm happily married to the most wonderful woman in the world (hey, she read this thing sometimes). Actually, at the end of the night one of them made a comment to me, something to the effect of "It was nice to meet you... Too bad you're taken." It was really quite innocent, but I must admit, it made me think back nostalgically to my single days. Yep, the plight of the desirable married man -- it's rough for guys like me, let me tell you.

Chris Rock has a hilarious bit about this type of thing. About how when you're single, it's tough to get girls to give you so much as the time of day, and then as soon as you get married, and can't act on it, woman suddenly treat you like you're Mick Jagger. I couldn't find it on youtube, but this is a different clip about being married that's pretty funny. (Warning, it's not suitable for work.)




Anyway, after Nellie's, RT and I went to The Saloon where I had a $10 bottle of beer (it's a cool, but overpriced place), and we had a discussion (maybe it was more like an argument) about abortion. It was pretty silly in retrospect, as it was very alcohol-fueled, and we actually have very similar views.

So as not to end the night on a sour note, we stopped at one more bar, Stetson's (where Jenna Bush was once supposedly kicked out of) and had one final drink. It was fine, but I don't think either of us really needed one more. It certainly didn't do me any good this morning, when I woke up with a headache. I've reached that point in life where it's absolutely impossible for me to drink more than one or two beers without being hung over. It kinda sucks getting old, sometimes.

In other news, the new house is working out great so far. A few unexpected annoyances have cropped up -- like the smoke detector in the kitchen being mounted directly above the stove, so that it goes off if you so much as boil water with the fan on, or a hole for the cable connection being drilled in the middle of the floor instead of against a wall -- but nothing too bad.

[Just a quick jog from our house -- very cool.]

Our neighborhood is pretty nice, I went for a run this morning through Rock Creek Park and parts of it are really pretty. In the park, there is a tennis arena where they play the Legg Mason Tennis Classic. I actually went to grad school with a guy who once played in this tournament. We had the same advisor, and he helped me out a lot by giving all this computer code he had written that would've taken me months to replicate on my own. He graduated before me, and one day after he finished and had moved away, my advisor randomly told me that he was once an aspiring professional tennis player. I Googled him and found out that he an All-American as an undergrad and once played a doubles match in the Legg Mason against Andy Roddick and some other guy -- kinda cool.

[William H. G. FitzGerald Tennis Center.]

Speaking of computer code. I've decide to embark on a new project. I'm going to try to make an iPhone app. I have no idea what to expect nor how hard it will be, and I don't really know where to begin. I've ordered a book that will hopefully explain things. I really just want to try it out, I don't have expectations about doing anything super awesome.

I have two ideas. The one I'm going to focus on first is a word game kinda similar to Boggle. I figure it's OK to make apps similar to other already existing games, given the success of Word With Friends. I mean, I like Words With Friends, I play it all day (and rarely lose, I might add, I think my record is about 50-4, literally), but it's just Scrabble. In fact, I don't see how they aren't being sued by Hasbro. Not only that, but the makers are on a commercial that aired during the Super Bowl? Really? They get hailed for a blatant rip off? (Yes, I get the airplane joke.) Seems weird to me.

It's like if I went to a basketball court, moved the rims down a few inches, made the court a few feet shorter, changed the three-point line to the four-point line, and then declared, "Hey, I made this new great game, hoopball. What do you think?" And everybody was like, "Wow! Hoopball is awesome!" Actually, that's not such a bad idea, I think I'm going to start working on the schematic of the National Hoopball Association.

Until next time...

Entry 104: Moving

We are moving this weekend. I hate moving. I mean, I'm glad we are. We have our own cool house after all, but I hate the actual process of moving. We've hired movers and still we're doing a lot of work. Our movers aren't really professional movers, well, they are, but they are pretty low budget. We've used this company before and a chubby 18-year old kid showed up with his 65-year old uncle (all ages and relations are estimated). They'll get the job done, but unless you want it to take all night (they charge hourly), you're doing all the packaging and a little lifting yourself.



We bought some furniture and kitchenware this weekend at Crate & Barrel. That place is pretty pricey. We had two gift cards from our wedding and we bought a single desk chair that exhausted all the money we had on both cards plus $100 -- not a desk and chair, just a chair that you use at a desk. When I saw the price tag I was thinking, "Yeah, right! We are not getting this," and then I sat in it. It was like the scene in Pulp Fiction when Vincent Vega samples the $5 milkshake (which seems like a reasonable price now). I justified it by telling myself that it's worth it to get a really good chair since I work from home sometimes, and you can't put a price on a healthy back (well, you can, but it's certainly worth more than two Crate & Barrel gift cards and a $100), and also that it would help the economy. It's my own personal stimulus package. You can call me a job creator.



Speaking facetiously of job creators, today Mitt Romney told CNN's Soledad O'Brien, "I'm not concerned about the very poor." This is the first thing I've heard Mitt say that I completely believe. Naturally, he and his defenders are going to say it was a poor choice of words, taken out of context, made into a soundbite by the liberal media, blah, blah, blah. To which my response is, by all means, look into the context, dig deeply, find out what the real content of Mitt's character is, that will be far more damaging than any stupid out-of-context quote could ever be.

On a completely different topic, I read a terrific article in The New Yorker about the suicide of Tyler Clementi. You probably remember the story -- a Rutgers student jumped off The George Washington bridge after being outed by his roommate who posted a video online of him fooling around with another dude. That's not quite what happened (he was already out and there was never a recorded video), but that's the story as most people know it.

The article focuses pretty equally on Clementi and his roommate Dhuran Ravi. Although Ravi sounds like a grade-A asshole, I do feel a shred of empathy toward him. He's not the reason Clementi killed himself (that comes from something way more deeply rooted) and the initial reporting of the story somehow got distorted in a way that makes him sound more hateful than he really was. You'll have to read the story to find out what I mean.

With all that said, Ravi definitely deserves to be punished, and he very well could be. He's going to trial in a few weeks after rejecting a plea deal in which he would've avoided jail time. (Although being raised most his life in the US, he's actually not an American citizen, and anything short of exoneration could lead to deportation, which is perhaps why he rejected the deal.) He will be tried on charges of invasion of privacy and something else (the legal name of which I can't remember) that's tantamount to bullying. My view is that for the invasion of privacy charge he should absolutely be convicted, and he should be given the harshest sentence this crime merits. On the second charge, I don't know, it seems like a lot tougher case to me. In the article he comes off more like an entitled, immature douche bag than a bully. I'm interested to see how it turns out.

And apropos of nothing, just because I heard it the other the other day, and like it, I leave with the song "Vehicle" by The Ides of March.



Until next time...