Entry 639: Good Vibes Only

Nice little Thanksgiving break, this one. We -- well, I, actually -- cooked a traditional Thanksgiving dinner, and it came out decently. The turkey was a little dry because I overcooked it a bit, but that's why God created gravy. I was worried that I was going to really botch the turkey, so I'll take a little bit overdone. What happened is, I bought all the food last Wednesday, so as not to try to do it at the last minute. But at the time it was possible I would be cooking for nine adult and four kids, so I bought a 15-pound turkey. However, it ended up being just the immediate fam (including my sister-in-law), so there were only three adults and two children, only one of whom (me) is a really big eater. A 15-pound turkey was now way, way too big.

And that would not have been a problem, except that I somewhat absentmindedly put the turkey in the freezer immediately after I bought it, and I didn't think about thawing it until Tuesday before Thanksgiving. I guess I just figured two days would be adequate time to do so. Au contraire, the internet says that one must thaw a frozen turkey in the refrigerator or an ice bath below 40 degrees, and for a turkey that big, one should allot at least three days to do it in the refrigerator, and an ice bath requires, like a half day, and you have to constantly monitor the temperature.

Now, I bet this is mostly bullshit. We treat raw meat in this country like it's radioactive. I mean, I know the threat of salmonella and other food borne infections are extant, but if they were really as likely as we're led to believe, I suspect meat-eaters would just be getting sick all the time because there's no way everybody who prepares meat follows the safety rules meticulously all the time. Unless you're vegetarian, I bet you've eaten tons of "dangerous" meat in your day, and your body handled it fine.

With that said, I certainly don't want to be the dad who ruined Thanksgiving by poisoning his family. And actually I'm usually quite anal about raw meat. Having worked for four different food service businesses before turning 20, I had to take the same food safety certification course a bunch of times, and it made me paranoid about raw meat. So much so that if I stick a fork into a cooking piece of chicken to see if it's done, I'll scrub the fork before I even put it in the sink on the off-chance somebody will use it before it gets washed. So, I certainly wasn't going to disobey the guidelines about defrosting a turkey.

Anyway, I'll spare you the details, but I utilized a combination of refrigerator and ice bath (waking up at 5:00 am in the process), and got it mostly thawed by the time it had to go into the oven. There was still some ice on the inside around the bone, but the meat all felt soft as deep as I could feel. It took way longer to cook than anticipated though (leading to some temporarily grumpy family members) -- I kept getting really inconsistent measurements from my meat thermometer -- and I think I was overly cautious and cooked it for too long. So, like I said, a little dry, but still decent. I'll do better next year.

I also made mashed potatoes, stuffing, bread rolls, cranberry sauce, gravy, and corn, and all that came out well. The funny thing about Thanksgiving is that the stuff that takes ten minutes to make (stuffing, gravy, bread rolls) is just as good as the stuff that requires actual preparation (turkey, potatoes). We have a lot of leftovers, which is fine -- I don't mind eating it for the next week.

So, Thanksgiving dinner with the family turned out to be good vibes in the end. Here are some other good vibes things in my life right now.

• I'm healthy, and I don't mean that in the macro-sense, like I don't have cancer or ALS (although I am very grateful for that too); I mean, I'm not currently sick. A bug is going around, not Covid, but something else, and also there's Covid, and somehow I've managed to avoid both this holiday break. This woman came into my fitness class the other day and was like, "Ugh... I had to force myself to come in here. I feel like shit," to which the instructor asked the obvious thing, "Why are you here then?" and she replied, "Because I can't sit in my house anymore. I need to do something." Uh, so, that something is exposing everybody else to your miserable illness? It couldn't be a solitary walk through the woods? She was totally wheezing too and not even wearing a mask. I kept my distance from her the entire class. I guess it worked. 
  
  
• I saw some good movies the past few days. I streamed Weird: The Al Yankovich Story, which I quite enjoyed, and then we went to see Wakanda Forever today as a family. It also was quite enjoyable, other than being way too long (the problem with almost everything these days). I saw somebody online say: "Wakanda Forever -- it felt longer."
  
  
• I'm reading a good book right now: The Ninties by Chuck Klosterman. It's basically a book written for and about my generation, so I'm finding it very relatable. One of the first things the author discusses is how important it was in the '90s to seem "authentic," and how kinda weird that was. For some reason, being a poseur or a sellout was among the absolute worst offenses. This is epitomized fictionally by Ethan Hawke (not Ben Stiller) getting the girl in Reality Bites, despite being a miserable jerk, and it was illustrated in real life with bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam hating their own success while simultaneously making conscious decisions to become more successful. The book also has a (somewhat surprisingly) captivating essay on Ross Perot.
  
  
• We got a Christmas tree this year -- the first time we've ever had one. We haven't had a Christmas at home since 2015 (when Lil' S2 was 0 years old), so it's not that strange we usually don't have a tree. We got a synthetic one. Real trees are too much work and mess. My parents made the move to a fake tree many years ago. It's one of those things where I thought not having the real thing would matter a lot until I actually tried it and realized it didn't matter at all. It's like doing a crossword puzzle on an app instead of on paper, or using an e-reader, or sitting in front of a gas fireplace. The only problem now is that we have to amass enough decorations to fill out a tree. But Lil' S1 is happy. He's been asking for a tree for a while, so hopefully this will placate him. I mean, it's definitely easier than a dog.
  

 Until next time...

Entry 638: Bad Vibes Only

Being that next week is Thanksgiving, I figured I could do a post this week about some things for which I am not thankful. I call it Gripesgiving, and I'm thinking about making it a new annual tradition -- by which I mean I'll do it in this entry and then never think about it again.

The main thing I'm not thankful for right now is that the Orange Menace, Tangerine Idi Amin, announced he is running for president again. Ugh... can't this dude just die already? With the Dems not performing horribly in the midterms, political news was just becoming tolerable again, and then we dive right back into the cesspool. It's possible he doesn't even get the nomination (I have no idea what will happen on that front and don't believe anybody who says they do), and he probably won't win the presidency even if he does, but no sound-minded American will be hanging their hat on that probably. Hopefully all this Ron DeSantis noise turns out to be for real. He's awful in a lot of ways, just as petty and vindictive as the small-handed vulgarian himself, but at least he doesn't seem like the type to inspire a mob to try to hang the vice president and prevent Congress from certifying an election he lost.

In other news of ungratefulness, I had to swallow my pride, cut my losses, admit defeat, and trash my treadmill. I literally threw it away. It broke for the third time in nine months, and this time the company said they weren't going to fix it for free. I called them, and after being on the phone for literally (and I mean that literally) two hours, a combination of being on hold and relaying the same information over and over in different ways, the denouement of the conversation went something like this.

Her: Okay, sir, I can set you up with an appointment to have a technician come out to service your machine.

Me: Thanks.

Her: However, because [company-specific mumbo jumbo about service codes and policies] there will be a charge of...

Me: No! Hell no! There's not going to be any charge!

Her: Well, you see, for this type of service...

Me: I don't care. I'm not giving you guys a single cent more of my money. You guys are the worst company I've ever dealt with. You sold me a treadmill that's broken three times and I haven't even had it for a year. Each time it takes two hours to set up a service appointment and then that doesn't even work. And now you're telling me you want me to pay you to fix it. Hell. No.

Her: Well, you see, for this type of service...

Me: I said I don't care what the type of service is. Look, I know this isn't your fault, and I'm sorry you're the one who has to hear this, but I'm so frustrated, and there is no way I'm paying you for a damn thing. Either you guys fix this for free or I'm just gonna hang up and... I dunno... trash you guys on social media or something.

Her: I understand your frustration...

Me: I don't think you do. Do you have a manager? Can I talk to your manager?

Her: Yes, I will transfer you to her.

Then I got put on hold for another few minutes, and then i just hung up. I actually didn't even really want to talk to a manager, anyway. I doubt it would've done any good. I talked to a manager before when they wrongly charged me for their monthly service, and it was hell just to get her to give me a $16 refund. I probably wasn't going to get shit from the manager, and even if I did, even if they agreed to another round of free repairs, it would likely just break again.

I called a repair shop not affiliated with the manufacturer, just to see if a (presumably) more competent company could salvage things, but they told me it was going to be almost $200 just for the diagnosis. No thanks. That's what they call throwing good money at bad. It's the sunk cost fallacy. So, I got off the phone, disassembled the sumabitch, and booked an appointment with DC bulk trash. This is the last I saw of it.

 

I think I actually know the problem. I'm too fat for it. All treadmills have safety devices in them so that they will automatically slow down or stop if they get too hot internally. I've had it happen at gyms before, and every time just before mine would die completely, it would get really temperamental whenever I got on it -- to the point I usually couldn't go above 5 mph without it stopping (and sometimes I'd smell a slight burning odor when I was done) -- but it would work fine whenever the kids got on it. I think I was just flat-out too heavy for it. This is very annoying, being that the stated weight limit is 250 pounds, and I am well below 250 pounds, but I do think that's the explanation.

Whatever the case, do not -- I repeat, do not -- buy any equipment that is NordicTrack or that is affiliated with the company iFit in anyway. They are the worst.

It sucks too because I actually really liked using the treadmill when it was working. I need something inside that gives me a good ass-kicking cardio workout, especially now while the weather is turning. I really struggle to find the motivation to run outside when it's 45 degrees, dark, and blustery. And I'm also not the type to just bust out a body-weight WOD in my basement without somebody leading the way. (My Krav Maga gym stopped doing Zoom workouts some time ago.) But maybe that's what I'll have to do. I also could join the gym up the street for like $10 a month, but then I still have to go somewhere, and one of the big reasons I got the treadmill was so that I could work out when I wasn't able to go anywhere.

It's a real tragedy.

So, I gotta log off now, but I wanted to give you all one more gripe: my eyesight. It's terrible now without my glasses. I feel like it's gotten way worse just in the past year or so. I can still see decently far away, but anything up close is super blurry without my specs. I've never had good eyesight for reading, but it used to be at least passable. Now, I struggle to read the tags on the fruit when I'm at the self-checkout machine at the grocery store. The other day, I actually took a picture of a tag on my phone and zoomed in on the number to read it. I mean, I could have just searched for it by name on the machine, but my way was a little bit faster and much more clever. But getting old is a bitch.

By the way, how old can you be before you have to stop complaining about getting old because you should just be happy to be alive? I'm thinking somewhere around 85, so I still got four decades of grousing ahead of me.

Until next time...

Entry 637: On Many Topics

So, as it turns out nobody really knows anything about the future. It's like a twist on the old saying: Some people can get it right a lot of the time; a lot of people can get it right some of the time; shit happens.

I've been doing a lot of thinking the past few days, and now I'm going to write as much of as I can in the next hour or so.

Elon's Twitter

I've been spending a lot of time on Twitter since Tuesday, following the election results. I didn't think things would change much when Elon took over, but I wasn't really basing that on much other than his own boiler-plate vision statement. Now some people -- seemingly legitimate sources (Pwnallthethings sounds legit, right?) -- think the site could actually implode over the next few weeks. Apparently, the main issue is that Musk needs cash quickly to start paying off the interest on his massive loans. 

 

That's why he's laying off so much staff, and why he rolled out the $8 check mark, which was ridiculous and hilarious, giving us gems like...

Elon is such a weird dude, and he's fucking my shit up because he's making it not cool to drive a Tesla anymore. I just bought that thing. Can I at least get a year of social cachet out of it?

But he actually might be on to something about voting republican. Anybody who tweets this should not be president.

 

 

The House

In my last post I jumped the gun a bit by saying that the Republicans had already effectively taken the House. It ended up being a lot tighter than I thought, and there is still a miracle shot the Democrats could hold on, but major networks are calling it for the Reps now. The final margin is TBD, but it will be much smaller than most people were anticipating and than what historically happens during midterms. Ironically, New York -- blue ass New York -- did the Dems in. They fucked up the redistricting, and then they lost a bunch of winnable races.

Well, the good news is that House terms are only two years, and a majority in the House isn't needed to do a bunch of things, like, most notably, confirming judges. Of the two chambers, you'd rather have the Senate.

Speaking of which...

The Senate

Not only did the Dems retain the Senate, but they have a very good chance (I'd say about 75%) to add a seat, with the Warnock-Walker runoff next month. Ted Cruz is going to tour with Walker, which sounds good to me, being that of the candidates he stumped for mentioned in this article only one of them (JD Vance), actually won. The others (Yesli Vega, Kari Lake, Blake Masters, Karoline Leavitt) all lost. It's, like, if your record is currently 1-4, and you honestly want your guy to win, wouldn't you be inclined to just sit it out?

(Do yourself a favor and watch this video for 15 seconds starting at 1:10. Cruz nodding along like a dipshit is my favorite part.)

Other Races

Abortion rights and anti-election-deniers are the big winners this election (and in my heart). All the major bills protecting abortion access passed, and almost all the election deniers outside of deep red states lost, including, most importantly, the ones running for positions that would give them control of future elections. That's huge. Also, the Dems won a bunch of governors races. The big one is Kari Lake versus Katie Hobbs in Arizona. I cited Lake as a loser above, but that race hasn't been called yet. Lake is one of those "rising star" Republicans, who's mostly awful in every way, so it will be glorious if she loses (probably tomorrow).

Democrats

I can be pretty critical of Dems on this blog sometimes. I stand by what I say, but maybe sometimes I overstate it a bit. I certainly was too pessimistic coming into this election. The D brand might not be as off-putting (outside of super red areas) as I thought it was two weeks ago. I do think they need to do a better job of building a broad coalition, and results in certain places (ahem... Florida) demonstrate that.

I've learned I have a very Obama-ian view of what the Democratic party should be. I didn't really appreciate this while he was president. But listening to him speak recently and listening to podcasts about him, I find myself in lock step with what he says the messaging and policy should be. I guess a lot of it goes back to a guy named Bayard Rustin. The key is patronage over principle. Do things that are popular and work for the people, not things that make you feel good and pure.

Republicans

What a shit show. I worry that the D brand turns off too many swing voters, but I know that the R brand does. In discussions about why the red wave never materialized, you might have heard the phrase "candidate quality" used a lot, but that's a euphemism for "don't run a bunch of weirdos and nut jobs". I mean, just look at some of these people.

• Dr. Oz never even lived in Pennsylvania, and he released an add trying to appeal to the common man by talking about how expensive crudité is, while shopping at the store "Wegners" without using a basket or shopping cart.
•  Yesli Vega suggested she believes that a woman can't get pregnant through rape, and then denied that she ever said it, even though it's on tape.
• Blake Masters released a random video of himself firing a "James Bond" gun while talking up the virtues of a silencer, because, you know, American Psycho is totally the vibe that appeals to suburban soccer moms. Who doesn't want a senator you could envision as an incel school shooter? Or as somebody said on Twitter:
  
  
  
  
  
• Then there's Joe Kent who decided it was a good move to denigrate one of the only things people on the left and right love equally: professional sports. He lost a House race in Washington (my home state making me proud!) he was heavily favored to win.
  
  
  
  
  
•  Lastly, this guy (name omitted, so as to not given him any recognition), who didn't run for anything, but pretty actually sums up the vibe of a lot of Republican campaigns. I feel pretty confident that dudes like this do more than their fair share to "manufacture" single women.
  
  
  
  
  
  

Until next time...

Entry 636: A Non-Devastating Election Night

I'm glad big elections only happen once every two years. They are quite stressful. The smart move is to be zen about it, but I'm a not a very zen man. Pretending to not care or forcing myself to not pay attention is actually more agonizing for me than constantly toggling back-and-forth between FiveThirtyEight and the NYT needle (not all that helpful this year, as they stopped it in place at 4am and never started it up again). Elections are also one of the few times I go on Twitter. But I find that it's showing me a lot of old tweets. Votes are being counted! Ten hours is an eternity ago! Get those antiques out of my feed! 

Twitter seems different now for some reason. I can't put my finger on what could have changed though.

My instincts were definitely wrong about the election. This is a good thing, as I was really down on the Dems chances, but it turned out to be, at the very least, a not disastrous midterms. I'll upgrade this to a satisfying midterms if Dems retain the Senate and a good one if they also beat Kari Lake in the Arizona governor's race and unseat Lauren Boebert in Colorado. Everything is really close, so it could take days to declare winners in all these races, and the Senate could once again hinge on a Raphael Warnock runoff. I can't say it was a great midterms because the Dems have effectively already lost the House. They were done in mostly by newly gerrymandered Republican districts and their inability to effectively gerrymander their own districts (a judge threw out a map in New York that would've been more favorable to Dems), but also they lost some winnable races (a few in NY, as it were), which almost always happens to the in party during the midterms. Based on the fundamentals -- Biden's unpopularity, inflation, etc. -- it could have been much, much worse.

Democrats were helped tremendously by the fact that Republicans fielded a lot of terrible candidates. This is something I wasn't wrong about, and I said as much in a previous entry. Probably the best result of the night is that Trump's candidates mostly got smoked in all but the deepest of red areas, and the non-Trump-endorsed candidates did much better. This is best illustrated by Oz and Mastriano losing fairly handily in Pennsylvania, and Kemp and Raffensperger winning comfortably in Georgia. Also, Ron DeSantis (who I was dismayed to learn is younger than me), Trump's possible rival in the 2024 primary, had a huge night in the Florida governor race. I'm no fan of DeSantis, and I think it's tragic how Florida has somehow gone from the quintessential swing state to solidly red in the span of six years, but if he actually decides to take on Trump and beats him (both realistic possibilities), then I will be much less of a non-fan than I am now. In fact, if you told me right now that I could guarantee Ron DeSantis would win the presidency in 2024, I would be tempted to take it; I probably would not, but I would be tempted.

Pretty good election for the polls too despite what you might hear. They weren't super accurate, but they were much more accurate than the prevailing narrative. The result we are seeing now was considered unlikely by poll-based models, but it wasn't some crazy outlier event. The polling error was just in the Dems favor this time. I'm kinda kicking myself for being so bullish on the red wave, but I was intentionally not really following the polls and just going with my gut, and my gut was probably acting as a defense mechanism for a worst case scenario. It's kinda like when I was saying the Mariners weren't going to make the playoffs even though I knew on some level that they probably would (and they did). The point is, your gut is shit... literally, if you think about it.

Anyway, I gotta wrap it up because I'm super tired. (S is gone right now, and Lil' S2 is kinda sick so he wakes up in the middle of the night and starts doing this weird congested whimper, and then I have to get up and give him a shot of children's Dimetapp to get him to go back to sleep, so I haven't been sleeping well.) I'll just conclude by giving my main takeaway from the night: Voters want access to abortion and normal elections. Also, I think anti-Trumpism is still a powerful motivating factor. So, thanks for that, Don, I guess.

Until next time...

Entry 635: A Relative Low-Stakes DC Ballot

I filled out my ballot and mailed it in. Yo voté, as my sticker says. It felt very low-stakes given the other races around the country. As I said in a previous entry, I'm not optimistic about the Democrats' chances. The polls have all the key races super close. I have intentionally not been following them intently, but I heard somebody on a podcast say we are a normal polling error in one direction away from a huge red wave and a normal polling error in the other direction away from a successful blue defense. Given the polls have hugely underestimated Republicans in almost every high-profile election over the past six years, I think my pessimism is warranted. 

I remember when I formed my first political opinions, back in the late '90s, I thought the biggest problem with our system is that the two political parties were too alike and too corporate. As Noam Chomsky once put it, "In the US, there is basically one party - the business party." Man, what I wouldn't give to go back to those days -- back to when almost every politician governed somewhere between Bill Clinton and John McCain, and when an Exxon-Mobil executive was the epitome of evil, not a relative beacon of probity and rectitude. But to quote another great thinker, "the thing about the old days: they the old days."

One thing about DC elections is that a bunch of major races were already effectively decided in the primary election. Muriel Bowser is going to be mayor; Phil Mendelson is going to be council chair; the candidate for attorney general is running unopposed. Another thing is that there just doesn't seem to be that much difference between most the candidates running for other seats. I read through the profiles of all the at-large candidates for city council, and I found it super hard to draw big distinctions between their positions -- like on crime they didn't all say the exact same thing, but nobody wanted to defund the police and nobody wanted to implement stop and frisk either. I ended up picking two people, not at random, but not exactly based on a whole lot.

The most interesting thing on the ballot is an initiative to end tipped wages. Currently, DC establishments can pay certain workers (like servers and bartenders) well below minimum wage with idea that these employees will make enough tips to cover the difference. If they don't, then their employer has to cover the difference for them, so workers at least make minimum wage, tipped or otherwise. The initiative would end this practice and compel employers to pay minimum wage pre-tips.

I went back and forth on this one. On the one hand, socially mandatory tipping is a very silly way to compensate people. It's not at all an extra reward for a job well done. It's probably more correlated to how conventionally attractive (and flirty) you are than how well you perform your job. It also can be a bit of a tax scam in that most people don't declare all (if any) of their tipped income.

But it's at least a tax scam that helps working class people.* Having friends that made the bulk of their salaries from tips, I saw first hand how important they are to workers. In fact, a lot servers and bartenders oppose the initiative because they (understandably) think people would tip less. What would probably happen is that an establishment, not wanting to raise its sticker prices, would add on a service charge, in effect a forced tip (some places already do this), and then patrons wouldn't tip beyond that. The service charge would not go directly into the server's/bartender's pocket like it does now. So, if you're somebody who rakes it in from tips, this is a terrible law for you.

*I also wonder if everything being cashless is making it more difficult for tipped workers to not declare all their tips.

On the flip side, if you don't make that much above minimum wage from tips, then you probably want the stability of a steady wage. So, lots of strands -- some winners, some losers like with any bill. I see both sides, but I voted no, meaning I voted to uphold the status quo. I don't think there is any way establishments can afford to do this without raising prices somewhat, and now is not the time to raise prices. Also, I think customers prefer the "freedom" of choosing to tip or not over the service charge, which just feels like a straight-up price increase (especially if the service isn't great). DC establishments are still hurting from the Covid shutdown -- people got used to staying home, and giving them more reason to do so, just doesn't seem smart to me right now.

I also think, instead of eliminating tipping, this bill will just make it more confusing. Do you tip on top of the service charge? And what if you just get a single drink, is there going to be a service charge on that, and if there isn't, will you still be expected to tip like before? 

We probably will find out. A similar bill passed a few years ago (2018, I believe), but the DC city council nixed it. They said they won't do that this time. But it only passed with 55%, and, as we've established already, things change. So, we shall see.

Until next time...