In short, I appreciate the championing for the middle class. I really do. Here's why it doesn't work --
1) A speech that's all sob-stories about individual, lame-ass people makes for a lame-ass speaker.
2) Any dem is going to fight for the middle class, the individual, the little guy. It's part of the party agenda. If you make it your main running point against two people declaring eras of "change" it gives the impression that you have nothing original to say.
3) We have a federal government, we have state and local governments, and we have constituents. There is a food chain. Perhaps as the president it would be best to focus on improving state and local governments so they can take care of individuals. If you worry primarily about the individual on the presidential scale, you are applying for the wrong job.
Good guy, good ideas, just the wrong focus for a national leader.
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Romney Update
For some reason, the most interesting part of this year's elections for me is consistent development of a long-forgone conclusion:
Mitt Romney is a complete and total ass.
CNN ran earlier this morning a little bit of a speech he gave contrasting himself favorably with John McCain. It amounted to a 15-second-ish laundry list of disparate votes they each took, each entry of which was like a virtual tick on the checklist of Why Mitt Romney is an Offensively Backwards Chump-ass Fool.
The top 5 that Romney was really proud of, complete with snippy remarks:
1) McCain opposed drilling for oil. (Romney did not!)
* Yes, screw McCain and screw finite resources, too! Drill the shit out of those fossil fuels before they (gasp!) run out forever. Clearly more effective than researching alternatives.
2) McCain opposed tax cuts for the wealthy. (Romeny supported them!)
* Come on, this is America. If the rich, white guy who's never once looked prejudice in the face can't get richer, then who can?!
3) McCain opposed the amendment that would define marriage as a union between a man and a woman. (Can it, Mormon.)
* Welcome to 21st century America, where in addition to socially persecuting you for being gay, we'll make extra-special certain that you get to feel the cold, hard dick of legal injustice, too!
Really, marriage is a joke. It's just as easy to get out of as it is to get into, and its main purpose in current society is a fat tax break. Amending the Constitution to ban homarriage (you heard it here first) is nothing more than bigotry. It's an absolute abuse of the Constitution's dynamics, and just the kind of bullshit moral parading that people in high office should be shamed for doing.
Moving on.
4) McCain supported embryonic stem cell research.
* This one is a little touchier, so I'll be gentle about it. Fuck Romney, fuck Bush, fuck this entire debate. If you can eat eggs, you can harvest precious cells from the unborn, and if you can mass-murder civilians on a political Jihad, then playing god is already fair game. Oh look, no issue anymore!
5) McCain supported amnesty for illegal aliens.
* Ok, so there are fair points to be made from both sides of this one, and I offer the following in bullet-form so as to avoid the stylistic choice of overly verbose diction that has at times in the past become not uncommon for me to use while writing. In no particular order:
- Immigration has vastly different effects from state to state.
- If you can get someone to trim your petunias for $3/hour, go nuts. Same goes for vineyards and vinyl siding.
- Land of promise, my ass.
- Only in this country can denying amnesty for anyone regarding anything be politically beneficial.
- Ok, that's probably a lie, but I still find it pretty abhorrent.
My advice: grant federal amnesty, then let the states decide what to do for themselves. That is why we have a multi-tiered form of government, no?
Oh, that reminds me, John Edwards doin' it wrong, and here's how --
Mitt Romney is a complete and total ass.
CNN ran earlier this morning a little bit of a speech he gave contrasting himself favorably with John McCain. It amounted to a 15-second-ish laundry list of disparate votes they each took, each entry of which was like a virtual tick on the checklist of Why Mitt Romney is an Offensively Backwards Chump-ass Fool.
The top 5 that Romney was really proud of, complete with snippy remarks:
1) McCain opposed drilling for oil. (Romney did not!)
* Yes, screw McCain and screw finite resources, too! Drill the shit out of those fossil fuels before they (gasp!) run out forever. Clearly more effective than researching alternatives.
2) McCain opposed tax cuts for the wealthy. (Romeny supported them!)
* Come on, this is America. If the rich, white guy who's never once looked prejudice in the face can't get richer, then who can?!
3) McCain opposed the amendment that would define marriage as a union between a man and a woman. (Can it, Mormon.)
* Welcome to 21st century America, where in addition to socially persecuting you for being gay, we'll make extra-special certain that you get to feel the cold, hard dick of legal injustice, too!
Really, marriage is a joke. It's just as easy to get out of as it is to get into, and its main purpose in current society is a fat tax break. Amending the Constitution to ban homarriage (you heard it here first) is nothing more than bigotry. It's an absolute abuse of the Constitution's dynamics, and just the kind of bullshit moral parading that people in high office should be shamed for doing.
Moving on.
4) McCain supported embryonic stem cell research.
* This one is a little touchier, so I'll be gentle about it. Fuck Romney, fuck Bush, fuck this entire debate. If you can eat eggs, you can harvest precious cells from the unborn, and if you can mass-murder civilians on a political Jihad, then playing god is already fair game. Oh look, no issue anymore!
5) McCain supported amnesty for illegal aliens.
* Ok, so there are fair points to be made from both sides of this one, and I offer the following in bullet-form so as to avoid the stylistic choice of overly verbose diction that has at times in the past become not uncommon for me to use while writing. In no particular order:
- Immigration has vastly different effects from state to state.
- If you can get someone to trim your petunias for $3/hour, go nuts. Same goes for vineyards and vinyl siding.
- Land of promise, my ass.
- Only in this country can denying amnesty for anyone regarding anything be politically beneficial.
- Ok, that's probably a lie, but I still find it pretty abhorrent.
My advice: grant federal amnesty, then let the states decide what to do for themselves. That is why we have a multi-tiered form of government, no?
Oh, that reminds me, John Edwards doin' it wrong, and here's how --
Saturday, January 26, 2008
Food Update
A couple of cooking novelties pulled from a recent camera-dump:
1) Bear egg
This is not super complicated to pull off.
1 egg
1 cookie cutter
salt & pepper
All you do is crack an egg into a cookie cutter. The smaller your shape's area, the trickier it is to cook the egg through without turning the yolk into a crumbly little piece of crap, but the metal frame makes it really easy to flip the egg early and cook it evenly.
2) Beer can chicken
This one was lifted from Achewood pretty much verbatim. Basic procedure is drink a few beers, then another half beer. Throw some spices and taste into the halfie, shove it up the chicken's bum, cut up some vegetables, get it all really oily and bake it. Simple and delicious and crispy and really, it's just a great recipe. Excellent as-is or as a template for repeated experimentation.
3) Meat cake
Oh, that meat cake. Meat cake, meat cake, meat cake.
This was my birthday cake this year, courtesy of X and Julia. Truly stunning. Three layers of extremely good meatloaf iced with mashed potatoes and decorated with ketchup and, yes, bacon. Mmmm, bacon. Original concept, Black Widow Bakery.
Seriously, check out that bacon work. That's some professional quality bacon lettering right there.
And a very convincing cake. Just look at that slice action.
1) Bear egg
This is not super complicated to pull off.
1 egg
1 cookie cutter
salt & pepper
All you do is crack an egg into a cookie cutter. The smaller your shape's area, the trickier it is to cook the egg through without turning the yolk into a crumbly little piece of crap, but the metal frame makes it really easy to flip the egg early and cook it evenly.
2) Beer can chicken
This one was lifted from Achewood pretty much verbatim. Basic procedure is drink a few beers, then another half beer. Throw some spices and taste into the halfie, shove it up the chicken's bum, cut up some vegetables, get it all really oily and bake it. Simple and delicious and crispy and really, it's just a great recipe. Excellent as-is or as a template for repeated experimentation.
3) Meat cake
Oh, that meat cake. Meat cake, meat cake, meat cake.
This was my birthday cake this year, courtesy of X and Julia. Truly stunning. Three layers of extremely good meatloaf iced with mashed potatoes and decorated with ketchup and, yes, bacon. Mmmm, bacon. Original concept, Black Widow Bakery.
Seriously, check out that bacon work. That's some professional quality bacon lettering right there.
And a very convincing cake. Just look at that slice action.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Alive: wow this album is tight.
If you have ever listened to Daft Punk and thought "Hey, this is pretty cool, but I wish it were a little cooler," um...
Look, point here is that Alive, Daft Punk's 2007 venture into recording live techno, is really, really goddamn sick. Truly, it has been kicking my ass on repeat since I got it.
So get it. And on the one hand, if you're largely unfamiliar with Daft Punk, using this album as a starting point is really unfair to both listener and band. It's much more open-ended and creative than most of their studio work, and quite frankly it's more interesting to listen to. It's not that the studio catalogue is particularly uninteresting, but rather that this album is kind of a curve-breaker in terms of overall quality and creativity.
...and on the other hand, if you are largely familiar with Daft Punk, Alive will it will make you go batshit raving bananas.
Look, point here is that Alive, Daft Punk's 2007 venture into recording live techno, is really, really goddamn sick. Truly, it has been kicking my ass on repeat since I got it.
So get it. And on the one hand, if you're largely unfamiliar with Daft Punk, using this album as a starting point is really unfair to both listener and band. It's much more open-ended and creative than most of their studio work, and quite frankly it's more interesting to listen to. It's not that the studio catalogue is particularly uninteresting, but rather that this album is kind of a curve-breaker in terms of overall quality and creativity.
...and on the other hand, if you are largely familiar with Daft Punk, Alive will it will make you go batshit raving bananas.
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Love is...
...walking to the kitchen to get some more coffee only to find that your girlfriend left her travel cup on the mail table on the way out the door and then being like cool i'm gonna drink it and then tasting it and realizing it has nasty-ass splenda in it and then being like nah it's cool i'll drink it anyway.
oh wait, that's not love. that's just plain old lazy.
oh wait, that's not love. that's just plain old lazy.
Gummies
It is roughly 11:00 in the morning, I have been awake since easily 6:30, and I have not yet eaten breakfast...
Unless you count scarfing oneself into a sugar coma on a half-pound sack of LifeSavers Gummies as "breakfast".
Seriously, if you get one of the big bags and just start going at it, you can cover the full cycle of excitation to sugar crash in about 30 minutes... and then you're just sitting there, twitching, sweating, wondering, "Damn, how do they get them so gummi?"
Ah, more coffee, then back to the grind.
Also, there had to have been a way to better connect "coffee" and "grind" in that last sentence.
Has to have been? Had to have been? Is was? Whazza? Blaaaaaaarrrggggg.
Guh. Being able to edit as you write out an internal monologue really does a number on verb tenses. Or maybe that's just the Gummies talking.
Unless you count scarfing oneself into a sugar coma on a half-pound sack of LifeSavers Gummies as "breakfast".
Seriously, if you get one of the big bags and just start going at it, you can cover the full cycle of excitation to sugar crash in about 30 minutes... and then you're just sitting there, twitching, sweating, wondering, "Damn, how do they get them so gummi?"
Ah, more coffee, then back to the grind.
Also, there had to have been a way to better connect "coffee" and "grind" in that last sentence.
Has to have been? Had to have been? Is was? Whazza? Blaaaaaaarrrggggg.
Guh. Being able to edit as you write out an internal monologue really does a number on verb tenses. Or maybe that's just the Gummies talking.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Today is Thursday
So are these things supposed to convey a sense of continuity -- "Dear reader, it's Thursday, and wow it's been a busy two weeks since the holidays and hey, happy New Year!" -- or is it cool to just pop in and scratch out some notes like marker on a public bathroom wall?
Were the Internet indeed a public bathroom, the "blogosphere" would certainly be the handicapped stall at the end of the row.
Meanwhile, it's Thursday, and it's been a busy two weeks, and Thursdays are really early days on the ol' Wrigley front, and I'm sleepy. I've been writing actual code lately (as opposed to doing my much-beloved secretarial and monkey work), which feels pretty good in an academic-justify-your-existence kind of way. I've also been eating candy like it's my job, which it kind of is, so I guess that's ok, too.
Seriously, though, I got some boxes of candy from Wrigley right around when I got back from Maine, including several boxes of Orbit. This is important, because I decided to quit smoking on New Years and now chew approximately 20 sticks of gum a day, at about 2 minutes per stick. Coincidence? Highly doubtful.
Also, I don't know what the etymology of "cold turkey" is, but...oh, wait -- wiki: Cold Turkey. Also, it is damn sweet that wikipedia exists, and that Google exists, and that both are such pervasive tools as to have become verbs, and that if you use Google for a phrase you need a definition on, it will more than likely point you at wikipedia. Only by the grace on the Internet is it completely legitimate to say, "Well I Googled it, but Google just pointed me at wiki, so I guess I could have just wikied it in the first place."
***
Went to Faneuil Hall with some heads for bar trivia the other night; nice bar, outskirts of the plaza. Too bad the start times listed on the trivia site and the bar itself showed a two-hour discrepancy, and too bad we showed up on the late side of it. So too bad we were in Faneuil with no reason to be there and ended up going to this empty wanna-be sports bar called The Tap. Why do I mention this? Because The Tap is in a long row of bars where someday, someone (maybe you!) might be walking and thinking, "Wow, so many bars, and which one should I patronize?" In the event of such a query, I advise skipping The Tap. Decent food, decent service, but horribly overpriced for the quality on both counts. Looks like a place where you should be able to snag a $10 pitcher. Not so much. Also the fries were soggy and the onion rings verily burst with room-temperature fryer grease. Note: if you are getting people drunk and you have a kitchen where 50% of your output is fried, do everyone a favor and make sure your fryer is hot and that you don't plate the fried stuff 10 minutes before you plop a crappy $9 club sandwich on the plate and trot it out to the table.
Really though, the nail in the coffin (checkpleasethankyougoodnight-style) came from a two-man band with which the bar was trying to attract patrons through the open door. We left halfway through their first song, a cover of Otis Redding's (Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay, handled exclusively in the way-out-of-tune register and quite possibly transposed into an extremely depressing minor key. As we departed, the singer (who looked like an ugly rendition on something stupid) was whistling his way through the bridge and the bar was almost completely empty.
Were the Internet indeed a public bathroom, the "blogosphere" would certainly be the handicapped stall at the end of the row.
Meanwhile, it's Thursday, and it's been a busy two weeks, and Thursdays are really early days on the ol' Wrigley front, and I'm sleepy. I've been writing actual code lately (as opposed to doing my much-beloved secretarial and monkey work), which feels pretty good in an academic-justify-your-existence kind of way. I've also been eating candy like it's my job, which it kind of is, so I guess that's ok, too.
Seriously, though, I got some boxes of candy from Wrigley right around when I got back from Maine, including several boxes of Orbit. This is important, because I decided to quit smoking on New Years and now chew approximately 20 sticks of gum a day, at about 2 minutes per stick. Coincidence? Highly doubtful.
Also, I don't know what the etymology of "cold turkey" is, but...oh, wait -- wiki: Cold Turkey. Also, it is damn sweet that wikipedia exists, and that Google exists, and that both are such pervasive tools as to have become verbs, and that if you use Google for a phrase you need a definition on, it will more than likely point you at wikipedia. Only by the grace on the Internet is it completely legitimate to say, "Well I Googled it, but Google just pointed me at wiki, so I guess I could have just wikied it in the first place."
***
Went to Faneuil Hall with some heads for bar trivia the other night; nice bar, outskirts of the plaza. Too bad the start times listed on the trivia site and the bar itself showed a two-hour discrepancy, and too bad we showed up on the late side of it. So too bad we were in Faneuil with no reason to be there and ended up going to this empty wanna-be sports bar called The Tap. Why do I mention this? Because The Tap is in a long row of bars where someday, someone (maybe you!) might be walking and thinking, "Wow, so many bars, and which one should I patronize?" In the event of such a query, I advise skipping The Tap. Decent food, decent service, but horribly overpriced for the quality on both counts. Looks like a place where you should be able to snag a $10 pitcher. Not so much. Also the fries were soggy and the onion rings verily burst with room-temperature fryer grease. Note: if you are getting people drunk and you have a kitchen where 50% of your output is fried, do everyone a favor and make sure your fryer is hot and that you don't plate the fried stuff 10 minutes before you plop a crappy $9 club sandwich on the plate and trot it out to the table.
Really though, the nail in the coffin (checkpleasethankyougoodnight-style) came from a two-man band with which the bar was trying to attract patrons through the open door. We left halfway through their first song, a cover of Otis Redding's (Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay, handled exclusively in the way-out-of-tune register and quite possibly transposed into an extremely depressing minor key. As we departed, the singer (who looked like an ugly rendition on something stupid) was whistling his way through the bridge and the bar was almost completely empty.
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