Jaime's Rants

How to go green

2007-06-11T20:55:00.000-07:00

I just did this so I can say that it's really easy to do. Go to this website http://www.nypirg.org/energy/green_electricity/table2.html and pick your energy provider and have them switch your electricity to green energy. It costs about a penny extra per kw/hour (usually from 15 to 16 cents) and it tells your energy company that you want to have the electricity coming into your home from renewable sources. The more people sign up the more your power company has to seek out green energy for growing demand rather than coal, gas, or oil burning plants. It's that easy.

Two Party System

2007-06-04T11:23:00.000-07:00

The political showdown to '08 is here and since the debates have already begun the rant side of my brain has decided to reemerge and share a thing or two.
There are a lot of good things about having a two party system, keeping the other side in check being the biggest positive and it also keeps fringe parties that don't represent more than a small minority of the population from ruling. Of course both of those positives have shown their exceptions during these past 6 years. But a new negative side has just come to mind. The conservative party is for smaller government and smaller taxes. The liberal party is for bigger government and bigger taxes. But because of how the system operates, most of the time only the easy part gets done when a specific party is in power, i.e. when conservatives rule, taxes are cut but the government tends not to shrink that much and when liberals are in power more services are added but not as many taxes are to cover the cost. Therefore having this kind of two party system guarantees we will have an ever growing government with a debt that will never be paid off. Sure there will be great leaders every once and a while who can do the hard stuff that needs to be done but never enough to counter a trend that's built into the system. Any ideas how to fix this?

An army of minus 1

2006-11-20T13:12:00.000-08:00

There was a memorial service yesterday for a man I hardly new. He was from my old town of Chappaqua, his father ran the town cleaners and he helped his father after school as he grew up. He graduated, did well for himself, had two kids, enlisted and went to law school. A credit short of his law degree he was on his second tour. His first was in Iraq. This time around he was in Afghanistan. Killed in Action just two weeks ago, he was the first person I could say I knew to have been killed in "The War on Terror."
I won't get into a political tirade about it since, first of all, I believe in us ousting the Taliban and fixing that country regardless of how bad it has gotten over there, but secondly because the back of his memorial service pamphlet said "Freedom isn't Free" and I also believe that. If this is going to be a statement in his memory I will not degrade it with my own personal beliefs that run counter to his own.
I guess this is my own eulogy for him, not the one opened by Senator Clinton, County Supervisor Spano, and all the local officials, there are no taps to be played by the local high school trumpeter, and there are not thousands of people standing around as this blog is being typed. And in my eulogy I want to look back at John Kerry's speech when he asked congress in 1971: "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" No matter the similarities, this is not Vietnam, and no matter your views it is still an opinion rather than a fact that "The war on terror" is a mistake. But the longer a war goes on the more people there are like me, those that actually know a person who dies in a land we chose to invade. And we must ask whether that death was a legitimate cost to the greater good, the means justifying the end that is meant to come out of a war's resolution. Because that death, that death that is the one personal death, is the last person to die. He is the only person in that war that makes it personal, no longer a statistic but a soul.
So now I find myself asking this deceased man to be the last man. Those before him are names on a TV screen, those after, sadly, will be the same. He is who I must ask to bear the burden or representing in my little life all those he served with. A man who left behind two children and a widow, a brother and a mother and a father, and a lot of people like me who will know the world is a lesser place because he is not in it.

Decision time

2006-11-01T15:54:00.000-08:00

I waited till we had a week left for this blog, (on All Saints Day of all days) but here we are, just days away from the 2006 midterm elections. Are you as pumped as I am? Of course I'm dorky enough to have voted absentee already in case work keeps me late (see previous blog). But this blog is for all the playa's out there ready to put their hats in the ring and vote. I pretty much know for a fact everybody who could possibly be reading this thing wants a Democratic House and Senate but I can't name a single one of you who would be reading this that I know will be voting. Every vote counts, 2000 and 2004 should have taught us all enough about that. This year there are youtubers out at polls to videotape any disenfranchisement and the political winds are on our backs. I would LOVE LOVE LOVE to have you all post a reply on this blog after election day telling me you voted. It'll be your little "I voted today" sticker that never goes away. Because this blog will be up forever and ever and ever (thanks google). So when the monkey men are checking over our servers 3000 years from now, they'll know you voted. Keep that in mind when it's time to go the polls.

What am I doing here?

2006-09-29T02:04:00.000-07:00

It's 5 AM and I'm at my agency on a Friday morning, not getting here early but rather I have been here for 19 hours straight without being outside once. Because today there is a presentation that's going to once again lead nowhere. The client will, once again, buy nothing, and we will be back to square one. What am I doing here?

My partner asked if I could imagine doing this with kids, never getting to see them. I brushed her off as a wuss cause we're simply too far away from that. But I know family life is coming and I know this work doesn't get done unless someone's here at 5AM every morning before a big presentation. What am I doing here?

I'm listening to Pearl Jam trying to keep my surprisingly heavy eyelids from closing shut on me tighter than fort knox and I'm not sure if it's working. What am I doing here?

Oh yeah, my dream, to be in advertising, I forgot.

Loyalty

2006-08-09T12:38:00.000-07:00

This is a question of Loyalty. Is it to a group that carries out what you believe in or to what you believe in that that group is supposed to carry out.

I was just sent this letter by the Wesley Clark political action committe or WesPAC:
Dear Jaime,

Support Ned Lamont! Urge Joe Lieberman to end his campaign for U.S. Senate.
On Tuesday, the message sent by Connecticut voters was loud and clear. They want change, and they want Ned Lamont to represent them in the U.S. Senate, voting for Ned by a 52% - 48% margin over Senator Joe Lieberman in the Democratic primary.
You see, despite what Joe Lieberman believes, invading Iraq and diverting our attention away from Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden is not being strong on national security. Blind allegiance to George W. Bush and his failed "stay the course" strategy is not being strong on national security. And no, Senator Lieberman, no matter how you demonize your opponents, there is no "antisecurity wing" of the Democratic Party.
Indeed, Connecticut Democrats recognized all of this, and yesterday they chose Ned Lamont as their nominee for the U.S. Senate. Now, I hope you'll join me in supporting Ned as he heads into the general election this November.
Stand with Connecticut Democrats. Send a message to Joe Lieberman to end his Independent campaign for CT Senate.
As a Democrat, I respect the will of the Connecticut Democratic voters and their decision to make Ned Lamont their nominee. Even before the election results came in on Tuesday, Ned Lamont showed his respect for the voters by committing to abide by the Democratic primary result and support whoever won.
Joe Lieberman, on the other hand, began collecting petition signatures to run as an Independent several weeks ago while concurrently running in the Democratic primary. In short, he wanted to have his cake and eat it too.
Despite his efforts to appear on the November ballot as an Independent, I held out hope that Joe would withdraw from the Connecticut Senate race after the primary votes were counted. Unfortunately, Joe has announced his candidacy as an Independent candidate, running against Ned, the Democratic nominee.
Today, I ask you to email Joe Lieberman. Urge him to respect the will of Connecticut Democrats and end his Independent candidacy for CT Senate.
In 2000, the presence of a third party candidate, Ralph Nader, no doubt played a role in the defeat of Vice President Gore and Joe Lieberman. Now Joe Lieberman is risking our party's claim on his Senate seat by running as a third party candidate himself. Recent news reports detail the GOP's interest in supporting such an effort. It's time to draw a line.
I committed myself to supporting the Democratic nominee for the US Senate in Connecticut, and I ask you to do likewise. Because too much is at stake with our troubles abroad and at home, we cannot play games this Election Day. That's why I call on all loyal Democrats to join me in urging Senator Lieberman to drop his bid for the Senate as an Independent and endorse the duly nominated Democrat.
We should thank him for his service and invite him to stay active, or even run again someday, but as a party we cannot let Joe Lieberman be this year's Ralph Nader.
Email Joe Lieberman. Encourage him to do the right thing, withdraw from the Connecticut Senate race, and focus his efforts on electing Democrats across America.
The 2006 elections represent a real crossroads for America. We must unify our efforts to stop George Bush's radical agenda and end this one-party government. I hope Senator Lieberman will join us in this critical fight for our nation's future.
Sincerely,

Wes Clark
PS: After you send your message to Joe Lieberman, please take a moment and forward this message to every Democrat you know.

Send a message to Joe Lieberman today!

This is the letter I sent to Joe Lieberman in the supplied email template from WesPAC:

I was sent a mass email by the WesPAC urging me to tell you to drop out of the race. I disagree with a lot of things you've done in the Senate but I vote for the greater good, not for singular votes. I am not a registered voter in CT, just a registered democrat in NY so my voice means less right now than many others in CT telling you to get out of the race. But WesPAC called you a Ralph Nader, a spoiler of a Democratic victory in the fall for our party, a party I know you are still a part of except in name only. I am sure, if it looked like the Republican challenger would win if you stayed in the race, you would withdraw in time (and, if not, I would be forced to withdraw these statements I am making now). Stay in the race, win as an independent, urge things to get done in Washington, never stand down in what you believe in, but never be afraid to change your mind publicly when you have done so privately. And maybe the middle road will see what can be done and not give in to the extremes of either party. Good luck.

It was automatically signed and dated.

Thanks for the idea Wesley.

For once, I agree with Shepard Smith

2006-08-08T12:14:00.000-07:00

At the end of a rerun of The Daily Show last night Jon showed a seen of Shepard Smith of Fox News complaining before a commercial break about how there's too much going on in the world to be worrying about Mel Gibson. And you know what, he's of course right. Not that Fox spends enough time on real issues as any clip from "Slow News Day" on The Daily Show can attest to. But since it's Fox News, I do feel in some way obliged to object to whatever comes out of Shepard Smith's mouth. So here's yet another rant on Mel Gibson:
This is what he said: "Fucking Jews... The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world."
Then he asked if the cop arresting him was a Jew.
Now, I've been drunk in my life, more drunk that Mel was that night a few times actually. But the funny thing about alcohol is, all it does is make my ID come out, that little guy in my head that is my uncensored self. I've told girls I was too shy when I was sober to tell them they were hot, I even took a drag on a cigarette, ooooooh..... But I've never had an anti-semitic reaction to beer before. Not even to that He-Brew stuff. But apparently the media is helping Mel's PR firm play this off as an alcoholism problem. Alcohol made Mel Gibson say that he hated the Jews! If only he didn't drink there wouldn't be Passion of the Christ, he would have denounced his father's statements about the Holocaust never happening, and maybe he wouldn't have even built that secluded Catholic Church on his estate so he and others could practice pre-Vatican II Catholicism.
There's plenty of movies Mel's made over the years that I've enjoyed at least on some level and I do feel a little weird having to turn then channel when Payback comes on TNT now, but there's a reason I've decided to boycott anything Mel Gibson has to do with, and this incident only further proves what I'm doing is right so I ask anyone who reads this to join me in this boycott. No loss of money can stop him of course, but the point is greater than money, the point is greater than getting him to stop what he's doing, it's to recognize is ourselves that this is not allowed. This is not a world I sanction to allow into my life. I am and will always be grateful for living in a country that allows Mel Gibson to do and say as he pleases without harming anyone, but that just makes it our responsibility to stand up and not allow it to grow beyond his self.
I kinda feel like putting on some blue face paint and attacking his Mansion. Aaaaaaaarrrrgggg!

I think even my teeth were sweating

2006-08-01T22:06:00.000-07:00

It was so hot and muggy with the AC on in the car that the cold air blowing out literally came out as steam like in a humidifier. Here's the temperature gauge on the car, it actually went up to 114 a few minutes before I took this pic.

There goes the bank account

2006-07-27T15:22:00.000-07:00

I've been through this so many times before, and here it goes again. Leaving the nest. At the ripe young age of 28, I'm moving out of my parents house AGAIN to East Williamsburg (aka Bushwick) where a lovely huge studio awaits me. It's run by some Orthodox Jews who seem to be rather generous with their converted warehouse.

As you can see from the photos I'm dragging over from the craigslist site I've got 20 foot ceilings and over 500 square feet of space to frolic. There's a front yard with a bbq to store my bike, a back yard with a bbq to walk dogs, and a rooftop with a bbq where I can store my sanity.

So when everything's ready and the moving boxes have been recycled and the charcoal has been acquired, you're all invited to Jaime's new and quite individual bbq house warming.
PS - there's also a game room with free pool, free air hockey, a coffee machine, soda and snack machine, a circa 1975 gym, and practice rooms for acting, instruments, classes, whatever, and some odd medieval type dining table.

Wasting away in coldpizzaville

2006-07-19T18:59:00.001-07:00

It's about 10 at night and I'm sitting in my cubicle cause we got handed a brand new brief at 11AM today for a presentation to a client tomorrow at 11AM. Yipdy freakin' dooo! Not too much to complain about it though, I even asked for this. I had a horrible case of Strep that turned into what looked like Mono and am now just back at work full time since Monday and what was the first thing out of my mouth to the ECD? "Ready for some 1AM night's boss, just let me know when. I'm rearin' to go!" Is it so wrong to ask for my karmic justice early for hardly working for two weeks and officially losing only 3 sick days? So here I sit with my poor AD (after finishing our cold delivery pizza) trying to figure out how to create a negative space sand castle of an apartment on the beach with absolutely NOTHING to work with.
And what do I want to talk about on this blog? Cable and Phone! Fucking cable and phone companies that suck the living life out of me for worrying, needlessly since it doesn't do anything, about when I'm going to be able to turn on the TV, check my email, and make a fucking phone call that won't charge me peak air-time minutes! We moved into our new Condo (leaving my old house of 25 years behind, tear, whimper, tear) with a promise from Verizon to have the phone on that same day and cable coming that Tuesday. The phone guys apparently decided not to show and Verizon gave no good reason why they didn't and promised to be there Monday at which point they promised that they rang the doorbell at exactly 10:09AM (which they didn't do because my mother swears she was there during that time) and said they'd come back on Thursday. Meanwhile the cable company sent a new kid out to see us (after I'd been on the phone with them the night before about how they promised a certain price but now where saying that they never said that or that whoever did say that was wrong) who found all our cable jacks to be just holes in the wall and discovered our working cable line in the attic (which was about 120 degrees at that point, poor kid) and that he needed access to our neighbor's attic to get the cable working which meant getting our neighbor's and the condo board's permission to get the cable running so our poor cable kid will be back on Tuesday to try again (excuse the run on but boy-oh-boy) We'll see what happens. Based on our previous experience with cable, I'm sure we've got a while to go.
I've just had a conversation with the studio about how to create a three dimensional sand castle of negative space out of a two dimensional floor plan, and you know what, we're going to try to do it tomorrow morning using LightPath (whatever that program is) and see if we can get it done before the 11AM deadline. Cheers to that.
And in case Bush didn't think I noticed... He did WHAT?! 62 Senators and a huge majority of Representatives passed the Stem Cell Research bill and Bush vetoed the fucker. THIS was his first veto. He's been in office 5 and a half years and THIS life saving bill that would help advance cures for everything from alzheimers to parkensins to broken bones, is what he chose to veto?! What the fuck is wrong with this guy?

Bullies never go away

2006-07-14T07:37:00.001-07:00

My girlfriend introduced me to her DVD collection of Freaks and Geeks last night. I saw the first and one of the last episodes. Apparently there were bullies in high school in 1980; shocking I know. But for the past few days, as I turn on the news any time now I see the beginnings of WWIII starting in the middle east I'm starting to see a connection. Hamas is a minority in Palestine. The Radical Clerics in Iran are a minority. And Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria also make up a very small part of their countries. It's a wonder they have been able to do what they do when a majority of people in their countries want nothing to do with this violence. But then again what were the Nazis but a bunch of drunks in the early 1920's screaming that they'll take over the world only to be arrested for drunken disorderly conduct. Bullies are always a minority, but their intimidation goes unchecked for one reason or another that I don't think any of us have ever figured out. Otherwise parents would know what to say to their kids when a bully comes by. Rather than just "Ignore him," or "Try to talk it out with him," or of course "Tell a teacher." Cause that always works.
Hezbollah is now (probably taking it's cues, guns, and money from Iran so the world ignores their Nuclear Program especially during the G8 summit going on right now) kidnapping Israelis and launching rockets into Israel as far and as much as they can. Every one of their acts is technically an act of war. And I ask myself what the Israelis, all 5 million of them in a sea of 150 million Muslims, can do? I understand they have arrested criminals. I understand they have killed not only terrorists and conspirators but also innocent women and children as "collateral damage" but nothing they have every done in any way compares to the horrible acts of aggression Hamas and Hezbollah do almost every day. Remember, almost every Muslim country does not recognize Israel's right to even exist. Israel has always, always just wanted to exist, to be left to their land and live their lives.
I think one of the biggest PR moves ever made by the Muslim nations was during the '67 war. Before that, Israel was a little country that had to be protected by Europe. It was a liberal cause. Then Israel was able to defend itself against 3 enemies at the same time and even gain ground in the war. But what Israel lost that day was the liberal cause because Israel went from a country of 5 million surrounded by a sea of 150 million to an occupying force of Palestinian refugees without a country (not that they had a country before then or that any and I mean ANY Muslim country would take them in). The liberals moved their cause to the Palestinians and when I lived on the west coast all I saw all over Berkeley were stickers under STOP signs that said Israel.
What is a bully who loses a fight? And what is a picked on kid that stands up for himself and wins but is never out of danger because the bullies are still there? And what can Principal America do about it? Maybe I'll have to go watch Strangers with Candy and see what Amy Sedaris would do.

If the Devil Wears Prada, does God Wear Gucci?

2006-07-08T10:22:00.000-07:00

A benefit of the mono is time to go to the movies. So yesterday I saw The Devil Wears Prada. Rather good for a chick flick, but I'd still put it in the chick flick category: no depth, emotional swings based on very little actually happening, and hotness for the sake of inner beauty rather than for the sake of hotness.
But it made me think about some of the changes I've been going through lately. Most of you know my clothing line as that of a cartoon character, the same jeans and sneakers for like 6 months straight with a t-shirt roundup that's recycled every week and a half to two weeks. Nothing much to write home about, but hey, there's reliable old Jaime with the same shit on every day. And then...
Jessica took me to Woodbury Commons. For those of you not from the Northeast, Woodbury Commons is a shopping center outlet of about 300 stores approximately 2 hours north of NYC. I hear you got a lot of that on the west coast, but it's freakin Mecca over here to a lot of people. There are even Japanese tours of the place. Anyway, I got in one day a few shirts from Banana, and get this: three pairs of shoes. 1 Merrill, 1 fancy pants converse with no laces, and one pair of shoe like substance that I don't even know what it is but man is it haute couture! And I've stolen some very nice Hush Puppies from my bro. I also got my first socks that are only ankle high. I feel very weird without sockage on my ankles, but I'm trying. FYI - apparently if you tell the woman behind the counter at Hush Puppies that you should get a discount on Merrill's because they're owned by the Wolverine brand which your agency handles you'll get the employee discount of 20% no questions asked. Pretty neat, try it some time.
I've noticed that since college I seem to have a lot more girl than guy friends but it took Jessica to actually start dressing me differently. And it's a slow process, granted, I revert easily, but she's on my fashion like yellow to a rain coat. Brand names never really made much sense to me, you put an A/X on a shitty 75 cent t-shirt and all of a sudden it's not $10, it's $50. And that's on sale! I may have to hock branding on others if I want to take home a pay check, but that still doesn't mean I understand why, when I was in Paris on the Champs Elyse and Concha came across the Louis Vuitton store she ran to it like she was in Chariots of Fire only to fall to the ground, crushed like a her soul had been deflated because it wasn't opening for a few months. Nor does it explain why my male La Jolla ECD takes us all out for pedicures, including yours truly and walks around in Louis Vuitton sandals all day.
A little help people.

Oh yeah, that's right, I'm a writer

2006-07-06T09:34:00.000-07:00

First of all, welcome to the blog world Emily!

Funny, I kinda just thought these things would write themselves and then life happens and next thing you know you haven't written for a month. Time for some updates:
I've got a lady, her name is Jessica, and boy is she lovely, I mean all around lovely. She's in the movie business trying to become a creative producer and is casting other movies along the way to make the money flow. Can't wait for all of you to meet her, those of you who haven't already of course.
I've been travelling to St. Louis for business on freaking Friskies cat food. Goodie goodie gumdrops I have to say. Center city is like the cleanest place in the entire world. And I had forgotten about that arch thing, yes it's still there. I can feel myself getting sucked into this packaged good and it's not a pleasant feeling.
Luckily I have jury duty assigned to me for this coming monday to get me out of it. But of course that itself I'm trying to get out of because my last trip to St. Louis brought me down with my worst case of Strep throat I've ever had which would be bad enough had it not led to my first case of Mono. Yes folks, I, a 28 year old, have just contracted the kissing disease. Jessica is fine, no worries there, but my god, what the hell do you do with Mono? I'm sitting in bed at noon writing this on a Thursday technically working from home and next week we're moving out of my home of 25 years into a condo, while I have this freaking disease so I can't lift anything and help around the house when I'm really really needed. It's a weird state of affairs so if anyone has any ideas of how to entertain me please send them to this blog. Muchos Gracias.

Anyone else?

2006-06-02T08:35:00.000-07:00

I had a late night at work last night and an early morning as well getting ready for a client presentation that's going on right now without me. And the darndest thing is I have this memory in my head about discussing some stupid little thing about some web site design stuff and I can't remember if it happened or if I dreamed it. I think I dreamed it but I just hate the fact that I'm actually so far into this shit that I'm dreaming about copy lines on a website.

Anyone else this far over the edge?

Hey MA I'm in da paper!

2006-05-26T08:43:00.000-07:00

If you get the New York Times, my first, albeit shitty, ad is on the bottom of page A19 today for Harvey Electronics. That's right, the first section baby!

Brad Pitt, sexiest man alive 2040

2006-05-18T07:25:00.000-07:00

I was just reading an article in the economist, yes concha, the economist as usual, and I read this article worrying that when the babbyboomers retire they'll all sell their stocks, cashing in to spend their non-working lives putting around golf courses in their million dollar mc-condos. The problem with a mass sell off like that is a massive devaluation of the stock market because there won't be enough people to buy up the stock at their current prices. But the article tried to assuage fears of course by talking about the rising tide of 3rd world countries into 1st world level economies able to buy up the stocks Americans won't. But their second pacifying tactic is what scared me the most, the hope of an ever older group of seniors. One man said with cancer probably being cured in most cases by 2020 and other advances in technology and care, the average age of death might well reach 120. With people not only living longer but working longer, they'll be able to keep society advancing skill wise. High School used to be all you needed to make it into middle management. Now it's college. But soon it will be grad school. I was in out out of ad school for 5 years after I graduated with a BA just to get this low paying job. The point being, the twixter generation, living at home, continuing their education into even our 30's means an aging entry level work force. What does that mean? Stability and adulthood comes later and humans grow at a much more advanced but slower pace. In other words 32 is the new 22. All of that is well and good, no problem with giving an ever advancing culture's youth more time to take in all it needs to learn. But evolution will not follow. It'll take 100,000 for our bodies to slow down to where our culture is. So women will still be menopausal in their 40's. And that's the part that's really going to change society. Of course it is the norm for younger woman to marry older men. I think the average has hovered around a 4 year difference. But now men won't be able or ready to marry till their much older due to the lengthening of young-adulthood. Yet women will be forced to marry younger than society wants them to if they want to have kids. So the teenagers of 2040 will swoon over a 65 year old Brad Pitt.
Is there another answer to this problem of men prolonging their barmitvahs while women are still forced to have theirs before Aunt Flow stops her visits?

Hello Me it's Me again

2006-05-10T06:41:00.000-07:00

You know after a show if you sit around long enough, maybe cause you're too high or drunk, maybe cause the crowd's so thick you're still waiting to leave and the stage is empty but you just kinda sit and stare at it. And then after a while a janitor or a roadie walks by to the microphone and he kind of builds up a little courage even though there's only like 5 people out of 50,000 that are still looking at the stage and he does his little show. I guess that's me now.
Sorry I've been away for so long, I guess most of us in our little blog circle have been bad keeping up as of late. Maybe life is moving on and leaving the blogs behind, who knows. But here I am again, at least for now, and here's the news.

Work is consuming my life. As I was hoping I guess. But now my childhood house of 25 year is for sale and we've got a buyer. The paperwork is supposed to be signed today. We've started paperwork ourselves on a 2 bedroom condo around Sleepy Hollow, yes THAT Sleepy Hollow, about 20 minutes away from where we are now. It's nice, it's kind of private, but it's just not home. And it really will never be home cause I'm gonna have to move into this city sooner or later and that'll be home from then on. So I've been missing my house even though I still live in it cause I only really get to take advantage of it on weekends.

Or at least now I get to take advantage of it on weekends because I may be employed now but I'm also single again. M'lady and I broke up on Easter. Xmas to Easter relationship, how very Jewish of us I know. It was just long enough to miss her but not long enough of a relationship to keep me down any long period of time. So it was quite a welcome excursion two Fridays ago when our CD decided to take all the ladies and himself, yes he's a guy, a La Jolla native, Louis Vuitton sandal wearing, guy, out for pedicures. And of course yours truly was dragged along. And rather enjoyed it. It wasn't the same as when bacon grease gave me that yellow toe painting years ago, but it was nice.

But last night was the doozy of all doozies that lead me to write again. Last night was my first focus group. An entire night of two sessions finding out from very affluent white men and women what they think of my electronic store ads. It can be summed up by what my Executive AE said during the fulcrum of the second session, "I've been doing focus groups for 15 years and I've never seen anybody get literally mad at ads before. Congratulations." He punched me in the shoulder and I raised my fists to the air as only a true champion could and then took it like a man as I listened to the stupid and the occasional, though I'm sure accidental, smart statement from these people as I tried to squish the head of this one woman who kept trying to move around commas and didn't like the color of one of the guys pants and decided to rip through the copy. She literally started having conniptions when the headlines were read. Conniptions! On the bright side it looked like, though they hated the ads, they defended the company and it's reputation, which pleased Mr. Client very much. So I think I'm about to have to redo a full campaign, perhaps from scratch, that goes into print in a matter of weeks, starting...... now!

Delay is freakin gay and Soccer plays hocker

2006-04-04T07:28:00.000-07:00

Tom Delay is freakin' gay
doo dar doo dar
He done quit his job today
oh the doo dar day

He thinks he'll go to jail
can't afford the bail

Oh... Tom Delay is freakin' gay
oh the doo dar day

Yay!

That was all I was gonna write this morning but I got a glimpse of The Early Show this morning where all the anchors were in a crowd with their guest of the moment. The guest happened to be the most famous American soccer player who's name escapes me cause, well, it's American soccer. So the hosts welcome him and these are his lines: "Thanks for having me. It's great to be here and as you can see I brought my friends from Claritin with me cause with my allergies, Claritin helps me keep going throughout the day nonstop." Of course he stumbled through it and they treated it like he was sooo cute. "That's all right. Hey, he plugs as good as he kicks folks!"

I know I'm in advertising so I'm supposed to defend this crap but come on. I'm only gonna defend good marketing and that was just stupid. Whoever saw that plug and actually thought, "Wow, this soccer player uses Claritin and he sounded so convinces I should try some" should make it into the Darwin awards when they die stupidly for fixing a fuse with a bullet or giving an enema to an elephant. (Thanks for the Darwin awards book, Nick.) What genius in the RX ad agency somewhere near Princeton NJ (cause that's where they ALL are) thought that would be freakin' great not to bother training this dope to get it right? I guess I'm just pissed cause of how innocently I felt toward him, like the hosts. "Oh poor baby capitalist. Trying to find his feet on his first big sponsor plug. You can do it. Yes you can, oh yes you can! (In puppy/baby talk)"

All this while I've been reading The Economist on my way to work on the train.

Oh capitalism, how I am your bitch.

Creativity and Structure DNA just won't splice

2006-03-31T07:21:00.000-08:00

A month's worth of work came down to the end of this week. And though it came in like a lion, it's going out like a lamb. 3 clients, 3 campaigns to finish. The first, for an electronics store, the smallest client, went without a hitch, easy greasy and we're done. He liked everything. Yay!
Thursday looked like it was going to be OK. But I walk in and immediately my computer's not working. So Kim, our IT guy (Korean guy, hence the girl name) tried it out. It freezes on me all the time. What do I do? Restart my computer. What does Kim do? He says fuck it and gets me a new computer. That freezes too so I end up working at another person's station who's out on a shoot in Canada. (I'm still here at her desk by the way. Kim's not in yet, and she's not gonna be back till Monday.) So I spent the day running back and forth in case my phone was ringing. Then of course the color printer goes down. Which wouldn't be too bad if the black and white one hadn't broken down two days before. So now every time I print I run across the office to the other color printer to get my stuff. And with about 30 revisions to scripts, 30 more of storyboards and key frames, I think I burned off my free dinner last night. So that's when we started working on the cat food, and it's... still... going... on! Revision upon revision that had to be rushed to FedEx to get it to them next day. Our account guy ran like the wind from the printer to the drop point in minutes flat.
In an of itself, still pretty normal for work but it kept us from getting the main attraction done and for the fact that my girlfriend is going to be out of town all weekend (our only time together usually) so she decided to picnic it with me at my desk with our take out beef and chicken teryaki. She got to meet my boss and coworkers which was nice but all I did was run around getting a kiss and a hug every 10 minutes as I left her be in my cube, or rather the absent co-worker's cube, as she ate, checked email, chatted, everything but spend time with me. The only good thing is that now I guess she understands a little bit better how the ad world, though creative, will never get its act together. We do our shit and the account people try and keep it together, but we always end up with broken comptuers, broken printers, and broken elevators, at 1AM in the morning. (More on the elevator later.) I swear I felt like it was hell week in ad school again, printing, reprinting, running around, getting 3 word conversations in with people. So after the dust settled and the gf went off to go dancing downtown I could work on Goya.
Our first presentation to the client for Goya was supposed to be to today (I'll get back to supposed later). So we didn't get to start working on it really till 8pm. And by 1 in the morning, after the jokes were finished, the boss had left, and the eye holes were shrinking, I had to catch my 1:08 train. But the ad gods said no, that wasn't going to happen either, because after just taking the elevator to get my fleece I pushed the button and waited. And I waited, and I waited, and then I waited some more. I pushed the up button, still nothing. 15 minutes went by. I had missed my last train home. Fortunately our HR woman, who stays late for reasons I'll never understand, got the super of the building to turn back ON the elevators. Let me repeat, turn back ON the elevators. For some reason at 1 AM someone decided to save a little electricity and turn off the elevators. The lights stayed on, the networks were working (unlike earlier in the day). So my nice account lady Tanya got me a voucher for a car service for my hour ride home in the burbs. I got into bed around 3 and got up around 7 to get into my fancy pants for the presentation today. And now I'm sitting here with the camel's back broken because the meeting has been postponed due to a sickness from one of the seniors at Goya.
I'm looking forward to enjoying this sun that's now out. I'm looking forward to the long lunch I'm gonna take in it. I'm looking forward to the half a weekend I'm expecting to have to get re-ready for the new presentation, which by the way is only an introductory meeting to prepare for the big boys which were supposed to come on Tuesday which I guess now will be pushed back too. I guess I'd better go fancy pants shopping.

Have a great first real weekend of spring everybody!

PS - boss just came by, we're off from work around noon today, yay! Time to catch up on The Shield and sleep!

United behind boycotting this film

2006-03-29T06:58:00.000-08:00

This weekend I went to see The Inside Man with my brother at the movies. Not one of Spike's best movies and Clive Owen, though great can't do American for shit. But that's all just a side note. During the previews I saw a trailer for United93 which is a dramatic telling of what happened on 9/11 to United flight 93. Not one of the planes that flew into the twin towers, not the one that hit the Pentagon, but the other one that seemed to have been foiled by the passengers on board. The movie looks like it's just an as complete as possible telling of that morning, the flight, and as many different perspectives as possible. I'm sure they'll try and be as tastefull as possible and there's a link to a memorial fund but...

NO FUCKING WAY!

It's too soon. It's too soon. It's too soon. Hollywood is a profit hungry machine. When that Arnold Schwarzenneger movie was about to come out about terrorism they didn't junk it or hold off, they moved the release date down only a matter of months and poof, there was Arny, going after terrorists. And that was that bad cause it wasn't blatant, it wasn't made with 9/11 in mind. This movie is. They're site makes it all as serious as possible, you can go to all the different locations in America that had to do with that morning and see who did what when. This isn't a documentary, this is a money making film created to squeeze the cash right out of our bleeding hearts.

I can't help but think of the guerilla advertising that I, my friends, colleagues, et al. do. We take an idea and create a world around it, make it serious so it's as real as possible, and in the end, it's all to sell some paper towels or a car. But that's all for entertainment's sake based on selling a product. I created a whole story about a woman being so fat she got stuck in her house and sued Domino sugar because of it. All for entertainment's and Domino's sake to sell some sugar packets. And there's lots of stuff like this.

But in the end, it's sugar. It's not about one of the most important, emotionally jarring, life/world changing events in my or anyone around's lifetime. We're not ready, decency cannot allow this crap to be shown. Please join me and boycot this movie. And wait till it's 2066 to show some piece of crap action movie with Josh Hartnett's, Ben Affleck's, and Cate Beckensale's grandkids in the starring roles.

Check it out for yourself at flight93.net. Incidentally united93.com is a site for a Brit football team.

All the news that's fit to blog

2006-03-24T07:14:00.000-08:00

Morning all. It's a grey, spring, Friday morning and snow showers are on the way for the weekend.

In global news, if any of you have heard of this new book Cobra II out on shelves now, it's a detailed account of the early days of Operation Iraqi Freedom (replace Freedom with pun connoting how horribly it's gone here). The gist of it is that as soon as we went in to Iraq Rummy and all the generals were either seeing or had been told that this was going to be an insurgent battle. The army was escaping and blending in with their weapons. It turns out Sadaam had planned for the army to return as an insurgency. But all the while he never thought we'd actually attack and didn't take measures to escape until we hit Bagdad. He really was only worried about Iran and Israel. He had to fake his neighbors into thinking he had WMDs and never once thought that irony of not having them but lying he did would turn into an American invasion. The crossroads was upon Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Instead of stepping up the number of troops in order to quell the looming insurgency, he, like his boss, doesn't like to admit any form of defeat and stuck to his original plan of 200,000 troops thereby dooming Iraq and indeed all of us to these past three years of chaos that is now organizing itself into civil war. But Bush, in his latest press conference, vehemently thinks he still needs his Rummy and no resignation (two were given during his first term) will be accepted.
I guess I'd just like to take this opportunity to talk to anyone who thought Bush was bad but Kerry would most definitely be worse. I agree on many levels that Kerry is an idiot. He can't not be boring. He makes Gore's civic lessons look exciting. And he picks the Alito nomination to the supreme court to stand and filibuster while he's skiing in, where else, Davos Switzerland. Granted, he wouldn't shoot any one in the face by accident, but Kerry had a lot of miss steps. But look at Bush. Look at what his steadfastness, or rather stubbornness is getting us. And look at Bush's team. His inner circle. With Kerry in, they would have been gone too. And in would have come fresh blood. One thing we always say about Bush is that he's the devil you know. But why do we also chose devils we know over those we don't? Does anyone really think Harriet Meirs, Katrina, Rita, Iraq, etc... would have been treated this badly under a Kerry administration? Come on! Even Bush's tax cuts don't fully take effect until 2008 so we wouldn't have had higher taxes. I used to say a few years ago if Bush is re-elected he'll go down as a good president because he'll have the second term opportunity to clean up his mess (back when I thought Iraq was still winable). And if he wasn't reelected all his bafoonery would be revealed. Turns out it's the opposite. Another terms is giving the Bush administration the finals nails into its own coffin. And a single term would have put all Bush's deficits and fumblings into the hands of Kerry or whoever to clean up, being the responsible but poorly received president. I guess we have more to think about when elections come up again.

And in local news. It's anniversary time! The 21st was my parents 30th anniversary since they met. Wonderful story that I've already blogged about, go check that one out. It's also my dad's dead dad's birthday (my grandpapi I never knew). He would have been 121 this year. I know! But the 23rd was also the anniversary of my parents first date, and coincidentally my AD's, Linda's, first date with her man. As we were having lunch with RB's BDH and Janny yesterday it occurred to us it was also a year since our dear Bacon Greese had left us in NY for the sun and surf of the west coast. We miss you RB! And The 12th was the first anniversary of my bro and his dear lady, Mary. How sweet a couple they are. Without knowing it, they gave each other the same gift, 5 hours at the same day spa.
And lo and behold, Ekta's back! She surprised me yesterday when my phone rang and it was her Ameican cell phone number and not some weird long Indian one. She took the plunge, she's back, she's freelancing and interviewing, and let's all welcome her to where she belongs, good old NYC!

That's the news lady's and gents. Goodnight and Good Luck. (I think I'm gonna have to come up with a more original sign off)

The difference between me and my partner and then the difference between men and women

2006-03-17T12:59:00.000-08:00

I am typing this during a short lull at work waiting for a horrible client phone meeting to occur while my partner has just left for a ski weekend in Killington VT that she just won with her boyfriend. No, I'm not complaining, I'm happy for her. It's a great escape from St. Patricks Day since she doesn't really drink. More beer for us! So that's the difference between her and me right now.

But here's the weird thing I was reading about the difference between men and women. Apparently men speak on average about 7,000 words a day. We communicate to the world that much. But women, oh you women, you speak an average of 25,000 words a day. Three and a half times more than we do! And check around your blogs if you haven't noticed but we men are pretty rare. In fact there just me and the good ole Steve-O Tribune actively blogging on my list. The rest are gossip queens. Really, really funny and provocative gossip queens. Granted, most of you are copywriters (still a rarity to be a girl copywriter for those who don't know), but wow, we men are few and far between!

Which leads me to this evolutionarily freaky article I just read in the NY Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/14/health/14preg.html) which goes into that whole "men are hunters women are gatherers" thing and elaborates to a degree I didn't think was possible. Most of us have already learned (some of us the hard way) how women are looking for everything in one man and how men are looking for one thing in every woman. And it makes sense with the whole, "we make a million a day and you get one a month" scenario. But it seems our bodies have worked this out too because women express genes in their kids to not be extremely strong and healthy when they get out so mom still has resources left over to have more kids where as dad gives the baby genes to make sure it grows as healthy as possible because dad isn't waiting for kid #2 with the same lady. So both tactics help to get more of specifically your genes out into the world and not necessarily your partners. One of the things the female genes do (if they are able to act without interference) is cause the baby to be up to 25% smaller whereas the daddy genes, when allowed to work on their own make the baby that much bigger. Dad genes also have this neat little trick where the baby can send out a hormone that clogs arteries thereby increasing the mother's blood pressure. And increased blood pressure forces more nutrients down the umbilical chord. If a baby senses it's not getting enough, it does this naturally. If a baby does this too much the mother gets pre-eclampsia which happens in about 6% of pregnancies.

So I guess if we want to truly make this planet an equal opportunity habitat we're going to have to do some gene modification. Or I should just live with the fact that my buds and I just have less to say than the lassies at the other side of the bar and leave it at that.

It's 11:11, make a wish.

2006-03-13T20:12:00.000-08:00

It's 11:11 in the PM at my agency and I'm working late again. My first presentation to an actual client is tomorrow and of course it's to our biggest one. Our $50 million behemouth. I worked till 1 AM last thursday for a friday presentation and then left at 5, after the work was done and nothing was left and people were saying they were leaving and I had to go with my girlfriend to her mothers for dinner so I was going not home to rest but to put on my chipper face and eat a home cooked meal and sit up straight. Which I did. And even got through watching the best of Eddie Murphy on SNL that I brought over upon request. And through the whirlwind that was the weekend of getting to Phily and back while being at my bosses beck and call I got through to today with 5 hours of sleep only to not be able to get home before 1 or maybe 2 and have to wake up at 6 for an 8:30 run through at the agency tomorrow morning. Yay!
I was going to write about how Bush is going to have the FDA ban a drug that can basically cure HPV because he thinks it will increase sexually pomiscuity regardless of the 5,000 lives a year it will save.
But sorry, I have work to do. Well, back to it!

The end is the beginning is the end

2006-02-25T23:03:00.000-08:00

There are two major problems in the world right now that scare the bejesus out of me that could lead to Armageddon. Civil/Sectarian war in the Middle East, and the melting of the polar ice caps. Both seem real enough to me to question bringing children into this world for fear of having them live in a world not only worse off than how I found it, but might actually not make it to a natural death because the earth "dies" first. However, after seeing Independence Day, of all things, on TV yet again I came to the conclusion that each end of days scenario can save the other from happening. It's a kind of glass is half full logic as long as I forget the empty half of the glass will kill us all in the process anyway.

I'll start with global warming since that's the one where Independence Day gave me the idea. Aliens were attacking and 1/2 the world was dead and what happened? The rest of the world came together to fuck those aliens up. Hurray! So, what's our alien invasion? The melting of the ice caps and the destruction of every coastal city in the world. When we're all sent back to the middle ages because the earth's pissed off at us, petty things like religion are going to seem a bit, well, petty. And I bet Sunni and Shiite and American get along pretty fine then.

And if civil war breaks out in Iraq the next step would be Iran siding with the Shiites and Saudi Arabia, Syria, etc.. siding with the Sunnis (or do I have that reversed?) as well as the Kurds across the middle east playing some sort of third party stick poker. That's going to be a Middle East version of a world war. When no oil is flowing out the rest of the world will be forced to alternative fuels, not for environmental reasons but because there just won't be enough oil. And perhaps that will force CO2 emissions down thereby stabilizing the earth enough to ward off a global catastrophe the likes of which only Hollywood has seen. Granted the earth will still be absorbing and reacting to CO2 from today a hundred years from now, but optimism is optimism.

As Eric Idle keeps whistling for a smaller and smaller brief case of cash: Always look on the bright side of life!

Apparently I'm working

2006-02-23T06:20:00.001-08:00

May 19, 2000: Graduation from Colgate U with my BA
September 14, 2001: Graduation from Chicago Portfolio School
April 1, 2005: Graduation from Miami Ad School
February 21, 2006: First day at Avrett Free Ginsberg

That was a longest trip from one destination to another I've ever taken. And a la RB on her timing clock it's been 5 years 9 months and 2 days from the time I set out on my life in advertising to the time I got my first full time job.

Linda and I are settling in nicely at our respective neighboring desks and pondering the delights of Fancy Feast Cat Food. It's finally the end of the beginning and the beginning of the road itself and I couldn't be happier to finally be on it. (Ok well I could if this were BBH or something, but now is not the time to complain, now is the time to make the best TV spot for cat food you'll ever see!)

Cheers to y'all and please tune in this summer to some freakin tasty shots of canned meat byproduct!

For the right and wrong reasons

2006-02-16T07:22:00.000-08:00

As the hoopla over Vice President Dick Cheney continues lets try not to let this hunting accident, this hilariously silly hunting accident, overshadow the real reasons why Dick Cheney shouldn't be around. I mean it's been two hundred years since a vice president shot anyone and that time Aaron Burr shot back and killed the guy. He gets into office, immediately creates record breaking tax cuts for all his rich buddies, especially gracious awards to oil companies, has a secret meeting with these tycoon CEO's keeps it top secret and gives them everything they don't need, more money, no bid contracts for his company Halliburton, ousts a CIA agent, leaves the blame on his fiercely loyal chief of staff, lies about WMD's, continues to insinuate Saddam had something to do with 9/11, hires and fires based on loyalties, like-minded thinking, and cronyism instead of actual skill, and the list goes on. And when he didn't get his way he told Senator Patrick Lehey to go fuck himself in the halls of the very public Senate building.
Frankly the closest job description this "skill set" belongs to is mob boss. He'd fit in quite well over at BadaBings once he has someone take out Tony Soprano I'd have to say. The jokes are so easy it actually took time for people to come up with some of them simply for that reason. I've heard the "Cheney's got a gun" song I've seen the pics of the different ways Cheney can kill you. And it's all a barrel of laughs that rightfully should be enjoyed. And on the completely other side of things, this guy, after one of the pellets found it's way to his heart, had a heart attack and almost died. That would have made Cheney guilty of involuntary manslaughter and a man would be dead. Horribly serious and horrible in just every single way. It's the closest line I've seen in a long time between hilarious and grave.
We're all, especially we in these early years of our lives, quite cynical about government. But it's Dick and his buddies that are giving us reason to be so cynical. It should only take honesty and hard work to make us believe in government again. Not even someone from another party (though that would be nice), just someone who lets us trust our government. Let's hate Dick Cheney, not Washington DC.

All or nothing or something in between

2006-02-12T23:55:00.000-08:00

I saw a Chevron ad this evening that said if Paris wanted to power itself with wind power it would need 20,000 turbines and it showed a hat blowing by the Eiffel Tower with a huge turbine on it. I guess the point was to threaten us with the fact that it'd be a huge undertaking to use alternative fuels and oil is just so... here. And of course making the ad in Paris was the subtle hint that only frenchie, tree-hugging hippies like the environment.

That made me think of the saying that good things come through hard work and time but great things happen all at once. We do like to think in distinct, big step progressions. It's one thing then it's something completely different. It's not incremental, boring steps, that aren't noticeable until it's already happened. But that's just not the way life works. And it shouldn't be the way to approach life either. It's the only argument I hear the oil industry making: it'd take so much to replace oil. We're not thinking that far ahead, we just need little things.

We're not going to "litter" the landscape with wind turbines, or solar panels, or dams, but we'll have all these options, and oil, coal, biofuel, etc. working together. Solar panels on roof tops and in the deserts. Turbines on hilltops and off shore and water turbines under, well, water.
We're insulating our homes better, and using lower energy draining electronics, more and more, it's a progression. There'll be gas powered cars on the road 50 years from now. They'll just be in the minority.

So lets stop sweating the big stuff, always think globally about the future, but we can act locally today. By the way, there's a blue light special on compact fluorescent bulbs right now. When you're next bulb blows, be ready with one of those. It's not all that needs be done, but there's plenty to fill in the gap between all and nothing.

The race is on

2006-02-05T13:56:00.000-08:00

Scared beyond belief again by what Andrew Sullivan had to say this morning on the Chris Matthews Show I feel like I now have to prepare for what this century will actually turn into. I think it's true, as most people say, that the 20th century ended when communism collapsed and the 21st century started on 9/11. But what this century is forming into is what I am just coming to realize. We are beginning to change the Middle East. We're not really changing it by this "democratization" but just by confronting Islam itself. Not the Islam we see in America but the Islam that has either not changed or is hearkening back to the middle ages.

The new clashes that have erupted across the middle east from the cartoons of Muhammad are showing just how true this is. Late last year there were a few Danish cartoons that featured Muhammad, most in derogatory ways like having a bomb for a head. Now that these images have made it to the area of the world where any drawn images of Muhammad in a derogatory form are blasphemous, the true reaction is being seen.

Of course devout Christians take offense to derogatory pictures of Christ and some Hassidic Jews were punishing Madonna for mentioning a prophet in one of her songs as it's against their religion for any mention of a prophet to be used to make money. The difference lies in the retaliation. The Islamic reaction is vengeance of the worst sort. The attacking of the Danish consulate this weekend in Beirut for instance, but simply in general, 9/11 being the most obvious, resorting to murder as the only answer. Now we must turn the confrontation into dialogue. We're going to have a lot of reactionary coups, and elections, and attacks during this century. And yes, it's going to take a century. The race, as Andrew Sullivan said, is going to be if we can modernize Islamic thinking before they get The Bomb. Lets start the discussion. Good luck to us all.

Friedman's Baby

2006-02-02T22:21:00.000-08:00

I was all set to rip Bush a new one as soon as his state of the union was over either for pandering to the right or for making a bunch of promises I knew he wouldn't keep like all his other semi-do-good sounding projets over the years. But then I heard the speech and it reminded me of what everyone had been wanting to hear but wasn't expecting, what Thomas Friedman has been screaming for this past year, a Kennedy style moon-shot for our energy problem. Bush actually addressed it.

Friedman's point is essentially this. We need to fix a lot of things and the way to do it is with energy. If we invest in home grown energy we can actually address problems in oil rich countries without worrying about where to get our next oil fix from. And that also frees that oil up to go to countries we'll no longer have to compete with like China and India. So we won't have to go to war for oil. (Literally, not like it says on the banners at the rallies just to keep the flow going to the open market instead of actually plundering the oil.) If that home-grown energy is environmentally sound we'll fix the earth we're beginning to destroy. And that home-grown, environmentally friendly energy will have to be invented from one of our scientists of tomorrow which means addressing our education and immigration issue. We have had significant drops in students going into the sciences and we have been sending immigrants who study science in America back to their own countries instead of encouraging them to stay here and investing back in the country that educated them.

30 science industry leaders got together, raised 400 points, agreed on 399 of them unanimously and sent their findings on to Capital Hill. Bush has essentially set his goal around these proposals for the most part. Cutting a few corners here and there but essentially, says this panel, accepting the 10 year program of $9 billion the first year and growing to $19 billion by year 10 in investments in this country's sustainability.

We simply can't lead or even survive in tomorrow's world when our only export left is American Idol and The O.C.

So now Thomas Friedman has written his response to Bush's response of Thomas Friedman, the man who I believe is most responsible for encouraging the "Geo-Green" movement. And he brings up a point I think we should all face. Bush has made his proposals and we need to make him stand up for them and not back down. Make him stay true to his word because we can't afford to just ignore him for another three years, we don't have the luxury of time any more. We need to invest now. The kids in elementary schools today are the ones that must save this country. And it's going to be a few years before they're out of the sandbox and into those labs.

I know with Bush my pessimism has become my reality and my optimism has become my fantasy but what choice do we have in a 4 term presidency? Write to the White House, write to your representatives and let's get this ball rolling.

The vacation from complexity is over

2006-01-29T22:44:00.000-08:00

The black and white days of good and evil, my side or the terrorists' is over. We can't hide from it any more, the world is actually more complex than a scantron form and we've come to the point where one word answers won't work.

Democracy, for lack of a better word, or rather the word that Bush has been using, is taking root in the middle east. But the elections in Afghanistan, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Iran, and now the Palestinian territory have all brought forth radical, religious, fundamentalists to power. The people have spoken and they have asked for American hating, religiously narrow, overly conservative, military leaders. The kind of militant groups that make the propped up dictators we've been peddling for decades look like Jimmy Carter.

In no way do I think we should go back to the Shah or any other American condoning, corrupt leader. But Bush has forgotten to be careful for what he asks for, because he just got it: An Afghanistan that is electing itself back to a warlord lead fiefdom; an Egypt that tried to act democratically to receive better trade deals but just voted for the party that backs Hamas; an Iraq that is bent on splitting apart and a Shiite majority that has sad it will side with Iran if America attacks it; a Lebanon electing itself back into chaos; an Iran that is out the prove the Holocaust didn't exist, Israel should be wiped off the map, and Nuclear weapons are their solution; and finally a Palestine that has just purposely cut itself off from the rest of the world by electing the worse of two parties because the worse party was more violent but less corrupt and actually collected the garbage.

I think Bush was right when he said that all people want democracy. I see how that makes sense. Democracy keeps governments honest with their people and doing the bidding of those people. But Bush forgot to take into account what would happen when those people hate you and most everything else that you stand for. How do you fight a country for doing what you wanted it to do. Bush basically asked, if you want to destroy us, could you at least take a vote on it first? Well the people have voted, and they are voting for an Islamic Empire from Spain to Asia with the immediate end of Israel and the eventual destruction of the United States.

I'll never forget the image I saw on TV in my bedroom in Chicago the morning of 9/11, not of the towers falling down or the people running and screaming, but of the celebrating Palestinians on the streets. They quickly quieted down when they realized what being televised meant and Yassir Arafat even donated blood. (I pity the poor soul that received his blood if no one in the red cross was decent enough to throw it out.) But that, that right there is all the proof I will ever need that everything else is an act, a mask to keep us thinking we have a chance to change their mind, that deep down they really do like us. Why shouldn't they? We're nice people.

Yes, there are genuinely good people in Palestine, there are genuinely good people in every culture that just want peace and harmony. I believe this. But the majority of the Palestinians and most Arabs and Persians want Israel and America destroyed. We should never forget that no matter what we want to dream. I'm sure most of you disagree, that most of you think the majority want just, at worst, to be left alone. But I think that is only the best. The world is not as small as we'd like it to be and no matter how close we're all related genetically (thanks National Geographic genome project), we have a long way to go before we even understand how to understand each other.

Because Oprah said it wasn't OK

2006-01-27T06:31:00.000-08:00

I can't believe I'm still writing about this. Oprah had to have James Frey back on her show to chastise him, tell him he betrayed millions of readers, and basically call him a liar. This guy's really getting the PR shit kicked out of him. I'm not going to defend the "untruthiness" of his work especially because his main theme for how he should live his life is by how he judges things to be true or not, but why can't we let this shit go? We've got a news cycle filled with bad guys and bad stories to make us focus our hate on. But I guess we always want the light hearted villain in our lives too. Someone we can point to and say "I'm better than him." Linda Tripp was great for that! I guess it's cause we can't identify with Hamas or that unpronounceable leader of Iran Amenedijadihadedad. We need someone who we think could have been us but we're glad we're not. That's probably it. Right?

You can't read this in China

2006-01-25T21:08:00.000-08:00

In my travels across the country I've seen a multitude of different ads for Budweiser and other beers. In New York, Bud is a Giants fan, in Phili, it roots for the Eagels, and when I'm on the west coast, all of a sudden, they've been die hard Raiders fans since the team was created. Do they think I'm not seeing these other signs? Do they think they're getting away with some sort of faux-sincerity to win my heart over?

If you type my name in Google.com, this blog is what comes up. But I am willing to bet it will not come up if you search it from Google.cn.
Now that Google is relaunching it's efforts in China and creating google.cn they have agreed to China's demands of censoring any information not deemed suitable. This includes things like Tianamen Square, certain civil rights sites and so on. Before, if a Chinese person could get access to Google's American site he would be able to search for anything and the Chinese government would filter out the sites. Page titles would come back, but none of them would be accessible. Google has now decided to filter itself, deciding which words to flag and which to let go only to have the Chinese government call them if they feel they're being too lax. Now the "bad" sites don't even appear, just a notice saying some sites were deleted.

Does Google think I'm not going to notice they conveniently are leaving American values on America's shores? Does Google think that WE are not going to notice?

As of today Google's mantra, "Do no evil," is hypocritical.

Yahoo and Microsoft have already kowtowed to China's demands to get access to their rapidly growing economy. This internet big three could easily team together and demand certain rights that they're not even asking for now, but they capitulate and they collect their money. If Yahoo is going to keep handing over sensitive documents to the Chinese government like the ones they handed over last year that put a NYTimes reporter in Chinese jail for exposing Chinese corruption, I don't think any pact will be happening soon.

Google says it's not offering it's easily searchable gmail or it's blogs (this blog service in fact) because that censoring would be going to far. They've already gone too far. And I hope China does see this, and reads it, before it sensors it.

Yes, I'm still going to use they're search engine, and their blog service, and their email. But there are other ways to have my voice heard than a boycott and I plan on using them. I hope you do too.

Sorry James, You're no Dave

2006-01-24T10:09:00.000-08:00

In reference to my earlier post entitled "Because Oprah said it was OK." if James Frey had just done what Dave Eggers did in his "memoir," A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. I think we wouldn't have a problem. Boys and Girls please turn your texts, aka A.H.W.o.S.G., to "Pretend it's Fiction" under the Acknowledgements section and read thoroughly. For those of you who need to read it twice, please go ahead and do so. Thank you for your time.

My prescription needs a refill

2006-01-20T13:10:00.000-08:00

Cleaning up my room as I prepared for the move, I came across my long forgotten pack of Iosat pills. They're good till around next year at this time. These pills were handed out to everyone living in the secondary blast radius of Indian Point. First blast radius being the area where people will just be incinerated. Indian Point is my local nuclear power plant and the pills are to keep my kidney's from melting. Or is it my liver? I get 7 pills for me and 7 for any survivor I've found. I searched my wallet and found the first two in my "secret" zipped compartment.

Indian Point is the oldest operating nuclear power plant in the nation and has been closed and opened so many times due to leaks and violations it reminds me of my crappy Chinese restaurant up in Hamilton, NY where I went to college. And because of that college, Indian Point and I have become well acquainted. I would pass it every time on my way up north. One time I was passing it while listening to the radio as an announcer said there was a radiation leak and it just happened to be raining at the time. I closed my windows and air vent and held my breath, futiley of course because that wouldn't have done anything and also because the nuclear steam leak turned out not to be hazardous. (Though I wonder how any nuclear steam can be classified as such.)

There was a documentary done on Indian Point by HBO seeing as how the third blast radius out of Indian Point contains the nation's largest city. Sorry guys, no Iosat pills for you. They interviewed my town's sheriff to find out how our evacuation would work. Single lane road out of the area, yeah that'll work. And it turns out security on the plant is so lax, basically anything can crash right into from land or air, and start the chain reaction.

I guess my question is, if oil won't last and nuclear is going to mean dealing with this, at least for now, why are we so stuck against solar, wind, biofuel, and other renewable energies? Is it because they don't have lobbyists in DC? Is it because windfarms are as "not in my backyard" an issue as nuclear powerplants are? Is it because initial costs mean people won't pay for them? If my choice is between holding my breath as I pass Indian Point and crossing my fingers (which I'll be doing tomorrow on my way to Bear Mountain) versus a higher energy bill (which will go down as infrastructure is in place and supplies become mainstream) I think I'll take the eye soar windfarm.

I wonder where I go to get a refill on my pills.

A new member of the family

2006-01-18T11:19:00.000-08:00

As if driving down to Lynchburg Virginia wasn't enough to see good looking babies. This last weekend I drove up to Boston Massachussetts to see Teddy Kilduff Ginsburg.

My first cousin Richard, and his beautiful bride Teri, have had their first son, Teddy. He's the first of the new generation.

My grandmother is now a great-grandmother. My aunt is now a grandmother. And my mom is now a great-aunt. We are all extatic and Teddy is of course the cutest baby I've seen in at least 2 weeks. (2 blogs down) He's 10 months old as of two days ago with the biggest bluest eyes with the cutest blondest hair. When you look at Richard (holding Teddy) you wonder where he got it from. But mom swears Teddy looks exactly like Richard from the back. Swears to god she says.

I guess I'm on a baby spree. So if any of you have any baby's that need exploiting on my blog just let me know and I'll be happy to pop down for a Jaime seal of approval.

Because Oprah said it was OK

2006-01-12T07:45:00.000-08:00

I just finished reading A Million Little Pieces by James Frey about 45 seconds ago. I borrowed it from a friend over New Years who said it was great (Thanks Nick) and I agree. It was arresting and original and written in a new way for me that helped push the envelope of how one can deliver human emotion through the written word.

But around page 350, news started breaking that the story of James wasn't true. That he had fabricated his Jail time and other facts for effect. I followed the story as I was finishing the book. I was already past the point of no return, already on James' side. His memoir, his story, was already a part of me and was looking at things through his perspective, not through the eyes of The Smoking Gun's website (a division of court TV) who broke this tasty little morsel of gossip.

Last night was the climax for this story when he appeared on Larry King. And though I still had about 40 pages to go I decided to watch.

The central theme I think of James' life is to see truth. Truth is not fact, to be sure, but something must ring true to you to believe it. And for James that meant that though he had compressed time, changed names, ages, and specifics, his message is what was true. And I wouldn't dispute it unless it was for effect. If it's for better reading, shame on you James for warping something that needed no embellishment. But I don't know where that line was, I don't think I'll ever know. He could have stayed true to himself the entire time, with or without the changes. I won't go into specifics out of respect for the book so whoever reads this and hasn't finished or started A Million Little Pieces has a chance to read it in peace.
At the end of the Larry King show, Larry said he was going to go over his normal time because Oprah was on the phone. The reason James' book is so big is because Oprah picked it for her book of the month club in October. And questions kept arising: will Oprah stand by her decision, follow James' lead of sticking to truth, not fact? Because it was a memoir, not an autobiography. And she did. She said the book doesn't change how much it can help those in need of it, and reveal to those who want to open themselves up to what kind of world addiction can be. Frank McCourt the man who basically reinvented the memoir genre, has not come under this kind of scrutiny, nor has any other memoir writer. Nor do I want them to. It is a subjective style that should be held up to the standard of truth, not fact.

I guess I just have to ask myself. Do I feel lied to?

No I don't.

Because whether what happened to James happened exactly as he wrote it or how it exactly actually happened, I believe the same James would be before us. No different.

And I'm happy Oprah and I see eye to eye on this. I hope those of you who take her word for Law, and I know who you are, take what she said last night, as what I am saying here today, for a good thing. Honor truth over facts because facts, black and white, come without an agenda, to be used as the person telling them sees fit. Truth is always good and always well intentioned and always the quickest path in life. A lie cannot contain truth, but it can contain facts. I have seen this too many times in politics and botched friendships. (Once is enough frankly). Honor truth and you will find the world a lot more welcoming than if you just stick to the facts.

What I learned this New Years

2006-01-06T16:11:00.000-08:00

Hello all, sorry I've been gone for so long but driving 1000 miles while still partying it up takes some time. Plus, being away from not only my blog and your blogs but also a computer at all (not to mention that bottle of Jameson) has left me a bit off for writing so please be gentle with me.

For New Years I drove down to Philly for my annual college roommate reunion. We've been doing it since 2001 and we never miss it. Usually in NY or SF, this time in Philly since one of them is at UPENN and this will be his last year there. Fingers crossed at least for it to be your last year NICK! And shut up, I know the Giants lost.

So here's the 4 of us, Jesse, Nick, Jon and Myself hunched over to fit under Jon's umbrella on our last day together in the horrible rain, desperate to get a pic of us together. And all we had was my camera phone. We went to this great bar called Chaucer's for New Year's which I recommend to anyone in the Philly area. I was wicked pissed and made friends with every Jew in the bar cause this one girl came up to me and had to ask if I was Jewish. I merely pointed to my rather obvious nose and she introduced me to the Cohens and Liebowitzes abound around me. And somehow we made it with the help of directions from random drunkards meandering the streets, one of which gave me a white balloon tied around my wrist somehow, thank you anonymous stranger, to Little Pete's, another recommendation, for the best cheesesteaks ever! It's amazing how many people like to talk to you more when you have a Happy New Year hat on, which I got from another stranger named Garth I think. Thanks Garth! Good times.

But of course the real highlight of my trip was to drive yet another 5 and a half hours southwest to Lynchburg, VA where I got to see Jenny and her new baby girl Bella Grace. She is such the cutie and here she is with Mama. Bella G is almost 3 months old now.

Once again, apologies for the quality but the cameraphone was all I had. Jenny's sister Meagan was there with her 5 year old Rosalind and her 11 month old Mason who is quite the cute little redneck when he sports his camouflage tshirt. He was totally fascinated with my beard and glasses and it broke my heart when he kept reaching for me as I left for my 8 hour journey back to NY. I got him to say "uh-oh" a lot. Basically all I did for my stay was enjoy Jenny's precious few minutes of free time and see, once again, how full time mommy work is. I don't know how you do it Jenny, you're proof that super-mom is a redundant word. So all ya'll trying to get in contact with Jenny, be patient, she's a little tied up at the moment.

So what I learned this New Years was, cherish your old friends as much as you can cause they can bring you back to the good ole times just when you need it and they're always great for making some new good ole times as well. And love the gift of life that you have, nothing drives that home more than a newborn who smiles right at you.

Anyway, there's plenty to be pissed at Bush about, worries in Israel, higher death rates in Iraq and plenty more to rant about. But for now, it's good to be back, and HAPPY NEW YEAR TO YOU ALL!

I thought I could still sit on Santa's Lap even though I look like him now

2005-12-25T05:55:00.000-08:00

This will be my last true Christmas. I say this because this house, my house, the house I've lived in since I was 2 years old will be put on the market in a matter of months. And when we leave it behind we not only leave marks on door frames where we measured me and my brother's heights, and secret spots where we burried our treasures and forgot about them, but I will be saying goodbye to the Christmas I know and love.

What's a Jew talking about Christmas for? Well, I guess that does require a little explanation. My mother's family all the way back to the 1800's on the North Shore of the Chicago 'burbs started to celebrate Christmas because their "forward thinking" Rabbi decided it would be a good idea for his "flock" to assimilate into their new culture. This was just as most them had landed fresh off the boat from Germany and surrounding areas. After all, around that time Christmas had been declared a federal holiday, the first and only religious holiday to be recognized as a federal one to this day (I think I mentioned that in a comment to RB's xmas blog). And it was practiced by my mother's great great grandparents, great grandparents, grandparents, parents, herself, and now me and my brother. We're a secular clan, the Schwarz's, so we don't have the complexity to deal with "cheating" on our real God when we do this. But for the first time it seemed hard to explain last night to a Jewish friend of mine who is of the practicing kind, a true believer of YHWH (she'll probably be mad at me for spelling that out). I think she finally understood what I believed, that we've taken an idea about peace and love and family and sharing and caring that had been concentrated into a religious holiday and absorbed it into our own way of celebrating those same values. But no way was she going to be OK with it. We basically celebrate Christmas the same way everyone celebrates Thanksgiving, but this time, there's a tree, and angels, and a star, and Bing Crosby singing with David Bowie. My mother's favorite type of music is Gregorian chants and traditional Christmas music. It's weird, some may call it hypocritical, but it's what we do, it's a Schwarz tradition, and I've loved every minute of it.

Which brings me back to my original point. Every Christmas morning the family would gather at the top of our stairs in ascending order of age, my brother in the front, my dad in the back (grandma behind him when she could make it to Chappaqua from Baltimore - Hi Grandma!) and we'd all go down slowly to start off with but by the time the choo choo train was nearing the bottom Noah and I were falling over each other racing for the presents. And now, in about 5 minutes, we'll be doing this for the last time. I know, I know, I'm 27, what are we still doing this for? Because it's what Schwarz's do best,
and I'll miss it. I just wanted to share this last minute of magic with you all in hopes you can take it with you and make it a part of your Christmas time as I hope to carry some idea of it with me to my new home, wherever it may be.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good life!

It's finally over, but it's really just beginning

2005-12-23T07:05:00.000-08:00

What a messed up week. The biggest shopping time of the year and no one could get into the city to take local businesses from red into black for the year. I was personally effected because my interview was put off during this week and will probably not happen to the new year. And even worse for my Indian friend Ekta, who is now back in India, will not be able to just drop by for an interview like the one she had scheduled the day she left that was cancelled by the strike.

And that's just the icing, or rather the mud on this dirt cake. The millions of hours lost in productivity. The hundreds of millions of lost tax revenue are like the 9/11 on the recession we were having in 2001. There were deficits seen on the horizon and now we've lost our buffer. And most of the deficit to our city will be the product of rising healthcare costs, the very reason the TWU local 100 went on strike in the first place. They don't want to pay more to get more. No one realizes that health costs are going up cause more people are using more services. Ulcer drugs, cancer drugs, AIDS drugs, cholesterol drugs, and not only are we all discovering we need one or the other we're all living long enough to basically guarantee part of our life on drugs. They are all life savers, we should be grateful for the new drugs we have and appreciating the quality of life that still keeps on rising even after we've doubled our own life expentancy last century. And we should even be worried about the drop in drug innovation over the past few years, but that's another story. All this is beside the point that our medical insurance system is defunct with 20% administration costs lowering all of our coverage.

The strike brought up the issue of pensions starting later, at 62 instead of 55 in this case. More and more we have an economy of services where people can work with little exertion as opposed to an industrial state where "workin' in the coal mine" is just impossible after 55. We have to be understanding of those in heavy labor but Mayor Bloomberg brought up an interesting point at yesterdays news conference. He said there are no easy answers. Well yes there are, it's just very hard to make them because we have to hurt now so we hurt less later and no one wants to do that. We must save now so we have something to spend later. We still haven't answered the social security question because we don't like taking away what seems to be working at this very moment. We KNOW we're going to live longer, we KNOW healthcare is only going up, we KNOW it's going to cost us more and yet the burden of providing for our retirements has dramatically shifted back to the employee instead of the employer. We are not a nation of saving anymore. We were until around the 60's and 70's but now we spend spend spend. It's one of the reasons our economy is so booming (or rather our GDP is high even if the lower classes aren't benefiting from it), because living beyond your means literally creates a bigger economy, but it also shrinks your own safety net. At a time when our government has been killing our safety net (just this week taking $8 billion away from people in NEED of medicare) now is not the time for companies and individuals to forget about their own futures.

Brother can you spare a 400 million dollar bill?

2005-12-20T06:15:00.001-08:00

When I arrived in London in the spring of '04 there was a transit strike going on so I had to cab it from Heathrow to my flat for 75 pounds! That's like $140! And it's just commonplace in Europe cause the Unions get their way there too much. And it's one of the reasons why our economy rocks and theirs, not so much.

Yes, I'm a liberal, yes Unions are a good idea, without them there would be slave labor in America, even today. We'd never have the 8 hour work day, the minimum wage, or anything close to a living wage (which minimum wage is still about 3 times less than), and decent working conditions. (Of course I gave all of those rights up to become a copywriter, but that's a separate issue.) It's a shame we need unions, but human greed and selfishness at the top created their necessity. However...

$400 Million, that is what this transit strike is costing NYC every day in lost revenue. That right there, in this one day, is all the money that could have been spent on MTA employees and their demands, but no, they had to break the Taylor Law and strike. That law is there for a reason, so that no ESSENTIAL services are ever denied to the people who need them. This union, the cops, and firemen, cannot strike under the law. People WILL die today because of the traffic and ambulances not getting to where they need to go fast enough. And as long as the MTA and the state government isn't walking away from the talks, I put the blame squarely on the union who is striking.

The transit workers are asking for their retirement age to stay at 55 and not rise to 62. This at a time when America is getting older, Medicare is shooting through the roof, and budget deficits, not surplusses like what we have now, are projected in the future. The unions are looking at the flush of this year created by the housing bubble and temporary low interest rates and using it to justify more money, not to mention that 62 IS the new 55. Give it up transit workers, I am not on your side. And now that you've denied me, and a lot of people more in need of it than me, our city, it will be a while before you are forgiven.

My Indian and her cupboard

2005-12-16T10:57:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, before my 3 hour adventure through the world of King Kong, I helped my better darker half (BDH) clear out her Manhattan Mini Storage. She is called my BDH not because of her darker sense of humor, but because she really IS darker than I am. Everybody meet Ekta.

She's been a great Art Director and friend to me over these past few months and now she's flying home to India. And this might be a permanent flight back. :( (do emoticons work on blogs?) How dare you Ekta! Just as we're all starting to love you so much. Kash did a great job pairing us up together and he has been thanked profusely many times by both of us by having him take us out to lunch.

Just on Tuesday she thought to invite me to a WYSIWYG talent show suitably called "Sumthin' Jewy This Way Comes" where Jewish bloggers read some of their works as they reflect on the Christmas holiday. We laughed, we enjoyed each other, Ekta won a door prize! 4 Jewish finger puppets of which she gave me two. Here's my Gelt puppet.

Gelt is money to all you gentiles out there.

And after that she took me to Hawaii! Well, an Hawaiian themed restaurant where we both partook in our true passion: Scotch. And when "Forever Young" came on the stereo, after I insisted she see the South African PS2 ad with that song cause I'm such an ad dork, she was even kind enough to honor me with a slow dance a la Napoleon Dynomite. I will miss you dearly Ekta and we all will be greatful for your return to the states ASAP!

Barkeep! Barkeep!

2005-12-14T12:55:00.000-08:00

Now that Bush has finished his 4 days of trying to explain what the fuck we're doing in Iraq and why we're in the in the first place, let me give it to you in Cowboy speak so Bush can understand this too.

Imagine you just walked into a bar and the place is a mess. It's obvious that there's been a major brawl. The bartender is really pissed off and has a few janitors cleaning and is reassuring everyone that he just sent a few bouncers to chase down that fucker who started the fight in the first place.

Things are kind of settling down, trying to look like a respectable place again but the bartender keeps eyeing this one big dude that's been sitting at the end of the bar the whole time. You can tell he's been through the wringer but he's still there, drinking his beer, stealing tips, paying off bouncers, just a dirty guy that likes to sit at the bar and make a little trouble in his little area. He's caused a few fights at the bar before, some with the bartender winking and nodding and some with the bartender having to stop it, but he's tolerated. Till now.

For whatever reason, still pissed about the semblance of his bar, maybe still a little reared up, maybe just pissed the previous shift didn't deal with him, he's calling in the brute's tab. He's saying "Pay up and get out. I think you caused this bar fight in the first place!" The brute shrugs it off. The bartender gets even more pissed and calls back some bouncers to deal with this guy. He's dragged out but that causes an even bigger brawl to start and a chair is flying right at you.

How's that sound cowboy Bushie? You likin' what this bar fight is doing to our bar?

I need a drink.

Fuck this game

2005-12-12T07:47:00.000-08:00

I hate the pressure, I hate the tit for tat, I hate the nuance that has no practical application, I hate the acting, the lying, the half truths, the exageration, I hate this fucking dating game!

For the past couple months I've ventured out into the realm of Jdate. I've seen it work, it does for other sites too, and no more games, la dee freakin da! And like most people of my generation, the "date" has basically died off and relationships are born from friendships, hook-ups, etc. So for all intents and purposes I've been going on my first dates, as a 27 year old, now. And I'm loving that I get to skip the "dance" of eye contact then winking the need for inebriation and pick up lines, but now there's the dating. I had one that went well and fizzled, for what reason I don't think I'll ever know. I had another that I think is now a friendship, so bonus, chalk up another friend to the friend pile, but I just had a great date last week that was, at least for me, a "Jaime, wipe that freakin' grin off your face" drive home. And now I have to play the new game of not seeming too interested, and "keeping the ball in my court," don't call before 3 days, jazz steps.

And the thing is, like most things I've learned in my life, I was already taught them in movies. But of course I don't grasp them till they happen to me. Case in point, Swingers. Fucking Favreau couldn't wait and fucked it up with ihs 90 messages on her machine. But in the end it wasn't the game that won out because Heather Grahm called him. Go Heather!

Maybe if I were freaking busy beyond belief I'd be able to handle this better, but I'm not. So my brain loves to keep my perpetual motion machine of thoughts going. Which, I'm sure is a nice thing, a romantic thing, to keep thinking of this girl, but I'm also sure is only creepy in other people's eyes. So I don't call, and I wait, and I have say things like "sure" and "whatever."

But trying to be empathetic, I get why there is a game. I understand how we have such nuance to make each one of us have something special to offer that no one else can. Or at least a new pick up line no one has heard yet. And confidence IS a real turn on, but why is it usually the polar opposite of caring and attentive? And still I'm wondering isn't there a better way people? Tell me there's a better way where we can all be honest and not miss an opportunity that could be "the opportunity" all because we didn't realize all the rules to "the game."

God I hope she doesn't find out how to read this blog!

2005-12-07T06:55:00.000-08:00

ABC is in preproduction on a new mini-series about the Holocaust. Nothing new there. There's been a lot of tellings over the past couple decades as the last of the survivors of the Holocaust are dying. But there's something special about this particular story, it's not that is about a particular girl, or her husband to be, or their amazing story of escape that failed only to have to try to survive in German occupied Holland from 1940 to the end of the war. It's not about anything having to do with that story or the making of it. It's about who will produce this movie. ABC is in talks with Mel Gibson's production company, founded to create Passion of the Christ, so that the controversy will bring in more viewers.
First, the justified crap to get it out of the way: I will always defend freedom of speech and expression. And I would hate my government if it ever tried to censor even the likes of Mel Gibson. I believe in the free market and I believe in the capitalism that comes with it and if that means we get a lot of what I don't agree with, then that's the price I pay. I have to have faith that common sense and decency will win out in the end (though this has not been happening so much these past 5 years.)
I saw the Passion illegally downloaded, 'cause how do you boycott a movie you haven't seen but how do you boycott a movie once you've paid? Aside from the fact that this really isn't a good movie, just a lot of torture and eerie scenes, I dislike the movie for the message it's passing on. Mel Gibson is a member of the Catholic Church from before Vatican II. He even built a church on his property because there is no one around who practices like he does. But I look to his father most of all for Mel's views. Because it's easy to not say things and therefore not reveal your true self, but when you don't deny things, that's the way into how you really think. Mel's father has said the Holocaust never happened, that it's made up. And Mel has gone far enough to say that there were lots of atrocities in WWII and that Jews died just like everybody else died and Jews did die in concentration camps. But right there he is making the holocaust the same as political assassinations or soldiers dying on the field or innocents being bombed during a battle, and not the planned extinction of a race. Plus he went out of his way to say, and here is the key part, that his father never lied.
So why am I putting two and two together? Messed up point of view with a bad movie? Because there is an agenda behind it. He made that movie to spread his message of what he thinks life/god/everything is really like, which as I said before is his right to do, but it is my right to boycott it and to boycott the rest of his works so that I send my message that I disapprove. That I will defend his right to say it is one thing, but to condone it, to approve of it, to let it go by without me saying my piece, that will never happen. Which brings me back to ABC who is simply, as they have even stated, using his religious controversy to increase ratings. All ABC is doing then is condoning Mel's view along with their Holocaust movie. Granted he'll have nothing to do with the making of the series but putting his name on it, what purpose does that serve? They think it will bring the Christian community that believes in what Mel is doing to the idea that the Holocaust happened and here's some of its story? What kind of irony is it when you get a person to back something they don't believe in so that others will believe more in him? And what does that do to the original message?
If this turns out to be something good it'll be like watching Hitler have to give the gold medal to Jesse Owens. Watching something wrong having to do something right, Mel having to come out and push for a more respectful view of the Holocaust. And the way this is playing out that is not going to happen. And if this turns out bad, it will be like the family that turned in Anne Frank so they wouldn't get into trouble. It will be us, the Jewish community and everyone else who believes in keeping what really happened alive, dropping our principles for the sake of vanity, for the sake of the limelight of controversy at the expense of what we believe in.

And now we draw to a close

2005-12-05T09:36:00.000-08:00

All the big wigs just left for the actual pitch and boy are my arms tired. This was a great experience that I'm sorry I missed the majority of, but to be a part of it in any way was great. Cars are probably the most advertised things ever and yet fresh ideas keep popping up. It's gotta be the single best thing to point to when people think there are no more ideas left. Cause there always are. And there's nothing new to say here when I say if some of these things actually go made we could out do CPB in a lot of ways. Fingers crossed. Well, back to late mornings and more concepting on spec. You will be missed, little strawberry poison dart frog.

This explains everything!

2005-11-30T16:25:00.000-08:00

I've been knee deep in MINI for a week now so I haven't had much time to check the news, but I just popped my head up to check my local onion for a recap of what I'd missed this week, and according to top sources, the "CIA Realizes It's Been Using Black Highlighters All These Years." (http://www.theonion.com/content/node/43014) Now I'm only writing this to further spread the word because this was news to me. I had no idea this was common practice in our nations intelligence services to use black highlighters. Now I understand why Bush's friends have been blacked out on top secret documents that have been released. People who were involved in everything from torture leniencies to the very fact of why we went to war, they weren't hiding them, they were pointing them out for others to know what to look for. According to this finding, this administration has been the most cooperative administration with the public's outcries for a transparent government in the history of this nation. They've gone out of their way to make sure we don't miss a thing, from secret meetings with the oil big wigs to billions of dollars that were simply lost in Iraqi reconstruction and overcharges from Halliburton. It's all making a lot more sense now. Now I can breath a bit more easy and concentrate on my work, it's all going to be OK. And on top of that I've now been here long enough for the free pizza! Yay!

$2.99?! $2.99!?

2005-11-26T10:41:00.000-08:00

I wrote this on Friday and forgot to post it. Silly me with my 100 hour work week.
The turkey has settled into somewhere in my body and is going into hybernation for the winter. Triptophan is a tranquilizer to keep you sedated so you don't notice the turkey just sits in your body keeping you "beefy" till spring. A Native American taught me that. And so I was going through the usual black friday ads and revelling in the after mail-in-rebate prices of tech stuff. $9.99 for a bluetooth headset, $7.99 for 90 CDRs, $2.99 for a comp-usa brand airport hub (Apple's goes for $199 fyi), and $2.99 for a wireless adapter for our computer, I mean come on! Give me some of that! I just bought a wireless hub used off ebay for $40. And then I made it to the store in the city after work and nothing was there, I mean NOTHING. And you know you'd think I would have learned by now if I don't get run over by fat 40 somethings in WalMart I'm not gonna get anything at a discounted price. Such is life.

Soul for sale! Soul for sale!

2005-11-22T19:42:00.000-08:00

So I started freelance today at a dream job, let just call it "Frawberry Strog." And it's on a pitch for a dream client, let's just call it "nimi." And as standard practice I was immediately sat down with my W9 and page upon page of "sign here on the dotted line so we can sue your ass for writing in your blog that we exist." So here I am. I just want to see what happens... teehee

As goes GM so goes 30,000 people to the unemployment line

2005-11-21T06:01:00.000-08:00

Word is spreading as I write this that GM is bringing its production in line with its sales which means closing 6 plants and laying off 30,000 jobs. And of course the first thing every news man will start quoting is "As goes GM so goes America" and wonder where "America" is at this moment. An America that could have prevented a lot of this from happening by creating universal healthcare. GM has to add $1500 to every car it sells just to cover it's health coverage legacy costs. It's understandable when we talk about business that you'd better keep up with the times and always be part of today's economy. Toyota will now be the #1 car company because it handles legacy costs much better. And to a large extent this is true, GM is getting what it deserves for being an uncontrolled behemoth. But there's also something to be said for 30,000 people who will now have to be reobsorbed into our economy which is having enough trouble finding places for the nations refugees of Katrina. So the saying still holds because we know what America is when we look at what happened to GM and what the effects of outsourcing are, what the effects of not dealing with our oil problems sooner are, what the effects of not taking an active roll in hybrid technologies in our car companies are, and what our effect of letting businesses deal with the insanely spiraling up prices of medical coverage are. And sin of all sins, "If we give tax breaks to big business, they'll use it to create more jobs." Yeah we can see how well the largest tax breaks in history for the rich and big business are doing. They're not stopping outsourcing, they're not increasing minimum wages, they're not even saving jobs let alone creating new ones. Businesses hire new people when they make more money having someone new rather than if they can get it done with fewer people regardless of what they pay in taxes, end of story. Tax breaks can be used to increase investment in one's company but more than not they just increase CEO's salaries which are also at record highs this year. GM is to blame for sure with its bad planning for a lot of this, but the structure of America is also to blame. Now I am a big fan of the saying "it is to hurt before it is to heal" (Never Ending Story), but there's so much more we could have done and there's much more that we have to do. It will hurt for us to heal as well, but if we don't face up to how we're restructuring America into a nation run on daddy's credit card, 30,000 jobs lost is going to seem like a drop in the bucket.

Why bacon greese should stay on the bus.

2005-11-18T16:46:00.000-08:00

Poor Miss Brown and her 47 Hustle has been having a rough time on the bus. Well here's a tale to lift her spirits as I promised in her comment area. On the first day of Spring, March 21, 1976, my father was getting on a bus in NYC to go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He'd been going to the Met a lot lately as he was getting a divorce from his wife. Because of their 6 kids he still lived at home but slept on the couch. So he spent a lot of time alone contemplating at the museum. Mind you this is a man who lived with his folks till he was drafted in WWII and then moved back in with them till her married in 1949 at age 26 when he moved in with his wife. He had never lived alone in his life, nor was that going to change. And on this very special day when he boarded the bus there were only two people filling seats, one of whom was Susan Decker of Manhattan, New York. My father made his way over and sat beside her and they began to talk and struck up quite a nice little conversation. He had just "updated" his wardrobe, which in 1976 meant HUGE lapels on his button down shirt. My mother was on her way to meet two of her cousins for a "fancy lunch" at The Plaza Hotel. Her stop came sooner than they were prepared for and when Susan got off, my father did not. That is until a minute later when he made the driver stop blocks before the next stop so he could get off and run back to the Plaza where he made his way through the crowds of people till he found my mother sitting with her two cousins. "My name is Wolfgang Schwarz and I would be honored to take you out on a date." "My name is Susan Decker" she replied, "and I'm in the book." My father, like a good German Jew, bowed and left with a smile on his face. He proceeded to call every Susan Becker in the phone book for the next two days with no luck till he remembered Decker not Becker and phoned her up. They went out that night and were engaged 2 weeks later, married 6 weeks after that. So you see Miss Brown and all you worry warts who think there is no hope on the bus, I say to you I and my brother are living proof of what magic the bus holds for us all.

I'm goin' shoppin' I'm goin' shoooppppin'

2005-11-17T15:29:00.000-08:00

Every Thanksgiving the stores go crazy with these freaky free deals on select items to get you in the store so you buy the more expensive items. And I tell it it works! Those bastards take me for everything!
But one of their tricks is to get the special sales out to you only at the last minute, like 2 days before the sales start to keep you on your toes. Here's a little trick to beating the system. bfads.net Stands for Black Friday ads. Black Friday is what the stores called the Friday of their biggest total sales day of the whole year. And this site gets the ads up early so you can plan on what you want to get and shop for those items specifically. Avert your eyes from the LCD TVs! I'm definitely getting myself some free flash card readers and 100 stack CDRs, what are you getting?

Who's going to be the new Gerald Ford?

2005-11-15T12:19:00.000-08:00

It's starting, you can see the wheels turning. Right after winning reelection in 1972 Vice President Spiro Agneu got taken down. He was a naughty boy and deserved it. So in came VP Gerald Ford, one of the nicest people left in Washington to make everything go down easy again. Then there came Watergate and we got the only man to be VP and President without ever beng elected to either. Now in 2005 Cheney is being distanced from Bush, it's only a matter of time before PlameGate hits him Squa' in the nuts. And with his backroom dealings trying to keep torture in the rule books his low approval rating is sealed. It was always supposed to be like this. We always believed him when he said he'd never run for president cause honestly, who'd vote for this guy. Now we know why. He knew he could only take it to the edge if he wereready for the step down so some guy could sweep in and keep Republicans safe again in the '08 ticket. Will it be Colin Powell? John McCaine? Even Condi? This will be one case of history repeating itself I'll be ready for.

Well, it's official, I'm a terrorist again.

2005-11-11T20:38:00.000-08:00

The beard is back and it has been about a month to the day since I shaved last. Needless to say it is growing handsomely and has taken on a life of it's own. Just like it used to be. (I use Herbal Essenses conditioner, the purple one, for it FYI)
So here we go again with the odd looks and the, "OK, he looks Jewish but he could be Liberian. I'm just not sure. What's that in his hand? It looks like a case of some sort, and it's black!" It's a fucking portfolio bag people! If I'm looking a little distraut it's cause I'm running late for somewhere, not the land of 72 virgins, somehwere on this astral plane. I can't wait till I have to fly again. My electric toothbrush always goes over well. But being in NY with the constent ringing of the "You are subject to a random search by the NY MTA," I guess it really can't get any worse.
But in the end, fuck it. Look at me like that, be suspicious, I actually feel safer knowing you don't trust my beard. What a world we live in where I feel safer for that reason. And of course I'm looking at you too little old lady with that oversized bag and whatever contents may be shifting around in there or mr. homeless man with one too may cans in his cart. The man with the beard is just as paranoid as you are.

Honor and integrity

2005-11-09T22:25:00.000-08:00

Having an affair is wrong. Having an affair when you're the president, yep, even more wrong. Lying about it in front of a grand jury? That's perjory my friend. Any of our god damned business? Hells no! Did he leak anything more to Monica than what ended up on that blue dress? Were trade secrets lost? We're people bought and sold like commodiites? Was policy effected in any way? (Well yes to that one, but only after and because he was weakened by the scandal and reacted to the attacks.)
And now we have these things. We have petty revenge that has damaged our national security. We have lies and deceit that affect policy AND all of us. And today we find out that Mr. Jack Abromoff was setting up a deal in 2003 to take $9 million from the president of Gambon to have a meeting with Bush. No transactions have been found but documents listing a $9 million transaction have. No indirect channels have been connected. But there WAS a meeting less than a year later with Bush which the administration called nothing more than routine. Hmmm...
And to rip off from another person, I quote Jon Stewart here as he watched Dick Cheney at the 2000 Republican convention saying that one the first minute of the first hour he will restore honor and integrity to The White House. To which Mr. Steward replied, "Yes, for that one minute they restored honor" and it was all downhill from there.

Happy Voting!

2005-11-08T07:13:00.000-08:00

Living in Chappaqua, NY I'm privy to some pretty interesting recorded phone calls. In one day I received two calls from my congresswoman Nita Lowie, one from Chuck Schumer, 2 from Hillary Clinton, 2 from Eliot Spitzer, 1 from Rudy Guilliani, 1 from some woman who had been raped and was endorsing a country clerk, and 1 from Bill Clinton who said he wanted to talk to me not as a president but as a neighbor, awwwwww. Other days I have received push polls, recorded messages warning me of push polls, and various other local officials all with some much need script reading classes.
And in spite of picking up the freaking phone every freaking 5 minutes I'm still going to vote. There are too many bond issues, too many local officials, and too many local issues out there for us to forget about just because a president isn't on the ballot.

See you at the polls!

Men in Brown

2005-11-07T14:22:00.000-08:00

I'm a pretty rational guy. After all the fun is had and the kidding put aside, there aren't that many real conspiracies out there. But I'd like to chalk one up to the list tonight. Yesterday I was going down the West Side Highway (Joe DiMaggio Drive), when, on the uptown lanes came a few cop cars. Not that much out of the ordinary. Then I saw a few UPS trucks. Then a few more cops on motorcycles, then more trucks. The line of UPS trucks stretched for miles! I got off a quick shot on my cell phone camera but other than that I have no more proof of the alien invasion we just won, or the giant death ray underneath the UN building that was dismantled, or enough food to feed an entire secret army stationed in the Hudson River, or?... or?... OR?!!!! Whatever it is, we just won, are preparing for, or are hiding something right out of next summer's blockbuster sci-fi movie. Good luck getting to sleep tonight ladies and gentlemen.

Naughty boys get detention

2005-11-05T11:15:00.000-08:00

Instead of cleaning house like Bush should and briging in some fresh blood, he's ordering everyone to attend an ethics seminar in the White House. They can chose any one of the three held next week at their convenience. But "attendence is mandatory." We've all gotten one of these in high school or at work when someone did a naughty thing so we all had to watch a sexual discrimination video or listen to the assistant principal in the auditorium walk back and forth and get all high and mighty as we sat there doodling, happy to not be in class. Now if only we can make sure that whoever took that photo of Bush asking for a bathroom break on a note pad at the UN can be at these meetings, I think we'll see some really high quality "office art."

Even his distractions are underfunded!

2005-11-01T15:52:00.000-08:00

Now that there's the Katrina debacle, Frist and Delay in trouble, Harriet Miers down the tubes, and PlameGate Bush has found his distraction in the avian flu epidemic. Today he proposed $7.2 billion. He wants to spend $1.2 billion stockpiling flu vaccines. What the hell is the point of stockpiling flu vaccines that have no impact on the bird flu? The only good thing was spending a few billion on finding a better way to manufacture the flu vaccine which is still done today by infecting one bird egg at a time which takes months to make. Of course it's way too little money to get anything done and years and years too late because it will take that long for any progress to be made on that front. The fact is, when the avian epidemic hits it will take a few weeks to make a vaccine and months to create any significant amount of it and years to get to everyone who will need it which will be all 6.3 billion of us. And since he says this is going to be mostly a local run effort because it will be the local officials and hospitals that will have to micromanage everything he's designated a few hundred million for all 50 states to prepare. That's enough to buy everyone a shot of freakin' Nyquil! And because this is going to be a global epidemic that will start in Asia, he's sending a couple hundred million their way too. Woopdeefreakindo!
Nice try Bushy but luckily Harry Reid, in his first balsy move ever, brought the subject back to Iraq by calling shenanigans on the intelligence committee for not following through on its investigation on whether or not Bush hyped up any pre-war intelligence. In July of last year they said they would be done soon. It took Reid's calling for a closed session to get the republican controlled Senate to promise to have phase 2 done by Nov. 16th. Republicans are calling this a stunt. I call it some fucking balls! Where have you been Dems? Finally!

A semen stain on America

2005-10-31T20:35:00.000-08:00

Such a wise statement on the lawn of the whitehouse today on a sign held by a, let's just say less-than-enthused citizen. It simply said: "Would someone please give him a blow job so we can impeach him!"

Libby's sleepin' wit da fishes

2005-10-28T20:45:00.000-07:00

Because I'm the guy who writes all the boring news stuff I have to write something about this freaking complicated leak case now that Libby's been indicted. (That can't be how indicted is spelled, hmm spell check says it is so.) Patrick Fitzgerald tried to make a baseball analogy about what's been going on but it was a bit too vague. So I thought I'd try to make it a little more entertaining but putting it in a more identifiable context, through the eyes of a Sopranos fan. Somehow the mafia just seems to work here, don't you think? But I can't seem to get this down right. So anyone who's a Sopranos fan, help me out here. http://www.hbo.com/sopranos/cast for cast list. This is what I've got so far:

Tony Soprano (The boss): Cheney
Uncle Junior (The guy who thinks he's boss): Bush
Andrea (talked to feds trying to help her mafia husband Christopher and was shot in the head): Valerie Plame
Christopher (forced to lose his wife and has shown signs of disloyalty in the past): Joe Wilson
Dr. Melfi (Tony's shrink, trying to get honesty out of him from the beginning): Patrick Fitzgerald
Silvio Dante (Tony's Consigliarie and owner of Bada Bing gentlemen's club): Karl Rove
Ralphie Cifferetto: (Captain who earned a lot but who talked a little too much, now he's "missing."): Libby
Livia (Tony's mother, still influential from beyond the grave): Barbara Bush

Obviously it's not an exact match and I'm missing some people. So help me out. I'm taking this thing to Broadway!

Finally!

2005-10-27T08:11:00.000-07:00

If all goes according to plan, the Davis-Bacon Act (isn't that a typing program?) will be reinstated. This is the act temporarily suspended by Bush so that workers in the gulf region would be paid the national minimum wage instead of the prevailing wages of the region thereby keeping more money out of the hands of the people actually working down there, trying to get a life going again in this torn region. I wrote about this earlier, one of the most despicable things Bush had ever done in his presidency domestically was taking that money away from the people who need it most and were the ones who were actually working there. They're wage cuts paid for the obscene money handed over to the Royal Caribbean cruise ships that housed Katrina victims and to the unbelievable ill planned trailer parks being built to house these people, away from everyone else in their own modern day ghetto. Apparently what brought Bush arround were republican congressmen from the industrialized northwest whose constituency is still largely unionized. See the unions still can do some good! Just watch out cause Bush said he wants to "push the envelope" for cost cutting so he won't have to raise any taxes to pay for all this reconstruction. Let's see how he gets the money out of the poor and gives it to the rich next...

A little behind schedule

2005-10-26T23:55:00.000-07:00

Only 12 and a half years after the fact, a jury has found The Port Authority, those guys who own the WTC site and handle NY,NJ transit negligent in the 1993 terrorist attack on the WTC. Not 9/11, the February 1993 van explosion in the lower parking level. There are tons of lawsuits pending waiting on such a fault to be declared. I guess we'll all just have to wait till 2013 for justice to be had for 9/11.
On a separate note on the same issue, the jury, in some weird way, has found the Port Authority 67% guilty and the terrorists only 33% guilty for the attacks. That's a majority of the blame for falling asleep on the job and a minimal amount of blame for the actual bombers who actively decided to cause us harm. Does anyone else see the problem here?
"Well officer she was in the bad part of the neighborhood and in a skirt so she was at the wrong place at the wrong time so I should only be found 33% guilty of robbing and raping her." So keep wearing that hood home from work concha and Em, I hope we get you a new place soon.

It's a good thing '77 is a drink cause here come the 7's

2005-10-25T22:44:00.000-07:00

Cause I can't please Ms. Brown with a root for the Texans, here's what she's been asking for...

7 things I want to do before I die:
1. Get the obvious over with, write a book
2. Write for The Daily Show
3. Find "her"
4. Have a conversation with Steve Martin
5. Finish my dad's book with him
6. Learn to ride a motorcycle
7. Get a job

7 things I cannot do
1. Sing
2. Play any instrument
3. Keep a beat
4. Dance (at least without alcohol or I dance like everyone in O Brother Where Art Thou)
5. Any other musical related activities most Jews just can't do
6. Survive if Jason comes after me
7. Art Direct

7 things I say most often
1. Uh huh
2. Washup
3. Holy Guacamole
4. No it isn't
5. Did you know...
6. Actually...
7. WTF mate

7 things that attract me to the opposite sex
1. Red Hair
2. Brains
3. Boobs
4. Booty
5. Face of a Botecelli, body of a Degas
6. She takes an interest in everything
7. She's actually paying attention to me?

7 celebrity crushes
1. Natalie Portman
2. Jennifer Connelly (pre-anorexic days, Dark City, Career Opportunites!)
3. Julie Delpy
4. Carmen Electra
5. Jessica Simpson (with tape over mouth please)
6. First crush - Sussana Hoffs of The Bangles (I'd still walk like an Egyptian)
7. Second crush - Bernadette Peters

I've finally been replaced

2005-10-25T22:07:00.000-07:00

Every year I'm always the guy that gets the best presents for my brother's birthday. Back in '95 I got him an "mp3 player." How weird. No one knew what it was, but bam! And I've been awesome at it since. Until this year. This year I got my bro a waffle iron for his new apartment. A great "accoutrement" to make Sundays with his girl a little more fun. But guess what his girl got him, guess!... A freakin guitar signed by Dave Matthews. I mean my god! There is no way I'm ever competing with that. At least until some agency wants to pay me 6 digits. I hereby bequeath to you, Mary, the title of best present giver to my brother.

Stop copying me West Wing!

2005-10-23T23:14:00.000-07:00

On tonight's episode of West Wing, apparently Russian spy's killed the President of Kazakistan or one of those Risk countries because it was cozying up to China when it came to natural resources by building an oil pipeline to China instead of it's Soviet fatherland. Therefore nuclear war is about to break out between Russia and China over oil. And after reading my previous blog right below on China and India going to war over oil the West Wing writers obviously read it and made the show in less than 24 hours cause it was such a good idea. What's up with that writer guys? I would have gladly given you the idea if you had just asked politely.

Don't confuse capitalist democracy for pro-American

2005-10-22T20:30:00.000-07:00

Since the defeat of the USSR and the end of the cold war, most Soviet satellite countries have turned to democracy and most of those have been pro-American. Poland and Ukraine are probably the best examples. And without their Soviet northern neighbors, China has slowly shifted to a capitalist country while still retaining its communist title. It's still an overbearing government with many restrictions and though a tipping point has been reached for a booming economy, don't be surprised if corruption and big brother go hand in hand with all this new free capital. But what made me write this blog is what has been going on in India. A communist leaning country during the cold war, it has recently become a free market that has, like China, grown exponentially. But this summer President Singh met with Bush and came away with a junior membership in the nuclear nation club. (Every nuke nation before 1974). And with very little in return, things they should be doing anyway, they will now be a nuclear superpower instead of a rogue nuclear state. Bush's plan is to please India in case China turns sour. It's going to be really amazing to watch China and India, neighboring countries, become economic super powers at the same time. We're even helping India develop it's space plans which will actually make it capable to hit us with a nuke. It can already hit all it's neighbors just fine. And I don't know Bush thinks he's doing by trying to feed one growing beast (India) in hopes it will scare another beast we're feeding (China) so they both won't go after us, all the while loosening the leash. With China's arsenal growing daily, India is on a path to have literally hundreds of nuclear warheads by the beginning of the next decade. A nuclear arms race is what speed up the defeat of the USSR by basically bankrupting them into defeat. But that will hardly work on two countries who's economies are growing faster than any country before them, AT THE SAME TIME! There is very little in common with these two countries so it might seem like I'm jumping the gun here to assume they'd aim their guns at each other but this is the century that will be framed about who can get what resources from where first. Alternative energy sources can only go so far so fast in a world built on fossil fuels. And this goes for our own country too which will only grow in oil consumption as it's percentage of world fuel share shrinks. The oil grab will be furious and out of control and it's really going to be a matter of making sure that there are as few nukes and as many safety nets as possible before we all realize we've grown too big for this planet. It almost feels like it's 1905 and Germany has just developed it's plan "just in case" it has to go to war with France and England and the in turn have developed thier own plan "just in case" as well. Let's make sure our "just in cases" are peaceful solutions when our Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand get's blown up.

2005-10-20T22:50:00.000-07:00

I just read the sweetest review of anything I've ever read. It was A.O. Scott's NY Times review of Steve Martin's Shopgirl. About 5 years ago I read a cute little novella by Mr. Martin called Shopgirl and thought not as much of it. His comedy is smart and forward and to the point without many layers. You just have to know where he's coming from and you get it. His collection of short funnies in Pure Drivel were hillarious and forced me to write out of sheer respect for the written word that Steve Martin put into me. But Shopgirl is retrospective, introspective, speculative, ironic, sardonic, whispy, unsure, but still from the same brain. This is true with The Pleasure of My Company, his new book where he dares write 50 or so more pages thereby leaving novelladom behind for an actual book.
But back to my point of this little blog. I was halfway through reading this glowing review when I realized what A.O. Scott was doing, the same thing I do when I am in awe of something, try to bring myself up to its level. Not in quality necessarily but just in a sense that how can I talk about something so great unless I convey greatness in every word I speak? Ever in search of the right words I never seem to find I either shut up or never stop talking searching for the right thing to say worthy of the experience just had. And that's what I noticed A.O. Scott doing as he kept delving into the movie's layers that he called so timidly put together they were like a house of cards. It's as if he were reviewing a desert so delicatly made, if you even breathed wrong while tasting it you'd miss alltogether what the chef's purpose was. I love that feeling that A.O. Scott seemed to be having, and that, beyond any words he actually wrote or I read in the book is why I am greatly anticipating seeing one of my favorite writers put his little words on the big screen.

President Bush has furthered the real conservative movement despite himself.

2005-10-19T23:27:00.000-07:00

Although Bush has taken conservatism and turned it on its head through bigger spending, nation building, and sticking the government's nose where it doesn't belong, a movement is happening. It is the same movement that would be happening had a true conservative leader of the free world been our president now. The point of conservativism is to let others, the local governments and the private sector rule as they see fit. The federal government should only be there when it absolutely has to be, because we, the people, can do it better. But it is because of Bush's incompetence in some areas, and negligence in others, and not his leadership that the private sector and local governments have stepped up to the plate. Governers are taking a more active role than they ever have before, joining forces to pass higher minimum wages and stiffer emmission standards where Bush has wither let them slide or weakened them further. The One Campaign along with the Live8 concert moved the G8 summitt in a much more productive direction. And people like Bill Gates and ex-president Clinton are taking on world health and peace problems with a furver worthy of the man who should sit behind the desk of The Oval Office. Of course I am no conservative, in the true or Bush sense of the word. I believe our government can act and be productive as many great individuals and NGO's do. But there are positive points to be made about what conservatives fight for every day. And it makes it even harder to understand why anyone in our country, conservative or liberal would not want this president gone now.

We've waited long enough.

2005-10-16T22:25:00.000-07:00

The Republicans have finally fallen on their asses. It took 10 years of absolute power corrupting absolutely but finally Delay, Frist, Rove, Libby, Abramoff, Brownie, and a few others are finally caught red handed. The reason they got into power in '94 in the first place was because they had a plan. And all we here now is where is the Democrats plan? Well I'm tired of waiting so I'm just going to say what I want them to say and hopefully someone will listen and get our country back.

Taxes - We got 22 million new jobs and the longest sustained year over year growth our country has every had under a tax system that charged us a lot more. For everyone who can afford it, say $200,000 and over (like Kerry's plan, yes he had a few good ideas), set the taxes back to where they were. And this part I hear said a lot on the campaign trail but it never gets done, close every single freakin loophole there is. Rewrite from scratch if that's what it takes. Apple wrote OSX from scratch and created a much more stable system, it was a tough switch but it was worth it. (Can you tell I'm on a Mac?) There are too many companies unpatriotically not paying their taxes because they have a PO Box in the Caribbean. There are too many rich folks living off dividends that, through these loopholes because of the tax lawyers no one else can afford but them, they pay fewer taxes than the guy I just bought my gum from.

Voting - The Electoral College has outlived it's purpose. We need a direct democracy. I get the point that campaigning won't be necessary in the small, rural areas because they won't be worth as many votes. But I think just the opposite will happen. A Republican's voice doesn't count in NY and CA, but it would when every vote counted. And how about all the Democrats in Oklahoma and Kansas that just don't vote because they know which way their state will go? And it works for the third parties too. I think we'll see a lot more people vote when they realize it's worth something.

Healthcare - Enough with the communistic fears of universal healthcare. Every GM car costs an extra $1500 because of the healthcare the company owes. Imagine a country where every company doesn't have the added cost burden of healthcare. The money can go into higher wages, more R&D, and of course, where it all goes now, to the three guys on the board with $5,000,000,000 bonuses. And with universal healthcare all the costs of the middleman disappear. All the money that the HMOs are making is the money that would be saved on healthcare costs. We have a pass the buck mentality where hospitals charge $6 for two Advil because, "Hey, the patient's not paying for it." Oh yes, we are. And the newest deterrent to healthcare for all is that we'll all use it too much, thereby burdening the system. I get that, but I'd rather have more than less healthcare. The lost productivity hours due to untimely sicknesses, which is in the hundreds of billions of dollars, would more than make up for it.

Iraq - Yes, getting out answers today's problem. But if we all seriously think about it, we know that when the troops go home, the terrorists won't. We are an attraction to terrorists, we are fueling the flames there that lead the jihadists to fight. But there is no stability yet. If you break it you buy it. It's that simple. And we all know we broke it.

Katrina - No more no-bid contracts to the big companies. Find as many local companies as you can. Use conglomerates as a last resort. No-bids in Iraq are bad but really there are only 5 or so companies in the world that can do what Haliburten and Bechtel are doing. Which reminds me, the Army Core of Engineers should stop outsourcing so much stuff and do it themselves like they used to. Hundreds of millions overcharged for gasoline would just not happen if the Army was fueling itself. It's more of a choice in our own back yard. And money for "Jim's Fix It Shop" is guaranteed to stay local instead the 5 cents of every dollar that ends up in Halliburtin's headquarters. And treat these people as refugees, because that's what they are. If we want New Orleans to basically disappear, fine, but if we want it to stay, we need to get all the people back who want to come. That means a lot of New Deal type of spending. Long term infrastructure building. It'll will cost in the beginning but it will pay for itself in the long run. I still don't get how FEMA is getting away with paying double to Royal Caribbean for housing people on their ships. And why are the buying 150,000 trailers that will only be temporarily used when there are millions of hotel rooms that are empty. And that money just goes right back into the economy too. Can anyone say giant RV surplus sale?

Energy - No single alternative energy source will work. We need mandatory solar panels on all available govt buildings. Wind farms and solar panels may not be as cheap now as they will be but a massive govt. buying spree will bring the price down automatically and on top of that, no matter what they cost, they will pay for themselves in time. Imagine free power. FREE! (minus maintenance, I know. And with the prices down after the govt. spending, they will be cheap enough for individual buying. Tax breaks to car companies to make every car made a hybrid to be sold at the same cost as their gas counter parts. There's enough room in America for enough wind farms to give us twice the amount of power this country uses on it's own. And that's not including solar, geothermal, dams, and biofuel. Corn ethanol won't work but sugar will. Sugar can create an ethanol twice as powerful as corn and it's cheaper to make. And all the waste from all the cows we farm can be locally used for energy as well. Ethanol and any biofuel loses a lot of it's productivity when it's shipped cause that takes energy too. But, focusing locally takes a big chunk of the problem away. We have the technology today to trap a lot the carbon dioxide burned from that and from coal and use it to get more oil out of our own ground. With carbon dioxide, we can pump it into the ground and force more oil up, it's a technology already in use today in some areas of Texas. And alternative energy can be the source used to make the hydrogen we'll need for the hydrogen fuel cell cars we'll use in a couple decades. All this will not only make us energy dependent but even an energy exporter. Imagine Saudi Arabia having to kiss up to us when they run out of oil.

Education - Basically just quoting Tom Friedman here: We need our moonshot. I'm a geo-green too. By encouraging education by actually focusing on it like we did when JFK told us we were going to the moon, we can create the next generation of scientists we'll need to compete with China and India and any other post-industrial nation in the future. And I guess I can just go along with no child left behind since it was a left wing idea to begin with anyway, we just need to do what Bush never did with it, fund it. We're a competitive nation, and we do well when we compete. We just haven't seen any one to compete with since '91. But they're out there, and they're winning.

That's not everything but that's enough of a platform for me to start with. Anyone got anything to add?

Fucking Cowards

2005-10-16T22:14:00.000-07:00

Right after 9/11 Bill Maher lost his show because he disagreed with everyone saying that hijackers were cowards. He said something to the effect that if someone is willing to die, kill themselves, and goes through with it for the cause they believe in, that is hardly cowardice. And I totally agree with that. He lost his show when sponsors pulled out by the end of the week but he's back on HBO and he has never taken back what he said. He's a complete idiot sometimes and rarely are his writers funny but I agree with him here and he's one of the best advocates for the 1st amendment. So right on Bill!.
But then... here we go again. Today I heard on three separate occasions, two real, and one on The West Wing, suicide bombers "committing acts of cowardice." What the fuck! It just strengthens their side when we go overboard and basically lie because it makes us feel better. Oh they're cowards for not only risking their lives but actually killing themselves. And we're so brave because we decided not to have a draft after 9/11 and not to sacrifice anything during this wartime and just sit around on the couch as before but with a little code yellow sign at the bottom of the Fox News ticker.
We're all against them, what the hell does adding something stupid to the mix do to help this situation? These fuckers are brutal and brave. They're fighting for a cause we don't believe in but they sure as hell do and bravery is not something that takes sides. They suck, I want them all dead, I want our side to win and theirs to lose, but for God's sake they are not cowards, now pick another freakin' word!

The new iPod is the reason why we must trade with China

2005-10-12T12:29:00.000-07:00

The scary thing about free trade is that you lose control. But really the only way to gain control is to lose it. We have been trading heavily with China since they entered the WTO in the late 90's under Bill Clinton. The point to outsourcing is to lower costs here by sending work abroad to lower cost wage earners thereby boosting those smaller economies. The problem is that we are hemmoraging jobs waiting for those other countries to have enough of our money to buy some of our stuff thereby balancing out the whole thing and creating a larger customer base for our products. And all we do is worry about the jobs we're losing instead of the jobs we should be making. The untold part of the freetrade story is that in order for this to succeed we have to keep inventing. If inventions stopped today and we lived in the economy we have now forever, then free trade would just not work. But we are no longer a textile industry, or even an industrial state at all. We're even moving past the service industry. But every time jobs would move down the ladder we'd have new jobs waiting. And Apple is a great metaphor for the larger picture. First there was the iPod and it was good. But then people started wondering what the hell apple could do to stay on top, then it got smaller and then it got better battery life, then it got color. Today apple introduced the video iPod and people are scooping them up. So if we could just believe that our economy will keep bettering itself the way we believe apple does then free trade just becomes a no brainer. The industry of tomorrow is what we need to prepare for. America's industry needs to start acting like Apple's R&D department. That means investments in education, science, math, grant projects, missions to mars, whatever the horizon hints at we'd better go there or some guy in India is going to call up customer service and hear some guy with a Brooklyn accent saying, "Yeah, how can I help you."

Why am I just learning about this now?

2005-10-10T13:34:00.000-07:00

Apparently in November of 2001, yes two months after 9/11 when we were all supposed to shut up and throw rocks at people who didn't have 50 American flags hanging out of their taxi cabs, Bush signed an executive order that prohibits any presidential papers from becoming public unless that president (or his estate) and the sitting president agree to it. An executive order means it can only be overturned by a president and the congress didn't get to consent or pass anything. Before this, any non-security related paper became public and would usually be part of the presidential library 12 years after that president had left office. Now Clinton won't have his papers released in 2013 unless the sitting president allows it, which could be his wife possibly. What kind of a bind does that put any new president in who could overturn it but has ties to previous presidencies? It's a horrible bind but one that MUST be overturned on January 17, 2009, period! Of course Bush did it just in time to protect Reagan and the Iran Contra problem not to mention anything his daddy did while he was VP also not to mention anything his daddy did while he was P for that matter.
Ok, so just to recap - Reversed Clintons order on less arsenic in the water; signed into law the 1st and 3rd biggest tax cuts ever with most of the money going to the rich. 3 of his 4 tax cuts were after we were at war; dismantled more environmental safeguards than any president; gutted the EPA, FEMA, and countless other services in the name of "streamlining;" got rid of the Superfund so now taxpayers must pay to clean up GE's and ExxonMobile's messes instead of the companies themselves; spent more money and grew the government twice as fast as the Democrat Bill Clinton and even faster than the Great Society President Lyndon Johnson. So now we have the biggest trade deficit and the largest debt ever which keeps breaking it's own record every year. Has not vetoed a single bill including the new energy bill with billions in pork that could be used in the south or Iraq right now. Came back from Texas to sign a bill to protect a brain dead woman but wouldn't lift a finger to stop the congress from gutting govt services until a new budget for fiscal year 2006 is signed when recess is over next week; brought up Harriet Meirs for the Supreme Court because she's an evangelical Christian that he knows and is down the hall from; and now is threatening to veto a spending bill on Iraq for $50 billion because it has a provision to make torturing people illegal. HE WANTS TO VETO A BILL BECAUSE IT ENDS TORTURE! Cheney is working like a ghost in the night trying to make sure it doesn't get out of the House so Bushie won't have to sign anything. And all of this is leaving out that regardless us all thinking there were WMDs in Iraq, or that Saddam was a bad guy, or that the terrorists were coming to get us, there were 2 days, repeat 2 days left on the weapons inspections in Iraq and Bush came on TV and said we're attacking. And leaving out we listened to the civilian Rumsfeld who said go in with fewer troops instead of listening to the actual soldiers who said we need at least twice that many and then firing one of them cause he said so out loud and that it wasn't going to cost $2 billion like Cheney said it would. And forgetting Rove and Libby leaked to the news that a guy had a wife in the CIA undercover because he said there were no WMD's in Iraq. AND THEY'RE GETTING AWAY WITH ALL OF THIS. He's in office till '08 unless we can impeach him. We probably can't take back that Senate in '06 cause there just aren't enough seats up in competitive areas and we have NO CHANCE of taking back the house for years to come because of Delay's redistricting among other non-competitive inducing tricks played by both parties. Anybody got any non-assassination ideas?

Apparently they were prepared for Katrina

2005-10-08T22:42:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Andrew Sullivan it has been brought to my attention that the cronies on the right were actually prepared for the devastation of Katrina and all the mess it was going to cause. The reason for this is because Joe M. Albaugh, the crony of Bush who ran FEMA before Brownie took over, who was a lobbyist for the companies who won no contract bids to fix Katrina, was already making deals with those companies to help with those "bids" before the hurricane had hit. So apparently they do know how to help at the right time, they just decided to help themselves.

What's with the 80's?

2005-10-06T09:29:00.000-07:00

I understand how we've got the whole 80's retro thing going on. We've been doing retro for a while now. Did the 50's pretty quick, the 60's almost as quick. The 70's stuck around for a while and now here we are in 2005 acting like it's 1985. And all that I guess everybody knows. The problem that I run into is, even before 1985 we were focused on 1985. 1984 was that distant point in the future and became a classic. The 50's was a time of looking to the future. And for some reason we'd all been thinking there'd be flying cars by the 80's. So what was it about Reagan, Hair Bands, Wall Street, and Crack that we collected around? We stopped talking about the future in fiction by the 80's and started showing what we could already do or what some genius could do that meant it was not far from mainstream like Back to the Future and Wargames. And I guess originality stopped after that cause Grung was punk and then came back the boy bands and Britney and the rest is history, or rather our present. This really doesn't make sense, but come one, does anyone pick up what I'm layin' down?

Oh Crap! They got me!

2005-10-06T06:55:00.000-07:00

So probably the first comment that is going to be left on this blog is from an advertisement. Now this is the part here where I'm supposed to say "Now don't get me wrong, I love advertising, I'm a copywriter, I'm supposed to love this stuff." But fuck that! Some dude has figured out that if he automatically posts comments on everybody's' blogs that say "Hey man your site is cool, it's like in my top three, I read it all the time. But you should really check out my site, it's about sex toys or how to refinance your house and get a bigger penis at the same time." Or even better, "I think I should try writing blogs seeing as how good you are at it, all I had before was this sex site." Which is of course a hyperlink to Tammy, I mean I uh... don't know if it's Tammy cause I've NEVER hit that link, it could be Cammy or Sarah, or Desire with that accent on the e that I can't make in this template.
I guess we should just band together and figure out a way to stop these fuckers from even being in the advertising category so I don't have to think about how I do the same thing and infiltrate every single spare space of air left to my fellow human being.
Oh.. yeah... uh.. and Bush sucks or China's economic plan to do something er other...

I can't believe I'm posting a forward!

2005-10-05T08:34:00.000-07:00

You'll all probably have this within a few days anyway in your email but I just couldn't pass posting a freakin' email forward on my blog cause it's just so freakin' apt:

The government today announced that it is changing its emblem from an Eagle to a CONDOM because it more accurately reflects the government's political stance. A condom allows for inflation, halts production, destroys the next generation, protects a bunch of pricks, and gives you a sense of security while you're actually being screwed.

And this forward came from my mother no less!

Cut and run, literally

2005-10-03T10:32:00.000-07:00

As in the past 9 years, Congress has not been able to come up with an operating budget in time for the new fiscal year (October 1). So on September 30, the house passed a stop-gap measure as they have for the past 9 years to keep paying everyone on government payroll and prevent a government shutdown (like the one we had in 1996). It all seems simple enough but that's not what the House Republicans did this year. Nope, this year they changed the funding for this limited period until a full budget is passed. The House's stop-gap measure calls for a 50% cut in every state in social services spending except for the 13 smallest states which are receiving a 75% cut. They dropped it on to the Senate for approval and left for a week long recess. Of course the more moderate Senate was left in a bit of a bind having to either sign the bill or get Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert to call the entire house back for a new vote on a new, less destructive bill. Which of course would be quite an unprecedented thing to do if all the Congressional Republicans didn't rush back to Washington to join Bush, on Palm Sunday no less, to sign their Terry Shiavo law. Of course the Senate did no such thing, called a vote, passed the stop-gap measure and left themselves.
It has long been my view that the economic conservatives in power have had a "starve-the-beast" mentality where if they cut enough taxes and make sure that enough social programs go bankrupt that it won't be economically feasible to save them when the chickens come home to roost and people, all of a sudden, realize they have no social security, no welfare, no unemployment benefits, nothing! And all of this while the Bush administration has increased non-military spending even more than Lyndon B. Johnson did during his great society. That's twice as fast as Bill Clinton's government ever grew. Where is this pork building, no bid contract giving, behind the door lobbyist dealing money that we're borrowing from China going?

Minimum Wage vs. Living Wage

2005-09-28T17:45:00.000-07:00

With the economic progress of this country, there are more and more jobs that require more and more education that are more and more specialized. All of this is a necessity of progress that I think everyone understands is happening in all developing nations. The problem comes when we look at the bottom of our economic class system. There are many jobs that can and are being replaced by automation. But there will always be some jobs required by humans that do not pay high wages. The jobs we have illegal aliens mostly covering and other, very desperate members of society. The problem is that our living wage is around $14.50. Or at least it was when Barbara earmarking published Nickel and dimed in which she worked three minimum wage jobs to show that it was impossibly or nearly so to get by. And this problem, though not very noticeable now by the rest of society, will become very apparent as the minimum wage (and lots of under-the-table wages which are much, much lower) spreads apart from a living wage. As the price of living increases with the advancement of our economy, our minimum wage will remain relatively lower and lower in comparison creating an unsustainable economic bottom base that will eat at our welfare and require more and more resources from the rest of us simply to live, let alone provide for anyone else or advance. Increasing the minimum wage is necessary and will happen but what will happen when (assuming for inflation) we reach a point of $7/hour minimum wages (above what they are now) and a $50/hour living wage?

This President is disgusting (originally posted Septemeber 10, 2005)

2005-09-26T14:35:00.000-07:00

We've all been living through this horrific event in piecemeal, finding incompetence after incompetence. And all of it up to now has been about our leaders, local and federal, being lazy, ignorant, and/or complaisant.
But now President Bush is actively tearing down, even further, what little is left of The Gulf Coast. He has just suspended the law that requires employers to pay the local minimum wage for every job ($14/hour for electrician working on a levee, $9 for a trucker) and replace it with the federal minimum wage.
All this does is keep the locals (you better believe every gulf coast native will try to get a construction job as close as they can to where they want to come back to) even more stuck in their poverty. It keeps money out of the region we're all trying to send money to. It will slow economic growth in the region and make it harder for our refugees to get off government subsidies. But I don't even know why I'm writing what the consequences of this are. We all no how horrible this act is in the name of saving the taxpayers money by "lowering bureaucratic expenses." I know we can save a lot of money by not paying "Brownie" and Michale Chertoff who sure as hell didn't earn their paychecks this month. Bureaucracies are middle men not the ones actually rebuilding the levees. How many letters will I (and hopefully you) be writing to ALL of our government officials to actively stop the madness!?
http://www.senate.gov/
http://www.house.gov/
http://www.whitehouse.gov/

Now we'll all know how to sing the blues. (originally published Septemeber 8, 2005)

2005-09-26T14:05:00.000-07:00

I've just finished reading my 746th article/blog on Katrina and we've all gone from shock to sadness to outrage to throwing every idea out there to try and fix this place. And pretty much all of them are good hearted, well thought out and can help make New New Orleans better than ever. But in the meantime we're left without a Big Easy. We don't have a place to go to listen to Jazz that's been uninterrupted since it was invented, to visit people who still believe and practice voodoo, and to celebrate Mardi Gras.
So I propose keeping New Orleans culture alive in every other major city in America till we can set it back where it belongs. I don't know if this means making French Quarters, like Little Italy or China town, but let's invite people to settle in and bring their slower than city life attitude with them. We can have New Orleans nights at bars where displaced musicians can perform. Restaurants can hire the displaced chefs and give buffalo wings a run for their money with some étouffée.
There's a lot of culture to be lost if we don't organize this diaspora. It truly does take a village.
I don't know how to pull this off so I want all of your ideas and then pass them along. We've got about 5 months until the next mardi gras so let's organize one in every city. Let's get displaced people to lead us in this. And most importantly let's make this Mardi Gras the one that will keep the next one alive, let's make them fundraisers with the money all going to Habitat for Humanity. Recovery will be over by then, but the rebuilding will just be underway.
I don't know if it's a silver lining to say that with this embracing of the south into all of our homes we can learn to truly sing the blues but there's something magical that can still be saved. That kind of magic Times Square lost when Disney moved in. That kind of magic Haight Ashbury lost when Gap moved in. That kind of magic that New Orleans lost to mother nature but has still not been lost to man.

Financing this war (originally published August 30, 2005)

2005-09-26T14:04:00.003-07:00

In September, Congress is going to vote to permanently remove the estate tax, also known as the death tax. This is a tax that only effects those who have millions of dollars to pass down. it brings in to the government about $1.5 billion every week which is, coincidentally, what we are spending in Iraq. So if this tax is revoked it's another roughly $80 billion a year added to our debt. Another $80 billion plus interest the Chinese will own of America.
The Koreans own two thirds of our mortgages and the Saudis have hundreds of billions of dollars invested in American companies. Dependency in a global economy is a good thing. It's incentive not to go to war and for free trade but it must be a two way street. All this does is make us dependent on loan sharks who could call back their loans any time they please which will be whenever they think we won't be able to pay all of it back anymore. Which, at this rate of cutting taxes and spending beyond our government's means, will be pretty soon.
What happens when the world economy has to metaphorically break our knees? I don't know about you, but I'm writing my Senators and Representative to vote no.

Financing this war (originally published August 30, 2005)

2005-09-26T14:04:00.002-07:00

...still apparently an idiot on hold. (originally published August 24, 2005)

2005-09-26T14:04:00.000-07:00

When we last left our fallen hero he had no phone service. But today, today is a different day. Today there is phone service once again. I spent the entire morning on the phone with Verizon again trying to get the phone turned on after waking up to a dead phone line, not even a dial tone like I had the day before. But I'll tell you what doesn't work, persistance. Persistance does not work. After 2 hours of wrangling and disclosing torid secrets, Kathy (the Verizon rep.) and I found that when Cablevision cancelled my service it was not translated over to Verizon who still had the cancellation of our sevice with them still pending. And to port a number back from Cablevision would take 10 business days. 10 days with out a phone line. But that, that along with the fact that they could get us a dial tone all be it with a different number, was the best case scenario. The worst case scenario was that the number was thrown into the pile because Verizon didn't grab the number back in time. FYI, when a number is thrown back into "the pile" it must remain there in limbo for 90 days, circling around a maze of god knows what till it pops out the other end where any phone company can buy the number and hopefully Verizon would be able to grab it. Then Kathy wanted to try calling my number to see what the status of the line was, but instead of putting me on hold, she disconnected me. I yelled very loudly, took a shower, calmed down, and called Verizon back to ask to be reconnected with Kathy. I got Else (pronounced L-See) who asked if she could be of some help because Kathy was on the other line with a customer (instead of calling me back.) I told Else the situation and she typed for a few minutes and said, "Ok Mr. Schwarz we'll have your line ported back to us in a few hours. If it doesn't work by then call us back." What!? What! So all I had to do was talk to the right person and they could just do it? OK! Okalie dokalie dooo! Kathy called a few minutes later and I told her what had happened. She was puzzled as well and I just said goodbye. And by the end of the day the phone was back on. So you see boys and girls, when someone doesn't give you the right answer, hang up on them, hang up on them early. Then call back and see if that person can help you. And just rinse and repeat till that works. Now all I have to do is get the two broken phone jacks on the other line fixed...

I'm sorry sir, our records indicate that you are an idiot. (originially published August 22, 2005)

2005-09-26T14:03:00.000-07:00

Like all of you, I have had my "fair" share of time spent in purgatory trying to get customer service to understand ANYTHING! Here is the latest tale of woe (be prepared, this is a short novel):
In May, I decided to switch our internet and phone service from Verizon DSL and phone to Cablevision so we'd have every input and output in our house on one bill and it was supposed to save hundreds of bucks a year... great! So we ordered the IO Triple Play, all 3 services for $30 each/month. Turns out that's only for people who don't have any of the services, and since we had cable, I had to sign up for the double play. We wouldn't save as much money, but it would still be considerable, and we'd also have nationwide long distance free and a faster internet. We were assigned to have someone come out 3 weeks after the order (first time available.) Unfortunately I had just gotten back from San Francisco and didn't make it back in time from the city to greet my technician between the hours of 11 am and 2 pm.
So I rescheduled. Next available time: 1 month later. Between the hours of 2pm and 6pm someone was supposed to come make the information age even better. Alas, no one came. I called, complained, got a new appointment and a $20 service credit, should service ever start. Next appointment, a month later. I complained. Next appointment turned out to be that coming Saturday between the hours of 8am and 6pm. But due to enough complaining I got someone to call back and have someone come Friday between 2pm and 4pm. He showed up at noon. Younger than I am, and less than enthused. He set to work. Had trouble configuring the computer. Got on his cell phone, asked questions, and after an hour and half got the cable modem up and working long enough to configure the internet phone (VOIP). Unfortunately, that wasn't working properly. So he went to disconnect our Verizon phone chords. Unfortunately he also disconnected our other phone line as well and still couldn't get the phone to work. We could dial out but couldn't receive calls. "Your signal needs to be boosted." So he waited in our driveway from 2:30 to 4:30 for someone to come take his place who could "boost the signal." No one came. He left saying someone said they would be here in an hour. No one showed. I called Cablevision again and was then assigned someone to come Saturday between the hours of 8am and 6pm. Meanwhile, we had no phone service.
The Cablevision guy arrived in the morning and worked on the modem for an hour before replacing it, and then replacing it again, just to make sure it wasn't a hardware problem. But of course the service was down at Cablevision headquarters so now, no phone AND no internet. So he fixed the phone chords and said that when the one Verizon line was shut down they were both shut down. "My advice would be to switch back to Verizon and when we offer two line service in a five or six months try us again." Then he showed us how our outside cables were extremely corroded from water damage and that he'd come out on his own time this Friday to replace the cables. When I told my Dad this, he said that he was still getting paid to do it. And I said that he was coming on a day when he wasn't supposed to be working. And since it's outside the house we don't get charged for this. It's funny that a guy would volunteer to do this like it's an emergency since everything works fine in the house anyway and it's really just an infrastructure upgrade.
I called Verizon. No one works during weekends in the billing department so I called for the repair service to get a dial tone on the phone that wasn't canceled from verizon to at least get someone out here. He would come out Sunday between the hours of 8am and 6pm. But voila, he showed up in our driveway an hour later working on the line. After fixing our phone line with them he tried to switch our original line back to Verizon but apparently Cablevision had "ported" the line at the end of our road already even though they weren't supposed to do that until end of business day on Monday. That meant we had to call Verizon on Monday when they were open and have them buy back the number from Cablevision or else risk losing the number we've had since 1976 back to "the pile."
And on top of that our other phone line only works on one jack but because we don't have the coverage plan for that line it would cost $91 for the first half hour and $46 for each additional half hour to have the two other jacks in the house fixed. So on Sunday I signed up for the coverage plan which doesn't go into effect until Thursday. So then when that works, I'll order a repair so we can have our fax machine working again.
Then my parents and I went to see The 40 Year Old Virgin. *Warning: Not recommended to see with parents.*
This morning I called Verizon at 9am. They said the switch was still pending so as long as I called Cablevision and canceled the order before the end of the day, Verizon would still own the number and the phone would be turned back on. So I called Cablevision, they said they already "ported" the number and that they had it so if I canceled with them, my number would go in "the pile." She said to have Verizon call her at a certain number, ask for Allison, and ask for the number back. I called Verizon and got Ms. B. A very nice woman by the way. She put us on conference with Cablevision to grab the number back together. Ms. B explained to Allison that the change was still pending so they just had to cancel the service. Allison explained that it HAD already happened so if I canceled with Cablevision I'd lose my number to "the pile." So the three of us argued about this till 11 am. But in the middle of this Ms. B. and I got disconnected. We sat their like idiots thinking we were on hold for 5 minutes until I asked Ms. B. to call them back and ask for Allison again. We got another guy who said that Allison was with another call, we explained to him that it was probably us that she was with and didn't realize we had been disconnected either. Turned out it wasn't. Instead of calling us back after being disconnected she just took another call from another customer. We got her back on the line and she said she had to help this other customer, "I have people on cue here." And of course Ms. B said, "I have people on cue too honey." But by that time Allison had already put us back on hold. Then Allison got a representative from Optimum Voice (a division of Cablevision) who finally admitted that they weren't going to change the service to them until between 2pm and 4 pm that day. (Even in their own company, they do things between certain hours!) Finally, after two and a half hours of wrangling through all of this, Cablevision canceled the service.
Ms. B. got off the line and I continued talking with Cablevision, which is weired because I was one the phone with them through a conference call with Verizon who hung up their end of the phone so how did that conversation continue without me being disconnected when Ms. B. hung up? Cablevision then warned me that since I was now only officially ordering the cable modem I would be charged $15 more per month. (It would have been $20 more if I didn't have them for cable TV.) So I had to explain how, since I never even had their phone service working and switched back to Verizon before even officially having their phone service, all I ordered was the modem I should get the deal where it's $23.90 for the first six months if I order the modem. They said since I didn't install it myself I wasn't eligible for that or the free wireless router. And I said I would have installed it myself had I only ordered the modem but because I got Optimum Voice, I wasn't allowed to install it myself. She told me what she thought a supervisor would say to that, and I said, "I don't want to hear what a supervisor WOULD say I want to hear a SUPERVISOR!" So I got put on hold and she came back and gave me the internet service for $30/month for the first year, ironically what I would have been charged had I gotten the Triple Play service I wanted in the first place. And then before I could say anything, she said she'd try to see if I could get the router as well. On hold I waited till I got someone else. I tried to explain I was waiting for this woman to tell me about a router. She told me she was a supervisor liaison. Apparently this position is someone who isn't a supervisor but is the step below that in case you want to talk to a supervisor. Just ANOTHER way to make sure I can't talk to someone who knows what they're doing! She said she couldn't get me the router because I officially ordered the double play service which isn't eligible for the router. So I asked for some voucher for my troubles, I got the first month's service free.
Now I'm waiting for my phone service to turn on again, which I was assured would be by tomorrow morning if not by tonight. And I'm typing this all on a computer that has Cablevision internet which is a lot faster than the Verizon DSL, and I don't have to be signed on to AOL to use it either.
So keep this in mind next time you want to sign up for a service: talking to someone over the phone who has the power to put you on hold and make you listen to muzak and/or Faith Hill, will torture you not because they can but because it's corporate policy. And you'll put up with it because you know the more you wait, the more you'll have to complain about when you ask for that first free month of service.

Two Endorsements (originally published August 17, 2005)

2005-09-26T14:02:00.001-07:00

Two endorsements for your own judgement:
Joe Biden for President
and Honey Teddy Grahms for the new national snack. Hazzaahh!

Whoops on Venezuela (originally published August 17, 2005)

2005-09-26T14:02:00.000-07:00

Ok, so what I said before about viable options for oil outside of the middle east... well Seymore Hirsch says that Iran is in talks with Venezuella about oil. So maybe there goes that source too, uh oh.
PS on Seymore Hirsch; for anyone who didn't read his article a month or so ago in The New Yorker about the first Iraq elections, he found out how our government sent money and political "helpers" to aid the people we wanted to get elected. And for some reason Achmed Chalabi, the guy this administration wanted to run Iraq in the first place, even though he had all these money laundering crimes in his past and had lied to us before and was a major source of faulty info about WMD's in Saddam's Iraq, is now in charge of the oil ministry. He decides where, when, how and even why money from Iraqi oil goes. Hmmmm, how did he get elected to that position after getting voted out of any major office? We don't want to steal the oil, we just want access to buying it, but jeeez what a way to go about it!

No more oil for you! (originally published August 11, 2005)

2005-09-26T14:01:00.000-07:00

With the successful buy out of Unocol to Chevron instead of China's Cnooc, the congress has effectively further sent us in the direction of a Shakespearean play. We are becoming so scared of the threat China could pose as a super power that our reactions might just make our worst fears a reality. We are pushing China away and turning them into an opposing force instead of an ally with each side relying on the other. China will continue to look for oil and they are going to get it. They've already secured huge amounts of natural gas in a 20 year deal with Australia and their investments in African oil are growing and
Then comes the big problem. Oil, all over the world, exists in a free market economy. It goes to the highest bidder. And that is how it should be. But that could not be the case for long. Imagine a day when the majority of oil, owned by Islamic countries, is sold almost exclusivly to countries other than America. A reverse-embargo where Iraq (if it ever becomes a controlled state), Iran, Saudi Arabia, etc... all just turn down American offers and sell to China who could, within a matter of a decade, buy all the oil the middle East has to sell. There are other sources, Hugo Chavez's Venezuela. the new arctic passage looks promising, Russia, but the main problem is not where we'll get our oil from, it's a middle east no longer reliant on a country that prefers, and has come to insist on, democracies. And more importantly no longer reliant on us, period. Free to declare publicly what the people have been saying for decades, "death to America."
We're losing our grip on the world because a super power is only as strong as the next strongest country is weak. A strong America, a new super power in the east, and perhaps an EU that acts as one nation. Will we all go our separate ways as protectionists? What will happen to the third world now? And what would a middle east, free to determine it's own destiny, no longer relyant on a demanding nation builder, do? More dicatorships? More Ayatollas? One Islamic Nation? A huge Sunni/Shiite civil war? 5 Kurdistans? Can we all truly co-exist with so much power in so many hands? The boarders on my board Risk board game version World War III are beginning to take shape.

We're doin' ok (originally published August 7, 2005)

2005-09-26T14:00:00.000-07:00

I just got back from watching The March of the Penguins with my parents. It was a noon show so there were a lot of parents with their little kids. We watched the movie to the sounds of kids yelling and kicking and asking what kind of chickens those were.
And as we watched we say babies dying left and right, adults starving to death and being eaten by Sea Lions. And my dad leaned over to me during one of the winter storm scenes as a kid was kicking his seat and he said, "You see how tough we have it." And honestly, I don't know if he was referring to parents troubles regardless of the species or human parents and these anoying scenes in movie theatres where they just won't stop.
So I looked back at the screen and then I felt my own chair being kicked and I thought, hmm, you know what, life as a human ain't so bad.

We can't have it both ways (originally published August 3, 2005)

2005-09-26T13:59:00.000-07:00

This country was founded by a bunch of rebels. People who decided that they didn't like the way things were and were going to do something about it. They took power into their own hands, lead their people against an oppressor and voila, the United States of America was born. Since then we have lived in a culture of taking charge. This is all well and good but it has just occured to me, as I watched the preview for "V is for Vendetta," (starring my future bride Natlie Portman) that we want to have our cake and eat it too.
The main character, V, uses his masked identity to run fear through his totalitarian government of the future. He says, "You may destroy me but I am an idea and ideas cannot be broken." And this is something we believe in because we believe in freedom. We believe in freedom and the idea of it, it's our "inalienable right." But look at Al Qaeda. It has become an idea. It is no longer about one man, it is about an idea. We can destroy the men who follow this idea of Islamic Radicalism. But what could kill the idea behind them? If we are to answer that question we must ask it of ourselves. What could kill our ideas? What is it that holds us together, that makes us, as a whole, stronger than the sum of our parts? Because we would fight, or at least still say we would, for something worth dying for, as these suicide bombers do every day now in Iraq. I cannot believe that were it not reversed and there were a few "freedom warriors" out there in a world filled of Islamic fundamentalists that we would resort to no less than what this V character does in the movie, really what these terrorists to every day. Why? Because the playing fields are not level. Does it make their tactics unjust? I don't think it is a matter of just or unjust, it is a matter of the tools at hand. The only level playing field, the only fair fight is in the minds of both of our peoples. Our ideas vs. their ideas. What would stop us? What would convince us to change our minds? When we are able to not necessarily answer that question, but at least ask it, then we can ask it of these radicals and start our way to winning the real war, the war of ideas.

Blog attempt number 2

2005-09-26T13:40:00.000-07:00

Ok all, I had my blog on friendster but it got really annoying. Those of you linked to my friendster site know what I'm talking about. I'll leave it at that.
I'm going to repost the few blogs I've done so far on the friendster page on here and then it'll be all new content from then on.
So here's where I'll be posting thoughts, enjoying your responses, and hoping something comes out of this.
Thanks for reading!