ThAmerica/New_York 02nd 2007f May, 2007
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Philosophy Politics When the hell did John Edwards grow a pair of balls? During an interview with Wolf Blitzer on CNN Wednesday, Mr. Edwards said that President Bush has been using Al Qaeda being in Iraq as the excuse for everything he has done (though he didn’t mention that Al Qaeda was not in Iraq until Saddam was ousted, but that’s another issue), including the war itself, "Guantanamo," "torture," and "illegal spying on Americans."
Those last three items are things the American people and the Democratic party have largely been shamefully silent on (I used different terminology when discussing this with Darla). For a presidential candidate to be finally willing to take on those issues makes me stand up and say "Huzzah!"
Huzzah!
Listening to him speak, it’s obvious that he’s gained some strength since the 2004 election, and that’s also a good thing. He also addressed the criticisms of his US$400 haircuts from Republican Mitt Romney by saying, "Governor, we ought to be talking about what we’re going to do about men and women dying in Iraq, not this kind of silliness."
Huzzah!
ThAmerica/New_York 28th 2006f November, 2006
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Philosophy Poker I’ll be the first to jump up and admit that I am a far, far better poker player today than I was a few years ago, but my biggest leak has simply got to be my temper (second biggest leak is calling when I know I’m beaten, and a distant third is not playing back against a pre-flop raiser with a marginal holding when I know I am ahead).
I’ve been working on it, to be sure, and I’ve certainly improved this aspect of my game. For instance, I’ve weaned myself off of (almost all) smartass comments when someone pulls a suckout, but just this past week I had two situations where I allowed myself to get tense at the poker table.
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ThAmerica/New_York 09th 2006f October, 2006
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Darla Life & Times Movies Philosophy Pop Culture Darla and I saw Jet Li’s Fearless in the theatre a few days ago. Great flick, if you’re into epic martial arts movies — and I am — but it was what occurred in the seats that I thought I’d write about.
First of all, there were only about 20 people in the audience, yet four of them — a full 20% of those present — felt it was OK to talk during a movie. The two folks behind us were clearly discussing the movie (I could be wrong, as my Chinese isn’t so hot, but the rhythm and flow of their talk suggested as much), while the two numbnuts a few seats away and a row down to our right were just chatting away.
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ThAmerica/New_York 01st 2006f October, 2006
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Darla Life & Times Love Philosophy Politics Pop Culture Religion Listening to The Church’s excellent cover of "Cortez the Killer" — what a great song, and what a great cover — and it occurs to me that life is indeed good. I have an amazing woman that loves me, great friends, a great job that affords me absurd flexibility, a wonderful dog who’s greying faster than his pop, and (good) little things like great music to listen to and Battlestar Galactica to watch.
With the assault on America being lead by the Bush administration and the Repbulican party, the destruction of our environment, religious zealots from many faiths trying to enslave us all in their preferred theocracy, and even (bad) little things like wanky people to get us irritated…Sometimes it’s good to stop a moment from dwelling on all the negative things around us in order to take stock of the good things in our lives.
Today, The Church helped me do that, and for that I say thanks. This post may come off as cheesy, but it’s quite heartfelt.
ThAmerica/New_York 25th 2006f September, 2006
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Philosophy Politics Bill Clinton has what no other national Democrat seems to have, and that’s backbone. He demonstrated that on September 24th, 2006, when he opened a can of whoop-ass on Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace, indicting both Mr. Wallace and Fox News in the process. Oh, go ahead and throw the neocons in the WTFPWNage, too.
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ThAmerica/New_York 21st 2006f September, 2006
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Darla Love Philosophy At long last, I have officially asked Darla to marry me. Oh sure, we agreed the time had come back in March, and we had the date set almost immediately. But, I hadn’t asked those words — "Will you marry me?" — and she didn’t have a rock on her finger.
I did. She said yes. Now she is.
w00t!
I think I’ll have to change my blog to "luckyfuck.com." Wait, that one is, shockingly, taken, so I won’t make it a link.
In the meanwhile, thanks to Geoff for helping us with the quarrying process, and thanks to Torrey for causing me to have to put off for one day the popping of the question. I still love you anyway, Torrey, and I hope you have fun in Japan. :)
ThAmerica/New_York 14th 2006f September, 2006
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Philosophy Politics TV Ken Olbermann? Where have you been all my life? Peter Cohen sent me a note this morning saying, "Keith Olbermann is a fucking ninja rockstar superhero," along with a link to commentary from Mr. Olbermann broadcast on MSNBC.
I fear I wasn’t familiar with Mr. Olbermann before this, but Peter is so right…
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ThAmerica/New_York 07th 2006f September, 2006
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Philosophy It sometimes amazes me the depths of crappiness to which people can sink. This was brought to mind recently when I saw two different women at two different grocery stores parking in the handicapped spots in front of the stores. What upset me was that while both had the handicapped parking permit on their rear-view mirror, neither was handicapped. What’s more, though, is that both were wealthy, in very expensive cars, and I think that this is maybe the biggest reason I was mad.
Why? The conclusion I immediately jumped to in both cases was that money bought their handicapped permit. I have zero evidence of this, of course, other than they fact that their cars were expensive (a new Vette and a new Mercedez convertible). That said, I’ve gotten angry at plenty of poor(er) folks misusing a handicapped spot in the past…
In any event, what’s more likely is that they have a handicapped member in their families, and got the permits legitimately. Even then, however, I get very tense at the fact that both of these women clearly feel that having their permit is what is important when it comes to parking in a handicapped spot, as opposed to a legit need to use it. Both were walking at a brisk pace, carrying baskets with groceries, and clearly, clearly not physically handicapped in any way.
That kind of secondhanded entitlement makes me tense.
ThAmerica/New_York 25th 2006f August, 2006
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Philosophy Politics Religion Is there hope for our country? For our democracy? For our freedom and civil liberties? I become more concerned about these issues daily, as the Bush administration does its best to destroy the foundations of our civilization and ruin any and all of our credibility throughout the world.
I am guessing I’ll be writing about these subjects often through the remaining 29 months of Bush’s reign of terror over the U.S., but what has me riled up today is the idea of using torture in the process of "defending freedom." I refer to the secret detainment facilities we operate somewhere in eastern Europe, as well as the torture in Guantanamo Bay and Abu-Gharib, and who knows where else.
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ThAmerica/New_York 31st 2006f July, 2006
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Life & Times Philosophy How is it that the lameness quotient of my fellow Americans seems to be ever-increasing? A couple of weeks ago, Darla and I were bowling with some friends (power outage, no AC, it was hot, etc.), and we noticed that the majority of our fellow bowlers were using bumpers.
Bumpers.
And almost all of these folks were adults. Worse yet, they would celebrate when they hit a few pens, even after bouncing the ball off the damned bumpers.
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