Happy Halloween!

What can I say, I love Halloween. It's a simple holiday where you dress up and have fun if thats your style and if you're not into it who cares? It's an excuse to throw a great party, and its one of the only times when you can play a character in real life. For one day out of the year you can be anyone, or anything that you want and it's almost always going to be socially acceptable. I say almost because as a couple of friends were sitting around last night, still trying to figure out what they want to be this year, another friend couldn't help but rattle off a list of the most offensive costumes he could possibly come up with. But for the most part anything goes. I might just put up some pictures of my costume this year... I think it's pretty good.

Have fun this weekend!

Evangelicals aren't so bad...

Eh this was going to be a jokingly perverted post about how evangelicals have sex younger than almost any other religious group. Note to self, never get an idea for a post in your head based on the Fark Headline. It is a fairly interesting article though, about how Liberals are all for real sex-ed and are fine with pre-marital sex, but an unplanned pregnancy is a big deal. And Conservatives want abstinence only education, are not cool with premarital sex, but if you get knocked up it's no big deal, your keepin' the kid and ya might want to marry the fella but other wise it's fine. Interesting, at first glance it's hard for me to imagine being nonchalant about unplanned pregnancy, and I'm sure it's not exactly nonchalant if your the teen about to go tell daddy to "put down the shotgun pa I've got something to tell you." From the evangelical perspective it's all part of god's plan so I guess it makes sense to not flip out too much over bad choices. I don't agree with the view, but I can try my best to understand them.

Slacktober

Damn I haven't written anything for a week! I'm sorry.

My usual topic of politics is pretty much all wrapped up other than the formalities in a week where it becomes official that Obama is the next president. I know a lot of people that are still worried that there are too many people with deep seated racism that will vote for McCain even after saying they were for Obama for months. Personally I just don't by it.

Actually, here is my prediction. Obama will win, not a landslide but pretty damn big, 325 Electoral votes or more. Then he will get in office, along with a pretty good majority of Dems in both the House and the Senate, Leiberman will no longer have the Dems by the nuts, and..... not much. We have no money. He won't be able to do shit, he wont be able to get us out of Iraq quickly He'll end up escalating Afghanistan in order to finish what should have been done in '02 spending the money we save as we draw down from Iraq. There won't be any universal health care, our economy is still going to be fucked, we're still going to be fighting an idea and all we will be able to cheer about is that we stopped going in the wrong direction, but I really don't think the democratic party has the will to do what needs to be done right now. It's going to take some hard love. Obama is going to have to stare down america and say we've been writing checks our asses can't cash. We've been living way beyond our means, and it can't continue. The government is going to return to the pay-go system and I highly recommend that we as a people do the same, if you can't afford it, DON'T BUY IT! One that really sucks is that I guarantee we don't get universal health care, which is too bad cause it'll probably be cheaper in the long run. Companies can bitch about getting taxed but imagine if no company had to worry about health care for its employees. That would help businesses of all sizes, but it won't happen because I'm sure it will cost a lot of money to implement and guess what between the trillion in bailouts and the trillion in tax cuts for the rich we are fucking broke and we gotta be nearing the limit on our credit. For the same reason its bad to take out a loan to pay off your credit cards, this constant reliance on borrowed money has to end eventually. Of course we could easily slash billions out of the pentagons budget but thats not allowed. Do you realize we are still building new submarines? Seriously, I think it was $200 billion on new Subs. Umm... Subs are used to stealthily destroy boats or the big ones are for launching nuclear missiles. We better not be doing any nuking and we should have enough old subs for taking out the Al-Qeada's Navy. This sort of stuff is fucking stupid. Fight the war with the army we have, not the one that looks cool in the movie- Do you concur captain? I do concur.

As for me, well life keeps goin'. I think I'm going to be an Obama Pez Dispenser for Halloween. Or should that be a Prez dispenser? Too corny?

An Interesting Time

These are great days my friends, or at least very interesting. The economic troubles make me wonder if our country and the world might finally come to grasp with the fact that the industrial revolution has forever changed the face of society, rugged individualism no longer works. No one lives self-sustained in a cabin in the woods anymore. The days of the skilled craftsman working from his home/shop is gone as well. Even the family farm is almost gone. Society like everything else has evolved, unfortunately the industrial revolution means that we need fewer people to do the same amount of work. That leaves people without meaningful employment. The medical revolution means that people don't die so much anymore and so we have way way more people than the world can sustain, but thats not a topic I'm going to cover this time. I just think it's very important that as a people we realize that some of our old ideals are fantastic and need to be cherished, but others ideals are simply not realistic anymore. We need to get rid of these 19th century notions that hard work is all thats needed to prosper. Toss aside the silly idea that free markets solve all problems. I really hope that this failure will finally let people understand that modern business alone has a terrible secret, without the help of the government it cannot survive, your tax dollars prop up companies, not just under the bailout but always. We've had minor amounts of socialism since at least the 1830's Clay's American System (history class sorry) so people just need to shut the fuck up about it being unamerican. My hope is that we will realize that socialism isn't evil, its also not a complete picture, we need to take the best of socialism and the best of capitalism and create a functional system.

Ok I swear I'm going to get to my point!

Another reason it's an interesting time to be alive is this fuckin' election. Can you believe that we're actually going to have a black president? Which reminds me, of a shirt I want, "I was going to vote for Obama, till I heard he was half white." Which brings me to racism. What other time than now could you possibly hear this story?

So a canvasser goes to a woman's door in Washington, Pennsylvania. Knocks. Woman answers. Knocker asks who she's planning to vote for. She isn't sure, has to ask her husband who she's voting for. Husband is off in another room watching some game. Canvasser hears him yell back, "We're votin' for the n***er!"

Woman turns back to canvasser, and says brightly and matter of factly: "We're voting for the n***er."

I honestly am not sure how to respond. Assuming it's true, and that the people really are planning on voting for Obama it's a pretty crazy story. I'm glossing over the fact that the woman asks her husband who she is voting for because thats a whole other mess that I don't feel like getting into, but I really think that within my generation there are very few who don't put men and women as equals. So what's my point? Well quite simply that the world has suddenly become an interesting place again. I think that we're taking huge steps towards erasing racism and sexism, not in the ways that our parents did in the sixty's by taking to the streets but by living in a post 60's world where men and women of all colors are quite simply treated the same. My parents generation have to consciously push racism out of their lives, my generation was raised by people who didn't want to be racist, thats quite an advantage. I look at my town, actually it was a friend of a friend who really drove this home, he started rattling off the names of all the kids he knew, then finishes with and they're all mixed. We ain't gunna have racism because there aren't gunna to be any race's left! The world is changing around us, not by force like it need to be done initially, now were simply swept up in the currents that are slowly moving us towards what I'm hopeful to think is going to be a brighter future. I'm not so idealistic as to think that we might not flow over a few waterfalls along the way with this economic shit but if thats what it's going to take to save us then so be it. I look forward to what tomorrow brings.... Oh wait no I don't I have a history test tomorrow. Clay's American System! Woo!

Spore

So I have a new roommate and she brought her computer, and its way better than my old POS. I laughed when she had all of three games for it and one happened to be Spore, a game I was about as curious about as anyone who had no expectations of playing a new computer game anytime soon. I spent way way too long playing it the last couple of days. It seems to be mostly focused on the end part of the game which is in space, lots of trading, forming alliances and stuff like that. The concept for the beginning is neat but I can't decide if it was worth it or not. You start off as a small simple creature which you get to "evolve" into ever larger and more interesting creatures. You eventually head to dry land, "evolve" some more and once you get smart enough you form a tribe, which eventually becomes a civilization and once you have united the whole planet either by force or by alliances or whatever you head to space. How you play the game affects you're specially abilities. Being the first time I played I just killed everything in sight and became a military powerhouse. Now that I'm in space though that doesn't seem to be helping me much. Its an addicting game for sure, but I can't decide if its really a good game or not. Guess I'll just have to keep going before I can answer that. It also seems really easy, but I do have it on easy because I'd never played before, which is often a big mistake, you get into bad habits because you can get away with them on easy then you move on with all the wrong strategies in your head. Oh well.

Like I said I get the impression that the part I'm in now is the main part of the game so I should probably hold off till I've gotten further, but so far my one line review would be, "It's caused me to loose sleep." Last two nights I've looked up at the clock eventually only to say oh crap it's two am and I've got a test tomorrow, last night it was only one am. So I guess I like it well enough so far.

The Express

Confused as to why I would want to go see a football movie? Well first of all I went to Ernie Davis Jr. High here in Elmira, although I don't think it was called that then. Actually that building would have been Elmira Free Academy, in the movie I guess they just called it Elmira High so people don't think it was a private school, it's not. Anyway I want to see this for that reason but his story is practically made for the big screen. And it's about more than just football.

The movie coming out got me wondering if people outside of this area know the story of Ernie Davis? Maybe some die-hard sports buffs but I would guess not too many. If you really want to know then go see the flick, it really should be good. Lets see heres the uber quick version, oh and if you know nothing about the guy, then theres a bit of a spoiler about how the story ends. He grew up here in Elmira, went to Syracuse University a couple hours away, was the best football player of the day, won the freaking Heisman Trophy, and he was black at a time when that a wasn't socially acceptable. So it should be a moving story about overcoming diversity and racism. So it'll have the usual up's and downs of any good drama, the low's when they flay the confederate flag in his face and drop N-bombs like it was Vietnam, but then highs when he scores the winning touchdown in their faces, that sorta shit. But this story does have one final twist, one that I've been told they only briefly mention in the movie. Now for the Spoiler Alert, if you don't know Ernie Davis's story and plan to see the movie, stop now.

For those still reading, how is it that the first black Heisman Trophy winner is someone you've never heard of? I mean this kid was good, he signed on with the Cleveland Browns and Jim Brown took him under his wing and expected him to be amazing, but it didn't happen. He was never able to play a single pro-game. He died of Leukemia, but the story goes that at one of the first games of the season he came to the stadium, and when he walked onto the field the entire stadium stood up and gave him a ten minute standing ovation. I hope they were able to incorporate that part into the film.

The Dark Knight

I finally got to see this flick and it's pretty damn good. Not even just sorta, hey it's good for a comic book movie but like actually a good film, I'm impressed. The dead guy played a great joker, he seemed more like a very disturbed person who had something terrible or many terrible things happen to him, completely insane but human, vs the old joker who just seemed like a the bad guy from a cartoon, or a comic.... So yeah this isn't exactly news to anyone but hey I'm cheap, I don't go to the theater unless it's something fuckin' special, or a chick wants to go, then I'll go watch National Treasure 2... true story, and that bitch just wanted to be friends. Which reminds me I gotta do a shout out for another movie that I might just go see in the theater.

FAIL

Fail, because schadenfreude is hard to spell.

And this picture is frickin' amazing.Yeah thats Paulson in the foreground during the big senate hearing.

If you'd like to know where the whole FAIL meme came from then read this from Slate (also where the pic is from), if you'd rather simply enjoy other people's fuck-up's then go to FailBlog.com.

Much Betta

A few days ago I did a bit of bitching, woe is me and all that shit. Lets face it I go through my swings like everyone, theres good times and there are bad, and yeah maybe my swings are more severe than my life really justifies. My life is pretty damn stable, but I'm not. Maybe I just want change so badly that my emotions swing so it seems like my life is changing even when its not. But who cares about that Freudian bullshit? I basically said recently that I'm going to stop being a little emo bitch and ya know what, I feel a whole lot better. I also took a couple days off work, I said I was sick, which was true, of course it was the sort of sickness that has more to do with the chemicals of the brain (not added ones) than viruses or bacteria but so what? The important thing is that I feel better now. I will admit that much of my recent downward spiral was the new girl at work, shes quite easy to fall for. But I fucked that up real quick as is my M.O. and then partially because of that I was down all last week and hardly spoke to her or the other lady friends at the office. I wasn't trying to pay it cool or any of that I just had the distinct impression that she didn't want to talk to me, and seeing as she shares an office with the other girl I usually bullshit with I was pretty bored at work which just left me with more introspective wallowing. So what happens today when I finally head back to work? She stands at my door for half an hour bullshitting with me. Then I kicked her out saying I had to get some work done. So yeah I think I'll stick with being slightly cold, which I don't think is a bad thing. I think most people do it, I've been too open, too easy, and it's no good for anyone. It's not the way I would like things to be, I wish we could all be honest with each other and have life have fairytale endings but this is reality and I'm realizing that Machiavelli was right, there's the way things should be and the way things are. If I want to be happy in the real world then I need to wake up to that reality and stop being so damn nice all the time. Hmmm... maybe I'll try some new pick-up lines.

McCain's Crowds

Ok so McCain has been saying that abusive comments have been hurled at him during Obama rallies, just like how people keep yelling "Terrorist" at his and Palin's events. Now I've only been to one Obama rally and it's true that people yell things, this was during the primary so it was also directed at Hillary but the important thing was Obama's reaction. When people simply Boo'ed he would stop them and say, "McCain has done great service for our country blah blah respect and shit." (not an exact quote) And thats the important part, Obama would not allow us to show our disdain for his opponents, anger should not be a part of decision making. McCain and Palin simply ignore these insults and continue on, plus their constant reminders that Obama has worked with a guy who was a domestic terrorist when Obama was what like 4? This seems to create an air where such outbursts are at least acceptable if not encouraged. I actually thought it was a little weird at the time that Barack was so insistent that we not boo his opponents, but now I understand why. So yeah maybe McCain has heard some nasty shouts from the crowds, but how did Obama address them?

Mood Swing

Well we just had some random kid (late teens maybe early 20's) come into the office to ask to use the phone, he calls his mom and is crying. The secretary motions me to stand near-by I'm not paying much attention prior to this so I figure she's worried about him flipping out or something, just assume she wanted me as security. Nope, she then asked if our crisis counselor was still here and I said he just left, turns out he had asked his mom to get him before he kills himself. At my agency we take that pretty seriously... except she was waving me to help. Fuck that. Thats not really my forte' to begin with, but I'm pretty much emotionally blank today and I really really don't think I could have helped the situation. So you just got outta jail and went to see your girl friend only to find out that she has a new boyfriend? Kiss my ass, at least you had a girlfriend. I'm older than you, smarter than you and probably an all around better person than you (I did say I was going to keep the arrogance) and I'm perpetually single so go fuck yourself if you're looking for empathy here. Live, die, whatever, just remember that suicide fucks up you whole family and is a total dick move, and seeing as you're crying to your mom right now, I'm guessing you're family matters to you.

But then I got a couple of comments on here from Kristi who has apparently spent about 2 hours (as of the last comment) reading my blog. It's funny but it actually cheered me up a little. Apparently my writing has brought a little joy to someone I don't even know, so that's pretty cool.

So Kristi, I want to say thanks. Oh and I told you I was a simple bastard.

Just Fuck It A Little

Yeah I was in a bad mood and I can see why you guys thought I meant that I hate everything or whatever. I didn't mean that I was going to be cold and detached from my friends, although I have realized that I really can't verbalize my problems with more than a very few friends, and they aren't even my closest of friends. Plus not surprisingly I can't say anything to my guy friends. I should make it clear that my friends are the shit and they'd listen if I talked, its me, I just can't do it. So when I have a bad day I do what any man is supposed to do with his problems, drowned them in a pool of alcohol. Is it the right answer? Hell no. But sometimes it easier to just forget. To let it all go, and good old fashion alcohol seems to be the best way I've found to get my brain to just shut up for a while. So when I said fuck it all I really mean is that I'm going to try to stop letting myself fall for every woman who speaks with me. I'm never going to be truly cold, well it's possible, there really was a time when I hurt people because I'd say whatever I wanted with no concern for others feelings because I just didn't think anyone cared enough about my opinions to be hurt by them.

But I can say anything I want, it doesn't mean I'm going to be able to follow through with any of it. I'd like to find a middle ground between the two poles of me, I don't want to be a cold bastard, but I also don't want to be the softie that gets crushed on a weekly basis. School is helping with that, test coming up hey would anyone like to study? It's just a coincidence that I always seem to study with ladies, usually the cute ones. Plus it's the perfect way to get to sit around and bullshit with a chick without any pretense. The fact that I'm one of the top students in every class also means that the cute girls are happy to study with me.

So I guess that just like the stock market, I had a bit of a fall, but I've rebounded a bit. Now I'm thinking that I just need to find that happy medium between the cold arrogant bastard, and the warm push-over, maybe thats what they refer to as cool. I might hang on to the arrogance though, humility gets you know where.

Fuck It All

Maybe it's time for me to go back to the way I once was, indifferent towards everyone. Cold and alone hurts, but in love with everyone and alone hurts even more. At least when I was cold and bitter behind my wall I could pretend that it was my choice to keep everyone else out. With the wall gone it becomes painfully clear that my wall wasn't keeping them out, they had no interest in climbing over.

Bailed

So they passed the bailout bill....
The stock market is still in a free fall....
What should I be for Halloween?

Forgot the Milk

California lawmakers passed a bill to have a little day of remembrance for Harvey Milk, who was killed in his office back in 1978. The fact that he was gay is probably what got him killed and what drove Arnold to veto this bill. In thirty years we've gone from killing prominent gays to simply ignoring them, we still have a long way to go.

For me the story of Mayor Moscone and Harvey Milk will forever be tied to "I fought the law" by the Dead Kennedys.

I read EVERY newspaper and magazine

Booya! Those nasty left wing lettuce eaters, they think I don't know about stuff, but when asked what magazines and newspapers I read to stay current. I said "all of 'em" shiiiit try ta beat that sucka! Ok so some haters might say thats impossible and that my answer makes it sound like I don't read any, but their just east coast elitist with their hoidy toidy printin' presses an shit. I mean come on if they just wanted some name droppin' I coulda, I do have a degree in journalism. But when big momma S-Rahh is in the hizzie y'all know the only shit gettin' spit be tha trufh. Holla!

I have no idea why I wrote this like this, guess I still miss Tha H-Dog, if anyone wants to buy me this shirt then you'll be my besttist friend forever...ish .