Rode the elevator today with three Freshman boys who joked with one another, “We’re lazy!” They went up one floor. Who am I to rag on someone taking the elevator? Someone with 14, count ‘em 14 flights of stairs. They even walked past the steps 20 yards to get to the elevator. You’re wasting your money with all that Ass, I mean Axe, body spray ya’ll drench yourselves in. Nothing, I mean NOTHING will get you laid like avoiding two flights of stairs. Nothing!
Dear Baltimore Sun, Re: Commenters.
Dear Baltimore Sun,
You should really moderate the comments on your website. They are threatening, poorly written, evenly more poorly reasoned, often racist and usually unrelated to the article they’re attached to. I understand their purpose: to give people a chance to respond and start a conversation. This is a good purpose. This is the best part of this Web 2.0 stuff. And if you moderated them and kept out the irrelevant, threatening, racist ones, this might happen.
But as it stands:
1) You’re paying for webspace and bandwidth for idiots to pontificate and then never come back, which is hardly a conversation. You’re paying for people to generalize about black people, to attack politicians in stupid ways, etc. You’re a newspaper! You’re supposed to edit what you publish!
2) People leave blatantly threatening comments; other people report them (multiple times); you never do anything about it. I assume you have a certain level of editorial integrity, yes? Why publish comments by people who can barely type legible sentences when all that clearly comes across is hate/racism/assholery?
3) There are people like me who refuse to read your website and paper because you seem to endorse this kind of behavior. There are other sources to read the same stories sans mean comments at the end about the kid who got assaulted by a cop, the man killed by an irresponsible truck driver, etc.
4) You lose money.
5) You lose readers and don’t get the news out.
6) 4 and/or 5 mean(s) that your purpose fails.
7) You’re contributing to the climate of idiocy that seems to sweep over Maryland whenever the state’s Republicans don’t get their way in elections.
Please don’t tell me about your belief in Freedom of Speech. Print the F word tomorrow morning if that’s what you’re about. Right there on the front page. And address it to JOHNNY so I know it’s for me. This has nothing to do with Freedom of Speech. It requires accountability, and there is none.
This is really and actually because you either:
1) Think this bullshit is Okay, in which case, I hope your paper fails, personally.
2) You don’t care what people write on your site, in which case, you should hire some bloggers (like me!) to run it for you.
3) You don’t pay any attention at all to what goes up on your own website. That’s just irresponsible to a terrible degree and doesn’t lend you much in the way of credibility and really means your paper should fail.
I look forward to some integrity and discretion from you in the future. And, seriously, thanks for being the only official news outlet to show up for the Ghost Bike last month (and I’m not being sarcastic; no stations came at all, only you).
Thank you,
This Dude
Three days away, and hell breaks loose.
I was out of town this weekend after a crazy week of work, trying not to get sick, having a pregnant wife who was sick, etc. I was offline for 75 blissful hours. We were away at the beach for the weekend (of which I should get some pix up and on Flickr also). But because I missed Monday, the day that some people got back from being away for nearly two weeks, it’s like I missed everything. Luckily, my colleagues have my back.
Why people roll in with a, “Welcome back!” when you miss one freakin day of work after they just missed 5-15 in a row and just happened to get back a day ahead of you if beyond me. Congratulations, yes. You showed up at work. I was en route from the ocean. You are clearly the model peer after whom I should fashion my work ethic.
Okay, rant over. I learned a few things this weekend which some folks might find helpful:
1) Ocean City (Maryland) is freakin far away.
2) Those “Extreme” Blazin Buffalo Wing flavor of Pringles with the hotsauce bottle on the can are amazing and taste like Texas Pete with some salt.
3) Sol is not bad with lime. Better without though.
4) If you eat enchiladas with cheese and you are lactose intolerant and also have double beans (because the rice is made with chicken stock) and three beers for dinner, go sleep alone. (OMG)
5) Leave your datebook home if you go away because it helps you forget all the mounds of shit you have to do when you get back (which I did).
6) Don’t leave your sandals within ten feet of a hose by the beach because some ignorant yuppie will hose down your shoes like a douche.
7) Sand tastes like crap.
8) Just because everyone and their mother swears by a certain breakfast joint, that does not mean that it will not contain rednecks with staring problems, a rude staff, undercooked eggs. I’m not naming names. But the same breakfast joint everyone talks about, yeah, it sucks. Even my dad who’d been there before and used to like it said that it sucked. I eat very quickly, but I’ve never managed to feel so rushed at 10 am on a Monday morning.
9) Jimmy’s Kitchen (on Fenwick Island, Deleware) has excellent omelets.
10) Tequila Mockingbird has very good refried black beans, esp if you use a copious amount of the nice selection of hotsauces on your table.
Mobbies!
Under PERSONAL! (CLICK IMAGE ABOVE OR IN SIDEBAR TO BE TAKEN TO E-VOTING BOOTH!)
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Me, Quincy Bay.
Geez, this is from three years ago when we took a research trip to Boston. This is near where I lived for two happy years, though they were pretty stressful when they were actually happening (MA program, PhD applications, learning to, you know, live on my own, etc.) We went back three years later in fall 2006, and ridiculously little changed. Then another two years later in August 2008, and I missed the subway tokens. And, seriously, I’m not joking, seriously, I almost wept when my favorite cafe’ was empty and gone.
I wish we had time to go to Boston this year. But with Baby coming, making time to travel to Carbondale for dissertation defenses this winter, etc., it just ain’t in the cards anytime soon. Which means that, next time we go to Boston, we’ll take Baby with us. And we can show our son/daughter this little beach that Mommy and Daddy always wished they walked on more than they did. Where we went to school. And, of course, Walden Pond. Maybe some Halloween fun in Salem.
Who’d have thought three years ago we’d be expecting Baby right now?
I don’t know if I’ve ever blogged about it. But until a year ago (and maybe more recently technically since I was so wishy-washy), I was absolutely against us having any children. Any. Ever.
Man, people aren’t shitting you when they tell you how quickly things change.
Mr. T-Rex.
When oh when did dinosaurs stop being cool?
What to do: Rally against rallies?
There are tea-parties wherein critics of the Democratic healthcare plan demonstrate, like liberals like to do — but also like liberals get upset over when anyone who is not a liberal does it. (Wew!) Then there are ill-informed rallies composed of people stepping like sheep because some pundit who fosters their fears told them a bunch of lies that these pundits are certainly not foolish enough to believe on their own (say what you want about Rush and Glenn; they’re not unintelligent men).
Now, as Harrison Price reports from the Washington Post, liberals are stepping down into the mire and using the same fear tactics, the same “with us or against us” tactics, the same logical fallacies employed by the Bush administration that run something like, “If you’re not with us, you think puppies are evil and should be fed to Nazis in the their soup!”
So, regardless on where you stand on healthcare reform, the situation is that the Right is holding rallies, and the Left wants to respond with rallies, all the while urging a civil conversation, or debate at best.
What do we do?
One could argue that our goal is healthcare reform, not to try to bridge the chasm between the parties. That we should pull out all the stops like “they” do. That, frankly, a lot of the people (certainly not all of them) at these rallies are acting on fear and anger and prejudice and a number of other factors that not reasoned thought. That there’s no use in trying to talk to or reason with such people. That we should harness their rage and turn it against our enemies. That “they” started it. That we can do a lot without stooping below “them”. (Not to mention some increasingly typical elitist liberal bullshit that makes me ashamed of my frequently Leftish leanings when I hear it.)
Would escalating the situation fix it? Because, you know. History shows us. This. When people are angry, if you make them more angry, the situation never gets worse, never explodes, always gets better. Wait….
But would a rational conversation (insofar as anyone can have a rational conversation about healthcare anymore) work on anyone who is driven by fear and Limbaugh/Beck or by anger against the Left? I mean, if you bracket moral/ethical concerns or even rhetorical devices like not stooping quite as lowly as your opponent does (yes, I think it can be a rhetorical device, and I’m guilty of using it), should the Left be more concerned with what works and what gets their position into minds and hearts and less about taking whatever moral highground they’re supposed to occupy if they’re civil? I’ve chided Mr. Obama in private for being so danged concerned with not making enemies and getting everyone to agree that nothing is happening after eight months in office. Is being civil worth it? When yelling and manipulation get the job done, should the Left do as the Right has occasionally done (and as the Left has occasionally done, too; make no mistake) and just go all out?
Or is being civil and rational and trying to get “both sides” to work together and probably not really getting anything done right away the way to go? Sure, we might not pass any healthcare reform this year. But if we stay civil, might we evolve a little and work together more and start getting at the fundamental problems with our government? Besides, nothing’s exactly getting done in the currect agitated state of affairs, is it?
Here’s a question for the folks who are frequently on the same side as I am: Do ya’ll really think that fostering anger and fear just because the Right is doing it is going to fix the situation and not just make it a million times worse?
Step step to Herr Glenn Beck.
I love how all these nutjobs are expressing their alleged conservative rage at what a “nazi” Obama is by goose-stepping down the street in Washington when Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh tell them to.
I keep hearing that the “radical left” is in charge. What radical left? Those mincy-mouthed Democrats we elected to do something who haven’t done much of shit? Show me more than a handful of truly radical liberals who do more than just talk!
Obama’s not a citizen. He’s Stalin. He’s Lenin. Hitler. Satan. Did you know the major news networks didn’t report on that rally? Wait, they did. Fox News (God bless ‘em) reported that they were the only ones who covered it. Isn’t that false reporting? Why are these masses feeding on false information, much of which is that the rest of us are fed on false information? Of course the media is biased and stupid. Might that not be part of the continued popularity of blogs? Then you have this little woman who says, “I watch Fox News because I get both sides. With them other networks, you only get one side, and that ain’t right.”
Seriously?
This is all disingenuous bullshit. Few of these people are scared of what they say they’re scared of. They’re scared of the black man in the White House and the Democratic Congress and then go to these pundits to learn what they can say they’re scared of on a banner in public without getting called a redneck. “Nah, I ain’t scerreda Hussein Obama! Imma scerreda socialism!” Do you know what socialism is, why you think it’s so bad — and how far we are from it?
Wow. If we really had the kind of government that these people are so damned scared we have, they would have all been arrested, shot, detailed, deported, etc. Not that I think they should have been. Certainly not. I wish there’d been some “radical liberals” to shout back at them. But what’s a radical liberal look like?
As one Republican Senator put it, Obama is the President. We are Americans. Don’t we want things to go well? At the charge that Limbaugh levied, that he’s abandoning the party, this man responded, “I serve God, not Rush Limbaugh.”
Republicans and sane Conservatives everywhere are uncomfortable with these herds of angry reactionaries, and they should be. While there are certainly irrational jerks on both sides of the aisle, there are also plenty of sensible people who really do want what is best for our country. Is yelling lies and marching with racist banners about the President supposed to help our country? (Is an angry blog post supposed to help?)
And I would say, if you love your country, stop wishing it ill and wasting your time with angry demonstrations that only hurt your own cause. If you love your country, at least learn about what you’re afraid of. If you’re really scared of socialism (for some reason) and bigger government, why does that require racists posters of the President and characterizations of him as an illegal immigrant?
Photo Friday: Plants.
Just before my bike crash, I had a nice evening of coffee and cherry blossoms with my friend.
Photo Friday: Plants.
First Baby G. Image.
Well, not the first, but the first I’m posting on here. Baby looks like she/he wants to hug you in this ultrasound image.
There are pictures of Baby coming.
First ultra-sound this morning. Three pictures! I’ll scan them tonight and put them here/Flickr. Despite twins running in both families, there is “only” one Baby. According to estimates based on female processes, Baby is at 9 1/2 weeks. According to Baby’s size today, he/she is at 10 weeks exactly. We go to Dr. OB Monday morning, so we’ll know more then.
Baby’s heart beats at 167 beats per minute.
Wow.
F in DC, two years ago, and other things.
I like the blues in this shot. That’s all.
And.
Had an event directed toward connecting campus and community tonight, with four higher eds and Central Baltimore. I work at one higher ed as an AmeriCorps type. (Well, I’m assigned there.) My wife works at another of the higher eds. We both had to go to the same event tonight. Professionally. As in, we were separated all night because we were there on business. Each of us. We didn’t even walk up together because I went with someone from my institution (and because we had to score some caffeine first). Bizarre to be physically near but apart from someone you share a bed with. I suppose it was beneficial to have the distance to step back. And to see how awesome my wife is and how…excellent she is at everything she tries to do. Being so close to the awesomeness, it’s not that you/I don’t see it. You/I just see it differently. Details. Not the breadth. That’s what I mean. You know what I mean.
Funny moment: When someone came up to us at the end as we were leaving (we did leave together and ride the bus home together after all), with a furrowed brow and said (tentatively) at the realization that we have the same last name, “You two have a connection….?….” Yeah, like I have a common last night? (I don’t.) Maybe it’s because we’re a different color? I don’t wanna think that. Not tonight.
Other funny moment: My pal ate a pizza with what looked like tiny octopi on it. Pulled one off and ate it and exclaimed, “AGH! This doesn’t taste like octopus!” It was squid. And she knows what octopus tastes like. Oh. My.
Also ran into my favorite socialist bike folks, with a Starbucks cup in my hand. Shame. Seriously.
Art School Conformos.
So I was at a, ahem, local art institute this morning, at one of their on-campus coffee shops. I was surrounded by about two dozen undergraduate art students. It was the one dressed entirely in Abercrombie and Fitch who didn’t look like everyone else. This is funny. At least my pal who is an alum of this school assures me that it goes away as the degree progresses.
I think it’s funny. And, yes. I came through a major with a “uniform,” too. Guess what the Philosophy Major Uniform was in 1997-2001!
Ravens season, chili, new music.
These are things which are awesome today.
Check out new records from Collective Soul, Third Eye Blind, Arctic Monkeys. Also see Shiny Toy Guns, Ashes Divide, Yann Tiersen.
As for my chili recipe, I can’t help you. I don’t think I’ve ever created something that is as universally hailed as my chili. So I have taken to guarding the recipe. It also evolves a little sometimes, with experimenting with different kinds and blends of fresh chili peppers.
(Me in front of Penn Station on a little ride one Sunday morning a few weeks ago. Taken by Mr. Dan.)
Dissertation work, late in the game.
I like my director a lot, but he’s had my draft for months and only two weeks ago gave me feedback on what needs to be done. So we won’t get to defend this fall. But I do have a good direction to be looking, and his feedback was both right-on and well-delivered, i.e., helpful. We have to get our defenses in before Mrs. P gets too pregnant to take the train to Carbondale via Chicago, so I’m cranking out the work.
I’m using Emerson to tie William James’ Pragmatism and Nietzsche’s ideas about energy, drives and sublimation (and how it all relates to hate) to beef up the scholarship. I had a TON of stuff about Nietzsche that I didn’t use because I think scholarship for scholarship’s sake is pointless. But then I remembered what I’m writing. It’s a hoop. The penultimate hoop before the oral/public defense. Still, I think it would be a more robust study with Emerson, so I’m not taking short-cuts and injecting all the scholarly research I have notes on regarding Nietzsche.
I was initially excited because I thought I’d get to spend my fall reading Emerson. But, you know, I have to read all the scholarly stuff and, ahem, do some more writing. So it’s not all fun and awesomeness. But having Baby on my mind, I’m getting more done in the time I have to work than I did when my dissertation was my full-time job three years ago and when there was no fire lit under my ass.
Buzz and run.
So, my old neighbor lives two floors below me now. No one lives in between currently. So when I heard thumping a few weeks ago, I thought someone moved in. No. He’s just such a loud asshole that I could feel it two floors up. He was at it again tonight, with it blowing out the open windows, too. I mean, ten minutes of something awesome like The Clash or Tool or Seal or Neko Case shaking the building I could stand. But this kid listens to some kind of new asshole “rock”. You know that loser band in School of Rock that is soft and sissy but still tries to rock? Yeah, like that. Seriously. Roxette is Metallica next to this shit (and they’re awesome anyway). “Oh, blah blah, me, my heart, oh, girl, oh, oooooooooooy, blaaahblaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!’
I should write him a note about his DUI and freak him out. “Oh, nooooooo. Who is this? How did they know? I’ll never drink again!”
I have taken to buzzing his intercom from the lobby when he’s being an asshole. Why? It’s funny. He’s dumb as a bag of my smelliest turds (OMG). I like to imagine him running to the box, asking, “Hello?” “Did you buzz me?” “Ooga?” He looks like he could kick my ass, so I have to be clever and not get caught laughing my way up the stairs.
We decided tonight that if we get caught, the conversation will go thusly:
“Uh, ooga, did you just buzz my apartment?”
“What?”
“Someone just buzzed my apartment.”
“Um, Okay.”
“Was it you?”
“Have you seen Good Will Hunting?”
“Huh, what, huh, ooga, wah?”
“It’s a movie.”
“No, I like TV a lot, huh huh.”
“Oh, so you never saw it?”
“What? Oh, I think I seen it once, (ooga) at my friend’s house. We were drunk, huh huh. Ooga.”
“Okay. Do you remember that scene where Jackie is telling that story about his uncle and the state policeman? How the officer came to his house wanting to get in his garage?”
“What? Huh huh. Ooga.”
“Well, to quote Jackie: MUTHAFUCKA, I AIN’T NEVAH SEEN YEW IN MY LIFE!”
“What?”
(Snickers from Johnny and Frankie.)
“What?”
(Dribbles as Johnny pisses himself in the elevator.)
“Ooga.”
Maybe I’m cruel. But this piece of loud shit helped us stay sick for a month three years ago by keeping us up all night and drove us insane. And because we didn’t want be the cause of his getting evicted in the winter like the management wanted to do, he was the cause of us having to move in 2007 to another apartment. I could do way worse things than buzz his apartment when he’s blaring his terrible music. I mean, I could do it in the middle of the night when I can’t sleep. I could pee on his door. I could steal a wheel off of his car and leave it jacked up in his parking spot. I could put a porkchop under his doormat at night to drive his dog crazy like I joked about.
Buzzing his apartment and joking with my wife about 90s films and what a caveman this guy is are the least service I can offer to my other neighbors.
Obama sure is evil for talking to kids.
Geezleweez, President Obama sure is evil. Talking to kids. Man, that’s some nerve. He didn’t read them a story through a national disaster, but Okay, I guess talking to them with your own words is a big deal. Huh. Clearly, urging students to take responsibility for their futures is pinko rhetoric and a false diagnosis of how education works. If we taught Creationism and had good, religiously devout teachers in every public school, kids would learn without any effort, right? I think this says it best and without overly politicizing it:
Pittsburgh Public Schools Superintendent Mark Roosevelt told KDKA Radio: “If the president wants to speak to the students of America and talk about the importance of academic achievement and working hard, that is a wonderful thing and ought not to be the subject of debate.” (Source.)
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not worshiping the guy. I wish he had gotten off his ass to so something in the gay rights arena by now (or a few months ago, really), and I’m saddened by the lack of cojones in “the party” on healthcare reform — which is probably more aptly called revision than reform with the way things are going.
Why the hell is the White House not responding more to this minority of crazy far-righties? Are we supposed to be above criticizing other people’s criticism (if you want to call these attacks criticism)? Screw the moral high road. We’re not using guns and bombs but words and legislation. Take the gloves off, man! Mr. Obama is intellectually and rhetorically capable of smashing these goons. I can understand the desire for composure and not becoming the monsters you fight. I do. But where did all the brash liberals go? Have they been they busy helping with Michael Moore’s new film? (Kidding, kidding; they’re around.)
Me, I’m not brash. And, depending who you talk to, too leftist to be liberal or too middle to be liberal. I do have a lot of anarchist and socialist leanings (no, they are not the same thing).
Wall of Chocolate.
In Washington last month, we had a pile of chocolate on the coffee table in our hotel room. We never ate it all and brought it home to put into the candy dish in our apartment. Then the summer finally got hot, and we didn’t feel like eating chocolate. And, being pregnant, F prefers salty snacks and ginger ale right now. With the onset of cooler weather, however, I think the chocolate wall might become bricks in my belly.
A lot of blogs I like are gone.
I’ve been blogging for a long time. Five and a half years. In that time, I’ve come across a lot of blogs that I read. A very large proportion of them are gone. I can’t even link to show where. They’re that gone. This makes me said for some reason.
Also, on the CBS morning show today, they talked about turning thirty (which I did Sunday) and the sun. (Not the crappy Baltimore newspaper.) A scientist mentioned that the sun is about halfway through its “life.” I’m well aware that we’ll probably kill each other and/or destroy the planet long before that. But it’s depressing if you’re a glass half empty kind of person. This time in five billion years, no more sun.
I enjoyed Sol yesterday with family. Fitting.
You are not my boss.
I’m tired of people telling me what to do and then getting pissed off when I don’t do it — or even more angry at me when I get mad enough to raise my voice and assert myself just a little bit. Which I don’t do enough because I am a 30-year-old sissy. Guess what? I’M NOT YOU! I don’t tell anyone what to do or try to make tree-hugging, bike-riding vegetarians out of everyone I know.
Of course, being pregnant, this happens more than usual.
There is a difference between offering advice and telling us what we have to do. You’d think most people would be smart enough to figure this out.
Advice, I like. I’ve gotten and am getting very nice, friendly, helpful advice, even from people who I don’t necessary ask for it from. Advice on what kind of strollers people who like to take walks (like we do) would get use out of; good types of bottles; insight into the different kinds of reusable diapers around; hospitals to seek/avoid. Not to mention the wisdom I’m hoping to soak up from family members I respect and look up to. You know what they don’t do? Tell us what the hell to do. No, we are not getting a fucking car. No, we’re not feeding Baby meat, and you’re not a doctor, so I don’t give a shit what you think (the OB said it was fine). You think we should wait to find out the gender? Good for you. When I already told you we want to know, I wasn’t asking for your advice, and in fact it’s insulting that you think you know what I want more than I do.
I mean, I’m not just being closed-minded when I get pissed off about people thinking they know the best way to raise our child[ren] and that they best way to deliver this “wisdom” is to say, “Don’t give me that shit. You’re X.” You’re such a credit to your child-bearing methods. I’m open to advice but not being told what to do. I’ve succumbed to being told what to do enough times in my fucking life, and parenthood is where it stops.
You know what parellel I’m seeing? People who are being the nicest and the most helpful without being bossy are also people who, in my humble opinion, I consider to be GOOD PARENTS! (My parents included and some friends who are new parents and some people who don’t have kids but who I think would be good parents if they did).