The Post X-Mas Reaction

First off, Happy New Year to everyone. 2006 provided "Everything is A-OK" with 35 posts-worth of idiocy, retardation and anger and, although i'm no psychic, i have a feeling that 2007 won't disappoint. I get this sneaking suspicion that every year from here on out will be ripe with possibilities for cynical commentary and personally i can't wait for a democrat (possibly a black one or a woman) to be president in 2008 and not because everything will automatically become sunshine and puppy dogs. Democratic presidents have left us no shortage of comedy and embarrassment in the last few decades and i imagine this one will be no slouch, whoever it is. But alas, i digress. This particular post is a reaction the the x-mas season that we've just survived. (And no, i don't think calling it x-mas takes Christ out of it. More on this later.)

My first complaint, of course, is that it's been Christmas since Halloween. (My friend Sara gave a first-hand account about this in her blog.) The song is about 12 days of Christmas, not 47. The marketers and the retail corporations have pushed christmas earlier and earlier every year. Why? Because the earlier they get you thinking about it, the earlier you'll start shopping for it. Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving) sales were down this year, want to know why? Because all the people who usually waited for that day to shop had started weeks earlier this year. And what does that do for people who are already a little bah-humbug about the whole thing in the first place? It shuts them off. At least it did for me. I had my head in the sand avoiding Christmas up until about the 22nd, when i absolutely had to start shopping or risk offending my whole family.

And by the time i got to the mall, i had already worked myself into such a bad mood about it that the only thing i could do was walk around the mall brainstorming ideas for people and didn't actually buy a single thing. On the way into the mall, i was lucky enough to find a person backing out of a space on the 2nd floor of the garage, i had about 15 cars stacked up behind me and there were about 18 coming the other way. The people coming down the garage, either leaving or looking for spots themselves, wouldn't stop passing through to let this person back out and leave. So that left me sitting there with my blinker on, traffic backing up behind me, and nervous that someone coming down would stop just long enough to let this person out before whipping their vehicle into my spot. So while i'm sitting there, waiting for the inevitable spot steal move by someone coming the other way, i wandered off into a little day dream about what i would do if my spot was taken. I pictured myself putting my parking brake on, calmly leaving my car running in the middle of traffic, while i walked over to the freshly parked car (i mentally assumed it would be a BMW or Benz), opened the car door for the person, and without hesitation, punched them in the face repeatedly. And when i snapped out of this daydream and pulled into my spot, i consciously thought that there was little doubt in my mind that i would have done just that. Normally you have a little conscience in there that reminds you not to go insane, but mine was on vacation. I honestly didn't have that little voice in there telling me not to hit someone, and it really, truly, seemed like a good idea that i wouldn't have been surprised to see myself follow through. Upon entering the mall and thinking more about that reaction, i was truly shocked at what the "holiday season" had done to me.

My other huge frustration is gift buying. See, i'm not a super thoughtful person, i admit this. I don't know my friends birthdays, i barely know my family's birthdays, and although i'm a creative person and could definitely come up with great gifts every year, i rarely put enough time or effort into it, or start early enough to pull off the "creative, thoughtful, sometimes home-made but really enjoyable gift" thing. So i end up at the mall, 3 days before x-mas with some great ideas but no way to pull them off, and instead i wander around finding gifts that are expensive and yet just good enough for the people i'm buying them for. They're not the perfect gift, but hey, they might like it right? So i find myself in Roxy or Pacific Sunwear or Steve Madden or Best Buy or Nordstrom's or LaCoste buying overpriced things and trying to place a dollar value on my relationship with the person i'm buying for. I found a really nice sweater that i though my sister would love, but i felt myself trying to accessorize it or find something else that would put me closer to the dollar limit i felt my sister was worth. And i pretty much wanted to throw up over that feeling. I also found out that my cousins were buying me gifts personally (traditionally in my family the parents get all the nieces and nephews gifts and the cousins let that suffice, instead of buying an individual gift for all 8 cousins in the family), so immediately i felt obligated to buy them something and broke into a cold sweat over which cousins would be buying me thing personally this year and if i needed to get something for them too.

Last year during x-mas, i was a salaried employee and although i wasn't making a ton, i knew i could spend almost freely on x-mas and be alright. Well this year i'm starting my own business and waiting tables which puts me in a little different tax bracket than i was in last year. So i went into it with a little different frame of mind than usual.

But the whole thing just really turned me off this year. I hated the music, i hated the crowds, i hated that feeling of obligation to buy everyone something, and to decide which friends were "worth it." So in my mind, Christmas was cancelled. I wanted nothing to do with it. And i got that feeling from a lot of my friends and my family too. It was just getting to a point that the tens of thousands of dollars we all cumulatively spent could have been put to better use. I think next year, we'll really cancel Christmas and go on a vacation or spend the money on food and wine so we all sit around a big table and enjoy it.

And it turns out that my christmas didn't end up being so bad, but the events that made it for me weren't the presents at all, but it was x-mas eve when my family came over and drank too much together and laughed and told stories and ate a delicious meal. And it was on x-mas morning when i woke up at 10 and realized that my family had grown old enough that we didn't wake up at 6 and race to the tree anymore. We all wandered into the kitchen where we sat at the table, ate ibuprofen, drank a lot of water (and maybe a bloody mary) and put the delicious casserole that my grandma had given us for x-mas in the oven and didn't start giving each other gifts until almost noon. It was that emphasis on something else, on being friends, on being family that made it for me. It had nothing to do with my gifts or the gifts i gave.

And i propose that everyone who reads this post and realizes that they felt even the slightest bit of agreement with it, that they take a new idea to their families for next year. Let's take the power out of the marketers hands, lets take the the consumerism out of it, lets let Black Friday be Completely Fucking Dead Friday, lets stop shopping, stop being frustrated, stop throwing our hard earned money away on things that people don't need, let's stop trying to place a dollar sign on our friends and family's worth. Let's do something different next year. My family has already thrown the idea out there of taking a trip somewhere together or going skydiving together, just to name a few.

I call it x-mas because it's easier to write. Some people say i'm taking the Christ out of Christmas, and i really could care less because i don't think Christmas has been about Christ in this country for a long time. So take him out, put him back in, whatever, i could care less. But what i do think we absolutely should do is take the capitalism and consumerism out of christmas for good.

Thanks for reading. See you in 2007.

I Don't Know If This Is A Sign Of The Apocalypse or a WTF? Award.

Probably both. Our fearless leader goes to bed before Saddam is executed. Obviously it meant a lot to him.

The WTF? Awards

Since there's a lot of crazy things going on in the world that may not be a sign of the impending apocalypse, i've started the WTF? Awards. Whenever i find something that makes me say, "WTF?" it'll be here. And every few weeks we'll recap and award the best one a winner.

So, without any further adieu, is this what consists of surgery in China? Let's just be glad the dolphins didn't need their colons checked.

The Worst Thing I've Ever Posted

Disclaimer: I've had some drinks, but that's no excuse. The best writers in the world write when inspiration hits, and this is the inspiration i had tonight. So don't consider this an apology, it's just a disclaimer. Take this for what you will. Burn me at the stake in the comments.

Discovering a Garage Sale

It’s a typical night, although not one I had high hopes for. It’s Wednesday and that’s not a popular day for garage sales. Still, I need to support my family and this is how I’ve made my living for the last 6 months. It definitely wasn’t what I had anticipated doing when I crept under that border fence. My wife and child were already here. I got her across when she was 8 months pregnant and I actually thought she would burst right there, right in the back on the truck. She had my son in a nice clean hospital, just like I said she would and now he’s a U.S. citizen, just like I knew he’d be.

So here I am, sitting in the cab of a pickup that by day carries 7 guys and a lot of palm fronds. By night, it carries me and two others and we do a kind of yardwork that is different from the one the fucking gringos pay us so cheaply for. This one is work, and takes patience, but it pays and is just un poquito more exciting.

We’ve been driving for about 2 hours tonight. Since about 11. That’s the cost of doing business. This 1997 white chevy pickup doesn’t get the gas mileage it used to. Still, it has the quietest idle of anything we own and that makes all the difference. We’ve found a few morsels that will tide us over and make good Christmas gifts for the ninos but we haven’t found “cuenta grande” just yet.

There’s a few neighborhoods we prefer. We mow and rake and weed-eat there in the daylight and we learn schedules and we learn habits. Just because we work blue-collar jobs, doesn’t mean we have blue-collar minds.

After scouting a few new places we cruise through familiar territory. Condos with closed garages. Nice places give nice people false security. White people associate ghettos and barrios with crime because of the dingy appearance, but they’re some of the safest neighborhoods in town. We bring the barrios to them.

“There it is,” I say to the driver without the slightest hint of exhilaration. The sight of the open door has become pretty routine. At this hour, there’s always one.

We can mow a half-acre lawn in 20 minutes, we can trim 25 trees, remove all the branches and rake up the shrapnel in an hour, we can clean out a garage in 12 minutes. We know where the good stuff is and we know our demographic. In Scottsdale, golf bags full of clubs fetch a nice price with half-way wealthy white people, work-out equipment, not so much. This place has a snowboard, boots and a roof rack. This town’s average temperature is 78 degrees. We’ll leave those. But we’ll take these power tools and this blowtorch and this bucket full of various nuts, bolts, washers and screws. There’s a day-laborer pick up site at 44th street that will love these. We’ll leave the couches and furniture, they might get money at a sale but they might draw attention moving at 2 a.m.

I don’t like to say Christmas at these jobs. Christmas involves Christ and I don’t think his father would be too proud of me now. But his son would. He was all about helping the poor and needy. Since he hasn’t come back yet, we’re going to help ourselves. I’m sure he’ll understand when he gets here.

Now, usually an open garage means a car is here. But evidence is not something we’re interested in leaving. We’ll leave it alone, unless…yeah, this idiot left the car unlocked. There’s change in the center console, identifying information and titles in the glove box. (Some time’s there are even keys. We’re not in this for grand theft auto, but we know people who are.) And just in case the pinche rich gringo is oblivious to the fortunes he has, we’ll arrange everything nicer than we found it. This car is nice and there’s a key here. We’re not in this for grand theft auto, but we know people who are and this will do nicely. You’d think with skateboards, an iPod, power tools and golf clubs that I wouldn’t be interested in the change in the center console. But that’s where you’d be wrong amigo. 100 pennies make a dollar makes 7000 pesos. That’s worth every penny to me. They say the only reason we’re in America is because we’ll do the work that nobody else will…if that means counting the pennies that nobody else will, then you’ve got me pegged.

In the back seat, there’s an apron. Maybe this person isn’t making that much money after all. Ah fuck him, the servers always make more than me when I bussed tables. With this much stuff, he does fine. There’s a wine key in his apron. Obviously he works at one of those nicer places. We’ll take this too, just to stick the corkscrew into the man’s ribs a bit.

He’ll wake up tomorrow and call the policia. They’ll ask some questions, mainly for insurance purposes and they’ll leave, never to talk again. Even if they find a fingerprint, they’ll never find us. They call it undocumented for a reason.

And we’re off. We’ve taken anything of value to us, but not everything of value to him. He has one of those fancy laser things that keeps the door from closing on cars and kids. If the door is closed in the morning and everything is clean and tidy, nobody will be the wiser for quite a while. This will lead to confusion for the boss, but not for the new owner.

This stuff, along with what we have found the last few nights will make a nice garage sale. And nothing will look better than I can afford. I’m selling their hides back to them and none of them will be any the wiser.

The hours are hard, but it’s worth it. My family is better off, and I’d do anything for my family.

Adam Wright is a frustrated writer and frustrated human who has been shunned and pushed aside by the writing community and then had his car and his garage robbed. He has given up on writing as a profession and embraced writing as a simple hobby, much like knitting or painting. He has no proof or basis of assumption about the perpetrator of his crime, just an idea in his head. And if that makes him a bad person, then that shoe fits.

Today's Sign that the Apoclypse is Absolutely Upon Us

Today's Sign That The Apocalypse is Upon Us

God help the people of North Korea, it's bad enough they live in fear of a nuclear war or barely get more than rice every day but now this?? That's just too much. I'm horrified.

An E-mail I Recieved from My Dad (that i know he didn't write)

On 11/15/06, Craig Wright wrote:
United States of America!
Something to Think About

About the time our original 13 states adopted their new constitution, in 1787, Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh, had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years prior:"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as apermanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up untilthe time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous giftsfrom the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, withthe result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscalpolicy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.""The average age of the worlds greatest civilizations from the beginning ofhistory, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nationsalways progressed through the following sequence
> 1. From bondage to spiritual faith; >
> 2. From spiritual faith to great courage; >
> 3. From courage to liberty; >
> 4. From liberty to abundance; >
> 5. From abundance to complacency; >
> 6. From complacency to apathy; >
> 7. From apathy to dependence; >
> 8. From dependence back into bondage

"Professor Joseph Olson of Hamline University School of Law, St. Paul, Minnesota, points out some interesting facts concerning the 2000 Presidential election:
> Population of counties won by: Gore: 127 million; Bush: 143 million >
> Square miles of land won by: Gore: 580,000; Bush: 2,427,000 >
> States won by: Gore: 19; Bush: 29 >
> Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by: Gore: 13.2; Bush 2.1.

Professor Olson adds: "In aggregate, the map of the territory Bush won was mostly the land owned by the tax-paying citizens of this great country. Gore's territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in government-owned tenements and living off government welfare . . "Olson believes the United States is now somewhere between the "complacency and apathy" phase of Professor Tyler's definition of democracy, with some 40percent of the nation's population already having reached the "governmental dependency" phase.If the Senate grants Amnesty and citizenship to 20 million criminal invaders called illegals and they vote, then goodbye USA in less than 5 years. Pass this along to help everyone realize just how much is at stake, knowing that apathy is the greatest danger to our freedom. It's quite obvious to me that this may very well be happening to our great country right now. If you really look at the figures the two professors quote above, then imagine adding twenty million more voters to those already on government hand-outs of several various and sundry types, then realize that all these voters are going to do everything in their power to continue to protect"their rights," our country is bound to fall under the heavy burden of all the "feel-good" programs. It MUST stop somewhere, and the sooner the better!

MY REPLY:

Well, it says "Something to Ponder" in the subject line so you had to expect that i'd "ponder" it and then construct a rebuttal, hit "reply all" and then "send." I think this little piece makes a very nice point about the life span of a democracy. I would agree completely that abundance leads to complacency and apathy (and also corruption and world-changing arrogance). But the article completely loses me in a few places:

1. Discussing statistics from an election that occurred 6 YEARS AGO! You're kidding right? There have been 3 full elections since then, or did nobody realize that?Of course people on welfare and in the need of the most government assistance voted democrat, they voted for their wallets and their livelihoods. Which is the exact same thing the Republicans voted for: voting for Bush kept the most money in your wallets! Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. Let's not have a double standard here, one standard will do just fine.

2. How poor Professor Olson got mixed up in this, not even he knows. Read this: http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/tyler.asp and find out how many of the statistics and facts in this e-mail are flat out wrong and falsely attributed to Olson.

Even if completely false, taken on its face, what a negligent statement to say that the people who voted for Bush pay taxes, while the people who voted for Gore don't. That's a pretty vague, biased, generalistic and obviously untrue statement, don't you think? I think if you were to add up the amount of money the Gore voters who didn't pay their taxes owed, and compare that with the amount of non-competition bids, tax-protections, kickbacks, reliefs and wind-falls that the friendly Bush corporations got, well, never mind, it's too obvious.

3. Who are the complacent and apathetic people in this country? Is it the illegal immigrants who are washing your Hummer H2, mowing your lawn, raking your gravel, preparing your food, cleaning your house, ironing your suits, working in the factories that keep the costs of the goods you buy down? Is it the people who risk their lives again and again to come to the land of opportunity and do the jobs us snobby Americans refuse to do in order to get their own children and families out of poverty? Or is it the American citizens who after years of good fortune and "I'm king of the world" status have become the most obese and wasteful country in the world, more than half of whom refuse to vote on their own election days, who allow great injustices to happen in the world, who let their constitution and bill of rights be desecrated by a corrupt administration while they yawn, scratch their full stomachs and turn the channel to Dancing with the Stars? Who are the complacent and apathetic ones hurrying this country towards it's downfall? Really take a moment to think about that one.

One of the major symptoms of a failing empire is when the land-owning, gentrified aristocracy start blaming the peasant workers for their problems. (see: Rome, Greece, Ottoman Empire, Hitler blaming Jews for Germany's problems, etc.)

4. And finally, i know it's an e-mail that someone on unemployment probably wrote while sitting in his pajamas at 3 p.m. on a Tuesday, but come on. "Goodbye USA in less than 5 years"? Are you high? If there had been e-mail in the 20s and 60s, then I'm sure the same ignorant thing would have been said when we, as a country, decided that it was OK for women and blacks to vote. That didn't kill this country and neither will illegal immigration. Apathy and complacency will kill this country and if you're looking to the border for that, you won't find it. The only place you need to look to find apathy and complacency is squarely into the mirror.

Hope everyone has a great day!

Yay for US

While we're all celebrating Veteran's Day, here's some fun. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-civilians10nov10,1,3364527.story?coll=la-headlines-world

Fox News reporter gets Tortured, but not

They should do this to everyone at Fox News. I got dibs on holding the hose on Bill O'Reilly.

But seriously this dipshit reporter remarks at the end of the video that he was willing to confess to anything they wanted just to get them to stop, but it wasn't torture cuz he was all peachy just a few minutes later. Well that sounds like a great technique doesn't it asshole? We're going to get a false confession, send the person to prison without a lawyer or trial or even contact with the outside world but he should write his captors a "thank you" note for not torturing him. Aren't we a stand up country? What a bunch of friggin hypocrites.

I was so happy today because the Democrats have the majority back, Arizona didn't pass it's gay marriage amendment and it finally seems like the people have been standing up and saying they've had enough. But this just shows you how little power we have right now and that the democrats really won't do a much better job of not screwing up than anyone else.

This world is a really awful place to be sometimes.

Today's Sign that the Apocalypse is Upon Us

This is by far the saddest thing i've posted lately. Maybe ever.

Today's Sign That The Apocalypse is Upon Us

"Come on judge, she was asking for it?!?"

Protection from a Cranky President

Alright, i've had a little more time to review this "Military Commissions Act of 2006" that was passed so quietly that "you could hear the yawn across the country as people turned to Dancing With the Stars."

I could probably break down each part and the reasons why it's unconstitutional and completely frightening but that would be 35,000 words and nobody would read it. So here is the scariest part:

Section 948a of title 10 of the United States Code, as added by the Act, defines an "unlawful enemy combatant" as:
`(i) a person who has engaged in hostilities or who has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States or its co-belligerents who is not a lawful enemy combatant (including a person who is part of the Taliban, al Qaeda, or associated forces); or
`(ii) a person who, before, on, or after the date of the enactment of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, has been determined to be an unlawful enemy combatant by a Combatant Status Review Tribunal or another competent tribunal established under the authority of the President or the Secretary of Defense.

The second section is the important one. This basically says that the President or Secretary of State (two of the most mentally unstable dudes in the country) can assign a tribunal to declare anyone an unlawful enemy combatant. On it's face, this seems like an extension of the Patriot Act and a semi-useful tool against terror suspects. Look just a bit under the surface however and this pretty much allows Bush or Rumsfeld to detain, without counsel, anyone they choose.
The writers of the constitution set in that document the idea that they would protect the country's citizens from a cranky leader. That is, the king couldn't just pass rules or put people in jail because he felt like it. That's why the U.S. has things like Habeas Corpus, due process, probable cause, Miranda warnings, the right to a lawyer and speedy trials by a jury of your peers. This new law, passed with minimal fanfare, takes all that away from us. If Bush has a tummy-ache or Rumsfeld goes completely psychotic, that they can appoint a tribunal of their own stooges and put anyone in jail at any time, for any reason and for any length of time, and without declaring them guilty of any specific crime.
Imagine this if you will: It's 2008 and Bush and his buddies decide that too many of the things they set out to accomplish when they were elected in 2000 haven't been accomplished (denying civil rights, killing women and children, ruling the world, lining their pockets with oil money, etc.). So they decide they're just going to stay in office. The people would revolt, right? (Let's hope anyway.) But any revolution or outcry this would cause could be absolutely quashed because the president and the secretary of state have the power to declare any citizen, any revolutionary, any member of any other political party as an enemy combatant and throw them in jail. The army and the police, if they valued their jobs, would have to comply. Overnight this country could become a police state with thousands, if not millions, in jail for made-up crimes, never to see a trial. They'd be political prisoners.
Now that may be an extreme example, and even my radical mind can't imagine this actually happening, but to me it's absolutely petrifying that there is even the slightest possibility. Sure, it could happen even if this law hadn't been passed but now we've basically given the fuckers PERMISSION TO DO IT! It wouldn't be absolutely legal.
What we've done is pass a law that removes the checks and balances on the executive branch. And we've torn down the things that were meant to protect us against a cranky president. If Bush is in a bad mood (he's out of fruit roll-ups, he can't beat a level on Mario Bros., etc.) and ends up reading this blog, i could be meeting some new friends in Guantanamo by Friday and he would be well within his rights to do it. Let's just hope they put me on the top of the naked-guy torture pyramid...
Good luck to us all.

The Day Habeas Corpus Died

This was sure slipped through quietly. I actually read a variety of news sources during the day and i missed this completely.

I'll post a more detailed position on this when i've had a chance to digest it a bit.

Profound

No wonder our sense of beauty is distorted.

Some Truly Horrifying Shit

I’m on my way home from Pinedale, Wyoming, where my family has had a cabin for 10 years now. It used to be an awesome escape to a little town of 1,200 that just built their first movie theater less than 5 years ago. But recently a huge natural gas deposit was found near our house and over the next 10 years, they will drill more than 10,000 wells and completely ruin my neighborhood, the hunting, fishing and quaint little small town feeling. Actually, the small town feeling is already ruined. See, when they do these things, they do environmental impact studies and they tell everyone that despite the ugliness of the wells, it’s really not going to hurt the land that much, the animals will be fine, etc. But they don’t talk about the impact on people. When you build that many wells, you need a ton of manpower and equipment. And when you bring hundreds of men into a town without hundreds of single women, you’re absolutely asking for trouble. Crime is up, violent crime is up. You don’t recognize people in town. It’s downright scary going to what used to be friendly, neighborhood cowboy bars. May my town rest in peace.
But this wasn’t meant to be an indictment of the murder of small-town America, although we could certainly talk for day about that.
What struck me as interesting during my visit were all of the Halliburton vehicles driving around town. I guess what really caught me by surprise was my underestimation of the size of that company. They have vehicles and equipment being blown up in Iraq daily, they have contractors and employees being kidnapped, killed, beheaded and ambushed all the time and yet, on the other side of the world in Wyoming, it’s just business as usual.

And I’m trying to duplicate this conversation that I had with my dad about it. And I can understand that it’s just so hard to wrap your brain around after all that you’re taught in schools and you hear in the mainstream media and you try so hard to believe in the ideals of this country that this stuff couldn’t be true. But if you look at the facts on some of this stuff, it’s just shocking and overwhelming and completely frightening. It’s the feeling that no matter what we do, no matter how we vote or how we live, that we’re just completely outnumbered and basically, fucked. It’s a tough thing to realize that you really can’t do anything about it. It’s a horrible thing for me to say, but I honestly believe that what’s going on in this world is too big for us to stop. It’s out of our hands. Thanks for playing, please come again. The status quo is too entrenched, the wheels are already in motion.
The oil companies posted record breaking profits last year in the 10’s of billions of dollars. Exxon made $28 billion in profits alone. That’s not just revenue…that’s money they made above and beyond the massive expenses of that company. During that entire time, Americans were caught at the pumps complaining about gas prices. Now I’m a fan of the laws of economics, so I’m not saying that Exxon shouldn’t have priced competitively and made as much money as humanly possible, because that’s the idea behind business. You make as much as you can. But, what I am saying, is that when you look at those numbers, and you look at the people who stand to benefit from those numbers, it’s not a big surprise why we’re fighting where we are fighting and why we are willing to put up with death and destruction and human rights travesties and all the other byproducts of this war. Because the war is still profitable.
How many trucks does $28 billion in profits replace? How many pieces of equipment? How many lobbyists? How many government officials? How many soldiers and officers can be promised high-ranking security jobs? How many terrorist attacks can you afford? (And that includes 9-11, because it cost a few thousand lives, 4 planes and a few really nice pieces of real estate. Add that up and it was a fucking drop in the proverbial $28 billion dollar bucket. I hate to minimize that event in those terms, but that’s what they’re doing, so for the sake of this argument, I must as well.)
And most importantly, how many deaths does $28 billion in profits get you? And it may make you sick to the very core of your stomach to think of death in terms of cost, but that’s how those companies and this government is looking at it. It’s just the cost of doing business for them. It’s the reality of the situation that people are going to die. The companies (and we’ll go ahead and lump the government under the “company” umbrella from now on, because they are one.) will pay the families, express their pseudo-condolences, pretend on their faces that they’re actually upset and that something needs to be done, but in their minds, in their board rooms, in their corner offices, there is a chart, a cost-benefit analyses, a return-on-investment breakdown that puts a price on those lives and determines just how many they can lose before the profit dries up. And I don’t know if most of us even want to fathom that number. It’s high. If I had to guess, I’d say somewhere in the hundreds of thousands.
When I had this conversation and swished these things around in my brain for a while, the statement was made, “I have to believe that if there was a better way. If there was a renewable energy source, if there was a way to quench this thirst, a way to market new energies that would be cheaper, easier to use, better for our environment and would reduce our dependence on foreign oil and make us safer that we would do it.” And I can’t blame that person for making that statement. Because that thought is based in the ideals and the values that we’re all brought up with. We’ve read them in our textbooks, been told them by our parents, politicians and priests. We’ve bought into them, and none of us are at fault for wanting to believe that the people in power really are doing the best they possibly can to move America forward. But they’re not. Because there is no money in it.
And it’s too hard and scary and dangerous anyway to even think about doing it differently. There is very little doubt in my mind that the brilliant minds in this country have thought up and attempted to develop at least 50 different ways -- if not more -- to completely relieve our dependence on oil and I feel strongly that the oil companies, the power companies, the powers in this country didn’t hesitate a bit to buy that idea and bury it. Why wouldn’t they? The money is in the status quo. Always has been. For these companies, there is no benefit in them finding a new way to do it. You find me a company who has changed and adapted and grown into new technologies and new ways to do things; better, cleaner, healthier ways to do things and has stayed relevant over the last 50 years. It hasn’t happened. Sure, there have been plenty of companies in business that long, but they’re all still using the core ideas and philosophies of their original business. When someone finds something new and better, they don’t bring it up in an old company. They start (or buy) a new one. Google, Microsoft, Saturn, Gateway. All had a new idea, and did it themselves (and even now those companies are getting old and slow and they’re the ones buying the new ideas ie youtube). Research and development of new ideas takes forever, costs a lot and there’s no guarantee of any money in it. That’s a basic business tenet. So tell me what incentive Exxon, Shell, BP or Halliburton has to do it any different? None.
It’s absolutely easier and safer for them to maintain the status quo. Do you think the government is going to make them? They own the government, democrats and republicans alike. They own this war. They’re bloody fingerprints are all over it.
The only reason America is in Iraq is to maintain that status quo. Those companies and this government -- that they own and influence -- is only in that country because there is a monetary interest in being there. Their return on investment will be so massive when Iraq settles down. And if it costs billions of dollars in equipment and thousands of lives, fine. I guarantee you it’ll be worth it financially to them. Would they like it to be all settled now? Sure, but I’d like my Microsoft stock to go through the roof right now. Will it? No, but I’m in for the long haul because it’s worth it. The only difference between them and me is the scale of it.
And if you think for a second that what I’ve said about ROI being the only reason we’re there, answer me this. Why don’t we have a standing army of 100,000+ in Darfur? How about in Somalia? Ghana? The Ivory Coast? The Congo? Russia? Why aren’t we there? The same things that happened in Iraq are happening in those places. Actually most of those places are definitively worse. (The people of Iraq were probably in less danger of dying horrifically before we got there to be honest. But that’s another blog, for another time.) But the bottom line is that we’re not in those other places because there’s not enough money to be made there. In the business world, they would say that those places carry a negative cost-benefit analysis.
What I’ve said is not hard to understand, it’s not radical and it’s not all that revolutionary. It’s basic business. It’s free trade. It’s the basis for all that we accept. And that’s the truly scary part.

The NL West

Ok, i know this post is only going to matter to a few people, but they are some pretty important people. Baseball is important. Maybe not to you, but to some people it absolutely matters. And if you're not one of those people, you're going to have to learn to understand someday.
The most unreasonable thing happened today in sports since Peyton Manning became the star of at least 9 commercials in a row (the one with that fake mustache being the most pathetic of them all. Seriously, is he so desperate to look human that he's begging us to like him during every single commercial break?) Two teams from the painfully mediocre NL West made the playoffs. The Padres were in 3rd place most of the year, then the Dodgers lost 11 straight right after the all-star break, then fought into first place by winning 18 of 19 and then capped off that run but losing like 9 in a row after that.
For a while the top 4 teams (out of 5) in the division were seperated by only 1.5 games...which was really amazing if only for its sadness.
For those of you who don't know, the NL (national league) is made up of 3 divisions (East, West and Central) and the west was without a doubt, the worst of the three. And yet somehow, they have contributed 2 teams into the playoffs.... It's absolutely wacky.
The AL East has the Yankees, Red Sox, Blue Jays and Orioles. Now the Orioles have blown since before the Palmeiro/Sosa steroid debacle of '05 BUT the rest of their division has still been made up of pretty amazing ball clubs on paper. Meanwhile, the NL West has been completely horrible for a good while, rarely fielding a team with a few wins over .500, but the AL East has been great, with ball clubs with winning records and relatively amazing players. So they get only 1 team in the playoffs this year, but the NL West gets 2??? It's like Jerry Colangelo (former owner of Dbacks), Jerry McMorris (maybe still Owner of the Rockies) and Bud Selig made some kind of blood pact that actually came true.
I'm going to go watch Field of Dreams and Rocky 2 and actually believe that those stories came true, because they would be as likely as the NL West fielding not one, but 2 playoff teams.
And that will conclude my first and only baseball post of this year, unless some amazing World Series ensues, like the NL West opponent beating the Yankees in the World Series with a bloop single against Mariano Rivera on the last out of the 7th game of the World Series, 3 weeks after a terrorist attack kills at least (but not more than) 5,000 people in NYC and only if Jay Bell scores the winning run. (God bless Luis Gonzales)
God bless the D-backs. May they R.I.P.

Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

I recently finished reading this book by Robert Pirsig and for most of the 420 pages, i really didn't know what the point was or what i was looking for. Still it was a good book and i would suggest it to anyone willing to take the time and put in the effort to understand a pretty deep and detailed piece of work. A few passages stuck out at me and i wanted to take the time to flesh them out a little further.The author speaks of gumption, an old, underused word which he defines as the desire to complete a task in the most quality way possible. He spends a portion of the book defining the different types of gumption traps, or in other words, the obstacles in the way of you completing a task in the most quality way possible

p. 315 - Anxiety, the next gumption trap is sort of the opposite of ego. You're so sure you'll do everything wrong you're afraid to do anything at all. Of this, rather than "laziness," is the real reason you find it hard to get started. This gumption trap of anxiety, which results from overmotivation, can lead to all kinds of errors of excessive fussiness. You fix things that don't need fixing, and chase after imaginary ailments. You jump to wild conclusions and build all kinds of errors into the machine because of your own nervousness. These errors, when made, tend to confirm your original underestimation of yourself. This leads to more errors, which lead to more underestimation, in a self-stoking cycle.

This particular anxiety trap struck a chord with me, especially of late. When i left my job, i had this grand -- yet obviously delusional -- idea that i would just sit on my laptop and write. I had so many ideas of things to say and topics to discuss when i was stuck in that cubicle that i felt the only thing i had to do was open up microsoft word and it would all pour out and pretty soon people would offer me large sums of money to continue gushing about any topic i felt like writing about. I obviously thought wrong.The thing about my life so far, is that i've realized i'm really only talented at one thing: writing. That and a quarter won't get me a cup of coffee anymore. You have to be a self-starter, you have to be driven and multi-task in a multitude of mediums. You have to be able to market yourself, you have to be confident that your stuff is good and that everyone else is missing out on something spectuacular by not reading what you have to say but you also have to be self depricating at the same time. Well, from what i've noticed lately, the only thing i know how to do worth a shit is write. And i haven't even been very good at that lately. I'm not working at it, i'm not sending out samples and clips, i'm not e-mailing my blog topics to other bloggers, i'm not even working at getting a job writing. At first i thought it was laziness. Then after reading Pirsig's book, it occured to me that it was almost entirely anxiety. It's pretty pathetic to talk about, and even worse to post online for my friends and family to see, but i'm honestly so petrified that i'm doing everything wrong, or that i'll fail when i try to strike out on my own, that i'm doing nothing instead. I have fallen into that gumption trap and it is keeping me from my dreams. It is wasting a lot of time too. Moving on.
I talk about needing to find an "enabler." Someone who is the a-type personality who makes plans and executes them. A partner like that would help me enact these ideas and philosophies and dreams i have. But that sounds more like a babysitter to me, and the bottom line is that eventually you have to man up, take a chance and get something done yourself. Otherwise you get to wallow in mediocrity your whole life. No thanks.

The author then talks about inner peace which is a peace that has no direct relationship to external circumstances.

P. 295 - I've sometimes thought this inner peace of mind, this quietness is similar to if not identical with the sort of calm you sometimes get when going fishing, which accounts for much of the popularity of this sport. Just to sit with the line in the water, not moving, not really thinking about anything, not really caring about anything either, seems to draw out the inner tensions and frustrations that have prevented you from solving problems you couldn't solve before and introduced ugliness and clumsiness into your actions and thoughts.

I don't think there is any real mystery about why i liked this passage, being a fisheman and all. I felt that inner peace on my last trip to Alaska and that is without a doubt why i needed to go. So much so that i quit in order to be able to go. I had hoped that it would follow me home and remain with me for a while but the stress of travelling and the typical nonesense associated with arriving home after 8 days with things to clean, bills to pay, etc. just thrashed that whole inner peace feeling that allows good thoughts and things to happen. Of course you don't need to go fishing to achieve that feeling. Some people can do it by reading or writing or sitting quietly, but i feel like we don't do it enough at all anymore. I don't just sit and eat breakfast quietly, i have the TV on. I don't just go running or work out with a clear head, alone with my own thoughts. I take my iPod. I don't travel with just a book in hand or with a pad of paper. I take my laptop and watch movies. And i honestly think that this attachment to constant entertainment is an extension of what i spoke about above. It's an anxiety blocker. If i don't have to be alone with my own thoughts then they can't scare me, i can push away the realities i don't want to face, i can fill my mind with the useless drivel of Meet the Fockers and ignore the truths i should be facing. I never looked at it as a crutch, but it's becoming more and more obvious to me that it is. Lately i've had a strong yearning to sell my plasma TV for 30 cents on the dollar, ditch my Cox bill forever and only maintain one, small TV with a DVD/VCR combo and only really watch a movie when it's raining or there is a riot outside. I've never felt like more of a slave to an appliance then i have with this TV. It's been nothing but trouble and expenditures and i'm addicted to it and it's keeping me from the potentially good things. I'll never part with my iPod but i feel that is in a somewhat different category. You can passively listen to music and actively be thinking about better things. Or you can actively listen to great music that will make you pursue quality when you are done listening to it. I could live with just my iPod. I could live with just my laptop too, because some pretty damn good things have come out of it, but it's a matter of discipline to keep it from being a distraction at the same time.

Then the author rides his motorcycle out of a big town -- relative to where they've been travelling -- and he talks about loneliness.

P. 356 - Lonely people back in town. I saw it in the supermarket and at the laundromat and when we checked out from the motel. These pickup campers through the redwoods, full of lonely retired people looking at trees on their way to look at the ocean. You catch it in the first fraction of a glance from a new face - that searching look - then it's gone.We see much more of this loneliness now. It's paradoxical that where people are the most closely crowded, in the big coastal cities in the East and West, the loneliness is the greatest. Back where people are so spread out in western Oregon and Idaho and Montana and the Dakotas you'd think the loneliness would have been greater, but we didn't see it so much.The explanation i suppose, is that the physical distance between people has nothing to do with loneliness. It's psychic distance, and in Montana and Idaho the physical distances are big but the psychic distances between people are small, and here it's reversed.There's this primary America of freeways and jet flights and TV and movie spectaculars. And people caught up in this primary America seem to go through huge portions of their lives without much consciousness of what's immediately around them. The media have convinced them that what's right around them is unimportant. And that's why they're lonely. You can see it in their faces. First the little flicker of searching, and then when they look at you, you're just a kind of an object. You don't count. You're not what they're looking for. You're not on TV.

This one doesn't need a whole lot of explanation and it's one of the few areas in the book where the author actually takes a tone of judgement about the current state of life. But it's not the TVs and the jets themselves that are to blame. It's the way we've been conditioned to think about those things in compartmentalized ways. I was talking to a friend yesterday who has been making friends on-line. Not a dating site or a myspace, but on Craigslist. I had no idea that type of thing even happened on that site, but miraculously, just as easily as you can sell a couch or a used car, you can find a friend. Someone to work out with, couples for other couples to go do to dinner with, someone to carpool with or form a book club with. When i asked why you couldn't just strike up a conversation with someone at the gym or at the bookstore, the friend said, "That's creepy." And i'm utterly shocked but i can't say that i'm surprised in the slightest. When i was younger and AOL was paid for by the hour, it was the weirdest and most foreign thing in the world to meet face-to-face someone that you had talked to online. In fact, it was downright scary. Now it has replaced face-to-face conversation as the "normal" way to meet people. It has gone so far that if someone strikes up a conversation with you at the grocery store, or a restaurant, then they are "creepy" but someone posting an ad for themself and you answering it and hanging out with them is the most normal and safe thing in the world. How did meeting online become more normal than shaking hands and saying nice to meet you? I'm not sure i'm ready to live in that world.

The author refers to college and the university enviroment as the Church of Reason.

P. 390 - The Church of Reason, like all institutions of the System, is based not on individual strength but upon individual weakness. What's really demanded in the Church of Reason is not ability, but inability. Then you are considered teachable. A truly able person is always a threat.

Even though this book was written in 1975, this seems even more true today. Including the college comments, which i believe to be true, this seems to be symptomatic of other things in our culture. Shows like Surivor and Big Brother and other reality shows encourage contestants to band together against the strong contestants. In the business world, talent gets abused instead of cultivated and cheap distractions and overzealousness become rewarded. Politicians don't actually say what they believe, they say what keeps them in their jobs. Pander to the middle, and you'll always get paid.

If you've made it this far in the post, congratulations. That is all.

The War on Terror, and How We're in Deeper Shit than Ever Before

Back in 2004, i wrote this column for the ASU State Press:

I’m not exactly sure how to say this without tempting the Campus Republicans to lynch me publicly from an umbrella in front of Einstein’s Bagels but I think that the War on Terrorism is making things worse. There, I said it and now that it is out in the open I can process it a little better. All around the world (even in Montana) our terrorist enemies are talking to God on their two-way radios and teaching their children how America is the enemy and how they will be rewarded for killing infidels, which I’m sorry to say, is all of us. These children will grow up and most likely take up arms against us because they hate us for our freedom and our prosperity and our Gucci backpacks and Burberry headbands. Something obviously needs to be done about these people and it is being done with varying degrees of success. However I can’t help but feel that all of our aggression is forming a new breed of terrorist that will grow up hating us because one of our bombs missed and hit his house while he was eating dinner and killed his mom and his little sister. Or his dad lost his job as a truck driver once Halliburton came in to help rebuild the country and he was killed at the Iraqi police station while applying for a job. This new breed of terrorist isn’t motivated by virgins or martyrdom, he’s motivated by vengeance. He’s motivated by something that we as Americans will rarely be motivated by. Unlike us, he gets to see the faces of the dead, he lives in the war and his biggest concern on the way to school is not finding parking but dodging bullets. While our government won’t even allow us the reality of viewing pictures of the coffins of dead U.S. soldiers, these people are given the privilege of digging through the rubble of their home in hopes to find enough of their family members to bury. The website www.iraqbodycount.net estimates that over 12,000 civilians have been killed in military intervention in Iraq. That is 12,000 moms, dads, brothers and sisters who have left survivors behind who now have a new reason to hate America. If someone murdered your family (even by accident) you would want justice. I supposed that is what got us here in the first place but would you feel justified in killing three of them for every one of us. That is exactly what has happened. If you don’t see their faces, if you don’t see them as people who get up in the morning and go to work and have the same basic concerns and desires as all other human beings then you don‘t have as much of a problem hearing about their deaths in enormous numbers. The people who hate this country are multiplying exponentially every time they look for a culprit and see an American flag. I’m not saying that we should leave the terrorists to their own devices and turn a blind eye but we are hurting our own cause by not doing the job the right way. Why add fuel to an already raging oil well fire?

And now the New York Times has released this report by the National Intelligence Council that confirms what i've been saying for quite some time now.

Damn, i hate being right.

Jesus Camp : Today's sign that the apocalypse is upon us...

Holy shit. (Literally...)

Keith Olbermann is my favorite

At first, i was sad when he quit Sportscenter, but now i couldn't be happier. His show is consistently hilarious and he puts to task the people who need it the most.

Olbermann comments on 9/11

Ben Dubin Video Montage

This is only a small sample of what it's like being Ben Dubin's roommate. In reality, it's actually much, much more "entertaining" than this. (Kudos to Cameron for cannonballing Tequila at the end to ease his pain.)

Today's sign that the apocalypse is upon us

Martha Stewart can show him how to take it off... Attention high school kids, don't rob the Smoothie king.

"I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of 'conservatism.'" - Arizona Senator, Barry Goldwater

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." - C.S. Lewis

It's getting to be about voting time again (Sept 12) and no matter how you feel about "adult-oriented businesses," I think anyone who reads what I have to say would agree that we have to keep the government at bay when they attempt to push their "idea" of morality on us. We decide for ourselves where to spend our money and what small-businesses to support, we don't need Mary Manross (who blushed at the words "Pink" and "Taco" when placed together) telling us what to do. The Scottsdale City Council spent taxpayer money to hire a lawyer from the Alliance Defense Fund to write the ordinance that will put Scottsdale strip clubs out of business. Nothing against my Christian friends, because I assume they are all more enlightened than the people behind this, but taking a backhanded approach to putting a business you find offensive out of business is NOT the role of government, at least not a tyrannical one. (And why the problem now? These business have been open in the same locations for decades and now, all of a sudden, they're hurting Scottsdale's image? Sounds shady to me. And the alleged "image" of Scottsdale is not as squeaky clean as the politickers would imagine it to be in the first place, but that's another blog, for another time.)

Whether or not you would ever consider frequenting one of these establishments and regardless of how you view them morally, this is not a moral issue. This is about government railroading a business out of town and as Americans, as free thinkers and as defenders of the constitution, we are all obligated to vote NO on 401.

Additional reading:
http://www.azcentral.com/news/columns/articles/0831sr-roberts0831Z8.html
http://www.azcentral.com/community/Scottsdale/articles/0908churchpower0908.html
http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/index.php?sty=55141
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0831sr-stripdebate31-ON.html

McDonald's. So your fat kid can drive a gas guzzling car too.

Alright, here's the Andrew Thomas story i've been talking about for a while. The reason it has taken me so long to write is that i had a job. Now that that's out of the way, i have time to write this story.

Full disclosure: My dad and uncles are part owners of Ajo Al's Mexican Cafe. Without going into too much detail, they're essentially stock holders. They invest and have zero to do with the day to day operations of the restaurant. Moving on.

Andrew Thomas is the Maricopa County Attorney and has recently made news because he has issued charges against the owner of Ajo Al's, Pat Daines, as well as the investors because of "health violations." This is not only unprecedented but what he alleges is entirely unproven by scientific evidence. I'll let this article explain the rest of the details. By the way, this article was in the Arizona Republic and is re-posted on the blog of a lawyer who specializes in Shigella cases. You can't even call him an ambulance chaser, because there's rarely an ambulance involved in food poisoning. Ass.

So since Andy decided to make up laws and ways to prosecute them, i thought i'd take a look at some of his other wise decisions while acting as prosecutor to our fine county.

Andy approves lucarative contracts to his old law firm.

Andy and Joe Arpaio get into bed together.

Andy charges illegal immigrants with smuggling themselves. (And then a judge rightfully dismisses the charges.)

Andy refuses to uphold law or do his job.

Andy loves kickbacks.

In the end, the restaurant has defended itself and appears to be surviving. But still, the owners have had warrants out for their arrests, have turned themselves in and have been fingerprinted and had mugshots taken...This is the equivalent of owning stock in the P.F. Changs Corporation and being arrested when one restaurant has a violation. In other words, it's retarded.

Now, i know a few things about photoshop, and they must have been working on a government super-computer to make this pig look good. Any decent computer would have made like a Dell laptop and set itself on fire before it allowed this to happen.


(I like to live my life with equal doses of intelligence and superficiality. It keeps things fresh. Like swimming back and forth from the deep end to the shallow end.)

There are a few brands that have managed to become so pervasive that they have injected themselves into the common lexicon. When you have left-over food, you put it in a plastic container of some kind. What's it called? Tupperware. It's a brand name, but we use it to describe all plastic containers that hold food. My dad's company has a product that is a thousand times better than Tupperware. It's called Lock & Lock and i still call it Tupperware. When you cut yourself you get a ... band-aid. Another brand name. When i was a kid and i wanted to sugary carbonated beverage i asked for a Coke. I really wanted Dr. Pepper, but i said Coke because i thought that was the generic term for the beverage. Chap-stic, Kleenex, and recently, Google. I think the first time i heard it, regretably, was when i saw that horrible Jennifer Lopez movie, Maid In Manhattan. She told her kid that he could Google something when he got home. And honestly, at the time, i thought that Google paid for the placement in the movie...now it's something we say all the time. Even if my homepage is set to Yahoo (which it was until this week) i would still say that i had googled it.

Well, apparently Google would like us to stop doing this.

It really doesn't make any sense to me from a marketing and branding standpoint. Why wouldn't you want your company to be the only thing people say and think when referring to a product that may have huge competition (like search)?

Apparently AOL and iPod also have a problem with this...are these people stupid? And why are these once "cool" companies losing their cool?

I'll have more time to post soon. Things are in motion to give me PLENTY of blogging time. Too much really.
Alright, here's today's sign that the apocalypse is absolutely, without a doubt, upon us: 30 Percent of Americans don't know what year September 11th occured in.

And if you're reading this, and you're part of that 30%, first watch this, and 2nd, get the fuck away from me.

I'm not linking it because i think it's 100% true. I'm just linking it because it wouldn't surprise me.

I've been out of town and haven't had a ton of time to work on this, so here's a quick one.
This week's sign that the apocalypse is upon us:
By JOANN KLIMKIEWICZ
Hartford Courant
July 26, 2006, 12:02 PM EDT

The video clip opens with the school's mascot logo bouncing across the screen before a saccharine female voice states plainly, "The University of Kentucky Wildcats."

Out rolls a montage of cheering fans, a waving mascot and an ecstatic basketball player scoring -- all interspersed with shots of smiling children decked in Kentucky blue and cuddling Wildcat stuffed animals."Basketball," the voice-over coos.

This is Team Baby Entertainment, a line of sports-themed DVDs meant to start collegiate fans young - that is, before they can even wrap their tiny mouths around the words, Go Team! "To parents, their children are obviously the most important things to them," says Team Baby founder Greg Scheinman. "So they want to be able to offer products to their children that can potentially make them smarter or more athletic or closer to their parents. "These are all positive things. As long as they're done responsibly."Scheinman is tapping into what's proving to be a lucrative, if controversial, market of products geared to infants and toddlers.

Never mind that they can't walk or talk. This niche has tremendous buying power. And advertisers and manufacturers are homing in like never before, expecting only more market growth, industry observers say.Trendy clothing, tot-friendly snacks, educational videos, even personal-care products -- all specifically tailored for and marketed to the under-3 set.

For clothing and footwear alone, spending on infants, toddlers and preschoolers reached close to $17 billion in 2005, up 4.5 percent from the previous year, reports MarketResearch.com, a New York research firm.

Equating dollar signs with children is older than Ronald McDonald and his Golden Arches. But some industry watchers say something has shifted. It's more aggressive, more targeted. And it's younger."When markets get saturated, they have to go somewhere. And with kids, the only place to go is down," says Susan Linn, author of "Consuming Kids: The Hostile Takeover of Childhood".

The aim, say critics, is twofold: Cater to fretful parents keen on raising healthy, wholesome, brainy children; and hook future consumers by instilling early on a brand loyalty likely to continue into adolescence, and maybe beyond.

It leaves critics like Linn worried, not just about the ethics, but also the impact of having children toddling their first few years through one big commercial advertisement. Just consider, she says, the cartoon characters smiling at them everyday from diapers and T-shirts, from wallpaper and snack crackers. In many cases, they recognize these logos before they're even watching TV, before they've set a baby-bootied foot in a McDonald's."

It's all disturbing. But targeting babies is more disturbing because of how rapidly their brains are developing," says Linn, a psychologist and co-founder of Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, a Boston-based advocacy group."It's difficult enough when you're coping with a child who has been exposed to SpongeBob at school and then starts nagging for SpongeBob products. But the babies aren't asking for it."

Not all industry watchers see the reach as damaging - just good business. And, in many cases, providing consumers with products that serve them well."I don't think it's malicious in intent. I think it's a smart marketing thing to do," says Michelle Poris, director of quantitative research at Just Kid Inc., a Stamford children's marketing group."

I don't think any company feels comfortable marketing to 2-year olds. They're really marketing to moms," says Poris, a child psychologist. "But the fact of the matter is, they know that 2-year-olds are in the grocery stores with mom and that 2-year-olds establish patterns. And if they have a product that a 2-year-old likes, that 2-year-old moves with that product as they get older."And with more media aimed at this age group than in previous generations, opportunities to communicate with them abound, she says.

TV For Toddlers
It's that technological terrain that's drawing the most attention, and scrutiny. The so-called kid-vid market is booming at $4.8 billion, according to MarketResearch.com. That includes DVDs like the wildly popular Baby Einstein line, which purports to be a teaching tool, with titles such as "Baby Mozart" and "Baby Monet."Making a controversial leap into the fray last May was BabyFirstTV, the first 24-hour cable and satellite network for children under 3, purporting to educate and stimulate young minds."[Parents] want their children to be smarter, and they will bend over backwards to bring that about," says Daniel Acuff, founder and president of Youth Market Systems and co-author of "Kidnapped: How Irresponsible Marketers Are Stealing the Minds of Your Children.""But actually, they don't really need anything to stimulate their brains except to play."

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no television viewing for children under 2, with only one or two hours a day of "quality screen time" for older children. Yet, 59 percent of children under 2 watch just over two hours of television on a typical day, the Kaiser Family Foundation reported last year. It also found that 30 percent of children under 3 have TVs in their bedrooms."

There's no evidence that any screen media is beneficial to children under the age of 2," says Linn. "But parents are bombarded with marketing that says [they are]. So they end up feeling justified putting their babies in front of this media in order to get things done."The claims of educational benefits prompted the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood to file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission in May against Baby Einstein and Brainy Baby, another top producer of infant DVDs. The complaint, which is still pending, seeks to prohibit the companies from marketing their products as educational tools and to require them to display the AAP's recommendations.

Among Linn's concerns is that children are being taught to soothe themselves through digital means, rather than learn their own coping mechanisms. Even road trips in the family car can mean long stretches in front of a TV screen.

But if Linn's group stands on the argument that no studies show that these media are of benefit to children, their producers point out there's no evidence to show they are not.

"I think if there's one thing we can all agree on, it's that further research needs to be conducted," says Sharon Rechter, a founder of BabyFirstTV."

The fact of life is that babies are watching TV," she says. "We're not out to make them watch more TV. We're giving them a better alternative."At $9.99 a month, the commercial-free network, created with a team of child psychologists, it says, aims to inspire learning and interaction between parents and their children. Many programs are built for joint viewing, so parents can guide their children through lessons on colors and shapes, for example.

"Parents are looking ... to give their kids an educational advantage. And high-quality content might help," she says. "And sometimes parents just need a quiet moment for themselves to stay sane." Leaving them with 20 minutes of children's programming, she argues, is better than plopping them in front of standard prime-time television.

Rechter wouldn't give figures but says subscriptions have exceeded expectations. Plans are to expand offerings into Spanish and include parent-oriented programming.

Scheinman, of Team Baby Entertainment, also argues that it's a matter of balance. He doesn't purport that his products are educational tools. Used thoughtfully and in moderation, he says, his 30-minute videos, made in consultation with child psychologists, are just good family fun.

"We don't want children to be placed in front of a television watching anything for hours on end," said Scheinman, himself a father of a 3-year-old son, with another child due next month. "What we want is for ... parents to be pointing things out to their children, watching with them."

Founded last year, the Houston company is taking off. With 20 collegiate videos on the market, it's launching a line of professional sports DVDs with organizations such as NASCAR, Major League Baseball and the National Basketball Association. Last month the company announced its acquisition by Michael Eisner, the former CEO of the Walt Disney Co. and now head of Tornante Co., a media and entertainment venture firm.

Still, the notion of teaching children to associate with a sports team from the crib is lost on some, including Acuff.

"To me, that's just silly," he says. "I just don't get it."In his own marketing business, Acuff won't take on clients whose products concern him. That means videos that are violent, snacks that are too sugary. He admits he wouldn't necessarily take on clients today that he took on years ago.He recalled one major toy company that recently wanted his firm to help market action figures to inner city youth. "We declined vehemently," said Acuff. "We don't want to contribute to the problem. We want to contribute to the solution."

Joann Klimkiewicz can be reached at jklimkiewicz@courant.com
Copyright (c) 2006, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

There are two signs of the apocalypse in this article about the cruise ship off the coast of Florida that rolled, can you find them? I know it's not funny to make fun of people getting hurt, oh wait, yeah it is.

Cruise ship rolls.

Still working on Andy Thomas. A gun is smoking somewhere...

Until then, Seth Godin,one of my favorite marketing geniuses, has pointed to the Snakes on a Plane problem, which happens to be written by one of my favorite writers, Chuck Klosterman. Chuck always has a way of saying exactly what i'm thinking (and selling it to Esquire for $7/word) before i get a chance to write it.

Oh well.

Fox Reporters Shot at by Israeli Forces in Gaza

I'm working on a piece about Maricopa County's fucktard County Attorney Andrew Thomas, but it's not quite ready yet. I'm currently putting all of my investigative reporting skills towards diggin up dirt on the afrementioned a-hole but until then, enjoy this moment of Fox News' stupidity. If you point at troop positions and identify where the military is, you get shot at. If there's any military that will not put up with that, it's the Israeli army.
Journalism schools across the world need to teach a full week on what not to do and use Geraldo Rivera as an example.
My favorite is the words "skeddadle" and "boogie." Stupid white people and your lingo.

A lot of people have been talking about this so called "quarter-life crisis" lately and i just want to talk about one section of it that is pissing me off. Yes, we're all in transitions with our lives, jobs, relationships, responsibilities and everything else, but i really fear that it's becoming an excuse for a lot of people my age. I got caught up in for a little while and it's no good. This is life, it doesn't matter how old you are. You create your own circumstances and you teach people how to treat you, don't hide behind this excuse. I'm working on following my own advice and it's a struggle but when you start to think of it as an out, then you never escape it.
The thing that pissed me off the most about this "transition" is something that was/is out of our control for the most part. All through high school, teachers said, "You have to do A, B and C to get in to a good college. If you don't do this, you won't get into a good school." So those of us that wanted to go to school and get what they told us was a good education, listened. We did what we were told. We became "yes" men at a very young age. Join this club, do that charity work, take that AP test 20 times and we all sold our souls just a little bit each time.
Then we get to college and we do it all over again. "Join a fraternity/sorority," the said. "Take this class, study this hard, get these grades, take some business courses, keep up the charity work, do this many internships for no pay, no respect and no actual on-the-job experience because if you don't, there won't be a place in the real world that will hire you." That's what they tell us. And then we get to read the news and hear on the TV and the radio how horrible the job market is, how our generation is immature, anti-social, unprepared and generally retarded. So after 4, 5, 7 years of that, some of us are completely convinced that an undergrad education still won't do it and we spend another 2, 3, 4 years at grad school because we still don't think we're sufficient enough.
Eventually we all go out into the job market and take the very first thing offered to us for as little money as they'll offer us. And we thank them. We thank them and we're fucking grateful for the opportunity. And it doesn't stop there...we get to hear how we need to stay there for X amount of years to get enough valuable experience so that we can quit and get a slightly better job at a slightly better place where we can still be working as hard as possible to make money for somebody else. And for what? So you can wake up when you're 65 and barely have enough money to live comfortably for the last 10-15 years of your life? That doesn't seem appealing to me at all. Maybe i'm alone, but i doubt it.
And I know how it happened too, I saw it happen and I can look back and trace every advisor and every teacher, but for some reason we all sat there and let it happen. We let these "authority figures" sit there and devalue us and tell us that no matter what we did to prepare and mature and educate ourselves that we still weren't prepared enough to be trained circus apes in a cube/cage. And i'm not saying they did it on purpose, they were just doing their best, just doing what they were trained to do, but it's really all wrong. Who were they to say what quality is, who made the rule that you were supposed to tell young people that they weren't worth a shit? Is that the point? That the worse we feel about ourselves, the more work we'll do at a lower cost?
Maybe it's just because i'm a writer and we're notoriously paid like shit, but I have a feeling that i'm not the only one in this boat. Maybe the engineers don't know what the hell i'm talking about and they can go fuck themselves. That's all for now. Maybe i'll deal with the other shit later.