Loose Livestock

Yes, Virginia, There Is Health Care Reform, or, What Would Jesus Repeal?

2010-03-23T14:52:00.002-05:00

Health insurance reform has passed Congress and been signed into law by President Obama, ushering in the most sweeping overhaul of health care in over a generation. So what happens now? I think it is instructive to look at two questions. First, Republicans are loudly clamoring for repeal. Can it happen? Second, what parts of this law are so egregiously un-American and unconstitutional that they would merit immediate repeal lest the Nation fall by sundown?

Republicans are already banging the drum to repeal the new health insurance reform law. Reps. Steve King (R-IA) and Michele Bachmann (R-MN) have introduced one-page bills to repeal the entire Act. Six senators and forty-six representatives have already signed the Club for Growth’s repeal pledge, along with almost 200 congressional candidates. Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney is even calling for repeal – an interesting pivot from signing a very similar law when governor of Massachusetts. But is this real, or just bluster?

Firstly, it will not happen before 2011 in this Congress, because if you don’t have the votes to stop something from becoming law, then you don’t have the votes to repeal it. Secondly, after such a battle to pass the law, any partial or full repeal would be vetoed by President Obama, and Republicans and lack the votes to override a veto. Gaining enough votes in Congress to override a veto before the end of Obama’s first term would require Republicans to pick up 25 Democratic seats in the Senate plus Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), or 26 seats without him. As there are only 16 Democrats up for re-election in the Senate in 2011, this is an impossible feat. Further, Republicans would have to win over at least 113 seats in the House in 2011, a number not approached since the Republicans lost 100 seats in the 1932 election at the end of the disastrous Hoover administration.

But now that it is clear why repeal won’t happen, let us humor Republicans for the moment and imagine that it could. Just what parts of this bill are so socialist, Marxist, communist, or any other -ist that they pose a threat to freedom, democracy, apple pie, baseball, and the future of America?

Alabama’s PACT (Pre-pay a Child’s Tuition) college funding program is on the verge of collapse. The jobless rate for college-age veterans is over 21%, and for other college-age adults is 16.6%. Many young adults are still living at home or depending on their families as they try to pay for college or find a job. Does Rep. Parker Griffith (R-AL 05) want to repeal the right to keep their children on their family insurance until they turn 26 for the thousands of middle class families in his district – many of whom rely on the Defense Department for their livelihoods?
Nearly 15% of the residents of northwestern North Carolina are “lacking the resources to meet the basic needs for healthy living; having insufficient income to provide the food, shelter and clothing needed to preserve health.” Many of them rely on the help of six community health care centers that care for the poor and medically underserved. Does Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC 05) want to repeal the nearly $8 million in federal assistance for community health centers?
More than one-fifth of the residents of Florida’s 16^th district are Medicare beneficiaries. Currently, these 171,000 seniors and other Medicare-eligible residents are responsible for $4,550 in true out-of-pocket prescription drug expenses before catastrophic coverage kicks in. Does Rep. Thomas Rooney (R-FL 16) want to repeal the elimination of the Medicare Part D doughnut hole over the next decade, costing the seniors of his district millions of dollars out of pocket, and forcing them to continue to decide between medicine, food, and other necessities?
Millions of Americans are uninsured and have pre-existing conditions like cancer and heart disease, including 16,000 residents of northwest Texas. For-profit insurance giants will not provide coverage to these citizens because there isn’t any money to be made in caring for them. As a result, some of these uninsured adults and children cannot get the care they need, and they die. Does Rep. Randy “Baby Killer” Neugebauer (R-TX 19) want to repeal guaranteed coverage for individuals with pre-existing conditions, or does he want private for-profit insurers to continue to have the right to deny care, allowing uninsured individuals, including babies, to die?
More than half a million residents of Minnesota’s 6^th district are insured through their employers or have purchased their own insurance. While this district has one of the highest rates of insurance in the country, its citizens are still subject to lifetime coverage limits, rescissions, rejections for pre-existing conditions, and wasteful private insurer spending. Does Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN 6) want to repeal prohibitions on annual and lifetime coverage limits, and prohibitions on rescissions when policy holders get sick and need their insurance the most, and prohibitions on denials for pre-existing conditions, and limits on company administrative spending and profits?
Hundreds of thousands of families face financial ruin every year, having to file for bankruptcy because of uncovered health care costs. Part of this is due to policies of for-profit insurers, raising premiums by a third or more annually, and dropping policyholders when they get sick. Around 1,700 of these bankruptcies were in Nevada’s 2^nd district, comprising most of the state outside of Clark County. Does Rep. Dean Heller (R-NV 2) want to repeal caps on annual out of pocket costs for those insured in exchanges or through private business, and bans on annual and lifetime limits?
New deficit hawks who have suddenly seen the light now that Iraq is occupied and George Bush is out of office – Republicans like Texas’ Jeb Hensarling (R-TX 5) – are beside themselves with glee at the political points to be scored from Obama’s deficit spending. They never mind the fact that the spending is necessitated by the circumstances of the country created by eight years under Bush. So if he really cares about the deficit, does Rep. Hensarling want to repeal health insurance reform that helps millions, improves lives, keeps families together and healthy, while reducing the deficit by $130 billion in the next ten years, and by over a trillion dollars in the next twenty years (depending on GDP growth)?

So which of these will it be?

Bowl Outlook (Saturday afternoon update)

2009-11-28T15:01:00.003-06:00

Okay, so some things have not gone according to plan. NC State upsets Carolina, Oklahoma is destroying the Cowboys, Clemson lost, and Mississippi lost. Here's where things stand.

Ole Miss loss to Mississippi State could cost them the Cotton Bowl, if Arkansas upsets LSU.
North Carolina lost a chance to move up in the bowls due to Clemson’s loss to South Carolina when the Heels got upset on a late field goal block by NC State.
Oklahoma State’s BCS at-large spot is slipping away at Norman. Now they have to hold off Nebraska for the Cotton Bowl.
OU’s win (with a Missouri loss) could give the Sooners the Alamo Bowl.
Six teams playing for two bowl spots: Connecticut, Louisiana-Lafayette, Louisiana-Monroe, Notre Dame, UCLA (all 6-5) and UAB (5-6).

As for the Aggies, OSU's loss could be good news for us. Now that the Cowboys consume one of the Big XII's contractual bowl berths, Texas A&M likely gets bumped down to the Texas Bowl or Independence Bowl.

College Football Outlook (with Bowls!)

2009-11-28T10:25:00.004-06:00

First things first – the Aggies.

A win over Texas would have solidified their bowl position higher in the Big XII selection process. However, the Aggies are bowl eligible and will be playing in December, partly because of the poor quality of remaining teams at the bottom of the selection barrel (more on that in a minute).

With Pittsburgh’s upset loss to West Virginia, and their expected loss to Cincinnati, there is room in the BCS for a new at large player. Oklahoma State is going to win the Bedlam Bell for just the sixth time since 1997 (and sixteenth in over a century). That will be enough to squeeze them past Iowa and Penn State for the tenth and final BCS spot. Penn State’s losses to Iowa and Ohio State look better than the Cowboys’ losses to Texas and Houston. But the fact that the Big Ten season ends so early gives Oklahoma State a chance to have the field to themselves.

Now, how does all that relate to the Aggies? The Big XII Conference has agreements with the BCS and seven bowls for a total of eight slots. With Oklahoma State in the BCS, there is now room for nine Big XII teams, and unless Kansas upsets Missouri, there will be exactly nine qualifiers. Four of them will be 6-6 teams: Iowa State, Oklahoma, Texas A&M, and possibly Kansas. The Sun, Insight, Independence, and Texas bowls have the last four selections. And when you get to this point in the process, it’s all about money and traveling fans.

The Sun Bowl in El Paso will be torn between the in-state Aggies and the Sooners, but will ultimately bank on more traveling Sooner fans. The Insight Bowl in Tempe, Arizona will then take the Aggies. Not that we care, but after that, the Independence will invite the Cyclones back, and if Kansas beats Missouri, they will go to Houston for the Texas Bowl.

Next – the Crimson Tide.

Now that the Tide have survived Auburn, they have locked up their spot in the BCS. It will either be in the National Championship Game against Texas (or TCU), or it will be in the Sugar Bowl.

What about LSU, you say?

Outside of Florida, the SEC East is weak, so the best bowl bids are going to go to the West. However, LSU’s loss to Mississippi doesn’t really hurt them. The Tigers had no shot to make the BCS, as the SEC already has two qualifiers. And the only real options were the Capital One Bowl (who selects next after the BCS team(s)) or the Cotton Bowl, who selects the best remaining from the Western Division. LSU lost the head-to-head matchup but will have a much strong positioning in the BCS – possibly qualifying for the at-large pool in the top 14. Unless they lose to Arkansas, they’re stuck in Orlando.

And Wisconsin, for Rachel and her peripheral interest?

The Badgers’ loss to Northwestern in the final Big Ten conference weekend causes them to switch bowls with the Wildcats: Wisconsin is heading to San Antonio now, and Northwestern moves up to the Champs Sports Bowl in Orlando. A win over Hawai’I could switch things back; a loss won’t change their position.

Finally, what about the rest of the bowl eligible teams?

There are 68 bowl slots available and currently only 70 teams have qualified. Six teams’ fates are still undetermined:

Army (5-6): must beat Navy for an automatic berth in the EagleBank Bowl, but that won’t happen
Connecticut (5-5): must beat Syracuse or South Florida to qualify, which they will
Duke (5-6): will lose to Wake Forest
Hawai’i (5-6): must beat both Navy and Wisconsin, and won’t do that
Kansas (5-6): will lose to Missouri
Notre Dame (6-5): will lose to Stanford; even if they don’t, the Irish are too good to go to a lesser known bowl game, and will stay home
UAB (5-6): must upset Central Florida at home to qualify, which they will

After the contractual bowl selections are made, this is what remains:

Bowls missing teams: EagleBank (from ACC); GMAC (from ACC); Texas (from Big XII); Humanitarian (from MWC); St. Petersburg (from Big East)

Predicted eligible teams remaining: Middle Tennessee State (8-3, @ Louisiana-Monroe); Bowling Green (7-5); Northern Illinois (7-5); Louisiana-Lafayette (6-5, v. Troy); Louisiana-Monroe (6-5, v. Middle Tennessee State); UCLA (6-5, @ USC); Connecticut (5-5, v. Syracuse, v. South Florida); UAB (5-6, v. Central Florida).

Bearing in mind that bowls may not offer a bid to a 6-6 team if there are eligible teams with 7-5 records or better, then Middle Tennessee State, Bowling Green and Northern Illinois will fill three of those five empty slots. UCLA will get a bid if they beat USC, or if no other remaining team gets to seven wins. The most likely fifth slot will go to Connecticut.

As for the BCS, Pittsburgh's loss to West Virginia shakes things up. The conference champions will still be Oregon, Alabama, Texas, Cincinnati, Georgia Tech, and Ohio State. TCU will automatically qualify under the non-BCS top 4 rule. Florida loses the SEC title game but stays in the BCS top 10 and is selected. Boise State cannot be ignored, and Oklahoma State steals the last spot with the win over OU.

And now for the rest of the conferences.

Atlantic Coast Conference

The title game is set: Georgia Tech and Clemson will meet in Tampa on December 5, with the Yellow Jackets winning the game and a berth in the BCS Orange Bowl. Clemson will fall to fourth selection, as Virginia Tech and Miami (FL) from the Coastal will get picked first. North Carolina finishes strong and will head to Nashville – but not via Interstate 40, which is closed due to a rock slide. Duke, one of the undetermined teams, will lose to Wake Forest to finish 5-7 and miss out on the bowls. As a result, the ACC will have to give up slots in the EagleBank and GMAC bowls.

Big XII Conference

Yeah, yeah, Texas, blah blah blah.

As mentioned, Oklahoma State will surge into the last at-large slot in the BCS, guaranteeing there won’t be any fighting for bowl slots from the rest of the conference. The South is still stronger, and will send five teams bowling, while the north just has three. Even with a win over Missouri, Kansas could still get left out because of the number of unassigned teams with seven or more wins.

Big East Conference

West Virginia took most of the air out of next week’s Cincinnati-Pittsburgh showdown by upsetting the Panthers. With a win over Rutgers to finish the season, West Virginia will surge into the second spot in the conference and head to the Gator Bowl, dropping the formerly BCS-bound Pitt to the Meineke Car Care Bowl in Charlotte. Connecticut will become eligible and take back one of the conference’s contractual bowls from the at-large pile.

Big Ten Conference

Since their season ended in October, there are no changes to the lineup here. Only Wisconsin’s game at Hawaii remains on December 5, and with a win they could move up a spot.

Conference USA

It’s the last week of the season, and both spots in the conference title game are still up for grabs. East Carolina and Southern Miss play a semifinal match, and the Pirates should come out on top. Meanwhile, Southern Methodist’s loss to Marshall last week took them out of the driver’s seat. They need Houston to lose to Rice – not likely – to make the title game. Houston will finish strong and beat the Pirates for the Liberty Bowl berth. The Eastern Division is muddled, with many complicated tiebreaker scenarios, so bowl assignments here are a crap shoot. Oh, and the Ponies will be spending their December at the New Orleans Bowl.

Mid-American Conference

Dan LeFeveour may be the best and most exciting player you’ve never heard of. He’ll lead Central Michigan over Ohio in the title game to head to the Little Caesar’s Pizza Bowl, a rather undignified name for a conference champion’s bowl. Thanks to the weakness of the ACC, plus their own strong finish, Bowling Green will go bowling for green at the EagleBank Bowl. Northern Illinois gets in, too, setting a record for the MAC with five teams in the postseason.

Mountain West Conference

No movement here, except that Wyoming’s win over Colorado State seals the Cowboys’ invitation to the New Mexico Bowl. The winner of BYU-Utah will go to the Las Vegas Bowl, and the loser to the Poinsettia.

Pacific-10 Conference

UCLA is on a roll and has locked up an at-large bowl berth from the MWC – the Humanitarian Bowl. Meanwhile, with so many games left out west, a lot could still change. Oregon and Oregon State battle for the BCS Rose Bowl, while USC is waiting in the wings to see how high up the selection chart it can rise. Stanford’s meteoric rise was stunted by their loss in the Big Game, but the Cardinal should still go middle-tier bowling.

Southeastern Conference

What’s the biggest surprise in the SEC? How about the Kentucky Wildcats? I see an upset win in the cards for them over Tennessee, giving them second place in the East and a spot in the prestigious New Year’s Day Outback Bowl, their second January 1 appearance since 1952. The rest of the weak East will send teams to major bowls, creating unfortunate mismatches in games that were once interesting. Mississippi’s win over LSU won’t be enough to get them into the Capital One Bowl (reserved for the best remaining team in the West) unless the Tigers lose to Arkansas. But the Cotton Bowl is probably a better prize for the Rebels, along with the exposure that comes from playing at Cowboys Stadium.

Sun Belt

Troy wins the conference and heads to the New Orleans Bowl. Middle Tennessee State’s eight wins in a weak year for the major conferences helps them steal a bid to the GMAC Bowl. If either of the ULs can get to seven wins (without UCLA or Connecticut doing the same), they will also go bowling, probably in St. Petersburg.

Western Athletic Conference

An undefeated season with signature wins over Oregon and Nevada still won’t be enough to get the Broncos of Boise State in the National Championship Game. (Well, not unless Nebraska beats Texas, TCU loses to 1-10 New Mexico, and Cincinnati loses to Pittsburgh.) They’ll head to the Fiesta Bowl again – who doesn’t want to relive that game against Oklahoma, except Eric? Four teams go bowling, including Nevada, whose loss to Boise State, but second place finish in the conference, earns them a trip to the Humanitarian Bowl – in Boise.

Bowl Matchups

NCG	Texas	Alabama
Rose	Ohio State	Oregon
Orange	Georgia Tech	TCU
Fiesta	Oklahoma State	Boise State
Sugar	Florida	Cincinnati

Alamo	Missouri	Wisconsin
Armed Forces	Southern Miss	Air Force
Capital One	Penn State	LSU
Champs Sports	Clemson	Northwestern
Chick-fil-A	Virginia Tech	Auburn
Cotton	Nebraska	Mississippi
Eagle Bank	Marshall	Bowling Green
Emerald	Florida State	Oregon State
Gator	Miami (FL)	West Virginia
GMAC	Ohio	Middle Tennessee St
Hawai'i	East Carolina	Idaho
Holiday	Texas Tech	USC
Humanitarian	UCLA	Nevada
Independence	Iowa State	Georgia
Insight	Texas A&M	Michigan State
International	Rutgers	Temple
Las Vegas	Utah	Stanford
Liberty	Houston	Tennessee
Little Caesar's Pizza	Minnesota	Central Michigan
Meineke Car Care	Boston College	Pittsburgh
Music City	North Carolina	Arkansas
New Mexico	Wyoming	Fresno State
New Orleans	Southern Methodist	Troy
Outback	Iowa	Kentucky
Papajohns.com	South Florida	South Carolina
Poinsettia	Brigham Young	Arizona
St. Petersburg	Connecticut	Central Florida
Sun	Oklahoma	California
Texas	Northern Illinois	Navy

#1: The Continental Local

2009-11-09T10:44:00.005-06:00

[As part of Dick Bolles The Job-Hunter's Survival Guide, I have been encouraged to write seven stories about times when I really enjoyed myself, demonstrating a goal, the obstacles to it, and how I overcame them step by step. These stories will later be compiled on an inventory chart that will help me pinpoint my transferable skills. This, as you can tell, is the first.]

In January 2008, I was laid off from my sales job at a metalworking factory in Madison, Alabama. As I was living with my mother at the time, and it had taken me nearly a year to find that job to support myself, I felt like I was in quite a bind. I decided that the one thing I could do immediately to earn a living was to return to tennis officiating full time. So I contacted one of the people involved in scheduling the American pro circuit - Woodie Walker - and asked her if she had any vacancies coming up.

The first place Woodie needed help with was at a women's event in Redding, California. Now if you really want to get back to work, and get into Woodie's good graces at the same time, you say yes to anything she offers. However, accounting for the fact that I nearly never fly anywhere, I was faced with a dilemma. I needed to accept the work, but it meant expensive flying or facing an 11-state, 2600-mile one-way trip across the country for a week of work. After some mapping, some planning, and some calling of friends and family, I accepted the assignment.

The first step was getting from Huntsville to Saint Louis in one day. If I arrived soon enough, I would go up into the Arch for the first time in about 15 years, have some nice dinner and sleep in. But I wound up distracted by news of Eliot Spitzer's downfall in New York, and the statue of Superman in Metropolis, IL, and so on, so I got into Saint Louis late, ate at Qdoba, and went right to sleep at an economy hotel.

Step two appeared to be the most challenging step, on paper - an 850-mile straight shot all the way across Missouri and Kansas to Golden, Colorado, where my friend Ryan was waiting to host me for a few days. It was very long, and very boring. I think Kansans know they are boring, so they invent things to make drivers stop, like the Wizard of Oz Winery, or the largest barn in North America, and so on. This time, however, knowing what faced me and eager to get to dinner with Ryan, I was not tempted. With the help of satellite radio, I drove straight on through, arriving in Golden as twilight fell on the Rockies. Ryan and I had dinner at a Mexican restaurant, and he got quite warm from half a margarita.

I stayed in Colorado for a few days with Ryan, seeing his campus and Golden, visiting Red Rocks, and enjoying my first visit with him in several months. One of the last things I did was accompany him to his swim league practice in Denver. Afterwards, as I waiting for him to emerge from the locker rooms, I met one of his league members - who also happened to be a friend's roommate when I was at Texas A&M 13 years earlier. Small world.

At this point, my trip became much more challenging. For step three, I originally planned to take I-70 west from Denver, because I wanted to see the Eisenhower Tunnel and the beauty of Glenwood Canyon. However, I-70 was closed west of Denver because of heavy snow. This opened up an opportunity for me to knock another state of my "visited" list - Wyoming. So against what one might expect, I headed north to avoid the snow.

I drove up to Cheyenne and then west on I-80. It was cold and there was a lot of blowing snow, but no significant accumulations on the ground. I stopped briefly to film a vlog in a depression in the center of the Continental Divide; but otherwise it was straight through the Wasatch and down into Salt Lake City. I arrived in town in the afternoon, so I went downtown to take some photographs of Mormon landmarks, ate dinner, and then continued west on I-80 into the salt flats. It felt too early to stop driving, but ahead on I-80 in Nevada, there were very few towns. So as darkness fell completely in the desert, I stopped at a rest area in the middle of the salt flats and slept until a few hours before dawn.

I work up early on Saturday morning knowing that I had to cover just 600 miles that day to arrive the night before work began in Redding. However, this was going to be the most challenging part of the trip to California.

As I headed west into Nevada, the elevation increased past the border city of Wendover. It had been cold and sleeting all night, and as I left Wendover I realized that there were no places at all to stop on the winding mountain interstate until a truck stop in Wells, 60 miles west. So I made the Flying J my next goal, and left the security of Wendover for the mountains. Not far outside of town, I realized this may have been a mistake. Snow was blowing heavily from the west, and the interstate was littered with patches of black ice. At this point I found it was too late to turn back now. So I lined up behind two eighteen-wheelers, who had their hazard lights on and were traveling at 25 miles per hour. Since it would have been crazy and unsafe to try to pull off to the shoulder in the blinding snow, I stay right in line behind the truckers until we all arrived in Wells two and a half hours later, just before dawn.

At the Flying J, I decided to have breakfast and read the news on my laptop while I waited for the sun to come up and evaporate the black ice. I would up staying at the truck stop for about three and a half hours, until nine o'clock or so. I was just preparing to leave when I felt something - well, it felt like a truck had rammed into the side of the building. I asked the waitress, "What was that?" Her nonchalant reply was, "Oh, that was an earthquake. We've been having them for a couple of weeks now." Sure enough, Wells had experienced a sharp earthquake that month, seriously damaging their historic downtown, and had suffered aftershocks for weeks. I remember seeing a spot about it on CNN, but didn't make a note of the place.

Black ice, snow storm, earthquake - it was time for me to get back on the road again. The next step was to take I-80 to Reno and Sacramento, then I-5 straight north to Redding. But the snow was not done interfering with my plans. Radio reports said that I-80 was closed west of Lake Tahoe to all traffic except vehicles with snow chains. My little Civic Hybrid did not have snow chains. So before I left Wells, I called the chief in Redding and told him where I was and what my situation was, and that I would do everything I safely could to make it to work the next morning.

I finished I-80 across northern Nevada, which winds aimlessly north and south just to keep you in the state for longer, and then descended through Sparks and into Reno. Since I-80 was closed to me, my only option was to head north on US 395 and skirt the mountains to the east until I got far enough north that I could cross them at a lower elevation above Lassen Peak volcano.

This strategy worked until I approached Honey Lake and saw signs for a California inspection station and that snow chains would be required to head further north. At this point, I did not know how I would make it to Redding; I decided the best approach was to be honest and play the innocent traveler (I had Texas plates at the time). The woman at the inspection station was nice, and asked if I had and produce or fruits to declare. I was surprised at this, but said no. She asked to see in my trunk, and I was waiting for her to tell me my tires were inadequate. But she closed the trunk and ushered me on. Now, I thought, the only thing stopping me was the condition of the roads in Lassen National Forest.

From Susanville, I started climbing into the mountains again. As I reached the top of the elevation, the scenery around me was like a postcard. A narrow two-lane road with massive pine trees on either side, every limb weighed down by a smooth few inches of snow. I stopped and took a few pictures of the trees and snow and peaks. But then I realized that I still had to get down the mountain, and that night was falling. If I didn't make it off the mountain before night, the roads would re-freeze and I would be stuck up there, just a few miles from my goal. Fortunately, I focused, drove safely, and made it to the hotel in Redding as the sun was setting. Six days, 2,595 miles, and I had made it.

College Football Outlook (with Bowls!)

2009-11-08T20:57:00.005-06:00

[I've taken last week's post to its ultimate conclusion, and expanded the projections to all FBS teams and conferences. The primary difficulties were in placing Notre Dame (which has individual bowl agreements), and the projected 7-5 and 6-6 teams (lower-tier bowl placements are dicey).]

Some surprising results last week have upended the bowl projections, particularly in the Big XII. But before we get to that, here is this week's BCS Top 10 projections.

ACC: Georgia Tech
Big XII: Texas
Big East: Cincinnati
Big Ten: Ohio State
Pac-10: Oregon
SEC: Alabama
At large: Boise State, Florida, TCU, USC

Two BCS Busters make it this year, but still can't break into the championship game. The most likely scenario that gets TCU to Pasadena? An Alabama loss to Auburn, and then a victory over Florida in the SEC title game. A colossal upset loss by Texas in the Big XII title game or to Texas A&M would give us the unthinkable: TCU v. Cincinnati or Boise State for the national title.

And now, it's time for a break down...

Big XII
Colorado is already eliminated from the postseason, but their surprise victory over Texas A&M made the Aggies' road to a bowl game much more difficult. A&M must take care of business against Baylor, and then beat either Oklahoma or Texas to get to seven wins and a reasonable bowl game. Without two more wins, the Aggies will be lucky to be invited to the ninth-pick Texas Bowl. Nebraska's "upset" of Oklahoma moved them into the postseason, and Missouri's loss to Baylor moved them out. And a strong finish by Oklahoma State, combined with some other outcomes, could move the Cowboys into an at-large BCS spot. In the North, Nebraska will beat Kansas State, but the Wildcats will take the Division That Time Forgot when Nebraska loses at Kansas and Colorado.

ACC
Georgia Tech is still the class of the ACC, despite their surprising loss at Miami earlier in the season, and two weak defensive performances the last two weeks against Vanderbilt and Wake Forest. The Yellow Jackets remaining schedule (Wake Forest, Duke, Georgia) is manageable, as is any potential opponent from the Atlantic Division in the ACC Championship Game. (most likely Clemson). The ACC won't fill all nine of its contracted bowl games, which will help out a team from the MAC, and possibly give a game to projected 6-6 Missouri.

Big East
The Big East title - and its usually undeserved BCS bowl bid - is a three-horse race now. West Virginia, Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh are all in the BCS top 25, and they will play their round robin during the month of November. West Virginia's loss to fourth-place South Florida puts them at a disadvantage to the other two teams, but it won't matter. The Bearcats will beat West Virginia, Illinois, and Pittsburgh to make the BCS and threaten for the national title. The weak bottom half of the conference will cost the Big East their St. Petersburg Bowl bid, to the benefit of the Sun Belt Conference.

Big Ten
Iowa's quarterback injury has ended yet another promising season for the Hawkeyes. Ohio State will sneak into the Rose Bowl by beating Iowa and Michigan. Penn State's two conference losses will send them to the Outback Bowl. And the middle of the conference is in danger of costing the Big Ten some bowl bids - Michigan State, Purdue, Minnesota, and Michigan all have work to do to get bowl eligible.

Conference USA
It's Houston's to lose. Any of five teams can win the East, but Houston will win out and take the Liberty Bowl berth. Tulsa looked great against the Cougars, but the Hurricane also seems most likely to get left out of the postseason.

Independents
Navy has already accepted a Texas Bowl bid. Notre Dame is so difficult to place - they will not qualify for the BCS, or for their Gator or Sun Bowl arrangements. The best vacancy I have for them now, if the Golden Domers will deign to accept it, is at the Poinsettia Bowl.

Mid-American Conference
Due to weak performances in the major conferences, the MAC could be the beneficiary with as many as four bowl bids. Temple has finally found an appropriate home in the MAC, but they'll lose the title game to Central Michigan. The finishing schedules also favor bids for Bowling Green and Northern Illinois (who last saw action in the 2008 Independence Bowl).

Mountain West
The MWC is strong at the top and can send six teams bowling this season. TCU still has to get through Utah, and will, to bust the BCS and threaten for the national title.

Pacific 10
The Pac-10's full round robin conference schedule leaves lots of doubt as the end of the season nears. Despite the loss to Stanford, Oregon is best positioned for the Rose Bowl - if they can get past Arizona in two weeks. But if the Wildcats beat the Ducks and then lose to USC, the Pac-10 could have five teams finish at 7-2 in the conference. And it's too late at night for me to figure out how to break that tie. Speaking of the Trojans, though, a Stanford-UCLA-Arizona finish points to an at-large BCS berth for the current #9 team.

Southeastern Conference
Provided they both win out, Alabama and Florida will both be in the BCS. The question is in which order. I'm a homer, but I also like Alabama's defense to carry the day agains the Gators. The Outback Bowl's conference arrangements pits the third-best Big Ten team (Penn State) against the best remaining SEC East team - not much of a choice between average Georgia, South Carolina, and Tennessee. The Vols have the best shot at landing this matchup. Meanwhile, Kentucky will win one and maybe two of their last three games to land in the Independence Bowl.

Sun Belt
Unfortunately, the bowl outlook is the poorest for the weak Sun Belt conference. They spend much of their non-conference seasons as fodder for the SEC, cashing large paychecks for large defeats. Troy will win out and take the automatic bid to the New Orleans Bowl. Thanks to the Big East's inability to fill all their bowl slots, Middle Tennessee State will sneak into the St. Petersburg Bowl. (I keep trying to put an "h" on the end of that.)

Western Athletic Conference
Boise State is tops once again, and has a chance at the BCS title game. Their at-large berth will keep a second Big Ten team out of the BCS. Nevada and Fresno State will go bowling again, and if Idaho can finish strong, the Vandals will shock everyone by going bowling.

Current Bowl Projections
National Championship Game: Texas v. Alabama
Rose Bowl: Oregon v. Ohio State
Orange Bowl: Georgia Tech v. TCU
Fiesta Bowl: USC v. Boise State
Sugar Bowl: Florida v. Cincinnati

Alamo: Oklahoma v. Northwestern
Armed Forces: Southern Miss v. Air Force
Capital One: Iowa v. LSU
Champs Sports: Clemson v. Wisconsin
Chick-fil-A: Miami (FL) v. South Carolina
Cotton: Oklahoma State v. Auburn
Eagle Bank: Central Florida v. Northern Illinois
Emerald: Virginia v. Stanford
Gator: Virginia Tech v. Pittsburgh
GMAC: Missouri v. Temple
Hawai'i: East Carolina v. Idaho
Holiday: Kansas State v. Oregon State
Humanitarian: Wyoming v. Fresno State
Independence: Iowa State v. Kentucky
Insight: Nebraska v. Michigan State
International: South Florida v. Bowling Green
Las Vegas: Utah v. California
Liberty: Houston v. Georgia
Little Caesar's Pizza: Purdue v. Central Michigan
Meineke Car Care: Florida State v. West Virginia
Music City: Boston College v. Mississippi
New Mexico: San Diego State v. Nevada
New Orleans: Southern Methodist v. Troy
Outback: Penn State v. Tennessee
Papajohns.com: Rutgers v. Arkansas
Poinsettia: Notre Dame v. Brigham Young
St. Petersburg: Marshall v. Middle Tennessee State
Sun: Texas Tech v. Arizona
Texas: Texas A&M v. Navy

Big XII Outlook (with Bowls)

2009-11-02T12:53:00.005-06:00

Most Big XII teams are four to five games into their conference schedules, and parts of the postseason picture are starting to come into focus. Let's start in the South, where the picture is much tidier (capsules are in order of likelihood).

Texas (8-0, 5-0 Big XII) controls its own destiny - the only way the Longhorns miss the championship game is by losing two of three to Baylor, Kansas, and Texas A&M. If they win these, plus a detour against non-conference cupcake Central Florida, and they will head to Arlington to roll over a mediocre North Division opponent on their way to the National Championship Game in Pasadena.
Oklahoma (5-3, 3-1) needs to win out (Nebraska, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Oklahoma State) and have Texas lose two of the following games: Baylor, Kansas, Texas A&M.
Oklahoma State (6-2, 3-1) needs to win out (Iowa State, Texas Tech, Colorado, Oklahoma) and have Texas lose two of the following games: Baylor, Kansas, Texas A&M.
Texas A&M (5-3, 2-2) must win out (Colorado, Oklahoma, Baylor, Texas) and have the winner of the Oklahoma-Oklahoma State game lose to another conference opponent; and have Texas lose to Kansas or Baylor.
Texas Tech (6-3, 3-2) must win out (Oklahoma State, Oklahoma, Baylor) and have Texas lose their last three conference games (Baylor, Kansas, Texas A&M).
Baylor is eliminated.

In the North, things are much murkier. Any of the six teams could still win the division.

Kansas State (5-4, 3-2) controls its own destiny - simply beat equally mediocre Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska, and they will tie the Huskers with their fourth North Division crown. It will be the only thing they have to celebrate, as any team in this division will be squashed by Texas in the title game.
Nebraska (5-3, 2-2) controls its own destiny, too. However, the Cornhuskers must beat Oklahoma, Kansas, Kansas State, Colorado, which is a much stiffer schedule than the Wildcats have. Their 9-7 loss to Iowa State was critical; had they won that game, they would be the strong favorites to win the division.
Missouri (5-3, 1-3) must win out (Baylor, Kansas State, Iowa State, Kansas) and have Nebraska lose another conference game.
Iowa State (5-4, 2-3) must win (Oklahoma State, Colorado, Missouri) out and have Kansas lose another conference game, and have Kansas State lose another conference game.
Kansas (5-3, 1-3) also unbelievably controls its own destiny, but must win out against Kansas State, Nebraska, Texas, Missouri. Not going to happen.
Colorado (2-6, 1-3) must win out (Texas A&M, Iowa State, Oklahoma State, Nebraska) and have Kansas State lose two of their last three conference games; and have Missouri lose another conference game.

Even more remarkably, an unprecedented six-way tie at 4-4 is possible in the North, but only if Kansas beat Texas, Oklahoma State loses to both Iowa State and Colorado, and a few more improbable outcomes.

(Skip this if you don't like minutiae: Nebraska, Iowa State and Colorado would be eliminated on the second tiebreaker with 2-3 division records. Kansas, Kansas State and Missouri would be tied with 3-2 division records and 1-1 records against each other. Using the same criteria, Iowa State would finish fourth, Colorado fifth, and Nebraska sixth. Under the third tiebreaker, all three teams in contention will have beaten fourth place Iowa State; Kansas is eliminated by their loss to fifth place Colorado; and Kansas State advances to Arlington on the basis of their projected win over Missouri.)

(Other trivia: the Southwest Conference had a five-way tie in 1994 after Texas A&M (6-0-1) was declared ineligible. Baylor, Rice, Texas Tech, Texas, and TCU all shared the title. Texas Tech took the Cotton Bowl berth. Oh, and Texas Tech is the only Big XII team to never have had a losing record since the conference was formed.)

So where does that leave the bowl match-ups? The bowls make their selections in a pre-determined order, and with a few exceptions, the bowls do not have to choose the remaining team with the best record. Here is the order of selection:

BCS
Cotton
Holiday
Alamo*
Sun*
Insight
Independence
Texas

*-Per an agreement between the Gator, Alamo, and Sun bowls, the Gator Bowl (which usually selects fourth) must choose a Big East team or Notre Dame this year, and the Sun Bowl must choose a Big XII team.

Based on my projections, here is how they will play out.

BCS - Texas (12-0, 8-0 Big XII) will play in the National Championship Game. No other Big XII team will qualify for an at-large BCS berth.
Cotton - Oklahoma (9-3, 7-1) will head to Arlington as the second-best team in the league.
Holiday - By virtue of their season-ending loss to the Sooner, Oklahoma State (9-3, 6-2) will go to San Diego.
Alamo - given the choice between five 7-5 teams (Texas Tech, Texas A&M, Kansas State, Iowa State, Missouri), the Alamo Bowl will choose the closest team with the biggest fan base - the Aggies (7-5, 4-4).
Sun - The Sun Bowl will follow suit by taking Texas Tech (7-5, 4-4).
Insight - North Division champs Kansas State (7-5, 5-3) take a beating from Texas and then head to Tempe.
Independence - Iowa State (7-5, 4-4) heads back to Shreveport. But if we're not there to see it, does it really happen?
Texas - Missouri (7-5, 3-5) gets the bid despite the losing conference record, because Houston's only other choice is Nebraska (6-6, 3-5). It's hard to promote a lower-tier bowl game as it is, without having one team enter without a winning record.

So get ready for some indoor football, boys - today it looks like we're spending the holiday in San Antonio.

Remember when Trigger was just a horse?

2009-10-30T21:49:00.007-05:00

The health insurance reform bill changes so often and so quickly, even within the same day, that an overwhelming sense of déjà vu has set in. Ideas that we thought were dead and buried are back again, making us wonder - is this a new idea, or haven't we heard this one before. Today, from McClatchy, it is the trigger:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., last week said he'd move ahead with a plan that allows states to opt out within the first year, but that's failed so far to stir the eight to 12 moderates whose votes are crucial.
Gaining support is the idea of a "trigger," where the public option only would be permitted if private insurers fail to lower costs. There are lots of other ideas, however.

Only if they fail to lower costs? Kaiser Family Foundation:

In the decade just ended, premiums increased 131%, and worker contributions increased 128%, compared against a 28% rate of inflation or 38% wage increases over the same time period.

In the United States, we spend more money per person on health care than any other nation in the world. And yet, in measure after measure, we trail most industrial nations and many developing nations in health outcomes. Without government intervention, there is nothing to stop insurance companies from continuing to loot the pockets of American workers. They have shown no willingness or ability to lower premiums year after year over a long period of time. So why should we wait even longer for them to show even more years of incompetence and avarice before a government-mandate intervention can be triggered?

In fact, public insurance companies have billions - yes, billions - of reasons to continue pushing premiums up, paying executive performance bonuses, and make no efforts to cut costs or ease the pressure on working Americans.

Company	Enrollment	Outstanding Shares
UnitedHealth Group	30,300,000	1,162,420,963
WellPoint	35,300,000	484,639,194
Aetna	17,700,000	442,800,000
Humana	8,400,000	169,657,445
CIGNA	11,900,000	272,704,706
TOTAL	103,600,000	2,532,222,308

These billions of shares have to receive dividends - profits on the backs of the diseases, disorders, illnesses, and deaths of other Americans. We don't need a trigger. We don't need to wait for more evidence that these health insurance companies are unwilling and incapable of controlling costs. We can see the problem clear as day. But too many people in power are too weakened by money and corruption to do the right thing.

Exhibit A: Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR). She is facing a tough re-election fight in a rare reddening state. When she is not busy being the pawn of Wal-Mart or Tyson (which is not often), she has the freedom to choose for herself what is best for her re-election chances - er, the people of Arkansas. Here is what those people told her this week - Progressive Change Campaign Committee (MOE 4%):

QUESTION: Would you favor or oppose the government offering everyone a government administered health insurance plan -- something like the Medicare coverage that people 65 and older get -- that would compete with private health insurance plans? (Wording of NYT poll)

FAVOR OPPOSE NOT SURE
ALL
56
37
7
QUESTION: If Blanche Lincoln votes against a public option as part of health care reform, will that make you more likely or less likely to vote for her in the 2010 general election or would it have no real effect on your vote?

MORE LESS NO EFFECT
ALL 16 29 55

QUESTION: If Blanche Lincoln joined Republican senators in filibustering and killing a health care reform bill because it had a public health insurance option, would that make you more likely or less likely to vote for her in the 2010 general election or would it have no real effect on your vote?

MORE LESS NO EFFECT
ALL 15 32 53

	FAVOR	OPPOSE	NOT SURE
ALL	56	37	7

	MORE	LESS	NO EFFECT
ALL	16	29	55

	MORE	LESS	NO EFFECT
ALL	15	32	53

A clear majority of Arkansans favor a plan like Medicare for all. And when it comes to the question of whether Lincoln should oppose a public option (-13) or join Republicans in "filibustering"* (-17), the affect on voters is similar enough to fall within the margin of error. Yet in this rare alignment of planets - the right thing to do AND the will of the electorate - Lincoln still seems to be in search of her spine. (So does her colleague Mark Pryor - he's not even up for re-election this time, but is still saying he will be guided by what Lincoln does.)

[* - until "filibusters" look like this again, I'll be using the quotation marks.]

And why is Lincoln still searching for her spine? Because in the 2009-2010 election cycle, only two people in the entire country have taken more from the health industry than Blanche Lincoln's $427,950 - Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) and Senate candidate and former governor Charlie Crist (R-FL).

Blanche - get off the fence and out from in front of the cameras, and do the right thing. Who knows? It might just get you re-elected.

Name that candidate

2009-10-28T10:30:00.002-05:00

Courtesy of Pollster.com, CNN and Opinion Research Corporation have a new poll out today regarding the 2012 presidential election, potential candidates, and their approval ratings and strengths. Regarding one politician who is frequently discussed as a candidate in 2012, their polling found the following:

Not a typical politician: 65% Applies, 34% Does not apply
A good role model...: 64 / 35
Care about the needs of people like you: 56 / 43
Is honest and trustworthy: 55 / 43
Shares your values: 49 / 49
Generally agrees with you on issues you care about: 48 / 50
Is a strong and decisive leader: 47 / 51

Have you guessed the candidate yet? Most non-incumbents would envy numbers like this, and it would lead you to believe that the candidate would be in a strong position heading into 2010. But then check out the bottom line:

Qualified to be president: 29 / 71

Have you figured out that the candidate is Sarah Palin? Even among Republicans, the margin is only 52 /47 (4.5% MOE). Her favorability rating is 42 /51 in the same poll. So if she is strong in these traditional measures of candidate values and strengths, what is it about her that makes seven in ten Americans think she is unqualified to be president?

I think the key is in the last strengths question - is she a strong a decisive leader? She receives her lowest marks in this category, and it would be a concern for any candidate to have low numbers on this criteria. But worse for Palin, her decisiveness is sometimes misguided and unintelligible. Two of her biggest decisions involved quitting public positions - one because of a lack of ethics of others, and the second because of a lack of ethics on her own part. In a crisis, will she quit?

All of this, of course, is purely academic. Everyone involved in the Palin follies of 2008 is turning their backs on everyone else and seeking to cash in for themselves. Palin knows, or has been told using very small words, that she could rouse a base of her party a la George Wallace, but she could never win the nomination or the election. Better to strike while the iron is hot, take her place along side Newt Gingrich as post-political party elders, and bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars in public appearance fees.

At least the Miss California pageant could strip Carrie Prejean of her title, limiting her scope and impact. The Grumpy Old Party has stuck us with Sarah.

The Failure of Basic Journalism, Episode I

2009-04-22T10:05:00.007-05:00

This is the first installment of many periodic series floating around in my head.

Traditional journalism, for good or ill, is in serious trouble in America. The local newspaper, the Raleigh News and Observer, just laid off several staff members, mainly because of corporate shenanigans of mergers, buyouts, and basic mismanagement. But from the looks of a story in today's N&O, perhaps some other staffers need to be let go for failing basic journalism.

Wednesday's paper features a story headlined "Choking game awareness foundation to host fundraiser". The choking game (which goes by many other names, too) is a form of self-asphyxiation practiced by some teenagers to gain a temporary high. If done incorrectly, it can lead to brain damage and death. As a former teacher and generally aware person, I have heard of the choking game. However, I was surprised to learn that there was a foundation for such things, and that it would have a fundraiser. It was just a weird headline.

So I head inside the article to learn more about it. Kris Marceno was 15 years old, the son of a wealthy Cary family, when he died after playing the choking game. His family created a foundation to his memory and to educate the public about the dangers of this practice. (Note to family: Your website is not as hip as you think it is. It's hard to load and relies too heavily on flash, making it possibly unreadable on some browsers, or so long to load that the viewer loses interest.)

Imagine my shock when the unnamed staff "reporter" wrote the following:

It's estimated as many as 250 to 1,000 teens die in the United States each year playing the choking game, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

250 to 1,000 teens die every year? A 9/11 of choking deaths every three to 11 years? How come I haven't heard more about this before?

The reason is because of a failure of basic journalism.

The website cites an unsubstantiated claim that as many as 250 to 1,000 teens die a year from the choking game, but also admits numbers are hard to prove because many of the deaths are recorded as suicides. While this is likely, the numbers still seem too inflated.

Somewhere along the way, the "reporter" attributed this statistic to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the chief recorder of medical statistics for the United States government. However, a quick 30-second visit to the Google provides the CDC's own information on the choking game.

Because no traditional public health dataset collects mortality data on this practice, CDC used news media reports to estimate the incidence of deaths from the choking game. This report describes the results of that analysis, which identified 82 probable choking-game deaths among youths aged 6--19 years, during 1995--2007.

The CDC's first attempt at estimating the prevalence of death from the choking game came only in February 2008. And while they admit the limitations of their methodology, their analysis debunks the "fact" that went unchallenged by the "reporter". According to the numbers in the article, it wasn't just 82 deaths in the time period studied, but 3,000 to 12,000 deaths. At an average rate of seven deaths per year, the choking game is as fatal as meningitis or heart attack, and less fatal than deaths due to HIV/AIDS, or appendicitis, or influenza, or kidney disease among those aged 5-14 (2005). (This data is not a direct comparison, but it provides a reasonable frame of reference.)

A few closing comments are in order. First, the "reporter" failed to practice basic journalism by doing independent research and verifying the information fed to him or her by the foundation, which is essentially an interest group. While its motives are good, the foundation benefits if people think the choking game is a larger problem than it really is. The "reporter" enables that by not checking the facts.

Second, the "reporter" failed to practice basic common sense. Stop and think about the numbers for a moment. Wouldn't you have noticed if a thousand, or even 250 teens, had died in a year due to this choking game? Shouldn't you have noticed? And if you didn't, shouldn't you have felt skepticism, the chief tool in a reporter's belt? If there were that many deaths every year, would the choking game really need an awareness foundation? While the loss of just one child to any cause of death is a tragedy for that family, this commentary is not attempting to diminish that loss. It is specifically focused on the journalism involved.

Finally, this is a brief six-paragraph article of local interest in a newspaper whose circulation currently ranks 60th in the country. But it is a big deal, because it is endemic of what is happening to journalism at all levels. And because as this staff writer grows in experience and reputation, he or she will continue to make the same errors, either willfully or not, and will continue to mislead readers. Next time, the story might not be about a rare cause of death among teens. It might be about war, national security, massive threats to public health, or something else far more critical.

UPDATE: I posted a brief comment on the story itself, highlighting the failure to check the facts. By the time I finished this post, the N&O had removed my comment. I have contacted the paper (Dan Barking, Senior Editor - Online) and I am waiting for a reply.

UPDATE 2: I received a quick and reasonable reply from the N&) today - my comment had a URL in it, which their policy prohibits. I am glad to set the record straight - and I hope the N&O will do the same.

Gratitude - April 19, 2009

2009-04-19T08:58:00.002-05:00

I am grateful for the full functional use of my body.
I am grateful for breezy, partly cloudy days on the beach.
I am grateful for Cici's all-you-can-eat pizza buffet, even if the price has gone up.
I am grateful for my Honda Civic Hybrid, and the challenge of maximizing my gas mileage on trips.
I am grateful for small children and the simple joys they revel in.

Gratitude Diary - April 11, 2009

2009-04-11T21:46:00.002-05:00

I am grateful for friendly and helpful people like Linda, who saw me at the CVS today in Jackson on my way to the laundromat, and offered to take my laundry home with her to do.
I am grateful for good health and decent eyesight, which allow me to focus on my work and on getting Dave healthier.
I am grateful for hunger pains that remind me of how fortunate I am to never want for food.
I am grateful for Brazilian jazz - that "ba da ba da baaaa" sound that puts me to sleep when I am alone on the road.
I am grateful for big stretches that make my muscles tingle and feel alive.
I am grateful for "Nessun Dorma".

Gratitude Diary - April 10, 2009

2009-04-10T22:36:00.004-05:00

I am grateful for excellent-tasting food, such as River Hills Club's bacon cheeseburger. The bun is sweet and big and doesn't get soggy; the cheese is thick; and the bacon is crispy.
I am grateful for ball kids - young boys and girls. They have a joy and exuberance in their fidgetiness, and they love to be on court.
I am grateful for bunny, who loves me with genuine affection and respects my work.
I am grateful for deep breaths that help center me, even for just a few seconds.
I am grateful for playoff races and chases, and complicated tiebreaker scenarios.

The Best (and Worst) James Bond Themes - Part 2

2009-03-09T10:50:00.001-05:00

[You can read my introduction to this series, along with the bottom five songs, here.]

25. "Die Another Day", Madonna, Die Another Day
24. "Another Way To Die", Jack White and Alicia Keys, Quantum of Solace
23. "Tomorrow Never Dies", Sheryl Crow, Tomorrow Never Dies
22."For Your Eyes Only", Sheena Easton, For Your Eyes Only
21. "All Time High", Rita Coolidge, Octopussy

20. "The Man with the Golden Gun", Lulu, The Man with the Golden Gun

Lulu was huge in the United Kingdom by 1974, when she was tapped by John Barry to sing the theme song for the next Bond entry. She had a huge hit in the UK with "Shout", was a co-winner of the Eurovision contest, and had even hit number one in the United States with the title song from "To Sir, with Love" in 1967. But her weak vocal styling, combined with what even Barry agreed was one his worst jobs providing score and theme in a Bond film, creates a parody of a Bond theme.

The song opens strong, true to the Bond formula - strong brass, aggressive percussion, and then an electric guitar theme that perfectly mirrored the rock music tastes of the time. And then Lulu starts singing some of the tackiest and most suggestive words to find their way into a Bond theme. "He has a powerful weapon..." Her nasal tones and vibrato on long notes make this sound like an American Idol contestant covering the song. It has a remarkable karaoke quality to it, but part of that feels built in to the song. I am not sure that a better artist could have made the song less crappy. But it does beat out "We're an all time hiiiigh...."

Grade: C-

19. "The Living Daylights", a-ha, The Living Daylights

Fresh off the success of "A View to a Kill" by Duran Duran, composer John Barry and the producers were looking for an artist that could hit the charts again with "The Living Daylights". Their first consideration had been Chrissie Hynde and the Pretenders, but they eventually settled on Norwegians a-ha, the first non-English speaking artist to record a Bond theme. (Can you imagine two more opposite artists from this era? Then perhaps I shouldn't mention that Alice Cooper claims his song "The Man with the Golden Gun" was considered in place of Lulu.)

By itself, the song is not a bad one. It combines traditional sound with the emerging electronic instrumentation of the mid-1980s, and allowed a sequence where Morten Harket could plunge into his trademark falsetto made famous by "Take On Me". But it fails as a Bond theme on several counts. Sure, the theme mentions the name of the movie, but that's about the only connection the lyrics have to Bond. They are largely nonsensical, and combined with Harket's occasionally thick accent, they are hard to make out much less comprehend. And another sign of a weak theme - it doesn't have a reprise in the credits. That honor goes to the Pretenders and "If There Was a Man".

Then again, perhaps I expected too much. This was a Dalton film, after all.

Grade: C

18. "Live and Let Die", Paul McCartney and Wings, Live and Let Die

By 1973, John Barry was ready for a respite from Bond films. So he temporarily turned his duties over to George Martin. Yes, that George Martin. It's no surprise that Martin turned to former Beatle Paul McCartney, who was at that time the most successful post-Beatles solo artist, to come up with the theme song. And given the subject matter, that was no easy task. Live and Let Die was released at the height of the "blaxploitation" era - in fact, it was selected as the next film specifically to take advantage of that - and it is filled with stereotypes that would be considered inappropriate in a mainstream film today.

I suppose this is one song where I diverge dramatcially from critics and most of the public. "Live and Let Die" was a big hit in the UK and the US, and received both Grammy and Oscar nominations for best song from a film. And I grant that the more aggressive parts of the song are appropriate for a Bond film and perfectly suited to adaptation during the movie. But the bridge - oh, the bridge is awful. And the changes in tempo are too much for my taste, too. Further, the film went to great lengths to incorporate the cultures of New Orleans, Harlem, and the Carribean. This song doesn't seem to reflect any of them to me.

I am a traditionalist when it comes to these songs. I suppose this was just too dramatic of a change.

Grade: C

17. "Never Say Never Again", Lani Hall, Never Say Never Again

Many hard core Bond fans have mixed but mainly negative feelings about the non-EON remake of Thunderball, titled Never Say Never Again in reference to Sir Sean Connery's vow to permanently reject future James Bond roles. One bit of anecdotal evidence in this regard - the title sequence of this film is not clipped on YouTube. In its place are several amateur mashups of how the opening credits and theme should have looked, if this movie weren't such a bastard of the canon. (Hrm, "bastard of the canon" sounds like a character in Les Miserables. But, as usual, I digress.)

Anyway, about Lani Hall. She is easily the most obscure artists to give voice to any Bond theme. Before laying down this track in 1983, she was best known as a bossa nova artist with Sergio Mendes, and as Herb Alpert's wife. Oh, and she won a Grammy in 1985. It's hard to write an entire paragraph about Hall. So I'll spend two sentences on how hard it was instead.

This song lands at number 17 on our survey for one overarching reason - mediocrity. The vocals are ordinary, and the lyrics are average. The song has some redeeming aspects - for one, the verses build in melody and volume to a refrain, a common element in Bond themes. However, the refrain is pretty awful. Like that kid in your homeroom class whose name you cannot remember because he never did anything noteworthy, this is a forgettable theme in a forgettable film.

Grade: C

16. "We Have All the Time in the World", Louis Armstrong, On Her Majesty's Secret Service

For casual fans, as well as most die-hard Bond aficiandos, a Bond theme requires lyrics. It's what we have come to expect from the artists. However, this was not always the case, especially with the early films in the series. On Her Majesty's Secret Service is one of the films with two entries on our list; because incorporating the title of this movie into the theme song was unwieldy, the film got an instrumental opening theme and a this vocalized end credits theme, by jazz impresario Louis Armstrong.

Because of the legendary status of Armstrong, the fact that this was his last recording, and the subsequent use of the song in advertising campaigns, "We Have All the Time in the World" is generally looked upon with favor by the public. However, as a Bond theme - an action theme - it clearly fails. Written by John Barry and Hal David, this is a love theme, focused on James and Tracy, and reprised throughout the film during generally tender moments (not counting Bond's burglary of the law office in Switzerland).

Based solely on Bond theme criteria this song would have landed in the bottom eight. But this was Barry's fifth Bond film, and by this point he had established a tone - I hesitate to use the word "theme" - that created a thread between films. This song fits well into that overall tone. And if that wasn't enough, the composition of the escalating strings line in the background was brilliant, and perfectly suited for reprises during the film itself. It adds to my enjoyment of this hard-to-love film that it has one of the best scores on a Bond film.

Grade: C+

Leaving Rush Limbaugh

2009-03-01T11:51:00.002-06:00

I lost a friend today over Obama's budget, of all things. He displayed a graph on his blog showing the dramatic increased in proposed deficit spending in Obama's next budget. I explained to him that a large part of the reason for this was that Obama eliminated a lot of accounting tricks used by the Bush administration, particularly regarding war spending, to make the deficit look better than it was. He response to me was that I needed to stop "drinking the Koolaid [sic]". And so I explained to him that the reason I was able to stay good friends with some of our mutual friends with whom I disagreed was because we could discuss and disagree and be civil. If he was unserious enough that he had to resort to name-calling, then we could no longer be friends. Sure, that was my choice, but we face serious problems, and now is not the time for people without solutions to get in the way.

Yesterday, on a drive across North Carolina, I listened to Rush Limbaugh's address to CPAC. And I have come to the same conclusion about him.

"[T]he racism, the sexism, the bigotry that we're all charged with, just so you across the United States of America know, and you'll see demonstrated here as the afternoon goes on, doesn't exist on our side. We want everybody to succeed."

Really?

Rush, you are a racist. You have been a racist across four decades of "excellence" in broadcasting. In the 70s, you told a black caller to "Take that bone out of your nose and call me back." In the 90s, you said "Have you ever noticed how all composite pictures of wanted criminals resemble Jesse Jackson?" When Carol Moseley-Braun, the first African-American woman in the U.S. Senate, was mentioned on your show, you would play the theme "Movin' On Up" from the television show "The Jeffersons". When a caller told you that black people need to be heard, you replied, "They are 12 percent of the population. Who the hell cares?" You even claimed that Donovan McNabb, the long-time Philadelphia Eagles quarterback, got too much credit for the success of his team because he was black, and that the media wants to see blacks do well. And you opined, "Look, let me put it to you this way: the NFL all too often looks like a game between the Bloods and the Crips without any weapons. There, I said it."

This is not the surface racism that has some people referring to "good niggers" and "bad niggers". And these are not the once-in-a-lifetime racial misquotes of a sincerely open-minded person. These are the philosophical statements of a man who clearly believes to his core that non-whites are less than whites. Someone who believes that whites are superior. Someone so unserious that he will viciously insult millions of people to get laughs from millions of other people.

You are a racist, Rush. There, I said it.

Oh, did I mention that you are a sexist bigot, too? Using a drawn out syllable to call Hillary Clinton a "bitch" while claiming you didn't. Stating that John Edwards' wife "might be attracted to a woman whose mouth did something other than talk." Claiming that Rev. Al Sharpton was concerned about the Duke lacrosse rape case because he was "trying to figure out how he can get involved in the deal down there at Duke where the lacrosse team ... supposedly, you know, raped some, uh, hos." [Racism AND sexism – a two-fer!] Repeatedly referring to women activists as "feminazis" (a quick search of your website shows over 60 uses of the term). And even in this speech, calling CBS's Maggie Rodriguez an "anchorette," and then jokingly apologizing for it.

And now, you want to convene a summit of women because "I want some of these women to start telling me what it is I must do to close the gender gap — or, if not what it is I must do to close the gender gap, what it is I've done that has caused the gender gap." I thought you were a man of principles, Rush. A man who is telling conservatives not to change, that, like a diamond, "conservatism is…forever". Yet you are willing to ask women what you "must do" – differently, of course – to win their support.

"Also, for those of you in the Drive-By Media watching, I have not needed a teleprompter for anything I've said. [Cheers and Applause ] And nor do any of us need a teleprompter, because our beliefs are not the result of calculations and contrivances. Our beliefs are not the result of a deranged psychology. Our beliefs are our core. Our beliefs are our hearts. We don't have to make notes about what we believe. We don't have to write down, oh do I believe it do I believe that we can tell people what we believe off the top of our heads and we can do it with passion and we can do it with clarity, and we can do it persuasively."

Racist, sexist, and now hypocrite.

"We believe that person can be the best he or she wants to be if certain things are just removed from their path like onerous taxes, regulations and too much government."

"We don't want to tell anybody how to live. That's up to you."

Then why are you in my bedroom? Why are you telling me what I can and cannot do with my body, the one gift with which I was endowed by my "Creator"? Why are you telling me I can love anyone I want, as long as you approve of my choice of gender? Am I not a better person, a happier person, a better contributor to society, if I am free to love who I want, and to have his support in my life? If I love someone, and my government tells me, "No, you are not allowed to love him," won't that make me less happy? Won't it make me resentful? And, in Republican terms, won't that make me a less productive input into GDP? If I am unhappy at home, and in my most intimate, personal choices and commitments, how can I be fully happy in anything else I do? How can I reach my potential and be the "best" that you say you want me to be?

You are also a liar, Rush.

"They don't have the right to take money that's not theirs, from the back pockets of producers, and give it to groups like ACORN, which are going to advance the Democrat Party."

First, neither President Obama nor the Congress is trying to give money to ACORN. (Paraphrasing Jerry Seinfeld, "Not that there's anything wrong with" ACORN.) But it is a lie to say the ARRA is going to give them money. ACORN is eligible for grants in the act, just like you are. But it would be just as much a lie for me to state on my blog that "Republicans in Congress allowed a bill through that would take your money and give billions to Rush Limbaugh." Further, it is true that the money is not "theirs". But that is a spurious argument. This is a republic. We chose representatives to make decisions for us. And the majority of those representatives set the tax and revenue policies, and set the priorities for spending. The money is ours, but we have given the authority to spend it to them. If you don't like that, perhaps you should win a few elections and change it.

"In fact, the money he's spending is not ours. He's spending wealth that has yet to be created. And that is not sustainable. It will not work. This has been tried around the world. And every time it's been tried, it's a failed disaster."

Your willful hypocrisy and irony are blinding, Rush. You cannot admit that this is exactly what Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush both did for 16 years. They spent our great-grandchildren into a gaping hole. And you are correct that it is not sustainable. It is an aggravating factor in the current economy. Reagan and George H. W. Bush spent us trillions into the hole. Clinton reversed the trend and even passed four consecutive surplus budgets. Bush has done even worse deficit spending than his father, and that doesn't include all the war spending accounting tricks to make the deficit look better than it was. I've seen the charts showing Obama's proposed budget and deficit spending, some estimates up to $2.5 trillion in one fiscal year. I don't know where the final number will end up. But I know that because of the inaction and failures of the last several years, drastic measures are required.

"Spending a nation into generational debt is not an act of compassion."

Then how come it was okay when "compassionate conservative" George W. Bush was doing it? He added trillions to the national debt.

"I have learned how to tweak liberals everywhere. I do it instinctively now. Tweak them in the media. And no reason to be afraid of these people. Why in the world would you be afraid of the deranged? There really is no reason to be afraid of them. And there's no reason to assume they're the minority. And there's no reason to let them set all the premises and all the agendas to which we respond to."

Again, calling names is not a strategy. Referring to my party as the "Democrat Party" seven times because you think it tweaks us is not a solution; it is childishness. But I have a better rebuttal.

"We, ladies and gentlemen, have challenges that are part and parcel of a movement that feels it has just suffered a humiliating defeat when it's not humiliating. This wasn't a landslide victory, 52 to, what, 46. Fifty-eight million people voted against Obama."

Actually, had you wanted to be more negative, you could have said that almost 62 million people voted against Obama. But almost 70 million Americans did choose him. Obama beat McCain by 9,500,000 votes, the largest margin of victory since 1984. Your party lost 14 seats in the Senate and 53 seats in the House in the last two elections – that's nearly one-quarter of your members. So it is not just at the national level that your ideas have lost. They have also lost among the 435 individual constituencies in our country, too. Your platform did not just lose one election – it has lost dozens.

"We don't have the votes in Capitol Hill to stop what's going to happen. What we can do is slow it down, procedure, parliamentary procedures, slow it down and do the best we can to inform the American people of what's really on the horizon."

And now you're making sense. You don't have the votes to win on most party line issues. But you don't propose better ideas, ideas that can win. Instead, you suggest obstruction and delay. Just like insults, neither of these ideas will make someone's life better.

"[Obama] wants people in fear, angst and crisis, fearing the worst each and every day because that clears the decks for President Obama and his pals to come in with the answers, which are abject failures, historically shown and demonstrated."

I'm sorry, Rush, are you sure you didn't mean President Bush? Because after 9/11, Bush had the chance to unite this country and to ask us to sacrifice as Americans for the common good. Instead, he and his people sowed fear, doubt and mistrust among and between us, and used the uncertainty and the confusion to soil the Constitution, the document you claim to love. Do you only love it during Republican eras?

"When I look out at you in this audience, I don't see a Walmart voter. And I don't see a black, and I don't see a woman, and I don't see a Hispanic. I see human beings who happen to be fortunate enough to be the luckiest people on Earth since you are Americans."

Actually, Rush, I think the reason you didn't see a black, or a woman, or a Hispanic, or a Wal-Mart voter in the room is because there weren't any at CPAC! But I digress with my snarkiness…

"So as you leave here, as you leave here optimism, confidence, not guilt, it's not worth it. There's nothing to be guilty about. Don't treat people as children. Respect their intelligence. Realize that there's a way to persuade people. Sometimes the worst way is to get in their face and point a finger. Set up a set of circumstances where the conclusion is obvious. Let them think they came up with the idea themselves. They'll think they're smart that they figured it out. Who cares how you persuade them, the fact they can be persuaded is factually correct, it's possible"

So regarding what position are you trying to persuade me? What ideas do you have for leading our country? You claimed to detail what conservatism is, but you barely scratched the surface. And other than jokes, and pointing fingers, and calling names, you have not suggested any alternatives. Do you want Republicans to be in charge, making the decisions, and driving the agenda again? Of course you do. So suggest something. As long as you have no ideas, as long as all you can do is tear others down, your good wishes for our country will not matter. You will not win elections.

"Joe Biden was mystified how Bobby Jindal got his shift off at 7-Eleven that night to make the speech. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Time out. Suspend speech for explanation. People watching at home. I'm glad this happened. Glad this happened. You think I just made a joke, an ethnic joke about Bobby Jindal, don't you? I didn't. I made a joke about the bigotry of the Vice President of the United States, Joe Biden."

I try to keep myself open-minded. I don't prefer people who are mindless followers of any media personality. Yet I do agree with Keith Olbermann when he calls you a comedian. Rush, you are an intelligent and creative man. But you are unserious. You are a comedian. You may have some worthy ideas, but they get lost in the insults and the racism and the bigotry and the cheap laughs that you yourself display.

It's true that Vice President Biden made a comment about Indian-Americans during the 2008 campaign. And he explained them. The vice president does not have a lengthy dossier underscoring a pervasive bigotry like you do, Rush. But that is not even the worst part of your statement. The worst part is this: will calling the Vice President a bigot save anyone's home? Will it get anyone a job? Will it get health care for those who cannot afford it? Will it educate a child? Will it eradicate cancer? Will making a joke about John Kerry's skin color do any of these things? So, then, if you are truly interested in leading, in finding solutions, in being compassionate, then why are you wasting your first "address to the nation" on such empty punch lines?

It is because you are an unserious comedian.

I laugh at Bill Maher sometimes. He skewers liberals occasionally but saves his heavy ammunition for Republicans (and God). And sometimes he crosses the line into tastelessness. But he is also politically minded. He is aware of current events. He advocates some positions I can support, like the legalization of marijuana. But I no more want Democrats to follow him as a political leader than I think Republicans should be following you now. Put it this way – just like the president and just like you, Rush, Bill Maher is an excellent communicator. However, there is a world of difference between using inspiration, hope and ideas, and using humor as the vehicle to a destination. Comedians like you and Bill and Jon Stewart can inform and entertain people enough to win them over to a cause. But when it comes time to translate that into action, the comedian has nothing left to offer. There is no "there" there. Liberals laugh at Maher, but follow Obama. Conservatives have found both in you. That kind of vacant leadership is dangerous for our country.

I should be thrilled that both conservatives and you yourself want you to be anointed the new leader of the Republican Party. It should only lead to more gains for Democrats and progressives. But I can't be happy about that. That kind of political debate is not healthy for America. I want real ideas on both sides, and I want our people and our leaders to choose from among them. Because I know that Democrats do not have all the answers. And when we are wrong, which is often, there should be other ideas out there. Republicans have good ideas about some things. (I can admit that about my political opponents, Rush. You are incapable of that.) I want an active and vibrant Republican Party to contribute to the constructive debate about how to keep our country strong. A party that follows your comedy shows is not capable of fulfilling that role.

And so I have made a decision. For years, I have listened to you from time to time. I wanted to know what my conservative friends were hearing, and what ideas were in vogue on the other side. I wanted to be educated about you so that I could fairly criticize you when appropriate – and it was nearly always appropriate. But yesterday, you revealed yourself to be the unserious comedian that many have always expected. You are not a philosopher and you are not a political leader. You are a joker with a drive-time radio show, intelligent but boorish, willing to say anything for outrage or for a laugh.

So as I divorced CNN over a year ago, I am leaving you in the dust, too. I am not listening anymore. I am not keeping tabs on you. I am not following your latest outrage on Media Matters. I am not discussing you with friends or opponents. I am not boycotting your advertisers. I am ceasing to care about you politically because you are an unserious comedian. Rather than refusing to listen to you because you are a Republican, I have chosen to ignore you like I ignore Dane Cook – because you are not funny.

You Can Laugh When Your Dreams Fall Apart at the Seams

2009-02-17T16:04:00.004-06:00

It's Tuesday, so I stopped at Snoopy's Hot Dog stand on the way home from work. The two hot dog special is a dollar off on Tuesdays, with hot dogs made as the good Lord intended - not messy, with chili, onions, and shredded cheese. (No cole slaw, you crazy West Virginians!)

Several of us were waiting for our orders on the front stoop, and a mother and young boy, about four years old, were among us. The boy was very active, running around the wall, jumping up and down, and generally being four. Finally, when their order came up, his mother went to the window and got it. She was walking back to the car, and her son kept running away, and bounding back up to the window, wondering where his food was. His mother finally convinced him that she had it, and they went back to their car.

Another mother with child in the line commented on how he was just like her son, running all over the place and acting crazy. A kindly white-haired lady among us said, "Oh, to be young again." I replied that one didn't have to be young to run around like that, except that everyone else might think you were crazy and look at you funny.

She replied, "I'm only 81 years old, and I can still run." And then she did a little jig on the stoop.

To be spry and optimistic enough to refer to 81 years of age as "only" is something to be admired and emulated.

100,000 Maniac

2009-02-16T14:52:00.003-06:00

That's my car - a 2006 Honda Civic Hybrid. I purchased it in January 2006 to replace my old Chevy S-10 pickup truck. And today, my Honda turned over 100,000 miles. (If you are on Facebook, you can actually see a video of it on my profile. Nerdy!) So when the odometer rolled over when pulling out of the Target parking lot this afternoon, it got me to thinking about how I got the car - which I tentatively named Phoebe - and where it has been.

By the end of 2005, my tan (champagne) pickup had over 175,000 miles on it, mainly from travels for tennis, and home from Texas to Alabama. It had been paid off for a couple of years, and I was near the high-water mark of my adult financial life. I decided it was time to look into a new car, and I knew I wanted a hybrid and nothing else. Unfortunately, American automakers just a few years ago had no idea what to do with hybrid technology. That meant looking at a Japanese car instead.

My first stop was the Toyota Prius. In fact, knowing the things about it that I do now, particularly all the efforts to tweak it into higher mileage, it's almost a shame I didn't buy it. Anyway, I met with the dealer, and immediately set out to test drive it. I climbed in the car, and my head was touching the roof. Then, I looked in the rear mirror and noticed that the rear window was very sloped, so the viewable area was narrow. Moreover, it was divided by a metal support beam. I got out of the car, thanked the man for his time, and left.

Later that day I went to First Texas Honda in Austin. The Civics had been so popular that there was a waiting list, and there weren't even any models on the lot that I could see. The best the dealer could do was show me a used model from a few years earlier. But I looked at the specs and discussed the car with him on a few separate occasions. By November, I decided to get on the waiting list. To get on the list, you had to put $1,000 down. When you purchased the car, that money was applied to the cost. If you chose not to buy the car when your spot came up on the list, you lost the deposit. (It could, however, be applied to another Honda vehicle from that dealer.)

So I got on the list and waited. And in early January, the call came. My metallic pearl (um, blue?) Honda Civic Hybrid was on its way from Japan. I arranged to sell my truck to a friend from work, and I got about 20% back of what I had paid for it - a great deal. I picked up my Honda in the middle of January 2006. I was smitten from the start, and my love for my car has not faded.

When I first started driving it around town, I was very conscious of the tank miles-per-gallon measure, as well as the real-time mpg stats that were provided by the dashboard. I started right away to learn everything I could about how it worked. What were the best driving conditions? How did weather and terrain affect mpg? What was the optimal way to accelerate? How much should I coast, and when? I have tracked every tank of gas since I got the car, and my lifetime mpg is around 45.

As I apprached 300 miles on my first tank of gas, I noticed that the fuel gauge was still around two-thirds. I was thrilled and a bit amazed. Yeah. As I neared 400 miles, the fuel gauge dropped like a rock, an important lesson to note. On several tanks, I have had to push the car well past E (no bars remaining) either by circumstance or by choice. And now I have a pretty good idea of how far the car can really go. (Basically, 20 to 40 miles after the last bar disappears.) I have never - knock wood - run out of gas. But I nearly did once on the way from Corpus Christi to San Antonio in 2006.

Within the first three months of having the car, it had driven on the beach on the Gulf of Mexico (punctured tire), and through a heavy ice storm in Memphis (shredded windshield wipers). Thanks to my job, I have put over 30,000 miles a year on the car. It has been to Mexico and to Canada, to Miami, San Diego, and 33 states. It has driven the entire length of Interstate 10 - every single one of the 2460 miles from Santa Monica to Jacksonville. Its wheels have actually touched the waters of the Atlantic, Pacific, Gulf of Mexico, and Lake Michigan. I have slept countless nights in that car on long trips.

In the spring of 2008, Phoebe and I took a 6,000 mile trip from Alabama to northern California, our most ambitious ever. We saw the Saint Louis Arch, the Superman statue in Metropolis, the Oz winery in Kansas; we saw bison in Wyoming, the Mormon Tabernacle in Utah, and black ice in Nevada. We felt an earthquake and drove past a volcano; through the wineries of Napa, the Sonoran Desert, and Texas Canyon. We've been to the Loop in Chicago, Key Biscayne in Miami, Coronado Island in San Diego, downtown Toronto, Central Park, as well as 19 state capitol buildings and the U.S. Capitol.

During the period of ridiculous gas prices in 2008, I got asked about my car frequently. I love how it looks and how it rides. And in the three years since I purchased it, my savings in gasoline have more than made up for the difference in price compared to the standard Civic. Amazingly, despite the mileage and wear-and-tear, the resale value is still quite high, in the neighborhood of how much I still owe on it. I do my best to take care of it with good gasoline, good tires, and preventive maintenance. I plan on keeping this car as long as I can keep it running.

I love my Honda.

The Best (and Worst) James Bond Themes - Part 1

2009-02-13T16:44:00.003-06:00

I am a major fan of James Bond movies. My favorite Bond? Easy – Sir Roger Moore. No, really. He played the part with equal amounts of charm and humor, and saved the franchise from extinction. But I digress. Many features of James Bond films have become iconic. The opening gun barrel sequence. (Which opening sequence is the only one in which Bond kneels to take his shot?) Maurice Binder’s excellent credits at or near the start of the movie, usually featuring naked women in silhouette. The gadgets of Q. The Bond girls. (Yes, Patsy Stone really was a Bond girl.) And, of course, the music.

For nearly half a century, the producers of Bond movies have usually sought out the top names in music at the time for the title themes – Paul McCartney, Carly Simon, Duran Duran, Tom Jones, and Dame Shirley Bassey (three times!). And occasionally their choices have generated a collective “huh?” from the audience. (Lani Hall? And, Lulu? Really? I mean, come on.) But between the star power behind the microphone and the writers behind the notes, the combination is usually quite memorable.

Though Bond himself is not anchored to any specific year, Bond themes tend to reflect the musical stylings of the time, and are quite varied. There are some ballads, some pop hits, some heavy metal, and some jazz. As a result, there is no formula for a perfect Bond theme. But a few criteria do apply. The song should be memorable. It should be able to stand alone, but it should also immediately conjure up images of James Bond. It really should mention the title of the film at some point. And, for lack of a better term, it shouldn’t be wussy. A ballad can be okay, as long as it is strong. James Bond is a lover, but he is first a killer.

So, just for the hell of it, here are my top 25 Bond themes.

(Notes: First, there have been 22 “official” James Bond films. Never Say Never Again was a remake of Thunderball and is not considered part of the official EON franchise – that makes 23 songs. From Russia with Love gets two entries in the countdown: one for the theme of the same name, and one for the introduction of John Barry’s “007 Theme”. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service also gets two entries: one for the instrumental theme of the same name, and one for Louis Armstrong’s closing credits song, “We Have All the Time in the World”.)

Let's start at the bottom of the countdown, number 25 - the only Bond theme to get a grade of F.

25. "Die Another Day", Madonna, Die Another Day

By 2002, Madonna had already topped the world of pop music. Every album she released had gone platinum, and she had 24 gold or platinum records. She had "acted" in several movies, though nearly all of them were commercial and critical failures. Highlighting the unevenness of Madonna's career, however, was the Golden Globe she won for Evita in 1996. So even though it was surprising she had not already done a Bond theme, she was already later in her career than just about any other theme artist in the history of the series. While the producers were hoping for another Evita, instead they got a Shanghai Surprise.

Madonna was knee-deep in her dance floor diva revival when EON came calling, and she didn't disappoint. As with the music of her middle-aged gay icon contemporary, Cher, it's hard to tell where Madonna's voice ends and the electronic computer enhancements kick in. Undoubtedly, it is a good Madonna song. But have you ever heard Madonna live - I mean, really, just her voice? She can't sing. So instead, we get this modulated robotic sound.

Madonna's rendition of the theme is like those artists who decide to perform the National Anthem instead of sing it with the spectators. The theme should be about James Bond. Madonna, as with everything, made it about Madonna. It is why she was nominated for both a Golden Globe and a Golden Raspberry for this song. If it weren't for an even more dreadful entry by Britney Spears from Crossroads, Madonna would have won. (As a note, she lost the Golden Globe to U2, but shared the Worst Actress Razzie with Britney Spears. And Madonna only had a cameo in Die Another Day.)

Grade: F

24. "Another Way To Die", Jack White and Alicia Keys, Quantum of Solace

It doesn't help that this song doesn't mention the title of the movie (though it does contain the word "solace"). It doesn't help that the title of the movie was taken from an completely unrelated short story, and therefore in this context is stupid. And it didn't help that this was the worst non-Dalton film in the series, by a long, long way. But the clincher was setting up the first, and hopefully last, duet in Bond theme history.

The music for this song, particularly the opening, are fantastic. It should be right up there in the top 10 of all Bond themes. And it would have been, if Jack and Alicia had never opened their mouths. This combination of sounds is revolting, so bad that it more than negates the great instrumentalism. "Another ringer with a slick trigger finger for Her Majesty"? No, thanks.

Grade: D

23. "Tomorrow Never Dies", Sheryl Crow, Tomorrow Never Dies

John Barry was the guiding hand behind Bond themes and scores from the beginning until Timothy Dalton came along. With a change in Bond, the produces sought a change in music. While Barry recommended his replacement, David Arnold, the lack of Barry's influence saw a generally steady decline in the theme music after 1987. The worst three theme songs date from this era. Without the experience and institutional Bond knowledge of Barry, theme artists with no investment in the franchise began going their own way with the music. (Exhibit A: Madonna) Sheryl Crow was the first artist in the post-Barry era to get lost on the way to the opening credits.

Whereas Madonna was one of the most experienced artists to record a Bond theme, Crow was one of the least. She exploded onto the scene in the mid-1990s, taking home three Grammys for Tuesday Night Music Club. But her work here with Mitchell Froom, husband of Suzanne Vega, has several fatal flaws. The choice of an equivalent 6/8 time gives the song a dolorous quality that is not in sync with the action of the movie. Thus, it did not lend itself to be reprised during the movie, as good Bond themes do. It also was not a good fit for Crow's mezzo voice; during the refrain, it feels like there are notes that she struggles to reach. And the rhythm and repetitiveness of the background piano is unfortunately reminiscent of this.

Grade: D

22."For Your Eyes Only", Sheena Easton, For Your Eyes Only

John Barry refused to return to the United Kingdom in 1981 for tax reasons. So EON Productions called on the man who gave us the music to all the Rocky movies, as well as the theme songs from Dynasty and Falcon Crest, Bill Conti. Needless to say, the result was a piano-heavy ballad that is one of the wussiest songs to ever grace a Bond film. Meanwhile, Scottish singer Sheena Easton had exploded onto the pop scene the year before, and would have been an unlikely choice to sing a traditional Bond theme. And unlikelier still, Easton is the only singer to appear in the opening credits. But the musical and vocal styles paired well with Conti's composition. The result was a very good ballad, but a very poor Bond theme. John Barry would return for the next Bond film, but this hiatus marked the end of his best Bond work.

Grade: C-

21. "All Time High", Rita Coolidge, Octopussy

John Barry came back from his one-film vacation to write the music and theme for the next installment after For Your Eyes Only. But how does a composer honor the Bond tradition of incorporating the movie title into the song when the movie is called Octopussy? John Barry brought in Broadway lyricist Tim Rice to help, and the result was only the second Bond theme to date that failed to mention the title of the film. (The first was Dr. No.) The selection of Rita Coolidge was a mystery, however. Coolidge had had an uneven if uneventful career, mainly known for covers of other artists' hits, as well as for breaking up Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young by leaving one of the singers for another. As with Sheena Easton before her, her voice was well-suited to the ballad that Rice and Barry created. But because it had little connection to the film, it is probably the least memorable Bond theme in the last half century. (As an aside, the balladry that Bond themes experienced in the 1980s seems well-suited to the character that Roger Moore brought to the role.)

Grade: C-

News You Can Misuse: February 9, 2009

2009-02-09T08:15:00.007-06:00

First today, some things you can really not use...

Carrie Fisher was the special guest on last week's episode of Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. She was promoting her new best-selling book, Wishful Drinking - that is, when she wasn't being hilarious. (If you haven't visited her blog, you have my permission to stop reading and go here.) Anyway, host Peter Sagal asked her to reveal something about Sir Alec Guinness that she hadn't written about. She replied, "Alec Guinness once gave Mark Hamill 20 pounds to go away." She also mentioned that during the famous gold bikini scene, the clothing would not adhere to her body. So while she was sprawled across Jabba the Hutt, Boba Fett was standing behind her and "could see all the way to Florida." I love Carrie Fisher. (Ask her about when Cary Grant called her - not once, but twice - to tell her not to use LSD.)

This morning as I wrote at at breakfast, I had VH-1 Classic on in the background. The familiar "Oh-ay-oh-ay" of the Miami Sound Machine's "Rhythm is Gonna Get You" started, and I looked up to watch the video. Oh, Lord, the 80s. But what caught my attention was that several band members were wearing t-shirts with "MSM" in large letters on the front. And all my brain kept saying was, "mainstream media? mainstream media? that makes no sense."

Finally, if this doesn't make you smile, then you are dead inside.

And now, the news...

Badgered over human rights. University of Wisconsin-Madison News:

The University of Wisconsin-Madison will end its business relationship with Russell Athletic at the expiration of its current licensing agreement in March....

In late 2008, the university's Labor Licensing Policy Committee (LLPC) recommended that the university end its relationship with the firm after questions arose over the decision to close one of the company's factories, Jerzees de Honduras in Choloma, Honduras.

Human and workers' rights groups have alleged that the closure took place as a result of union-organizing activity, and they cite additional claims that the factory management repeatedly sought to suppress freedoms of association there....
"We are a university that wants to do the best for workers making products bearing our name," says Dawn Crim, special assistant to the chancellor for community relations and liaison to the LLPC. "The company has not met our expectations."

I know that Madison is a hippy-dippy place (Hi Rachel! Hi Neal!). So it is rewarding to see that the university is responding to claims of human rights violations and unfair labor practices. But I think there is more to this story than meets the eye.

Athletics is big business. The NCAA and its member institutions have generally been impervious to what is best for the student, in all cases choosing what is best for the cash. And in this case, Russell products only netted $39,514 for the university in 2007-2008. Even in these hard times, that's chump change for a flagship institution.

A prediction and an expectation: first, look for UW-Madison to replace Russell with a more prominent athletic label such as Nike. And don't expect Nike's human rights record to get in the way of the almighty dollar. And second, shouldn't UW-Madison, and all its departments and employees, stop doing business with Wal-Mart? Wal-Mart's outrageous human rights and labor records are well documented, and certainly worse than Russell's.

D-O-U-C-H-E. USA Today:

Sports are often made for TV. And TV is made for advertisers.

So it shouldn't surprise — especially as all sports are scrambling to find new places to hang "for sale" signs given the current economy — that the NBA's first H-O-R-S-E contest won't use those letters.

As that contest joins dunking and three-point shooting contests as part of TNT's NBA All-Star Weekend coverage, the as-yet unnamed three contestants — who'll be overseen by an NBA ref — will play G-E-I-C-O. As in the insurance company that will be the event's unavoidable sponsor. (Suggestion: The winner then takes on the famous ad lizard to really drive home the brand awareness.)

Really? SRSLY? I already have significant issues with the overlogofication of sports. We're fashion police in professional tennis when it comes to the small number and size of logos we will allow. And in NASCAR, with every single thing covered in logos all the time, how come there have to be commercial breaks? MLS Soccer can broadcast for 45 minutes without interruption - why can't NASCAR?

FanHouse takes this down better than I could:

Look, I understand that the economy stinks that everything needs to be sponsored (this is why Sportscenter has the Coors Light Cold Hard Facts Sponsored by GMC, of course) but at least keep the integrity of the game intact and let it be TNT's HORSE presented by GEICO. Then, instead of selling all our souls, just have a commercial every 12 seconds (fit it in between the Closer, perhaps?) where the gecko and the pile of money with eyes play G-E-I-C-O against each other.

It would have the same effect really, and no one would feel dirty.

A picture is worth a thousand jobs...or more. Daily Kos:

We have a long way to go.

Who, Mii? Engadget:

The sketch artist at the Kanagawa, Japan police department must've been on vaca last week -- local authorities there decided to use this shady-looking Mii to try and catch a man suspected of a hit and run. Crude, yet effective -- although something tells us a man with no arms who can still swing a tennis racket might just stand out on his own.

Are there really enough option in the Mii creator to render an adequate "sketch"? My Mii looks like hell - maybe it's time for me to engage in a crime spree in Kanagawa.

Did you know...that the Pointer Sisters recorded the music for "Pinball Number Count" for Sesame Street in 1972?

You can thank me for having that in your head for the rest of the day.

Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars

2009-02-08T22:26:00.004-06:00

I am thirty-five years old. I work at Target and I make $8.50 an hour. I take responsibility for the path my life has taken because of the choices I have made. But I am not ashamed of my salary, or of the work that I do. I am years away from approaching the honesty, integrity and determination of my father, the man whose name I bear. But I am still a hard worker, an important lesson I learned from him. I respect my employer and my team, I strive to be on time and fulfill my duties, and I never take advantage of my position. Even in the simplest jobs, it gives me a sense of pride that I am liked and respected for the person I am and the quality of my work.

In my jobs, including officiating, I almost always give my very best. At the times when I don't, I'm still giving pretty darned close to my best. I make sure I am always early. I study and ask questions so I am prepared. And I strive to make sure I am being a good teammate. I am certainly eligible for promotions and raises at Target. But those incentives are not the main reason that I work hard. I work hard because it is what I was taught, because it feels good, and because it is the right thing to do. It would be nice if I earned more than $8.50 an hour. But that's my wage, and I am going to work hard for it.

I would work no harder if I got a raise, nor if I was offered a bonus, because I always give my best whenever I can. I cannot understand this bonus culture that has poisoned Wall Street, the banking industry, and corporate board rooms. My incentive to do my job and do it well is two-fold: pride and my salary. Pride motivates me because I want to be viewed as a team player and a hard worker, and I want to honor my father's memory and his work ethic. But moreover, my salary is my incentive because I wish to keep my job.

If you received a bonus for performing well in your job, then what was the purpose of your salary? Is it financial recognition that you showed up every day and gave it a C+ effort? What is the point of paying you a salary to do a job if I also have to pay you a bonus to do it well? And if you do it poorly, how come I don't get to dock your salary or ask for money back?

I have my concerns about President Obama's decision to cap salaries of executives at firms that take TARP funds. It seems a legitimate criticism that top minds and executives will leave these firms for ones that don't take TARP money. But what I would really like to see is a prohibition on bonuses. Earning your salary and not getting fired are the only incentives you should need to do your job well.

News You Can Misuse: December 14, 2008

2008-12-14T09:22:00.006-06:00

A few messages before the news...

Dave has been experiencing some non-specific pains in his abdominal region. Long story short, he and his doctors agreed on a series of tests, including a CT scan, to uncover the cause of the pains. On the morning of his test, a test he had to fast for, we are awakened by the testing office telling us that the insurance company - BCBS - has not pre-approved his test, and until it does, he cannot have the scan lest we risk having to pay for it. She said pre-approval could take five to seven business days. Yesterday, we receive a letter rejecting approval for the scan, and providing a list of symptoms, that, if Dave had, would justify the scan.

As a young and blessedly healthy man, I have had few dealings with insurance companies on matters like these. What the hell is a pre-approval? He has to be approved for a procedure before he knows he needs it? And who the hell are BCBS, who have never met Dave, who have never met his doctors, who have never sat with me while I gently rub his back and try to ease his pains, to tell him he cannot have a test that his doctor recommends for diagnosis? The first fat that needs to be cut from the insurance industry hog is the phalanx of low-level letter writers whose only job is to write the initial denial-of-coverage letter, hoping the insureds will just go away. You're gonna need that cross and shield, because we're not going away.

Also, we visited the in-laws yesterday in Haw River. I just don't have time right now to write about the teacup pooch with the severe overbite, or the grandpa who knocks sandwiches out of his own hand. But I will.

And now, the news.

"Have Gun, Will Travel" reads the card of a man. Lexington Herald-Leader:

It's not the Christmas rush that's causing gun and ammunition dealers across Central and Eastern Kentucky — like their counterparts across the nation — to run out of stock and see sales doubling.
Rather, gun shop owners from Lexington, Frankfort and Hazard say the surge is a result of customers thinking that President-elect Barack Obama will reinstate a 1994 federal assault weapons ban or push for other gun restrictions....
"There's the election factor and the safety factor," [Paul's Discount gun shop partner Joe] Neikirk said. "With the meth labs, home invasions, and robberies, people just don't feel safe."

So, how many of these buyers are purchasing their first weapon? And how many are stockpiling because they fear changes in gun laws? With the exception of collectors of non-firing weapons, a person can only use two guns at a time. (Flame this post in 3...2...) And how much of this has to do with race? Eastern Kentucky is country-club white - there are dozens of Census tracts that have no blacks - and the entire state is over 90% white.

(Non) Lethal Weapon II. AlterNet:

It's hard to know which are more ubiquitous at this point: stories of accidental death by Tasers, or stories of police brutality involving bullets. Just this week, in New York, a Bronx man was shot and killed after he allegedly waved a baseball bat at police officers who entered his home. In theory, these sorts of confrontations are the reason such "non-lethal" weapons as Tasers exist. But news reports tell a different tale. In the United States and Canada, more than 400 people have died after being Tasered since 2001.

How the hell does a "non-lethal" weapon alternative kill 400 people in eight years? A redneck, Wild West mentality.

Despite the rather old news that Tasers can kill, the news media continue to be littered with reports of trigger-happy Taserers, many of whom should be relieved that their victims lived. This week in Oklahoma, police Tasered a man who had gone into diabetic shock while driving, which caused him to spin out of control on the road. (The officers felt "extremely bad" upon realizing that he was not drunk or high but rather in need of medical attention.) In another report, last month, undercover cops in North Carolina Tasered a man acting as a pallbearer at his father's funeral. (The local sheriff apologized for the deputies' behavior. "Family, friends, relatives. … That was a bad decision.")

Combine this with poor quality control, allowing some Tasers to shoot more voltage than designed and raising the heart attack risk among targets by half, and the results are bound to be disastrous. Many police forces already have mandatory mental health leaves of absence for officers after any incident in which they discharge a firearm. This "cooling off" period allows time for evaluation of the situation and the officer, and some space for reflection on the incident before resuming law enforcement duties. A similar cooling off period should be required after any Taser discharge. Too many officers view Tasers like Nerf guns. Too many are too lazy to do the actual law enforcement work required to avoid the use of any force. And too many do not appreciate the consequences of Tasering. All that should end.

Bringing up baby. Anchorage Daily News:

If federal funds and oil dollars suddenly evaporated from Alaska, two-thirds of the state's jobs would disappear too, according to a new analysis from the University of Alaska Anchorage.
The cash flow from the rest of the state's economic drivers -- including tourism, seafood and air cargo -- support only about a third of the state's jobs, according to the analysis....
The state's biggest job creator is the federal government, not oil and gas production, according to Goldsmith's analysis. Due to the state's military bases, massive federal land ownership -- including the largest national parks and forests -- Alaska Native programs and other federal initiatives, federal money supports roughly 125,100 jobs in Alaska, he said.

Alaska is only seven months and 18 days away from being the baby of our union, and yet she is still suckling at her mother's teat. For half a century, the rest of America has been subsidizing survival for a population the size of Fort Worth to live in an inhospitable region. If Republicans are unwilling to bail out the automotive industry, why should we continue to bail out Alaska? What are Michigan-Americans lacking that Alaskan-Americans have? And why does that upset the GOP? Alaska is that middle-aged child that has far overstayed his welcome in your basement. Time:

As if it couldn't support itself, Alaska also ranks No. 1, year after year, in money it sucks in from Washington. In 2005 (the most recent figures), according to the Tax Foundation, Alaska ranked 18th in federal taxes paid per resident ($5,434) but first in federal spending received per resident ($13,950). Its ratio of federal spending received to federal taxes paid ranks third among the 50 states, and in the absolute amount it receives from Washington over and above the amount it sends to Washington, Alaska ranks No. 1.

Alaska received $1.84 from the federal government for every $1 it sent in 2005. Is your state making up the difference? (Rachel: Wisconsin gets $0.86 back.) It's time to cut the cord.

I Hope It Was 10W-40. Reuters:

With sport-utility vehicles at the altar and auto workers in the pews, one of Detroit's largest churches on Sunday offered up prayers for Congress to bail out the struggling auto industry....

Local car dealerships donated three hybrid SUVs to be displayed during the service, one from each of the Big Three. A Ford Escape, Chevy Tahoe from GM and a Chrysler Aspen were parked just in front of the choir and behind the pulpit....

At one point, Ellis summoned up hundreds of auto workers and retirees in the congregation to come forward toward the vehicles on the altar to be anointed with oil.

This is a bizarre combination of church and state and industry. And I can't help but feel a little creeped out about it all. Or, as Princess Sparkle Pony put it, "This Week, the Part of the Golden Calf Will Be Played by Three Sport Utility Vehicles."

Blackberries on Parade. Fox 5 Washington:

Private information at bargain prices. It was a high-tech flub at the McCain-Palin campaign headquarters in Arlington when Fox 5’s Investigative Reporter Tisha Thompson bought a Blackberry device containing confidential campaign information....

We traced the Blackberry back to a staffer who worked for “Citizens for McCain,” a group of democrats who threw their support behind the Republican nominee. The emails contain an insider’s look at how grassroots operations work, full of scheduling questions and rallying cries for support.

But most of the numbers were private cell phones for campaign leaders, politicians, lobbyists and journalists.

We called some of the numbers.

“Somebody made a mistake,” one owner told us. “People’s numbers and addresses were supposed to be erased.”

“They should have wiped that stuff out,” another said. But he added, “Given the way the campaign was run, this is not a surprise.”

The people involved in managing these decisions would be pulling the levers of power in DC on January 20. It is yet another reason to be thankful for the election of Barack Obama.

O-face. Logo Design Love:

Sol Sender, who led a design team for the Obama 08 logo, was recently interviewed about the project.

Here’s a walk through the various logo options, with some of Sol’s thoughts. The full interview videos can be watched on the website of VSA Partners (where Sol is now a strategist).

From the start, the iconic "O" was a major part of nearly every prototype. Well, with one notable exception. My favorite rejected image:(Doot doot doo-doo-doot, Pop Up President!) This is a fascinating website for those who love practical visual art. Try not to lose an entire day with stories like 10 Successful Logo Redesigns

News You Can Misuse - December 4, 2008

2008-12-04T20:59:00.002-06:00

Gays have lost their ways. John Aravosis:

Yeah, the Mormons have only been dropping cash into gay state initiatives for, oh, 15 years now? No one could have predicted that they'd have jumped in again. And the notion of religious conservative use gays to get out the vote in a critical presidential election year, I mean, who's ever hard of that?

Absolutely pathetic. And now we're having "the day without a gay" and postcard campaigns to Obama (yeah, that'll get his attention) because we are a movement of aimless and energized followers with no real leaders. I don't fault the followers for coming up with very sweet but useless ideas. I fault the leaders, in California and in Washington, for permitting this void in smart political leadership to continue year after year.

John and his team at AMERICAblog have been all over the Prop 8 story, from links to the Sundance Film Festival to the "unintended consequences" of donations to the Yes on 8 side to coprorations we should consider avoiding. But today he hits the nail true. Who are our leaders?

Most of us (politically active, bloggers, blog readers) would have no problem naming leaders of the African American equal rights movement - Jesse Jackson, John Lewis, Martin Luther King. What about the women's equal rights movement? Susan B. Anthony, Gloria Steinem, Billie Jean King. Atheists equal rights movement? Madalyn Murray O'Hair.

So who are the leaders of the gay equal rights movement? Can you name anyone? The reason you cannot is because gays and lesbians are not a cohesive group. African Americans, Hispanics, women - they all share certain cultural touchstones that have the potential to strongly unify them in the face of adversity and discrimination. Gays and lesbians share only one thing - one thing that is actually very different for men and for women - and are terribly diverse in every other way. We are every race, religion, party affiliation, and so on. We cannot progress because we cannot unify. Even in the face of a defeat like California, we lack cohesion and rely on temperamental boycotts and stunts like "Day without a Gay". What we need is Obama-style netroots activism. And we need homegrown leaders.

That's why all the folks on Rocky Top get their coal from a jar. Natural Resources Defense Council:

Today, BofA released its revised coal policy, which will have the immediate effect of curtailing commercial lending to companies that mine coal by blowing off the top of mountains. The policy states, in part:

Bank of America is particularly concerned about surface mining conducted through mountain top removal in locations such as central Appalachia. We therefore will phase out financing of companies whose predominant method of extracting coal is through mountain top removal. While we acknowledge that surface mining is economically efficient and creates jobs, it can be conducted in a way that minimizes environmental impacts in certain geographies.

Bank of America has been my least favorite back for years, dating back to experiences in College Station, Texas when I was in graduate school. They charge for everything - they even have accounts that charge you for making a deposit with a teller - and I never feel like I can completely trust them.

Through mergers and acquisitions, BoA has become the largest bank by assets in the United States, and a major financial services company with the purchases of Merrill Lynch and Countrywide Financial. And, for the sake of convenience, I have a local account with them now, too. The branch manager at my local office, a bundle of energy named Greg, is a polite and helpful man, and his effervescence rubs off on everyone else there. It has made me reassess BoA, though I still don't completely trust them. This news, however, is good news.

In 2006, BoA provided nearly 100 times as much financing for heavily polluting energy projects as it did for cleaner alternatives. With the Obama administration hinting at the possibility of a "Green Deal" set of public works projects, BoA and the other major banks should get on board. Government should go further, however, requiring that banks follow a Community Reinvestment Act approach to funding cleaner energy. It would be a good start for the government to provide billions in funding for cleaner energy. It would be great if the private sector would see the benefits of doing the same thing.

(And if you want an idea of what we clean energy proponents are up against, check out the story of how Don Blankenship of Massey Energy tried to buy the West Virginia Supreme Court and legislature, and succeeded in one case.)

There goes the neighborhood. New York Times The Caucus:

As hard as it may be to leave 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush have settled on a new home.
The White House announced today that after the president leaves office next month, the first couple will be moving to the upscale Preston Hollow neighborhood of Dallas....
According to property records on file with the Dallas Central Appraisal District, the home at 10141 Daria Place has a market value of over $2 million. The 8,501 square foot, four-bedroom residence, which includes a cabana and servant’s quarters, was built in 1959 and sits on 1.13 acres.

President and Mrs. George H. W. Bush retired to Houston. He planted his library at Texas A&M University. And now, after convincing Southern Methodist to find some shelf space for his coloring books, George and Laura confirm that they are moving to a wealthy north Dallas neighborhood. From the looks of it, there will be plenty of brush to clear. And, it's less than ten miles to the President George Bush Turnpike:

View Larger Map

These boots were made for charging. Engadget:

Charging your laptop could start to feel a lot more like work in the near future, if the folks at Easy Energy have it their way. They've just completed a protoype for the Yogen Max laptop charger, and though details are particularly spartan about the actual workings of the device, as you can see from the mock-up, it's going to involve a human foot pumping juice directly into your laptop.

Check out the flash. It is as direct as can be. And that energetic woman in the background just compels me to buy...

And finally. North Carolina Department of Agriculture, via Greensboro News-Record:

North Carolina produced nearly 4.8 million poinsettias in 2007 and generated cash receipts of $15.2 million," said Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler. "Overall floriculture production contributes more than $194 million to North Carolina’s economy, and poinsettias are a very important part of that.

Just don't let my cats near them.

News You Can Misuse: December 2, 2008

2008-12-02T09:45:00.009-06:00

God save the Bluegrass State. Lexington Herald-Leader:

An atheists-rights group is suing the Kentucky Office of Homeland Security because state law requires the agency to stress "dependence on Almighty God as being vital to the security of the Commonwealth."

Edwin Kagin, a Boone County lawyer and the national legal director of American Atheists, said he was appalled to read in the Herald-Leader last week that state law establishes praising God — and installing a plaque in God's honor — as the first duty of the Homeland Security Office.
The requirement to credit God for Kentucky's protection was tucked into 2006 homeland security legislation by state Rep. Tom Riner, D-Louisville, a Southern Baptist minister.
Riner said he expects Homeland Security to include language recognizing God's benevolent protection in its official reports and other materials — sometimes the agency does, and sometimes it doesn't — and to maintain a plaque with that message at the state's Emergency Operations Center in Frankfort.

Yeah, this one is pretty ridiculous. But then again, there are 7,382 state legislators in the United States - there are bound to be a few small-town flakes. And you would think this would be a slam-dunk case. Except the atheists bring the absurdity to a new level.

The plaintiffs ask for the homeland security law to be stripped of its references to God. They also ask for monetary damages, claiming to have suffered sleeping disorders and "mental pain and anguish."
"Plaintiffs also suffer anxiety from the belief that the existence of these unconstitutional laws suggest that their very safety as residents of Kentucky may be in the hands of fanatics, traitors or fools," according to the suit.

The Commonwealth is still fairly red. Flipping Bunning's seat in 2010 may not be that simple after all.

Indict Cheney? Not so fast. Associated Press:

A judge dismissed eight indictments Monday brought by a South Texas prosecutor against high-profile figures including Vice President Dick Cheney, former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and a state senator.
The order by Administrative Judge Manuel Banales ended two weeks of proceedings that some courtroom veterans declared the most bizarre they had ever witnessed.

At first look, it seemed that this rural Texas district attorney might be on to something. Cheney is an investor in the Vanguard Group, an investment management company that has part of its assets in private prison companies. This created a conflict of interest, with Cheney profiting from the growth of detention centers, some of which have been accused of abusing detainees. Gonzales was accused of stifling an investigation into these charges.

The indictments were dismissed on a technicality relating to the composition of the grand jury. But the story of the prosecutor, Willacy County DA Juan Angel Guerra, is more complicated. Guerra himself was under indictment for extortion and corruption for 18 months until Judge Banales cleared him of the charges. Guerra's indictment of Cheney and Gonzales also included indictments of five other local figures who were allegedly behind Guerra's own indictment, and who purportedly interfered to try to stop Guerra's investigation of the private prisons.

Guerra has a recent history of unusual or erratic behavior.

Guerra ran the investigation into alleged prisoner abuse with a siege mentality. He worked it from his home, dubbed it "Operation Goliath" and kept it secret from his staff, he said. He gave all the witnesses biblical pseudonyms — his was "David."

[While under indictment,] Guerra protested in front of the sheriff's office with farm animals and in March lost his re-election bid in a primary.

The judge suggested that Guerra avoid re-presenting these cases before his term expires at the end of the year. Guerra viewed that suggestion as evidence of the judge's complicity in a wide-ranging conspiracy to block his investigation.

"I expected it," Guerra said immediately after the hearing. "The system is going to protect itself."

A coup in Canada. Bloomberg:

Canadian opposition party leaders agreed to try and oust Prime Minister Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s minority Conservative government, signing an accord to work as an alliance until June 30, 2011.
Liberal Party Leader Stephane Dion would lead the government if Harper is defeated, he and other party chiefs said today in Ottawa. The Liberals would have 18 cabinet posts including finance, and the New Democratic Party would get six cabinet jobs.

“We are seeing a sad spectacle from Harper’s government,” Dion said at a press conference in Ottawa after a signing ceremony, flanked by Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe and New Democratic Leader Jack Layton. “We are ready to form a new government that will address the best interests of the people.”
Canada has never been led by a group of opposition parties since it was formed in 1867.

South of the Forty-Eighth, Harper would be called a "loyal Bushie." After his party's re-election two months ago, Harper tried to push through two controversial initiatives - restricting public employee union rights, and ending public campaign financing, a step that would have hit Opposition parties harder. The Opposition called Harper's bluff, and the end of a tumultuous week saw an unlikely alliance of Liberal, NDP, and Bloc Quebecois members to oust Harper.

Parliamentary democracy has its flaws. But can you imagine if this option had been available to Americans in 2005 - or even 2001?

And finally, USC will continue a tradition by wearing their home jerseys when they play at UCLA this weekend. ESPN:

[USC Coach Pete] Carroll said on Monday that the Trojans would wear their cardinal red home jerseys on Saturday at the Rose Bowl. That violates an NCAA rule that requires visiting teams to wear white, and the infraction will cost him two timeouts, one per half.
The last time the Trojans and the Bruins both wore home jerseys -- the Trojans in red, the Bruins in blue and gold -- was in 1982, when the schools shared the Los Angeles Coliseum.

Why is the corrupt and useless NCAA even legislating this, when we get this all the time in college basketball?

An Independence Bowl Primer

2008-12-01T23:56:00.005-06:00

So here is what I know about the big game, as of December 1.

The Independence Bowl has tie-ins with the SEC and Big XII Conferences. However, an unusual set of circumstances in 2008 will likely prevent either conference from being represented in the game.

(1) SEC: The SEC has tie-ins with nine bowls. Only eight teams are bowl-eligible (six wins and a non-losing record). And one team - Alabama or Florida - will almost definitely play in the BCS Championship Game (not included in the nine bowl tie-ins). Therefore, the last two bowls on the SEC's selection order list - the Independence Bowl and Papajohns.com Bowl - will not be able to select an SEC team.

(2) Big XII: The Big XII has tie-ins with nine bowls for eight slots. Only seven teams are bowl eligible this year - the fewest since 2004. So the last team on the selection order list - the Texas Bowl - will not get a Big XII team.

The Independence Bowl is seventh on the selection order list. If Oklahoma beats Missouri for the Big XII championship, the Sooners will be promoted to the BCS Championship Game, and the Independence Bowl will lose its Big XII team (which would be Kansas). The same result happens if Missouri wins the Big XII and BCS #3 Texas moves up.

The only way the Independence Bowl gets Kansas is if Missouri wins the Big XII, USC clobbers UCLA, Florida beats Alabama, and USC impresses enough voters and computers to get past the Longhorns in the BCS standings - not likely at all.

(3) Sun Belt: In 2008 and 2009, the Independence Bowl has an agreement with the Sun Belt to choose an eligible team from that conference if either the Big XII or SEC cannot provide a team. This clause will definitely kick in for 2008.

The Sun Belt will have four eligible teams - Troy, Arkansas State, Florida Atlantic, and the winner of the Louisiana-Lafayette v. Middle Tennessee State game. And, for the first time in this post, this is where things get complicated.

In 2006, the NCAA instituted a rule (.pdf) requiring that bowl eligible teams with a winning record be considered before teams with a 6-6 record. This rule does not apply if a bowl has a contract with a conference, as the Independence Bowl does with the Sun Belt Conference.

If Troy defeats Arkansas State, Troy goes to the New Orleans Bowl as the Sun Belt Conference champions. Then, if Louisiana-Lafayette defeats Middle Tennessee State, the Independence Bowl will almost certainly give the Ragin' Cajuns their first bowl bid in school history. But if Middle Tennessee State wins, the Independence Bowl will choose between MTSU, Florida Atlantic, and Arkansas State. Arkansas State, as the closest school and with a victory over Texas A&M to open the season, would be the front-runner.

If Arkansas State defeats Troy, they are conference co-champions, and Arkansas State goes to the New Orleans Bowl on the head-to-head tiebreaker. Then, under the 2006 NCAA bowl rule, the Sun Belt would be required to send 7-5 Troy to the Independence Bowl over 6-6 Florida Atlantic and the 6-6 winner of ULL v. MTSU.

This conference is so tight at the top that it is impossible to predict what will happen here. What is almost certain, however, is that either Troy, Arkansas State, or Louisiana-Lafayette will play in the Independence Bowl.

(4) At-large:There are 68 bowl slots available. At least 72 teams and as many as 74 will be bowl-eligible. In the last three seasons, every BCS conference team that was bowl eligible received a bowl invitation. This means that the WAC, with six eligible teams and only four bowl tie-ins, will likely send Louisiana Tech to the Independence Bowl for their fourth appearance, and first since a 34-34 tie with Maryland in 1990.

There are two dark horses for this at-large spot. The MAC's Western Michigan could land in Shreveport at 9-3. They tied for second in the Western Division with Central Michigan, who beat them. However, Central's season-ending loss to 3-9 Eastern Michigan probably ended the Chippewas' bowl hopes. Also, North Carolina State is the tenth team in the nine-bid ACC. They could be shipped to Shreveport if there are no vacancies in more prestigious bowl games.

The match-up I'd like to see? Louisiana-Lafayette versus Louisiana Tech. Tech leads the series 16-10-3, but the teams haven't played since 2004. The most likely match-up? Arkansas State versus Western Michigan. ASU v. Louisiana Tech was a regular series in the 1990s, and not a very interesting one (Tech leads the series 14-3.) Plus, the only time in the last decade that the Independence Bowl reached out to another conference was in 2004, when the MAC's Miami gave Iowa State a competitive game. And Arkansas State has played Eastern and Central Michigan, but never Western.

(5) Bowl notes: The eligible teams most likely to be left out of the bowls: Bowling Green, Central Michigan, Northern Illinois, Florida Atlantic, San Jose State, and Memphis.

The Big XII and SEC conference championships are also essentially BCS semifinals. Here are the possibilities.

ACC: Boston College or Virginia Tech
Big East: Cincinnati
Big Ten: Penn State
Big XII: Oklahoma or Missouri
Pac-10: Oregon State or USC
SEC: Alabama or Florida
Automatic qualifier: Utah
At-large: Texas
Possible At-large (in order of likelihood): Alabama/Florida loser; Oklahoma (if loses to Missouri); USC (if loses to Oregon State); Ohio State; Boise State

The BCS National Championship will definitely pair the SEC champion against Oklahoma or Texas. (Two exceptions - [1] Poll voters get a conscience about a team that did not win its conference playing for the title. [2] Florida wins the SEC and Oklahoma wins the Big XII, but Florida cannot squeeze past Texas for BCS #2.)

My predictions:
BCS Championship: Alabama v. Oklahoma
Rose Bowl: Penn State v. USC
Sugar Bowl: Florida v. Ohio State
Fiesta Bowl: Texas v. Utah
Orange Bowl: Boston College v. Cincinnati

UPDATE [12/2/08]: Apparently, if Troy loses to Arkansas State, the Indians go to the New Orleans Bowl, and the Trojans are committed to the Papajohns.com Bowl. This probably strengthens the case for a Louisiana Tech-Western Michigan match-up. Even if Louisiana-Lafayette wins their final game, their season record would pale in comparison to these two teams.

The Fear That Dare Not Speak Its Name

2008-10-09T21:46:00.004-05:00

I have been away from this keyboard for awhile because many things have been happening. I fell in love. I moved to North Carolina. I searched (and search) for work. I am settling into a new home. I am making new friends. And I am consuming voluminous amounts of political information as the election campaigns reach the final stretch run. I have decided it is time to put all those things on hold, because something terrifying is happening. And I have a specific audience in mind as I write.

This is for my aunt, a pro-choice Democrat who has unspecified fears about voting for a black man with a funny name. This is for my sister, a born-again Republican who seems to have forgotten everything my father worked for and everything she learned in her youth in a union household. This is for Will and for Scott, two men who I love like brothers, whose minds I don't expect to change, but who I desperately want to understand my fear. It's for my mother, who is out of excuses now that Hillary Clinton is out of the race. And it is for anyone else within earshot of my keyboard who still does not select health care, our troops, or the economy as the most important issue facing our country, and the things that should be most talked about in the next four weeks.

I have been paying attention to politics and government ever since I have had a memory. And I have seen a lot in three decades.

My bolonga has a first name,
It's J-I-M-M-Y.
My bologna has a second name,
It's C-A-R-T-E-R
I love to eat it every day,
and if you ask me, why, I'll say,
That Jimmy Carter has a way
of screwing up the U-S-A.

I hadn't quite figured out in first grade who Jimmy Carter was, or why I was supposed to dislike (or eat) him. But I was paying attention. I remember the Iran hostage crisis. I remember thinking then, as a kid of barely seven years, how curious it was that the hostages were released on the same day as we got a new president. I saw George Wallace speak from the back of a flatbed truck at Parkway City Mall as he campaigned for his last term as Alabama governor. I made the cover of my middle school yearbook, wearing a union t-shirt and borrowed glasses as I passionately debated in favor of the underdog Mondale-Ferraro ticket. I was in the Tuscaloosa County Democratic Party headquarters in 1992, deathly sick with the flu, to see Bill Clinton elected president.

I have also seen some things I never would have believed could happen. The Florida recount in 2000. The Sophie's choice election in Louisiana between David Duke and Edwin Edwards. Howell Heflin, Anita Hill, and Clarence Thomas. The first Alabama Republican governor since the Civil War. The impeachment of a president. The failure to impeach another. Terrorism in Oklahoma City, and Atlanta, and New York City. The destruction of two space shuttles. An African-American and a female presidential candidate, both with legitimate chances of victory.

In other words, I have been watching politics, eating and living politics, participating in politics all my life. Yet nothing - nothing - has filled me with dread any more than what I have witnessed in the last two weeks.

Barack Obama began receiving protection from the Secret Service in May 2007, the earliest that any presidential candidate had ever received protection since it was first offered after the assassination of Robert Kennedy in 1968. One year later, Hillary Clinton was chided by some for an oblique reference to Obama and Kennedy's assassination. And ever since Obama began his quest for the presidency, these fears have been referenced in hushed tones and muted colors (with an occasional right-wing outburst).

However, it has been considered poor form to talk about such things aloud, for multiple reasons: class; dignity; hoping that if we don't think about it, it won't happen; hoping that if we don't talk about it; others won't think of it. And all of those emotions and fears applied merely to the default state of America - how far we have come since the civil rights movement, and how far we have left to go. All of those thoughts about the future took into account the actual amount of racism and hatred left in our country on an average day. The last ten days have not been average.

Before and after the second presidential debate, McCain attacked Obama over his association with William Ayers. Yet McCain did not have the courage to say anything about it directly to Obama in Nashville. (By the way, how many of you assumed Ayers was black? He's not.)

Virtually all of McCain's television ads last week were attacks on Obama; Obama's attack ads were only one third of his total.

In August, Sarah Palin sat in her church last month while a speaker said that terrorist attacks on Israel were "God's judgment of unbelief" on Jews who had not converted to Christianity. Palin apparently did not respond and did not walk out.

Angry that his voter registration card was late, a Louisiana man threatened to bring his shotgun to the registrar's office to get it because he had to be sure to cast his ballot and "keep the nigger out of office."

On Saturday, Sarah Palin accused Barack Obama of "palling around with terrorists" for having served on a non-profit board with William Ayers.

On Monday, a supporter at a Palin rally shouted "Kill him!" at a reference to Obama. Palin did not respond.

On Monday, a supporter at a McCain rally responded to McCain's rhetorical, "Who is Barack Obama?" by shouting "terrorist". McCain did not respond.

On Tuesday, after Palin criticized Obama remarks on Afghanistan, a supporter shouted "treason!". Palin did not respond.

On Wednesday at a rally in Allentown, Pennsylvania, a supporter shouted "off with his head!" McCain did not respond.

At a rally today (video), McCain allows a voter to rant about Obama, calling him a "hooligan"; McCain concludes by agreeing with the man.

This week in Strongsville, Ohio, McCain and Palin supporters demonstrated the depth of their ignorance of the facts about Barack Obama. [Courtesy bloggerinterrupted]

At the same rally,

[A] family who believes Barack Obama is a terrorist. They brought an Obama doll, to show he’s a “puppet”, and when asked why, their small child says “you need gloves to touch him”.

Even Fox News is on the case.

On the contrary, watch this video of Barack Obama speaking about John McCain in Montana in August 2008(courtesy Associated Press):

The reason that I offer only one counter example is simple. This video is typical of Obama's approach to his opponent. He speaks of his opponent with dignity while he emphasizes the differences between the two of them. (It is often forgotten by most that criticizing an opponent's positions or highlighting differences is not attacking him.) And among the thousands of video clips floating in the intertubes, you will be hard pressed to find a clip of Obama allowing his supporters to boo, jeer, or make incendiary comments against John McCain. In many situations, he implores his supporters to show more respect. And it has become such a part of his stumping that audiences seldom jeer because they know it is inappropriate and not in keeping with the dignified campaign Obama is trying to run.

Countless supporters of Barack Obama fear for his safety because of extant racism and hatred in our society, because of Matthew Shepard, because of Timothy McVeigh, because it takes only one crazy person. Countless more supporters of Obama fear for his safety because they remember John Kennedy, and Robert Kennedy, and Harvey Milk, and Derwin Brown. And even more know the story of Henry II and Thomas Becket. It is a fear so great that we even fear the fear itself. But those fears exist in every day America.

In the environment that has enveloped the slash-and-burn tactics of John McCain and Sarah Palin just in the last two weeks, these fears are becoming too great to bear. I will grant that it is acceptable to have your own criteria for assessing a candidate, including who that candidate may associate with. And I would be remiss if I did not note that it seems ironic to trust the man intimately involved with the last great financial scandal, the Keating Five, with the current financial scandal.

However, inciting your supporters to hate speech and fighting words, or failing to call them on it, is a viciousness and a baseness that I have never seen in my lifetime, and it frightens me. These episodes above are not isolated; they are becoming typical of a McCain-Palin rally. Toss in the strained economic situation that many Americans find themselves in, and you have a fire that is ready to explode in violence.

It is irresponsible to rule through fear or to campaign through fear. If you still support McCain and Palin, I don't want you to ask them to stop attacking Obama. But I do expect you to speak out against hatred, violence, threats, and intemperance in their names. One of the worst tragedies our nation could face in these horribly turbulent times would be the assassination of a political leader.

The Fear That Dare Not Speak Its Name

2008-10-09T21:09:00.005-05:00

My bolonga has a first name,
It's J-I-M-M-Y.
My bologna has a second name,
It's C-A-R-T-E-R
I love to eat it every day,
and if you ask me, why, I'll say,
That Jimmy Carter has a way
of screwing up the U-S-A.

RedState's mature approach to politics

2008-09-05T06:23:00.001-05:00

Republicans only seem to like the media when it is eating out of their hands. Any outlet that dares to, say, actually do its job faces the wrath of the faithful.

And by wrath, I mean this measured, balanced, and useful approach:

As you know, the magazine Us Weekly will hit news stands this coming weekend with a hit job on Governor Sarah Palin.

Though Us Weekly claims that its coverage is very balanced, its cover features Governor Palin holding a baby with the headline "Babies, Lies, and Scandal."

US Weekly, which has been a promotional vehicle for Senator Obama's campaign, is in the tank for Barack Obama and will stop at nothing to ruin Governor Palin's reputation.

Please consider doing this: When you go to the grocery story this week, pick up a couple of copies of Us Weekly and deposit them on the shelves where the toilet paper is located.

When your party does not have a tradition of community organizers, this is what passes for responsible political action.

VIDEO: A Palin Primer - Ten Topics for the Week

2008-09-02T07:31:00.001-05:00

There is a lot going on that involves Alaska governor and Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin. Her public, and more complete, vetting continues in the media and in bloggers' basements across the country. Now that the holiday weekend has passed, here is a round-up of the information you need to investigate and discuss Palin this week.

Part 1:

Part 2:

[Please forgive the amateur nature of this video. I am, well, an amateur.]

1. Yes, Palin seemed to imply that the Pledge of Allegiance, particularly the “under God” phrase, was “good enough for the founding fathers.” The pledge was written in 1892, and the “under God” phrase added during the Eisenhower administration.

2. Yes, the Vice Chair of the Alaska Independence Party (AIP) said in 2007 that Palin was a member of the AIP before becoming mayor of Wasilla in 1996. The AIP’s goal is to force a vote on the legal status of Alaska, with the goal “to achieve independence under a minimal government, fully responsive to the people, promoting a peaceful and lawful means of resolving differences.”

3. Yes, Palin served as a director for the Ted Stevens Excellence in Public Service group, a 527 that could raise unlimited money from donors, and aimed to run a “boot camp” for female Republican candidates. John McCain has said that 527s are “a disgrace and they have to be eliminated because they're clearly in violation of the law.” Apparently, so is Ted Stevens.

4. Yes, Palin opposed the “Bridge to Nowhere” in Ketchikan, but only after first supporting it, then opposing it and spending the money on other projects.”

5. Yes, while mayor of Wasilla, she raised taxes.

6. Yes, while mayor of Wasilla, she fired the librarian and police chief, saying, “I do not feel I have your full support in my efforts to govern the city of Wasilla.” Both had supported her opponent in the mayoral election. Both agree that she never explained to the chief the reasons for his dismissal, saying only, “You know in your heart when someone is supportive of you.”

7. Yes, while mayor of Wasilla, Palin screwed up a sports complex land deal so badly that the city is on the hook for an extra $1.7 million because of it, cause cuts in city services and increases in fees.

8. Yes, as mayor of Wasilla, Palin registered $20 million in long-term debt for the city – around $3,000 per resident.

9. Yes, the Anchorage and Fairbanks newspapers, staffed with people who have watched her closely for years, question her selection and her qualifications to be Vice President.

10. Yes, Palin is involved in a sticky scandal involving her sister, her former brother-in-law, and the state Public Safety Director. She and her husband are accused of pressuring the Public Safety Director to fire the former brother-in-law from his job as a state trooper. When the Director refused, Palin fired the Director for failing to fill vacant trooper positions. Palin replaced him with a new director who lasted two weeks on the job before departing under a cloud of sexual harassment claims. She is due to be deposed before Halloween, and the results of the investigation could hit before Election Day.

There are some other stories – her daughter’s pregnancy; the timing of her first pregnancy and her marriage; the birth of her fifth child – but these are either of a dubious nature, or beyond the scope of civilized political discussion. In other words, her positions on sex education, a woman's right to choose, and related issues, are germane. But discussion of these personal stories should not be the entry point for discussion those issues.

The Pigs of St Joseph

2008-07-31T18:58:00.003-05:00

Since my visit to Philadelphia, I worked for a week in Lexington before coming here to northwest Missouri for my last week of work until New York City. There wasn't much to report from Lexington - long days and nights, some annoying people, and a boss who acted unprofessionally. In other words, a normal week on the road. There will be much more to say once I finally retire.

In the meantime, we've been here in St Joseph, less than an hour north of Kansas City, for a women's $10,000 tournament. This is the entry level of professional tennis; many of the women here do not even have rankings yet. As a result, the level of play has been quite uneven at times, and startlingly competitive at others. In general, there is a wide gap between the skills of the top twenty players and the rest of the top 100. From about ranking 200 through 400, just about any player can beat any other on a given day. Once you get below that - and some players here are ranked around 1000 - the level of play once again drops off. There have been several matches here where the loser did not manage to win more than two games in the match. Then again, two equally inconsistent players could meet on the court and take you for a three-hour ride.

After receiving this assignment several months ago, I heard a few horror stories about the weather. I remember how parts of the Midwest can be in the middle of the summer, so I expected the worst. But we have been fortunate to have mostly overcast days (and a little rain) all week. Friday will finally be the clear and sunny scorcher we have been expecting all week. There was rain all day on Tuesday, creating a very long Wednesday, but now the end of the week is here, and we are back on schedule.

I have worked in a wide variety of tennis facilities in the eight years I have been on the road. This tournament is being played at a park with tennis courts and a track and football field, located alongside a fairly busy residential street. Three of the courts we have played on border the sidewalk and the road pretty closely. In the mornings, the sidewalk is the best place to watch matches and avoid the sun. There is a small building with restrooms and air conditioning. The accommodations are not elegant, but for an entry-level tournament, we have just about everything we need. Well, and we have one thing we don't need.

In all the years and all the cities and states I have visited, I have never encountered as many pigs as I have in St Joseph. Male pigs. Apparently, it is considered the height of class in this city to slow your pickup as you drive by the park and whistle, hoot, cat-call, or blow your horn at the women. It is true that these women are dressed unlike anyone that these pigs will see in their daily lives of work, Wal-Mart, and home. But that certainly does not excuse the behavior.

In the last three days, I have watched countless cars drive down the street - which in the afternoons is directly in front of me - and slow down once the pig drivers realize that lightly-dressed women are playing tennis on the courts. Most pigs slow down for the first bank of courts, speed up until the next bank of courts, slow down again, and so on. A few pigs have nearly caused wrecks, either by slowing down unexpectedly to ogle, or by nearly rear-ending the driver in front because they were not paying attention. At least ten have made some sort of inappropriate noise to signal - well, to signal what, I am not exactly sure.

Is this some weird mating ritual in northwest Missouri to which most of the rest of the country has not been exposed? I've seen men all over this country notice the female tennis players with whom I work, but I have never seen the women treated this way as they have been in St Joseph. Which of these women is going to say to herself, "Wow, he slowed down and whistled out the window, and then drove away quickly. I must be looking good today. And that man - so brave. That's the man for me"? These players know how they are dressed, and they know when they look good. But they did not invite rude behavior, and it offended me to have to see it this week.

Being a gentleman, it has been hard to wrap my mind around the goals of the pig. The one who whistled and then drove off quickly - what is he hoping to accomplish? If she thinks he is a pig, as she should, then driving away quickly might be smart. If he is trying to impress her, how would she know who he is? Is she to stop playing tennis and chase him down the street? The men who yelled, "Yeah, baby," and the like - is this the rural Missouri idea of how to woo a woman, or, more importantly, to treat a woman with respect? What motivates these pigs?

After a few days of witnessing pigs in the wild, and thinking about their behavior, I can only think of one explanation. Pigs aren't concerned with impressing women; they're trying to impress each other. They know they do not stand a chance with any of the women on our courts. So to earn standing with their fellow pigs, they try to demean the women that they cannot have. It is the gayest thing they can do without touching each other. If they were all on an elementary playground, the pigs would be trying to push the women down - that's about how mature this behavior is.

In this work environment, it is not my place to say anything to the pigs. (It is complicated to explain.) But I have apologized to the women when it has tread too closely to our tennis. In my experience, I feel that it has to be something about this place, St Joseph, that all these pigs have in common. I have never seen such disrespect for women anywhere else I have worked. And it bothered me enough to write about it. When women, and even other men, see this behavior, they should object to it. These pigs are close kin to the monsters that abuse and beat women. And often this puerile porcine behavior is how it starts.

Shine a light through the eyes of the ones left behind

2008-07-21T20:17:00.004-05:00

Before heading to World TeamTennis in Wilmington, Delaware last Tuesday night, I decided to take my free day and spend it in the city of Philadelphia, where my mother is from and where I had spent so much of my youth. I have only been back there once since my grandparents died in 1989. Many of my memories had solidified, while others had become embellished through the years in my mind. In all, I was not sure what to expect.

From Albany, I drove through northern New Jersey and approached south Philadelphia from I-95. The skyline is different and taller, certainly; but much of the vague details, the set dressing of the city looked remarkably the same. And the first thing I tried to find was a bathroom, since the only place most Philadelphians can use the facilities is at home. My search was unsuccessful, so I parked at 12th and Washington for the first stop of the day - cheesesteak.

I can remember the biggest local debate among Philadelphians related to cheesesteak - specifically, Geno's or Pat's. Both are located roughly at the intersection of 9th Street and Passyunk Avenue, alongside the Capitolo Park. Years ago, the basic difference between the two restaurants was that one used real cheese on the steaks and one used Cheese Whiz. (I haven't been able to sort out which was which.) As a result of this and other subtle differences, my mother is for Pat's, and her elder sister, Aunt Lucille, is for Geno's.

I checked with both of them before I made my decision.

Aunt Lucille swayed me - she was the older sister, and lived in Philadelphia for more than fifty years.

Geno's and Pat's are both the kinds of restaurant with lots of locals as well as tourists. It helps to watch the habits of the locals so that you know how to order. While I was reading the menu board and listening to some construction workers order, I saw it:

For a rare moment in my life, I was stymied. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. But before I knew it, my turn was up, so I ordered and paid (cash only), went to the next window and ordered fries and a soda (cash only), and found a seat. How did I not know about this sign, this place?

I hadn't even had time to figure all this out before the next surprise. The Geno's cheesesteak - soft bread, steak, dice onions, provolone cheese - tasted like nothing. It did not taste bad. It just had no flavor at all. And I don't think this was one of those memories from my childhood that I had embellished. I remember the cheesesteaks being good, and I have lamented the lack of quality cheesesteaks in other parts of the country. (Excluding, of course, Texadelphia.) But this was a bad cheesesteak. Do you hear me, Joe Vento? A bad cheesesteak.

[Later, when I got back to the hotel, I looked up some information on the sign and the owner. Fox News set up Joe Vento and gave him a forum to "vent" about Barack Obama's comments on languages, and he didn't fail to demonstrate his ignorance.

If you had the stomach to watch the whole thing, you might agree with me that Joe Vento could stand to learn English, as well.

Any politically astute viewer who saw all of Obama's comments in context would know that Obama is not advocating for all American children to learn Spanish. But someone like Joe Vento who is ignorant - either by upbringing or by choice - wouldn't know the difference.

Vento: This guy [Obama], with this — he scares me. I'm telling all the people out there, please, please, vote these people out of office. And if they can't tell you that English will be the official language before the election, vote them all out, and do not be afraid of who you're going to get. It is not going to be worse than what we already have. We have got to speak. [Emphasis added]

Do not be afraid of who you are going to get? It can't get worse that Bush, right? Right?

Bonus: This photo was on the fence of the Little League field at Capitolo Park near Geno's and Pat's.]

After Geno's, I drove down to mom's old neighborhood - 12th and Daly Street, near Jackson Street. I parked by my grandparents' church, on whose fronts steps I vomited as a kid. (Ah, memories.) Grandmom and Grandpop's house is now peach, but the railing and the front stoop were the same. The butcher across the street is now a salon, but the Mauro grocery store is still there, so I went inside.

I don't know what I was expecting to find inside the grocery; maybe I just wanted to see if it still felt so small and familiar. And in most ways, it did. Carol was behind the front counter, and Joe was behind the back. But before I could say anything or notice much more, I saw the ATM machine, and it had money in the dispenser. No one else was in the store. And just then, Carol came around the counter and asked if she could help me. I told her that I had come in for another reason (to buy some Tastykakes), but that I noticed the cash. So she called to Joe to get her an envelope and to see if he could remember who had been in the store last. And then she wheeled around on me and said, "You're Dana's son, aren't you?" (Dana is my mom.) I was stunned and said, "How did you know that?" Carol had recognized me from an old picture Mom had sent to her.

I walked a block up the street to the bakery where we used to get rolls and Sunday pizza. But the bakery is closed on Mondays, so no bread and disappointing cheesesteak were all I ate in the city.

Before heading to my hotel in suburban Philadelphia, I had one more stop - to visit my grandparents cemetery on Baltimore Pike in Yeadon. Uncle Frank sent directions to me, but somehow I sensed how to get there, too. I hadn't been back to visit them since their funeral in December 1989. I drove right to the cemetery and found them from memory, without any trouble at all.

I sat with them for awhile, and then gave them a kiss and a pat for me and for Mom before heading to Glen Mills.

For the Pennsylvania we never found

2008-07-15T08:37:00.003-05:00

I spent last week at a women's tennis event in Allentown. For all the time I spent in Pennsylvania as a child, I had never been there. I went there from Raleigh, traveling through the traffic bottleneck approaching Washington, and then up around Baltimore and into south-central Pennsylvania, approaching Allentown from the west and passing through some small parts of Amish country. It was a calm, quiet, and pretty drive - much nicer than the natural utilitarianism I would experience in New Jersey at the end of the week.

When I arrive at the hotel late Saturday night, there was a Jewish wedding party, a band in the bar, and a youth softball tournament that had quite literally overrun the hotel. Consequently, the front desk could not find my room, and I had to put down my own credit card for the night. As I waited, the desk clerk was on the phone with our chief umpire, telling him that there had been an error in reservations, that the hotel was overbooked, and that their company policy for overbooking was that whoever arrived first got the remaining rooms. Thankfully, I got a room, albeit a smoking one.

While I never found out who owned the hotel, it was the most patriotic place I have ever stayed. Seals with eagles adorned doors, carpets, and directional signs. The restaurant was called "America". The walls were adorned with all sorts of patriotic photographic art. Even the cigar lounge was prominently sponsored by Samuel Adams beer. (Although, I admit some trepidation in including this last fact, given that I do not know the provenance of that line of beers. I just know from the advertising that it seems colonial and patriotic.) And each morning at 8 a.m., they salute America with a flag raising. Employees and guests gather at the flag poles and honor hotel guests' family and friends who have served in the armed forces. The flag is raised to the National Anthem, followed by the much-overplayed "God Bless the U.S.A." by - you guessed it - Lee Greenwood. [Right next door to the hotel was the Liber-tee mini-golf. I went over there a few times for ice cream, as well as to play a round of golf by myself one cool night.]

The facility for tennis was decent, the staff was good, and the week was fairly normal. We had a few rain delays, one that moved our matches to the adjoining indoor courts. Imagine, if you will, Noah's Ark. Now, turn it upside down and place it over four tennis courts. That is what the indoor facility looked like. It was constructed of rich, dark wood planks around four inches wide, and it was built quite securely. The arc of the roof gently curved back in the opposite direction before reaching a point at the top. While the entire place smelled like your grandmother's damp attic, it did not leak a drop of water.

On Friday evening after work, I stopped by the supervisor's desk to chat before returning to the hotel. The order of play for the next day was on the table - two singles semifinals and the doubles final. As I looked at it, I said to her, "Well, I bet I know which match I am doing tomorrow." I had already had one of the singles semifinalists that day in her quarterfinal match, and back-to-back matches for chair umpires are avoided. And I've never done a final, so...

"You are doing the doubles final," she said. I told her that I was pretty certain this would be my first professional final. "Don't you think it's about time, then?" she said.

I wound up doing the opposite singles semifinal first, and then the doubles final third the next day. Other than a few extra duties for the final, it was mostly like any other match. I hadn't felt nerves on court in a long time, so it was an interesting feeling. But once we all got a few games under our belts, it was just like any other day at the office. And the match went pretty smoothly.

One note from the singles semifinal. The player to my left came to the next for an overhead smash. She succeeded in putting the ball into play against her opponent, but I heard something hit the ground as I watched the ball speed to the other side. The opponent got her racquet on the ball, but it sailed far outside. That's when I noticed the sound again, and saw the first player's racquet bouncing in her opponent's court. Apparently during the smash, the racquet slipped from her hand, bounced on her side of the court and then over the net. After the ball went out, the first player said to me, "Do I still win the point?" "No," I replied, to laughter from the player and the crowd.

And on other note - in another match, a tall player came racing into the net to play a short ball from her opponent. She got the return over, but her foot touched the base of the net in the process, so I called "touch". She looked at me and said, "Touch? What touch? Who touch?" So I told her that her foot had touched the net. As she walked back to the baseline, she shrugged and said, "Eh, my big feet."

Sunday morning I left for Albany for World TeamTennis, a pleasant drive of a couple hundred miles. Since I wasn't in a hurry, I drove mostly 55 mph on this trip. When I arrived, I discovered my gas mileage was 62.5 mpg for the trip. That's when I decided that I needed a bumper sticker reading, "I Drive This Way To Save Money". It amazed me at all the SUVs racing past me, sometimes more than 20 mph faster than me. Before you complain about the high price of gas, how about adjusting your driving habits?

I've also been playing the license plate game with some friends - the hard version, where you have to find all 50 state plates in alphabetical order. I have been stuck on Colorado for a couple of months now, which annoyed me since I was going to be up in New England these two weeks to get Connecticut and Delaware. And despite seeing Washington, California, Wyoming, Florida (lots of Florida), North Carolina, Texas, Alabama, Quebec, New Brunswick, and even Mexico (D.F.), I still haven't seen Colorado. I'll have more to say about this in a future entry about bumper-sticker politics.

I was in Albany for World TeamTennis, a unique format of professional tennis that uses a box umpire in place of a chair umpire. In other words, you do the same job, but just standing the entire time on a box at the net. WTT has different formats, scoring systems, procedures, verbiage, and mechanics. And while I have been a line umpire at WTT events before - a job exactly the same as line umpiring on the pro circuit - I had never been a box umpire before.

I studied the rules carefully, but some of them are arcane and hard to get unless you see them in action. I don't get the cable channel that shows WTT, so I asked a lot of questions in the last couple of weeks. I knew the basics, but I did not know what the actual product looked like, so I was winging it. Players can tell by the little things if you know what you are doing. If you can't get simple announcements and verbiage correct, they'll mark you as a rookie and eat you alive, even if you aren't. So I tried to master the little things that would instill confidence.

WTT has noisy crowds, even during play; it has coaches and players that come from the bench to argue calls with you; it has instant replay and challenges (in some cities); it has a headset microphone and a Palm Pilot for live scoring and a wide range of line umpire skills, varying from city to city. In essence, it is a challenge even for experience officials. And it was one of the few things left on my list of things I hadn't yet done in tennis.

The night seems like a blur, even though I was sweating, my legs hurt, and I was on the box for three hours, as the match went into overtime. But overall I survived it, and I even enjoyed it a little bit. I'll be more prepared for tonight's match at the DuPont Country Club in Wilmington, and then I will be done with WTT for the far forseeable future. (In case you are wondering, I am next off to see family in the Washington area and then have a vacation with Dave, and then I go to Lexington for a week and St. Joseph, MO (north of Kansas City) for a week.)

The Sins of the Fathers are the Sins of the Sons

2008-06-27T08:34:00.005-05:00

What happens when a growing new industry threatens the power and the profits of Big Oil? Why, environmentalists win, of course! Doing a double-take? You are not the only one.

Growing demand for alternative sources of energy has many proponents turning to solar power. The technologies behind concentrating (heating water to produce steam energy) and photovoltaic (converting solar energy directly to electricity) have improved dramatically in the last quarter-century, reducing costs and increasing applications. And some of the best places in the United States for solar installations are located on millions of acres of public land in the American West. (If you have ever driven Interstate 10 from El Paso to Los Angeles, you know exactly what I mean.)

As a result, the New York Times reports, dozens of companies are applying to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) for permits to install solar panels on barren, unused public land.

Much of the 119 million surface acres of federally administered land in the West is ideal for solar energy, particularly in Arizona, Nevada and Southern California, where sunlight drenches vast, flat desert tracts.

Galvanized by the national demand for clean energy development, solar companies have filed more than 130 proposals with the Bureau of Land Management since 2005. They center on the companies’ desires to lease public land to build solar plants and then sell the energy to utilities.

According to the bureau, the applications, which cover more than one million acres, are for projects that have the potential to power more than 20 million homes.

It sounds like a win-win situation, and it almost is: the only losers come in the traditional energy industries, particularly petroleum, coal, and natural gas. However, the positives are clear. Solar power is a renewable resource; the others are not. Millions of acres of Western land are sitting unused, when both private companies and the federal government could profit from their development for solar power. The United States could take the global lead in developing solar power, generating thousands of green jobs that are powered by foreign and domestic sales.

Naturally, the Bush administration is on board, right?

Faced with a surge in the number of proposed solar power plants, the federal government has placed a moratorium on new solar projects on public land until it studies their environmental impact, which is expected to take about two years.

The Bureau of Land Management says an extensive environmental study is needed to determine how large solar plants might affect millions of acres it oversees in six Western states — Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah.

Suddenly when traditional backers of the Bush administration are threatened, environmental concerns become paramount. How did I not see that coming? Maybe because the usual Bush approach is delay and obstruction. The EPA refused to grant California a waiver for tough cuts in greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks. The state of California sued the EPA to force its hand; automobile manufacturers preemptively sued to stop the waiver if the EPA was forced to give it. The automakers' suit was rejected on Thursday. Meanwhile, the administration has refused to release documents related to the EPA's denial of the waiver, citing executive privilege.

According to the Los Angeles Times, both Sen. Obama and Sen. McCain have pledged to support the waiver if elected. Hopefully, this BLM moratorium will be treated in the same way. So add these topics to the long, long list of items that wait for Bush's retirement to his ranch.

[h/t to Grist for highlighting both stories.]

It's not time to panic

2008-06-26T13:14:00.002-05:00

Barack Obama has brought many new people into the political process, and he has reinvigorated the progressive souls of many who stopped participating. For a long-time pol like myself, it is easier to see the shifts and changes that Obama is exhibiting as normal progressions in a campaign. For the groups of people I mentioned at the start, changes in public financing or FISA feel like a betrayal, and it has shaken their faith. I am here to tell you not to jump ship or even put on your life vests. It is going to be alright.

I am not disappointed about Obama's choice to eschew public financing; I somewhat expected it, and I know it makes my a hypocrite. I think there is merit in some elements of public financing, which is why I was disappointed that the Supreme Court voided the Millionaire's amendment today. Obama has played new media and new methods of raising funds brilliantly. As a writer whose name I forgot succinctly put it, any adviser who suggested staying in the public finance system would be guilty of "political malpractice". It would be folly to give up our huge advantage in the fuel of political campaigns when we finally have one. (UPDATE: It was Norman Ornstein who said it. Thanks, Dave! h/t)

I am terribly disappointed in Obama's positioning on the FISA Amendments Act of 2008. I have been hoping and dreaming of a Thurmond- or Byrd-type filibuster, one for the ages, where a senator talks for two days straight until relieved by another senator, and so on, until this bill dies. I did not like the "triangulation" I sensed in Obama's nuanced statements on the bill. But we are not single-issue voters. We cannot be if we expect to win.

Democrats have made errors, for example, in taking African-American and gay voters for granted. The party sometimes acts like those voters have a natural home in the party, that they vote on only one issue (race or sexuality), and that they will stay. Those voters are more savvy than that, and while one issue may have more importance than others, it will not be the only issue upon which they decide.

Obama supporters, we cannot be single-issue voters, either. We cannot act surprised that our candidate does not embody perfection on every issue. He does not deserve our blind loyalty, but maybe sometimes we have to cut him some slack, too. He is out there working hard to broaden this coalition, so that our victory in November can be subject to no doubt. When he makes these moves, to the extent we are able, we have to stand by him. Surely we can pressure him to adopt our position. But if not, and when it is not an absolute deal-breaker, we have to keep the faith.

Remember what is at stake here. The future of Roe v. Wade depends on this election. The future of our loved ones in the armed forces depends on this election. The future of our environment depends on this election. The future of our security against economic threats and energy crises depends on this election. Keep your eye on the ball.

John McCain

2008-05-29T13:22:00.002-05:00

To find out more about John McCain, click on the links below.

J o h n Mc C a i n

But they'll laugh at you in Jackson, and I'll be dancin' on a Pony Keg

2008-04-10T18:43:00.003-05:00

I still owe a post about my adventure from Denver to northern California, and I promise it will come eventually.

I have been in the capital of Mississippi all week, and I have gotten way too much sun. Yesterday, I got stuck in the chair on a match for over three hours, and by the time the match was done, the sun had shifted from behind to in front of me, baking my forearms and the sides of my face. I have taken to wearing a rather hot navy blue windbreaker in 87-degree heat just to keep the sun off of as much of me as possible.

In some senses, it has been a good week. Between the boss constantly taking us out to dinner and the food offered for free at the hotel, I've had to spend very little money here. And I am working, after all, and that's a paycheck. But for the most part, it has been a crappy week.

I feel alone and isolated again, even though I am working among friends. It is something that has haunted me every time I have fallen back to this line of work, either on accident or on purpose, and it is one of the reasons I cite when I leave. It is hard to keep up friendships on the road. It is impossible to make new ones or to date when on the road. My life has no sense of "rootedness" and no sense of normalcy when I am living like this. I just exist through each day, one at a time, until I am off the road again.

That in itself is a problem, because I am supposed to be searching for something career-like to do when my work on the road ends in early June. I don't want to be doing this into the fall, because it means I will turn 35 while still living in my mother's house. But I have done no job searching, set no interviews, made no efforts to find something. I keep saying I want to work in public relations and sports information, but I have been my own worst enemy in achieving that goal.

[I really don't want to hear that I am setting myself up for failure, or that I am trying to tell myself that this is not really what I want to do. The actual answer is that I am a lazy asshole who doesn't want to do anything, except complain about the fact that my life sucks, has no meaning, and has no meaningful people in it.]

I have been battling allergies all week, which I am sure has made my work roommate thrilled. I have only slept through the night once this week. The rest of the time I have been up either for coughing fits or because I cannot breathe. I am all doped up on medicine, so I am not as effective at my job and not as entertaining as I usually am to be around. It will really, really suck if I have to spend these three weeks on the road, alone, and sick.

I have not been exercising or walking at all, because I just haven't felt like it. My weight is down to 194, and I am encouraged to know that even if I regress some this week, I can keep the weight off by just doing what I have been doing. But being sick and tired this week, I haven't felt like it at all - I am not even close to walking and running as much as I did in Redding, California.

This tournament has been on clay court. There are no line umpires, so all week we make all the calls alone. The ball leaves a mark in the clay when it hits the court, so sometimes on disputed calls, I have to get out of the chair and read the mark that I have. As matches go on and on, there are dozens of ball marks on the court, and sometimes a close, point-ending shot lands in a chewed-up part of the court, or in, around, or on other ball marks, making the reading complicated. Add to that the fact that you are holding a ball mark on one side of the court while a player on the other side of the court is protesting to you. You cannot look at her, or you might lose the mark. Then, you have to climb down out of the chair without falling and without moving your eyes from the mark, then go to the mark, pray it is the right mark and that you can read it, and then make your decision, sell the hell out of it, and go sit down.

Both of my matches yesterday went over two and a half hours each. At the end of my second match, on match point, I had to read a mark on the far side of the court. It was closer to a neighboring court, where four other players had been practicing and watching. After I read the mark to the credit of the team that was winning, thus ending the match, the winning player went across the court to talk to the other players watching, who were her friends. I could hear them all say that I read the wrong mark, and that her ball was actually out, and that they should still be playing. I remember one of the foreign players saying about me with a thick accent, "too many mistakes." It was a pretty devastating end to the day - hard work, I survived, but I had too many times where I just wasn't sure what I was seeing, or I was reading the wrong mark. It is one of the reasons I have a love-hate relationship with this job. It's hard, and sometimes it feels great and cool that I can do it. But I just do not have enough talent to be very good at this, and it shows. Our supervisor mentioned reputation at our morning meeting today, about how you have to earn it, about how the players get to know you, and they talk about you to her and to other players, and players know whether you have your act together or not. It's a pretty good bet that my name is mud at least for the rest of this week. Either that, or at the least they'll be laughing at me in Jackson.

Cross Country Days 7-18: Not much happened...well, one thing happened

2008-04-05T08:29:00.007-05:00

My work in California, and the enjoyment of the non-work time, plus the drive back to Alabama were times that I did not feel like writing, so I am a little behind. So let me just summarize what happened for the week there and on the trip back.

I spent a week in Redding, California. It was very beautiful, and with only one exception, the weather was fantastic. I found a nice park and running trail where I could work out, and I managed to keep my slow but steady weight loss going while I was on the road. (I lost three more pounds, and I am now down sixteen pounds since the start of the year.) Also, I had a very good week of work. I was complimented by a fellow higher-ranking official on the job I had done that week. (This despite a day in which I gave six penalties in two matches, including a well-deserved penalty that cost a doubles team their match.)

On the drive back, I spent a night with my cousin and her husband in Napa. They work in the wine and beer industry. She had been bitten on the face by a dog the day before, but was in remarkably good spirits, and we had a nice visit. I spent the next night in Phoenix, and then the next two nights visiting friends in San Antonio (more below). On the next to last day of my trip, I drove through Austin and visited my old high school. I got lots of hugs and smiles, and it was very nice to be so warmly remembered. (I am considering a job offer there.) I spent the night in Lewisville with my sister's family, visiting my nephew (who is gigantic and not even two yet). Then I drove to the University of Mississippi for a college tennis match, and finally back home for a week of rest. The visits with friends and the urge to be home made the last week of this trip fly. But overall, it was an excellent experience. Two-hundred-mile drives are nothing to me now.

So, back to San Antonio...

At the start of this trip, I had six friends in San Antonio: three sets of gay couples. I met the other two couples through the first couple, Jeremy (I've known ten years) and Jon (I've known in one way or another for fourteen years). The other couples are James and A.J., both Starbucks baristas, and Jonathan and Justin, who split up in the recent past, but still live together out of circumstance. Jon and Jonathan are my age, and everyone else is in their 20s.

Jeremy and Jon have always been my main place to visit and stay when I come to San Antonio, even when I lived only an hour away in Austin. They have the biggest house, the most computer toys, and always seemed welcoming, or at least ambivalent, to my visits. Jonathan and Justin moved from Ohio and lived with Jeremy and Jon for a few months until they go on their own four feet. Initially, I was going to visit Justin after he got off work late, because I wasn't arriving from Phoenix until around 11pm. But I was exhausted when I got close to town, so I begged off meeting him that night, and instead called James and A.J., who were happy to wait up to see me, and gladly let me spend the night.

I had a great visit with them, even though it was short, and my plan was to spend the next day with Jeremy and Jon, hopefully have Justin and Jonathan come over to visit, and go out to dinner like we usually do when I visit. So, I left James and A.J.'s place and went to get my car serviced. By noon I was out, and I called Jeremy and went over to their house (Jon was at work). I confirmed again that when Jon got off work (Jeremy said around 7), that we'd all go to dinner.

During the first part of the visit, Jeremy says to me, "In exchange for sleeping here, would you clean the kitchen?" I was very taken aback - I've never had to sing for my supper before, so to speak. But for some reason I agreed, probably in part because I never have to do any cleaning in my own house.

The kitchen was a disaster. There were flies and bugs crawling because of how unsanitary it was. Food was caked onto plates and the range top. The microwave looked like a lentil soup had exploded inside it. Cereal bowls were stacked up six-high in the sink. The floor was covered with dog hair, dog food, and all manner of crumbs and human food remnants. It was disgusting. And it was somewhat expected - Jeremy and Jon are slobs. Part of the rent arrangement when Justin and Jonathan lived there was to clean the house. I watched Justin do ten loads of laundry one day, and he couldn't even catch up.

Well, like a good friend, I diligently cleaned up. I spent forty-five minutes on the microwave alone. As I worked more and more, I became angrier and angrier that Jeremy would even ask such a thing of me. You don't ask friends to clean your house, especially in exchange for letting them stay at your house, when you have let them stay at your house for years before without such a request. So now, I was stumped as to exactly what the hell was going on in his head.

While I am working in the kitchen, Jeremy is mesmerized by World of Warcraft. I am used to this obsession, however, and I visit with him while I play Wii in the same room. About an hour later, a man comes over - middle aged, hulking, and, according to Jeremy, a divorced masseur. Jeremy said he always has a massage at 2pm on Wednesday -- "ALWAYS" -- so would I mind? He said I was welcome to stay and play games in the meanwhile. Sure, I thought, no problem. Well, that was the next problem.

See, the massage didn't take place at Jeremy's house. Jeremy left and went somewhere else, probably to the guy's house, which Jeremy said was in the neighborhood. And then Jeremy was gone for three and a half hours. I couldn't leave because I didn't have anywhere else to go at that point. And, by the way, there was much more than massaging going on, from the behavior between the two of them when the man was there.

So Jeremy is back now, and it is almost six o'clock. Both of them are flakes, I know, but I've overlooked it for a decade, so why stop now? Jeremy goes back to his computer games, so I go back to the Wii. (Actually, I had never left the Wii for the most part in the previous three hours - there was nothing else to do there.) Time passes, I am hungry, and we are waiting for Jon to come home so we can go to dinner. Suddenly, I notice two things at once. First, it is nine pm. And second, Jeremy is getting dressed and putting his shoes on.

I asked where he was going, and he said to the gym to workout. So I said, um, hey, it's nine pm, and where's Jon, and we're supposed to be going to dinner, right? And he said, oh, I thought I told you, Jon is going to have drinks with friends after work, and won't be home until nine or ten, buh-bye. Well, not quite buh-bye, because I told him I was hungry and aggravated, and that he in fact had not told me that. He replied, oh, I must have said it to (the massage guy). So Jeremy leaves me alone in the house for the second time that day.

About an hour later, after ten pm, Jeremy calls and says, "Okay, my workout is done." Long pause. Like I am supposed to say something in reply. ("Great, I am ready for dinner. Don't mind me, it wasn't any inconvenience at all.") Finally I said, "okay." He had just spoken to Jon, who was on his way home. So I said, fine, we'll figure out what to do when you get here.

They both arrive home around the same time, and I explain the situation to Jon. After some arguing, Jon agrees to make some Hamburger Helper for dinner. Not what I was expecting, but not horrible, either. So he cooks, we chat, and Justin comes over to visit. (He'll wind up staying for about four hours, probably the nicest part of the day.) When it is done, Jeremy says, "Eat what you want and I'll take the rest." So I do. Jon sees what has happened and says, "I didn't cook for you guys to eat it all." So he comes and takes some from each of us. Thankful for anything to eat, I just consume my Helper in mostly silence.

While we are eating, and Jeremy goes back to his computer games, I explain to Jon what happened with the kitchen. Jon tells me that he had told Jeremy the day before to clean the kitchen, because it had gotten disgusting. Now I am pissed. Jeremy, my "friend", used me. Neither Jon nor Justin seems to have an explanation for this. So as the night continues, and the three of us stay up late talking, I ask Jon what he really gets out of a friendship with me. Justin tries to explain, both then and in a later IM exchange, that friends are not ledger sheets. That made sense, but it still did not explain why Jon tolerates me, much less calls me friend. He's never needed me for anything, never had to rely on me for anything, and I don't have anything he wants or needs. He sometimes shows contempt towards me between being affectionate. And all of those things, especially in recent years, apply doubly to Jeremy.

I should have stayed with James and A.J. again that night, but it was late, and I just said, screw it. Sleep, get up, leave without saying goodbye, go to Austin, and don't look back. And that's what I did. I don't consider Jeremy or Jon friends anymore.

It's funny how time can pass, and you can think things are just fine, and it takes a strong slap across the face ("clean my kitchen") to realize that you have been ignored and abused all that time. I guess I kept going back to them because they had things I needed - computer knowledge and equipment, a place to stay in town, occasional fun friends. It is hard to believe that at thirty-four, I can still be surprised by things like this.

V13: On dinosaurs and Texas Canyon

2008-03-26T15:43:00.004-05:00

This is a special edition of my vlog for my nephew, Will Carter, whose birthday I missed while out on the road.

The week of work in Redding was nice, with beautiful weather and uneventful events. I have some photos of the Sundial Bridge in Redding that I will post to flickr soon. Here are three:

I am on my way back to Alabama this week. I still owe you a post on the last and most treacherous part of the drive to California. There is already a video up on my vlog at YouTube.

Cross Country Day 2: Saint Louis to Denver / V11: On wind

2008-03-11T20:22:00.001-05:00

One of the disadvantages to sleeping in the car is that I tend to wake up pretty early - because I am cold, because my back aches, or because the sun makes me rise. In this case, it was a combination of all three that got me on the road to Denver around 6:30 in the morning on day 2. I had breakfast at a Holiday Inn Express west of town. I hear that people who eat there can do pretty phenomenal things. Since I was trying to drive 850 miles in one day, I thought it was an apt choice.

The day was going to be divided into three parts - I-70 from Saint Louis to Kansas City; the drive clear across Kansas, and the shorter drive from the Colorado state line to Denver. During the first part of the trip, there was not much of interest to see. I spent most of the time thinking about baseball, actually.

The 1985 World Series was the I-70 series: the Kansas City Royals against the Saint Louis Cardinals. I knew I was mesmerized by sports from an early age, but this is my youngest and most vivid childhood sports memory. See, there was a time when World Series games were broadcast on weeknights at a time that kids could stay up and watch them, when games were played much closer together to keep the interest and drama high. I sat in the living room of our home every game night of that seven-game series, with Dad's ottoman over my legs. On top of the ottoman, I had the lineups for each team written in pencil on notebook paper, and I would compute and update in real time the players World Series batting averages. This should have been a sign that I needed to go into sabermetrics when I was older, but the 1994 strike, and canceling the World Series that year on my 21st birthday, forever ended my love affair with baseball. I remember being thrilled that Kansas City (controversially) won game six, and how they blew out the Cards in game seven so badly that both Whitey Herzog and Joaquin Andujar got tossed from the contest. Sadly, now, I can't even watch baseball. Even the playoff fail to excite me like once when I was young.

Perhaps because of the daydreaming, I cannot remember much about the drive across Missouri. But when I got to Kansas City, I needed a rest. I decided to visit the international headquarters of the Order of DeMolay, a Masonic-sponsored youth organization that I participated in until I was 21. Someday I'll tell more stories, but for now I will just say that DeMolay helped me come out of my shell, and gave me the confidence to speak in front of people, to seek elected office, and to become a professional sports official. The tour was interesting, and it refreshed a lot of memories that had collected dust since my majority. I don't think it stimulated me to go back and serve as an adviser, or to become a Master Mason like I promised. But who knows?

Rested and refreshed, it was time to tackle Kansas. Ah, yes - 450 miles of unbridled mediocrity. But Kansas was also where a lot of the fun began. Once it was finished, I realized that I could have easily spent a couple of days stopping and enjoying all the kitsch along I-70. But with the long day ahead, I just did not have the time. At first - hell, for the first 200 miles - Kansas is not as flat as you would believe. In fact, there were large swaths of the drive that significantly resembled north Alabama, save for the fact that the dominant color was yellow-brown, not green.

Shortly after leaving Kansas City, I-70 becomes the Kansas Turnpike. At the entrance, you get a time-stamped ticket. You pay when you get off the turnpike. This ticket-taking made me think of a problem I faced in high school calculus. We had to prove, using calculus, that if a driver averaged 60 miles per hour for a three-hour drive, at some point during the drive he must have been traveling exactly 60 miles per hour. My teacher Mrs. Jones said that if the speed limit on a section of toll road was 65, and the time stamp when you entered and when you left computed to show that you averaged 66 miles per hour, then one could prove that at one point, you must have been speeding. The toll booth operator would collect your toll money, and then hand you a speeding ticket and tell you to have a nice day. I drove one mile per hour under the speed limit all the way to Topeka.

Before the next major bout of fun, some random things happened. A tumbleweed actually rolled onto the interstate in front of the car, and I struck it with the right front fender. From where I sat, it looked like it exploded into hundreds of shards. When I stopped an hour later at a rest area, the bulk of it was still lodged in the front of the car. I passed the Oz Museum and winery, and I really wanted to stop there for mom's friend Kay, but it was too far off the interstate, and I did not want to take that big of a detour. And looking at the map of Kansas, I understand now why meteorologists and experts tell you that if you are caught in a tornado while driving, you should drive in right angles away from the funnel. Kansas roads only intersect at right angles, so it is the only way you can flee. Moreover, it might not be as dangerous to fall asleep while driving in Kansas as elsewhere I have been. There's nothing to run into. Finally, when trucks and farm vehicles sprint down the dirt roads that gird the interstate, they resemble terrestrial comets, with long tails stretching behind them.

I was in a bit of a hurry the night before I left when I tried to recalibrate my iPod to work with my laptop. As a result, I allowed the computer to decide which songs fill on my iPod. When I started using it during the drive, I had to skip five to ten tracks each time to get to a track I wanted to hear. The automatic upload had included podcasts, audio books (but only selected chapters - no complete books), songs I didn't know I had, too many classical works, and Christmas music. I'll be fixing that when I stop for a few days in Golden.

On a political aside, I heard the following factoid on CNN: Hillary Clinton is more likely than Barack Obama to be supported by "lower income white rural working-class voters". Tell me if that stilted description does not also sound like the voters who are most likely to be racist.

About halfway across Kansas, I began to see the wind turbines I was expecting. Here, let me allow the video to tell the story.

[I had to climb a steep embankment and slither through a well-constructed barbed wire fence to bring this story to you.]

As I passed through the tiny towns that randomly dotted the interstate in western Kansas and eastern Colorado, I tried to imagine what life was like for teens on the High Plains. There can be an Abercrombie or Old Navy for a hundred miles. What sets the tone for fashion, for coolness out here? How do they react to seeing styles in movies and on MTV that they cannot replicate where they live? And what in the world do they do when they are not in school? For some reason, the only thing I can visualize is the John Deere chicken fight scene from "Footloose".

Once I survived Kansas - which, by the way, was not bleeding anywhere - the last part of the trip through Colorado was survivable. Even as early as I left, I had to drive straight into the setting sun for a couple of hours. The sky was so clear and bright that I could see several jets flying in several directions, condensation trails giving them away. It was as if some giant force used Q-tips to write in the sky.

About 75 miles from Denver I was finally able to spy the Rocky Mountains. They helped shield the sun, but they also made it too dark as I drove into the Denver metro area for me to look around. The last (and only) time I was in Denver previously was in the summer of 1992 for a DeMolay convention. We stayed on campus at the Colorado School for Mines, where my friend Ryan is a graduate student, and the rest of the time I stayed with a friend in Aurora. It was so dark, and I was so tired when I arrived, that I did not even notice the huge Coors factory on the left as I drove into Golden. I hoped I would recognize more from sixteen years ago, but I didn't.

Ryan lives in a bachelor apartment about three blocks from his campus building. It was really great to see him after the insanely long drive. We went to dinner at a new Mexican restaurant in town, and after he had one margarita, I had to drive us home. I am looking forward to the stay here, and when I get some time, I will take some photos and edit and upload them for you to see.

Cross Country Day 1: Home to Saint Louis / V9: On Spitzer and gas / V10: On Superman

2008-03-10T20:31:00.011-05:00

So today I embarked on my insanely ambitious cross-country drive from Huntsville, Alabama to Redding, California, for a week-long professional tennis tournament that I am umpiring. At least at the start of the trip, the plan was to drive from home to Saint Louis for the night, then to Golden, Colorado to visit my friend Ryan for three days, and then on to Salt Lake City and finally Redding on Saturday night. (The tournament begins on Sunday.) We will see if the weather and my plans hold.

I have driven most of this route before a number of times - especially in Tennessee - so there wasn't that much surprising to see. I got bored in Kentucky, so I put some random thoughts down on film.

It wasn't until I arrived in southern Illinois that things got interesting. And, unfortunately, it was the only interesting thing until I reached Saint Louis after dark. Seeing the Arch, lit only by ambient light from the city, is an impressive sight at night.

One thing you should understand about me is that I enjoy kitsch and Americana. (Some might say to this, "what's the difference?") I stop for quilting museums and the largest ball of twine and the potato chip that looks like the Virgin Mary. I find that local cultural icons such as these help me get a better understanding of the values and norms of different parts of America. And in my travels, I have gotten pretty good at distinguishing the genuine from the tourist trap.

So we return to the story in southern Illinois - Massac County, to be exact. There is a rest area just off the interstate interchange as soon as you cross from Kentucky into Illinois. I remember stopping at it once before, when I drove to the Chicago suburbs in 2003 for the U.S. Open golf tournament with my brother-in-law. When you exit the rest area and get back on the local highway that takes you to the interstate, there is a blue sign with Superman's shield on it, reading "Giant Superman Statue". I am intrigued. So, instead of getting back on the interstate, I follow the signs.

One mile passes, and then another and another. Periodically, there is another blue sign that says "Giant Superman Statue - straight ahead". I have faith and persist. Finally, I enter the nearest city. It is fairly flat out here, save for the grain elevators, so I figure that I won't have much trouble finding this giant statue. And right when I enter town and am welcomed by the Chamber of Commerce's sign, I see something that makes me groan and wonder if I ever should have exited the interstate in the first place. More on that in a minute.

Finally, the signs direct me to the town square, site of the county courthouse. This is what I find:

Here is a still photo:

There is a post script to this story, the thing I mentioned that I would come back to at the end. As soon as you enter Metropolis, Illinois, there is a Big John grocery store on the left hand side of the road. This is what I saw as soon as I came into town:

Now, here is my first thought - Superman got purchased by this grocery store and converted into a bag boy. I was thisclose to turning around and leaving Metropolis in a cloud of angry regret. But then I saw another sign ahead for the Superman statue, so I continued. When I stopped to take this photo, another car was also stopped taking a picture of Big John. I am sure I was not the only one fooled by this inconvenient placement of a grocer's statue.

Scenes from a mall

2008-03-08T20:47:00.002-06:00

On occasion, whether for the change in scenery or to avoid cold or inclement weather, I will walk at the local mall, Parkway Place. It's less than a mile from the house; on simply cold days, I will walk to the mall and do several laps inside before coming home. I see many other people walking there, especially a lot of seniors. What I have yet to see, however, is a bona fide mall-walker - fast pace, swinging hips and arms. I tend to walk pretty fast by dint of the music in my ears. But I don't mall-walk either.

Tonight was a very visually potent night at the mall. I had not walked there on a Saturday night before, and I left with several scenes in my head.

One
The mall might as well have been a farmer's market, for all the obvious county folks who had made the once-a-week trip into the city to sample the exciting sights, sounds and tastes of Parkway Place. The boys had poorly dyed blond hair, heavy work boots and dinner plate belt buckles. The girls mostly holding hands with the boys, were also invariably larger than the boys, with flat, limp, uninteresting hair. The only stores that seemed to interest them were GNC (boys acting butch for the girls), Brookstone (shiny things) and the Cookie Company (of course).

Two
I walked past one woman and her two small children several times. She was seated in a bench near an exit with a stroller and several bags of merchandise. Her nonchalant posture implied that she was waiting for something - a spouse? a ride? They two children each had a drink and a cookie from the Cookie Company. The drink cups were on the ground, and one had already spilled some brown soda on the floor. I wondered after each circuit passed her whether she would exhibit good parenting and citizenship by cleaning up after her children, or (gasp!) having them clean up after themselves. Finally, on the next lap, she was gone. So were the drinks. Well, at least the cups were gone. The drinks were dripped and splashed all over the walkway, with pieces of cookie randomly scattered and smashed into the tile throughout.

Three
I passed the central intersection of the mall, and from my left side I saw a woman and a man walking down the adjacent way. She was carrying a white and black Williams-Sonoma bag. But not for long. The bottom fell out of the bag, and out tumbled a sterling silver cylinder that looked like a coffee carafe, and its mated lid. I had the ear buds in ("High School Never Ends," Bowling for Soup), so I didn't hear anything, which was remarkable. Most of the heads I passed for the next several seconds were turned in that direction, often murmuring something to the other nearby heads.

Four
Weekends usually bring out the young people. Parkway Place has a policy prohibiting unescorted minors during evening and weekend hours. Teen and early-20s adults come there, too, and this includes the urbanites from the north part of town. Many times at the mall I have seen pairs and small groups of young men that are mixed race groups - blacks and whites, for the sake of simplicity. Never have I seen the men in the group all dressed like the whites. They are always all dressed like the blacks.

Five
Near the end of my walk, I was following two adults, with two boys and five or six small girls. The group seemed too large and the adults seemed too happy for them to have all been related. And then I noticed the shortest girl in the group, a blonde whose height would imply she was four or five, but whose behavior would make you think she was double that age. She looked remarkably like my eldest niece Maddie. But she wasn't looking at or noticing me. I kept watching her, but not for too long, because I didn't want anyone who saw me to think I was some lecherous man. So I called my brother-in-law, and he confirmed that Maddie and Jessie were both out with friends. So I called her by her full name, and she turned around and saw me, and ran to give me a hug. She pointed me out to her younger sister, and said, rather demandingly, "Give Uncle Frankie a kiss!". Jessie kissed me, too, and I introduced myself to the adults, apologetically. I told them that I had seen Maddie, but not Jay or Lena, and that it had just surprised me. (I did not tell them that I had called Jay to make sure it was Maddie I had seen.)

Six
When I see seniors walking in the mall, especially alone, I wonder if that will be me someday. Without a spouse or children, it is easy for bachelor, single, or gay men to be forgotten in the older age. It is a platitude to say that it couldn't happen, or that it couldn't happen to me, because I can see it has happened to some of them. I have plenty of time to avert it. But then again, when I broke up with Joe Little, I certainly did not think at that time that I would still be single now, eight years later.

Seven
Near the central intersection of the mall - where the woman's bag broke - is a sunglasses kiosk. For almost the entire hour that I was walking at the mall, this attractive man was shopping there. Each time I walked past, he was trying on a different pair of sunglasses. Tragically, he did not have anyone to provide him advice aside from the salesperson, which was to his detriment. Each look he proffered was out of reach for him, an unusual state of affairs for a handsome man. On some laps, I speculated that he might have noticed my passing frequently, and he was trying to choose frames that were more and more outrageous each time. When I saw him last, he had walked away from the kiosk, empty-handed.

V8: On a snowy future

2008-03-08T18:14:00.001-06:00

It snowed in Atlanta on my visit there. I am about to start on my 5,000-mile trek to northern California and back. This is just a short update on what is up, and a quick view of the snow.

Know your true self, or your truth might bend

2008-03-03T20:13:00.003-06:00

As most of you know from my incessant bragging, I went to Toronto for the weekend following Valentine's Day. It was a vacation I had originally planned while I was still permanently employed in my last job, and I anticipated going in March instead. When I was laid off on 4 January, I abruptly canceled the vacation, on account of having no income. But after I came out of my post-layoff gloom, I reconsidered that decision. While it is not true that I had already saved the money for the trip - that was a convenient lie to get my mother off my back - it was still true that I needed a vacation. It has been eight years since I went someplace new for the sake of vacation, and not because I was already there for tennis or some other reason.

Also, for the last several months, I have been getting to know very well through the internet a charming and wonderful man named Ed. He lives near Buffalo, and when I re-scheduled my vacation, I asked Ed if he would come over to Toronto and spend the weekend with me. I liked him from what I already knew, and I wanted to meet him in person and spend some time with him. Thankfully, Ed was able to arrange his work schedule with the Washington's Birthday holiday to spend three days with me in Toronto.

I don't have much that I want to say about Toronto, and I think the reasons will be evident later in this post. But the trip was fantastic. I enjoyed the city greatly, and my feelings about Toronto and my enjoyment of the vacation were magnified by having Ed to share it with. It was a terrific experience to take in a brand new place; having someone so compatible with whom to share the experience made it very special. We avoided typical tourist destinations, and instead relied on the advice of a Frommer-brand guide to the city. I mention the brand name because we were never let down by the advice given, from walking tours to restaurants to how to get married. (Unfortunately, we ran out of time before we could do the last thing on that list.) Even when we were lost looking for a Tim Horton's, desperately hungry, I was very content on Ed's arm.

Surprisingly, the drive back from Toronto was fine. It was the week home - alone - after Toronto that was difficult for me. It was like the feeling you have coming home from summer camp, or some other awesome, lengthy childhood experience. There were so many wonderful things compressed into the time you were away, and now you have to return to the mundane. I found it especially difficult since I have only one friend here in town. I went to dinner with him one night that week, but otherwise, through the soccer and the tennis work, I felt terribly lonely. Apparently, Ed had blue feelings that week, too, though I can only speculate on what the true cause of his feelings was. (Since then, Ed has been mentally and emotionally sidetracked by a literal fender-bender.)

Once the "week after" was over, I came back to my usual self. Of course, I had fears that my old, epic, brutal depression was trying to set back in on me. But I realized as time passed that it was just the feelings of let-down following a wonderful trip and meeting an exceptional guy. Also, a week filled with soccer and tennis work helped keep me busy and focused. I think part of what threw me off for a week was thinking about all the possibilities, all the choices, all the forks in the roads ahead. As I had felt in years past, I was starting to get overwhelmed, paralyzed by inaction because there were too many options, and too many unanswered questions. Moreover, Toronto was something I had been looking forward to for a long time; but there was no "next" event on my calendar to anticipate. (This does not include figuring out what I want to be when I grow up.) Even now, thinking about Toronto leaves me with happy thoughts and a slight twinge of sadness. Were it not for this cursed 817-mile gap, I'd be asking Ed out for a second date.

Thankfully, February is over. We had three snowfalls and one middle-of-the-night tornado scare. (Tonight might be another scare.) I refereed soccer matches in a freezing rainfall last Wednesday night. It's a hell of a way to make $60. My friend Justin in Atlanta is giving massages at $80 a pop and has a jarful of cash now. Damn him. My hands are not strong enough. And my mom would probably frown on me doing that here. This past Friday and Sunday, I drove 500 miles round trip to Starkville, Mississippi to umpire at college tennis matches. It is a haul, and a tiring day, but the pay is around $300 each time I do it, or about four massages, so it's worth it.

March has started well. My weight loss is at just under eleven pounds now. I have added some running and light muscle resistance to my exercise. By chance, I walked and ran over six miles today. I have soccer on Wednesday night, and then I am spending a couple of days in Atlanta with friends before my long, hard road trip to Redding, California. By the way, here's the sketchy details on the Redding trip.

9 March - college tennis in Oxford, Mississippi
9/10 March - drive to St Louis and spend the night
10/11-13 March - drive from St Louis to Golden, Colorado, to spend a few days with my good friend Ryan
14 March - drive from Golden to Salt Lake City and spend the night
15 March - drive from Salt Lake City to Redding
16-19 March - work at a tennis tournament in Redding
19 March - drive to Napa and visit cousins Dana and Nick for the night
20 March - drive to Flagstaff and spend the night
21 March - drive to Wichita Falls, Texas and spend the night
22 March - drive to Starkville, Mississippi and spend the night
23 March - college tennis in Starkville, then drive home to Huntsville

It will be over 5,000 miles, the most ambitious trip I have ever tried. I am a little anxious about it, but I don't have much choice now, as a plane trip would be prohibitive, and I wouldn't get to spend time with Ryan. After this, I will be home for two weeks before spending three weeks in Jackson, Mississippi; Houston; and Baton Rouge. So far, I am not booking any work beyond the end of May. This week, I will begin looking for and applying for public relations jobs in Austin and Nashville.

I have been experiencing very vivid dreams for five consecutive nights, and I may have to start writing about them, or at least journaling them. The first dream related to my nurturing and emotional side, and it may have included the initial appearance of one of my miis. (Hang on, I'll tell you.) The next three nights in a row were about escape - running with a group of five or six other young people from an enemy we could not see. And last night was about soccer refereeing, probably because an incident from a soccer match was still on my mind.

Regarding miis, they are representations of one's self, or parts of one's self, experienced in meditations and dreams. I think the term comes from Ed, and I see it as a play off of the Mii avatar that you can create for yourself on the Wii video game system. Synesthete Ed sees miis as colors. I may see them as actual people. I was fascinated by his descriptions of his meditative encounters with his miis. I think I lack the discipline to have such experiences in meditation, but my subconscious dream state has been happy to indulge me. I cannot guide my interaction with my miis in my dreams as well as Ed probably can in his meditations, but it is nice to see that I have the capability to experience them, too.

Several of you have been helping me tackle some personal choices that I have to make in the coming months, and I appreciate the responses you have given. Honestly speaking, I think I already knew the best answers; I just lacked the courage to face the truth. But even at my age, I know Rachel and Scott are right, and that I need to focus on "good life strategies". It's hard to do that when you discover long-dormant parts of your self suddenly engaging again, stimulating you, intriguing you, scrambling your brain. But I think I have my feet back under me again, and I can focus where I need to focus, and I can try to get myself out of my mother's house and back to eating life again. With each passing day and each passing dream, I am learning more about my true self. And that helps align my life once again.

Walker County

2008-02-23T19:22:00.002-06:00

Coming out of the closet is a crap shoot, and everyone has an angle.

My older sister Lena was the first family member I voluntarily came out to. It took place on one of our many interminable 150-mile drives from college at the University of Alabama to our home in Tuscaloosa. I was the first one in the family to go away from home for college, and things were great until Lena joined me in Tuscaloosa, and we had to share the car I had once enjoyed by myself.

Mind you, this car was not worth fighting over. It was a 1980 Chevrolet Chevette that my father had purchased for a few hundred dollars and, doubtless, a case of beer. When my father showed it to me for the first time, it looked like a 1970s apartment on wheels. There were several coats of sparkly blue spray paint all over the body; the original interior had been replaced by dark shag pile carpeting; and the remnant of a tie-dye bumper sticker helped keep the rear bumper in place. I would not have been surprised to find a velvet painting of dogs playing poker in the hatchback.

Since the Chevette took personal offense at being asked to cruise at 56 miles per hour, the two-and-a-half hour drive would stretch to nearly four hours. Lena and I, nearly polar opposites of one another, spent long stretches in silence. Lena was the partier, the sorority girl, the social animal, the cheerleader. (Actually, it is accurate to describe her as a member of the cheerleading squad, inasmuch as a two-meter tall elephant named Big Al can be called a cheerleader.) I was the wonkish, unpopular, pasty bookworm.

Since none of my high school friends followed me to college, and owing to my constant ineptitude at making new ones, Lena’s was often the only familiar face for me in college. I didn’t say anything to it, I just looked at it. And during one of our drives home, when she had honored me with the privilege of sitting behind the wheel and fighting with the Chevette to stay between the lines, I blurted out the worst kept secret in the state of Alabama.

Somewhere in Walker County, on one of my notorious short cuts that invariably added a dozen miles to our trip, I simply blurted out, “Lena, I’m gay.” I didn’t look at her when I did it, but I continued that I was telling her now because, regardless of her reaction, she couldn’t rightly go anywhere as long as I was driving, and she and I would be compelled to work out the dozens of issues this newsflash would stir up.

Lena squirreled up her face for a minute. For a brief moment, she resembled Commander Data, straining to integrate a complicated set of instructions into his neural net. After a long pause, nearly enough time to make up for my short cut, she finally opened her mouth. “I’m sorry,” Lena said.

“You’re sorry?” This was not going as planned at all. Someone should be crying by this point, and I had already gone all-in on myself.

“I’m sorry I used to call you a fag when we were kids.” She stymied me by being both apologetic and understanding all wrapped into one, like a dog who wagged his tail even though you were mad at him for not being able to find your wallet.

Among the many petty insults I endured at my sister’s hands as a child, being called names like “fag” was among the more forgettable. However, I do still bristle at the memory of all the Hot Wheels races I lost to her banana seat blue bicycle. Or how we would play office, and I would be hard at work in the basement, calculating or filing, while she and my cousin George hid in her bedroom eating peanut butter crackers and watching television, in between issuing random orders to me. “This Lego has to get to Tokyo by tomorrow!”

Really, I don’t even think she called me names out of malice. Names and words were interchangeable to Lena. When reprimanded for using one of the traditional fifty-cent curse words, she resorted to cursing by using the word “foot” instead. That stopped after my mother decreed any word said in anger was a curse word. Actually, it stopped about an hour later, after our laughter-through-tears finally subsided from cursing “blanket” and “tampon” and “birdbath” and “asteroid”. (The last contribution was mine.) So when she was barred by my mother from calling me a fag, Lena took to calling me a “gaf” for all of about two weeks, and then that phase ended. And out of everything, that was what she was sorry for.

And that was it. We still had Cullman and Morgan and Madison counties ahead of us, and it was over. There were no questions about how I got this way, no pleas for me to change, no quotations from Leviticus (I was ready for that), no dirty questions about “how we do it”. I spent three nights practicing this moment in front of my Cabbage Patch Kid, Spencer Christian, and this was it. Nothing. At least Spencer asked me if I had a boyfriend.

V7: On Lake Erie

2008-02-19T14:02:00.001-06:00

I am back from Toronto, and there is much to tell and write. For now, be satisfied with this stop along the frozen shores of Lake Erie on the trip to Toronto. I apologize for the quality and I have learned from my error.

V6: On nieces

2008-02-11T18:58:00.001-06:00

I figured you were tiring of hearing from me all the time, so tonight I have something much cuter.

Rules for Fighting Fair

2008-02-10T08:42:00.000-06:00

On Super Tuesday, I volunteered as a poll observer at University Place School in Huntsville, Alabama. The polling location was in a hexagonal, cinder block gymnasium on an unusually warm and humid winter day. During my fourteen-hour day in that gym, I spied the signs of children all around me - four-square lines on the floor; chairs too short for me to sit in; rows of aligned dots painted on the floor for assigned seating; and elementary art on the walls encouraging students to stay active and eat healthy. Sometime during my interminable day, I discovered this:

and I was reminded that we adults seldom remember or exemplify the lessons we are trying to instill in our children. I think it is a worthy desire to want to live in a civil society. I believe the values of tolerance and freedom can exist together and complement one another. And I feel that as our road seems to inexorably lead to another argumentative presidential election, we should go back to what we learned in school about how to fight fair.

1. We find out the problem. In a civil society comprising more than one person, fights will happen. Fighting can sometimes involve violence, but most basically, fighting is about disagreeing. In elementary school, such disagreements were often one-word affairs. "Mine!" "Stopit!" "Jerk!" In the grown-up world, disagreements take on significantly more facets, complications, and baggage. They can refer to critical, even life-and-death, matters. Yet most often, as children and adults, we are reduced to puerile, off-topic rants about unrelated issues or events that get us no closer to solving the problem.

If we want to fight fair, and if we really care about the problem and solving it, first we must find out what the problem is, and leave everything else at the door. It is the first agreement that leads to the end of the disagreement. So much time and energy, so many column inches and diaries are wasted on the debris surrounding past and present conflicts. So much bad will is generated and maintained by the memories of past fights. To be successful, we must find the problem, isolate it, and focus our intensity and efforts like a laser beam on the problem itself. This goal relates directly to the second rule.

2. We attack the problem, not the person. This is the most violated rule of fighting fair. As children, our lack of maturity makes it easy to spin off into name-calling, pushing, temper tantrums, and grudges. We're supposed to be older than that now; we're supposed to be adults. There should be no threats and no blaming. Does this sound like an adult way to attack the problem of terrorism?

And Barack and Hillary have made their intentions clear regarding Iraq and the war on terror. They would retreat and declare defeat. And the consequence of that would be devastating. It would mean attacks on America, launched from safe havens that make Afghanistan under the Taliban look like child's play. About this, I have no doubt.

I disagree with Senator McCain on a number of issues, as you know. But I agree with him on doing whatever it takes to be successful in Iraq, on finding and executing Osama bin Laden, and on eliminating Al Qaeda and terror. If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator Clinton or Obama would win. And in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign, be a part of aiding a surrender to terror.

To summarize Jon Stewart's apt analysis: "So, Mitt, in order to avert a surrender on terror, you are going to ... surrender?"

So far, our candidates have resisted most urges to demonize the Republican Party and its supporters. They have defined the problems of our country as they see them; they have outlined their ideas for solutions; and they have highlighted how their plans differ from the proposals of their opponents. We Democratic partisans, we campaign supporters, we diarists and bloggers need to follow their lead. Fighting fair means keeping our eyes on the problem. It means no name calling, no threats, no making excuses, no failing to listen, no getting even. And it means doing this even when others do not.

Do you want to win, or do you want to win justly and fairly? If you are saying to yourself that the problems our country faces are too critical to make this distinction, or if you are asking yourself if there really is a difference, think. Why do we, and most right-thinking Americans, oppose the use of torture against our enemies? We oppose it because we do not want ourselves or our soldiers to be treated that way. We oppose it because it is inhumane. We oppose it because we do not want to be known in the world as a country that would do such things. All these statements boil down to one truth: we oppose it because it is wrong. We should not only fight the fights we can win. We must fight the fights that need fighting. And this is why we must do it fairly. Victory is hollow and meaningless if we don't fight fair.

3. We listen to each other. Fighting fairly is more than telling my side and waiting for you to agree, acquiesce, or give in. [Indeed, that is the way of the Bush administration.] We fight because we disagree, because we believe in something, and because we eventually want to agree. If we did not desire agreement and harmony as our default condition, there would be no incentive or impetus to fight in the first place. We must listen to those with whom we fight, even when they play unfairly.

Fighting fairly requires faith. We must believe that the people with whom we fight are what we strive to be, that they are sincere in their beliefs, and that they fight because they feel those beliefs are important. If we accept this and have faith, it makes it easier to fight fairly. No longer will we waste time on pettiness, on past quarrels, on scoring cheap points. Both sides will see the earnestness of the other, listen to what they offer, and find a road to connect the two.

If I only trust and listen to those who play dirty, then I do not really know who or what I am fighting. After all, I cannot disagree with you if I do not know what you believe or propose, or how it differs from my ideas and ideals. We must listen. We must seek out sources of information from those with whom we disagree. We must turn on our ears, even when our minds want to turn off our hearts to our opponents. We must listen, so that others will hear us. If we want to fight fairly, and if we believe things are worth fighting for, then we must desire a solution and a resolution to the fight. We will never achieve that without listening.

4. We care about each other's feelings. Perhaps politics, like revenge, is a dish best served cold. If we fight dispassionately and stoically, then we cannot be hurt when we lose. Perhaps, as stated earlier, the crisis of our country is so dire that it does not matter how we win, just as long as we win. Yet all of us are old enough to have been both winners and losers in this game, some of us many times over. We know that the losers do not get voted off the island. We must all live together in this republic once the current fight is over, and until the next fight comes. Fighting fairly means caring about how we fight, and caring about the feelings of others.

We teach our children to play fair, and most of us cite some religious or secular formulation of the Golden Rule when we correct their behavior. Then we mature, inherit the responsibilities of the world, and abandon this point of view. We're good, they're bad, and we must win while they lose because everything is a zero-sum game. But it does not have to be that way if we fight fairly.

Caring about the feelings of others while we fight is how we would want to be treated. It encourages future fights, meaning it allows people to have faith that the next time they disagree, they can fight fairly to solve it without animosity or hatred. It invites us to engage one another to solve the problem that started the fight; when the fight is over, we must return to being neighbors. And caring about others when we fight allows us to engage in rule two - focusing on the problem and not the person. If it is good enough for our children, why can't it be good enough for us?

5. We are responsible for what we say and do. When we fight fairly, we become a collective unit towards the goal we are seeking. The tactics we use to fight, including the words we say and write, are the weapons in that fight. We are all responsible for how they are used and what effects they have. If you believe in a cause or a person, you should want to fight fairly. It allows people to have faith in your sincerity, and it lends credence to your views. It engenders faith in you as a fighter. You will not be successful at winning converts if you do it unfairly. They will not be able to trust what you say now, or when the next fight inevitably comes.

If there are people fighting with you that do not fight fairly, you must call them out for their behavior. Remember, it is about the goal, the purpose, the ideal - and not about the person. Calling names, seeking revenge, or spreading misleading statements will not help you in your fight. They discourage others from fighting fairly, they cast doubt on your motives, and they distract from what you are fighting for. If the fight is more important than the person, then fighting fairly is to your advantage. Criticize others when they don't fight fairly. Apologize and take responsibility when you fail to remember these rules. Encourage those who keep their eyes on the prize. If you are responsible for what you say and do, even when you err, you will earn the trust and respect of sincere people with whom you fight, smoothing the way for future agreements.

Following these rules and fighting fairly is difficult. We should do it because it complements our sincerity and earnestness. We should do it because we want others to treat us the same way when we fight. We should do it because we expect it of our children, for whom we should be exemplars. We should do it because it makes winning feel good, and losing feel tolerable. All these statements boil down to one truth: we should do it because it is right.

V5: On space

2008-02-09T19:55:00.001-06:00

The U.S. Space and Rocket Center here in Huntsville just held a huge gala celebrating fifty years of the space program. It got me to thinking about the merits and future of the space program.

And if you watch the video, here is the photo I talk about from 1978:

The only time it's okay to brag about it

2008-02-07T17:51:00.000-06:00

[Note: I don't usually warn people of content beforehand. However, if you don't want to learn too much about me, or if you are a family member, I'd suggest you stop reading now.]

Ellen Degeneres once talked about a visit to a grocery store:

I always try to guess what people coming in have to pick up, and what they're just picking up because they're there. You know, especially if it's just a few items. If it's like baked beans, douche, and a lawn chair.

I never have felt the need to hide anything I am purchasing. If it were something that could embarrass me, such as wart remover or lice shampoo, I think it is more likely to embarrass the person trying to spy my purchases. And clerks see so much every day that I am sure nothing surprises them. Every product in the store has to pass under their noses and through their hands before it can go out the door. So that is why one of my favorite things to do is buy condoms at the CVS.

Just like everything else these days, the price of condoms has risen sharply, but the variety has increased as well. Sure, there are still tacky flavored and colorful condoms, but the real innovations have come in lubrication and material. Some condoms are now ultra-thin and can be used with oil-based and water-based lubricants, making everyone happier. Other condoms tout their "new shape" (huh?) or enhanced sensory stimulation. All of this has complicated what used to be a rather fun anticipatory purchase. It's too bad I don't have condom coupons, like I have for everything else. That would make my shopping easier.

Condoms mean sex. Well, that is true unless you can make a mean balloon animal like I can. But sex makes people excited and happy. So the way I see it, when I buy condoms, I am cheering up the clerk. As far as he sees it, if he's not getting any, well, at least someone is. But what puts the cherry on top of the sundae, if you will, is my purchase of Magnums. (In case you didn't know, Magnums are just what they sound like - Trojan brand condoms for men with large penises.) Now you are not just saying sex, you are saying SEX.

I don't look for anything else to buy with my Magnums. I don't want to distract from the purchase I am making. In fact, I'll walk around the store and window shop awhile longer. And even if I see something I want, I'm not buying it. I'll make a special trip and come back later, just to buy the condoms alone. Because when you plant a box of a dozen Magnum condoms on the counter and nothing else, you're making a statement. The clerk got it; he smiled at me with a gleam in his eye. (It was either a look of brotherly locker-room chumminess, or genuine longing. I have a hard time telling the difference.)

For a moment, assume the position that I am well-endowed and very talented in bed. (Forget the fact that my bed has been devoid of anyone but me for eight years.) Now, such a talent would be a terrific asset. It would be very pleasing to sexual partners. If you will allow me, it would be a great selling point. But having a large penis and knowing how to use it is not exactly something you can put on your business card or your eharmony.com profile. For some reason, it is expected that I keep such a thing a secret from potential partners or boyfriends. And why? Politeness is the only reason I can fathom. It seems quite unfair that I would have to rely on more mediocre selling points, when the one thing that could seal the deal is kept hidden away, zipped up and muzzled.

Buying condoms, on the other hand, is a necessity and a normal daily activity at the CVS. It is not shameful. And when you have the privilege of being a man who needs Magnums, it is a daily affirmation. It is, in fact, the only time it is okay to brag about it.

V4: On tornadoes

2008-02-06T05:46:00.001-06:00

It's now 5:30 in the morning. I am hopelessly awake. Here is why.

V3: On Obama in the rain

2008-02-04T11:50:00.000-06:00

I have a lot of other things to tell, of making new friends and losing more weight and generally feeling better. But right now, I need to tell you about Barack Obama, me, and the rain that just would not quit.

Edwards for President; or, How To Choose a Candidate in Seven Days

2008-01-31T18:21:00.000-06:00

I was sitting in my room and the news came on tv;
A lot of people out there hurtin', and it really scares me.

Love and mercy, that's what you need tonight;
So love and mercy to you and your friends tonight.

~~Brian Wilson, "Love and Mercy"

It was about eight in the morning yesterday when my friend Ed sent me a text from Buffalo and said, "Turn on CNN." My first thought was that Buffalo was on the news - he had been telling me about the severe winds, about how school had been canceled, and about how, dammit, he still had to work that day. In the few seconds more before the channel appeared, I wondered a few more things that might prompt Ed to direct me to the news today, but the news I saw was the last thing I was expecting. John Edwards was ending his campaign for president.

I am certainly a political animal; I am my father's son in that regard. But, as my friends will attest, I can inform without offending. I have never lost a friend over politics. So I am a true believer, but a reluctant proselytizer. Many would be surprised to learn that I have been with John Edwards since his first run for president in 2004. I thought the ticket was reversed that year; I stood by him and supported him in my forcefully quiet way until the present. Similarly, many would be startled at the depth of my support and passion for Edwards' campaign.

I wonder, when I saw him in Nashville two days before his withdrawal, if he knew then that he was ending his campaign. You could not tell from the passion in his speech and the fire in the crowd. I came home and signed up for a couple of campaign events locally that were supposed to occur today. And now, it feels like my significant other of four years has left me. And I have to find a date for next Tuesday's ball, or else I will be the only person sitting on the sidelines.

The kernel of an idea for this diary was a grand analysis of candidate positions; a three column chart on each major issue area, comparing and contrasting the positions of Edwards with Obama and Clinton. From this, I could call a "winner" in each policy area, and use that to determine where I would send my support - I am not sitting this dance out. I also wanted to highlight the differences in Senate roll call votes between Obama and Clinton in the last two years. However, I could hear in my head the criticisms of this approach, and I also became daunted by the sheer volume of information involved. I tried to focus only on the candidates' differences, but found there were few substantial policy contrasts.

In order to save my sanity, I turned to a thematic and idea approach. Which candidate shares the values and the passion of John Edwards to a greater degree? Which candidate has more truly innovative ideas? Which candidate has demonstrated the judgment and awareness to carefully select adviser to help administer the government? Ah...now we're getting somewhere.

During the beginning of my more in-depth analysis of policy positions, I consistently found more detailed, more creative, and more congruent ideas from Obama than from Clinton. One might want to argue that all the information on candidate positions is not available on their campaign websites, or one might want to refer me to other sources of information. My view is this: the campaign website is the primary vehicle of communication with the public. It is not limited by timed duration or column inches. If it is important to the candidate, it should be detailed on the website. Here is just a sampling of what I found.

Tax policy: All three candidate share support for restoring higher-income tax brackets to 1990s levels; extending and enhancing child tax credits; and rolling back Bush's tax cuts. But Clinton's policy speaks in generalities, with words and phrases I have heard before, over and over. Obama, meanwhile, offers substantive and fresh ideas. He proposes a Making Work Pay tax credit - $500 individual, $1000 joint - that could eliminate federal income taxes for 10 million lower income people. He also has actual ideas for simplifying federal tax filing. For example, the IRS could use information it already receives from banks and employers to send pre-filled statements to taxpayers for verification; ideally, filing federal taxes could be reduced to five minutes.

Government reform: The three candidates agree on verifiable paper trails, ballot security and election auditing; restricting the revolving door for agency officials and lobbyists; and using technology and the Internet to provide more government transparency and data-sharing. Clinton proposes a Public Service Academy - four years of paid college education followed by five years of service. It is a quality idea, but hardly innovative. Want something new? Try Obama's Sunlight Before Signing - all non-emergency bills presented for his signature will be subject to a five-day public comment period before he takes action. How about 21st Century Fireside Chats? Obama would mandate that Cabinet departments hold regular broadband town hall meetings.

LGBT issues: John Edwards was the run away leader in his efforts for equal and fair treatment of lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgendered people. Edwards visibly supported civil unions and other arrangements that would provide equal standing for the more than 1100 federal rights related to marriage to straight and to same-sex couples. He opposed a constitutional amendment to define marriage. He wanted to expand Medicaid to cover HIV+ people; to increase funding and support for the Ryan White Act; and to encourage age-appropriate sexual education and science-based prevention. Clinton and Obama have each made public statements supporting equal treatment of the LGBT community, but both need to step up the written and verbal commitments to rise to the level of support from John Edwards. Obama took a step in this direction by addressing equal treatment in front of a predominantly African-American audience. But more than words are needed.

I can go on - rural America; nuclear proliferation; civil rights; Africa; trade relations - but the pattern is the same. Both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton strike all the right chords when singing about the major issues our party and our country face. They have white papers, press releases, and speeches that say all the right things and stroke all the right constituencies; this is expected. The difference is in the quality, innovation, and freshness of the ideas. This is more than just "change": who can change the climate of Washington, or who can change the course of our government.

Barack Obama has shown the charisma and the inspiration to bring people together to follow him. And if you are looking for "change" in this election, he represents it to a far greater degree than Hillary Clinton. He is worried about health care, and tax burdens, and external threats, and education. But on each of these topics, and more, he hits the right notes and then embellishes them with trills and arpeggios. I have not seen sufficient evidence that Clinton is flexible enough or open enough to tackle old issues and emerging threats with a keen and fresh eye. Obama has the creativity and the vision to see beyond the same solutions to the same problems.

This is my analysis, and this is what works for me. Hopefully - maybe - it is helpful to you. The candidate who comes closer to the passion, the ideals, and the perspective of John Edwards is Barack Obama. I will be voting for Obama on Tuesday.

V2: On energy

2008-01-29T13:05:00.000-06:00

I missed my daily walk yesterday because I was in Nashville for the John Edwards rally. So today, I decided to double my usual walk, and also to walk into Jones Valley, where some challenging hills awaited. When I was done, I had walked four and a half miles, and this is how I felt.

Vlog 1 [V1]: On seeing John Edwards in Nashville

2008-01-28T22:59:00.000-06:00

I drove to Nashville today in order to see John Edwards speak at a steelworkers' union rally. I decided to use this occasion to roll out my new video blog (vlog). I mean what I said about people hearing what he has to say. Go to johnedwards.com and find out for yourself.

On a related note, apparently I was in a hurry this morning to drive to Nashville. Mom said that when she got home from work, the side door was open. Not just unlocked - open. I told her that any potential robbers would think someone was home, because no one (me) would be stupid enough to leave the house with the door open.

So high that I could almost see eternity

2008-01-26T10:24:00.000-06:00

If you've been following the saga of my 2008, you already know that right about the time I settled on a career field to pursue, I got laid off from the job that was paying the bills and eliminating my debt. I've written about that layoff elsewhere, because it has its own baggage and issues associated with it. Anyway, I want to pursue a career in sports information and/or public relations, working for a college athletic department or a professional sports team. But now something new is on the horizon.

(Aside: It makes me wonder if I will ever figure out or settle on what I want to do, if I can keep being intrigued by new ideas. This is certainly not my usual decision-making matrix.)

A few nights ago, my friend Ed up near Buffalo mentioned that he completed his testing to be a teacher of English overseas (TESOL). That made me remember when I was in college at Alabama, and how I entertained the idea of teaching English in the newly-independent Slovak Republic. So I told him that he could live out an old dream of mine by going overseas to teach. And Ed said, "Why don't you come with me?"

My first reaction was to make excuses, as I usually do - I'm too old, I don't have the money, it's too far away, I am not as adventurous as I used to be, and so on. Ed has seen me bullshit before, and he wasn't having any of that. So since then, we have been actually talking about the mechanics of it, and what is involved, and what my fears are.

It seems Ed's first choice is Taiwan. My first choice would have been a Spanish-speaking country, because I'd like to pick up Spanish in the bargain. However, the job posting for Ecuador said the pay was $6 per hour. Even in Ecuador, that just seems wrong. While the expenses are higher in Taiwan, the pay for one posting there was $1650 per month. If Ed and I split living expenses, it is very doable. And I told him this is not something I would even consider without him. We'd have to do it together and get posted to the same place.

At one point in the conversation, Ed said it would be so "crazy" to go to Taiwan to teach English. When I asked him to elaborate, this is what followed:

Ed: Well dropping EVERYTHING to go live somewhere completely different where I have no clue about the language.

Me: Well, what exactly is "everything" for you right now?

Ed: True.

Ed: lol

Ed: Not much.

Ed: Friends and family.

Me: Who will [still] be here in a year

And then he made a very flattering comment about me which I will just enjoy and keep to myself.

I meant to go back to that exchange later, because I had a little epiphany when he said it. What is everything? As I have written before, I don't have a passionate career love yet, like the people on Project Runway. I have my family, but I don't have any friends here. My family loves me, and would be here when I returned. And the close friends I do have are all over the country now - the Internet works just as well between here and Taiwan. So what really is holding me back?

Fear is holding me back. I am afraid of the unknown, and of a whole host of things. What will I do with my car, which I love? What happens if I get sick and need medical care there? What if someone has an emergency back home - can I afford to fly back? Would I lose my job? What if I fall for Ed while I am there? Worse, what if I fall for Ed and he doesn't fall back? What about retirement savings? This will be one more year that I haven't planned for my future. I am going to be greeting folks at Wal*Mart in my 70s because I won't be able to afford to retire.

It is all these unknowns that are holding me back; there is nothing tangible, concrete, or logical that is making me say, "Oh, I cannot do that." In other words, it is fear. But there are all these plus sides I can imagine, too. I would be so inspired to blog and vlog all the time while I was there. There is so much natural and man-made beauty to see. In the case of Asia, it is a brand new culture to me. The opportunity to become very close to another person, Ed, is an exciting prospect, too. I don't have anyone very close to me right now, and I miss that companionship.

I don't know that I am that much more brave this morning than I was last night, but I think I have had this brewing inside of me for awhile now. I want to face my fear, at least in this matter. I am tired of regretting things, of missing out on experiences, of wondering what has been and what is going to be. I need to grab the steering wheel again. And if I am wrong, so I make a mistake. I pick up, and I go on with my life. Life is not going to slow down or stop while I read the owner's manual. I just think this opportunity, whether it is the right one or the wrong one, has captured my attention and imagination and led me to a point I should have been at a long time ago.

I have not made a final decision yet. But I think this is where I stand. I have committed make myself available for tennis events through the US Open in September. I have not been assigned to many of these events yet, but those will come soon. I should know about the Open in early summer. If I don't get the Open, I'll just quit working tennis in June or July instead of September. Either way, when I am done with tennis this year, I think I want to be available to go overseas to teach for a year.

There are still a lot of questions I need to think of and then answer. One that just came up is this - will I lose my tennis certification, if I can't work enough events to keep it because I am overseas? Would I be able to find some opportunities to work while in Asia? But I will face them as they come. I think I want to do this. Hopefully, sometime soon, I will have more confidence in that statement.

So the next step is to go to Toronto in three weeks with Ed for a weekend vacation and planning session. We will sit down together and tackle these questions, think of everything we can that might come up or that we haven't anticipated yet, and decide together if we want to plan for this. I'll say this much - maybe it is a sign, but just thinking about this makes me more energized than I can remember being in a long time.

Should Mother Nature choose the president?

2008-01-21T09:15:00.000-06:00

clipped from talkingpointsmemo.com

Norris says McCain too old for president

APRIL CASTRO
AP News

Campaigning for Mike Huckabee, actor Chuck Norris said Sunday that Sen. John McCain is too old to handle the pressures of being president.

"I didn't pick John to support because I'm just afraid that the vice president would wind up taking over his job in that four-year presidency," said Norris

As the first Southern primary, South Carolina was supposed to be friendly territory for Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor and Baptist minister.

"We obviously wanted to win and we really thought we would win," he said. "The fact of Fred Thompson's being in the race took some votes that we would have most likely had."

Huckabee also blamed late snowfall in parts of upstate South Carolina.

"The snow not only froze the streets of the Greenville-Spartanburg area, the votes kinda stopped once it started snowing," he said. "That was an area we were looking forward to having a significant vote margin."

Further down in this article from Talking Points Memo, Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee lamented the affect of weather (and Grandpa Fred) on his vote totals in South Carolina.

Especially today, on the formal celebration of the life of Martin Luther King, it is worth noting the cavalier attitude we seem to have towards democracy and voting rights. I am not old enough to remember the bulk of the struggle for women and minorities to secure the right to vote. But in a country that considers itself the modern torch-bearer for democracy, in a country who nicknames its president the Leader of the Free World, in a country where thousands have died in the Middle East so we can ostensibly enjoy the freedom to shop here at home, it startles me to see the basic act of democracy so tattered.

Weather should not affect elections. If more South Carolinians really wanted Gov. Huckabee to win, it shouldn't be his bad luck - or a reflection on him - that they were too lazy or not intrepid enough to brave the weather in order to vote. It is troubling enough to deal with the variables of computerized voting versus hand counting, of polling places running out of ballots, of citizens actually turning away in Nevada because of half-mile lines to vote. It is likewise disturbing that dozens of votes were found to have been miscounted in New Hampshire, despite the fact that the recount did not change the outcome. Do you want your vote to be the one that is not counted?

So I guess my beef is not with Mother Nature. It is with our particular flavor of democracy. The tradition of Tuesday voting - harking back to the days of farmers' markets, and when most citizens would be "in town" to vote - needs to be retired. We need weekend voting, multiple day voting, voting by mail. Ask Oregon - mail voting has been tremendously efficient and effective, and very impervious to fraud. Austin always had multiple early voting sites throughout the city when I lived there. Unless you were away on business for three weeks solid, there was no excuse for failing to vote.

After all that has been given by so many for our right to vote, shouldn't it be more protected, more cherished? A vote should not be minimized because one could not get off work...because one could not get a ride to the polls...because one had a sick child on the one day of the vote...because weather depressed the turnout of an entire area of a city or state.

Do You Believe I Wanna Dance With a Virgin

2008-01-20T21:23:00.000-06:00

When I was at the bar in Nashville on Saturday night, I stayed longer than I probably would have (which was only 40 minutes to begin with) because the music and videos selection from the DJ was pretty darn good. Well, it was pretty darn good with one exception.

I've heard "versus" mixes before - two songs with congruent beats that are mixed together, so that verses are alternated, and sometimes the refrain is blended together. I don't usually appreciate versus mixes, but that's just me. If DJs aren't versus-ing songs, they are playing twelve-minute versions of "Time After Time" instead of just moving on to the next damn song.

Anyway, I was watching the video monitor intently. (If you don't know why, read the post before this one.) And the next remix video starts. It has the intro that always throws me - is it "True Faith" by New Order, or "I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)" by Whitney Houston? (I know - what a pair.) When I see shoulder-length curly-haired Whitney in that slinky miniskirt, I realize it is the latter. But underlying the beat is the unmistakable intro to "Like a Virgin" by Madonna. Okay, another versus remix, right?

As this mash-up progresses, I see on the screen...Cher. Not pretty Cher. Post-apocalyptic Cher. You know, Will-and-Grace Cher. Plastic Cher. But then her face morphs into this greenish alien head, with glowing red eyes. And then as the melody rotates between Madonna and Whitney, images from their respective videos pop into the screen. And then, Cher's "Believe" gets woven in with the other two songs. For me, this is a first.

I know all three songs by heart - hell, they are all part of the gay musical canon. Even if you hate pre-crack, pre-"Bobbbyyy" Whitney, you know this song. But the images kept shifting, and the melody kept fluctuating between three different songs with one pounding beat between them. I got dizzy. Didn't know whether to scratch my watch or wind my butt. And I think that, despite what I wrote earlier, was the harbinger of the end of the evening.

They have forgotten what by day they lack

2008-01-19T23:14:00.000-06:00

I've never had an actual request to write before - well, not before today. So Jon, this one's for you...

I am in Nashville right now as I write, and it's not even midnight yet. I come to town once or twice a month because Huntsville has nothing to do, and because someday I hope to move here. But on many of my trips up here, I never leave my hotel room. I haven't felt comfortable in bars in many years, coincident with my losing the bulk of my friends and thus not having anyone to go out with. Like dining alone, going to a bar alone is an acquired taste. And I don't like it.

But it's a new dawn, it's a new day, so I said what the hell, and went to Tribe. Tribe is what I affectionately call an S&M bar - stand and model. It is also a video bar, connected to a restaurant, and I have to give the DJ props for his mixes. But still, it requires a lot of effort to show up there and to have a good time when one is alone. The other bars are too leathery, or too queeny, or too smoky, or too any-other-excuse-I-can-make. So Tribe it is.

I arrived shortly after 10, muscled my way to a spot at the bar, and paid way too much for a Heineken (my third choice, after they didn't have Molson or Shiner). I took it to an upper level of the bar (three steps up), and found a place where I could look around and see most of the people and the bar.

As has been the case for the last five or six years, this is where I stall out. What do I do now? I tried to look relaxed, as I scanned the bar for friendly or attractive faces. I found two almost directly in front of me - the bartender and the barback. But experience has told me not to bother with bar personnel, so I moved on. I kept coming back to these two guys, however, so I decided to use them for my mental exercise.

First, I was thinking about the bartender - shorter, solidly built, with nice lean arms showing from his black tank top and a nice, sexy, light beard. But when I wasn't looking, he took his shirt off, revealing a very sexy v-shape below the navel, nice pecs, great art, and an impossibly low amount of body fat. Oh, and no underwear. And I very quickly came to resent him, and couldn't even look at him anymore. So I turned to the barback instead.

The barback was tall, with sexy lean arms and a trim waist. That experience I mentioned earlier about bar employees is true, though - barbacks are straight, or have found a boyfriend from all the passes made at them, or are sluts from all the passes made at him. I knew I was never going to approach a barback to talk to him, so I made myself imagine he was just another guy in the bar. At least to me at that time, he was the most attractive and intriguing man there. So I began to talk to him, in my own head.

I can never think of what to start with. Everything and anything I can come up with will always sound like a shallow, cheesy pick-up line in my own head. So I start with, "hi." And I imagine him saying, "hi" in return, but only a split-second after I can already feel him judging me, sizing me up. And that stymies me; I can't think of what to say next. How are you? It doesn't elicit a deep response or draw him into the conversation. Nice shoes, wanna fuck? No, too tacky and too forward. I have no idea what interests him, what he likes, or what to talk about. Since I can see that I have nothing interesting to say to this guy, including "hi," then I wind up saying nothing at all.

I have no self-confidence anymore in such settings. I don't feel like I have anything worthwhile to say, and I don't know how to put one verbal foot in front of another. It is pathetic and I don't know how to get past it. I even tried drinking some more to loosen me up, but it had no effect. I can't get past the initial meeting, and the feeling that I am being judged and found not worthy. I can't think about the here-and-now because I am too busy thinking about what to say next, or to say after that. I am not comfortable in my own skin.

I looked around and found very few eyes looking back at me. It almost felt like I was a void, or the wake of a Starfleet-era cloaking device. You think something is there, but you brush it off as a figment of your imagination, and you walk right on through. I was like wallpaper.

I didn't stay longer than forty minutes. I saw no point in standing around, waiting for someone to come to me, because I sure as hell wasn't going to strike up a conversation with anyone. Anyhow, whenever people eventually do come up to me, they are definitely not the kind of people I am looking to meet. (Take that to mean whatever you want it to mean.) So rather than run the risk of deepening my depression, I ran.

If I went out with a friend - if I had a friend - I sense I would spend all my time talking to that friend, and I still wouldn't meet anyone new. I just don't have any idea how to proceed, especially living in Huntsville, where the bar is the only place to meet new people. (The internet is a dismal failure.) I am too afraid of failure, too tired of rejection, too set in my ways, too doubtful of my own worth. I am absolutely terrified of what a person might (or might not) say to me if I went up and said "hi". I have become functionally socially illiterate. I don't know how to operate in strange society anymore.

Just like I don't know how to find a career, or how to find a boyfriend, I don't know how to meet new people. I don't have a clue how to get past this. I tried professional help, and she was no help at all. What the hell am I going to do with myself, with my life? I felt miserable and pathetic standing in that bar, even though I really wanted to try. I couldn't move myself to say anything to anyone. I am actually and quite literally terrified.

I have no idea how to fix this.

Two condos

2008-01-13T21:11:00.002-06:00

This evening, I got an instant message from someone I used to know years ago in Austin. He's about seven years younger than me. When I knew him years ago, he was overweight, single, unhappy with his life, and relying too much on alcohol and partying to soothe his soul. He moved away, gradually living all over the country. I'd hear from him once in a blue moon, often when he stumbled across my blog or profile online, or when he moved or changed jobs and wanted to get back in touch.

I don't believe in schadenfreude, though I certainly understand it. I guess that was how I felt about him. As long as his life was bad, I wasn't the only loser. And as he flitted from place to place, it seemed that was the case with him. I remember him getting involved with the tanning industry, and eventually moving to take promotions in that kind of work. But then the last time I heard from him was just over two years ago.

I read back in the chat logs from that conversation in December 2005. My life was nightmarishly pathetic back then, and I said so. Obviously, I didn't endear myself to him very much, or encourage him to want to keep in touch with me, because he didn't. I heard nothing from him again until today, when he again stumbled across my profile online and decided to see how I was doing.

That's the way it is with nearly everyone in my life. They will check in once in awhile, see that my life is still wrecked, and they'll move on for another year or two. It feels like they are looking away, hoping that the next time they look back, I will have magically repaired everything, and then they can pick up the relationship where it left off. I have no plans to indulge those people. If I ever fix this broken wreck of a life, anyone who comes out of the woodwork to find me repaired and who wants to restart anything will be told to bugger off. If you weren't here for the heavy lifting, you don't get to enjoy the benefits. I have no room for absent friends. The result of such a policy, of course, is that I will have to make all new friends. That's fine with me. There's no one in my life that's been around more than five years anyhow.

So he comes back and wonders what is new with me. I told him that I lost my job on Friday, so things were pretty much as they were when he last asked about me two years ago. Just to be polite, and to see if I was to be a lonesome loser, I asked him what he was doing. And he told me he works as a litigation manager for an insurance company in Houston, and that he has a Lexus and two condos, including one in Santa Fe. This is a guy who was cleaning tanning beds five years ago, who has no legal training, who couldn't even get himself out of bed to meet new people when I knew him in Austin. Now he's making nearly six figures a year and is what almost anyone would call "successful". (Two condos - good grief.)

When I asked him how he did it, he said he worked his way up. That's when I gave up on the conversation, even though it petered on for a few more exchanges. I just don't have the strength, the mental energy, or the drive to start over - again - at my age. I know I won't go back to school, because I have no confidence in what I want to do with my life. I can't risk wasting thousands of dollars and two or three years of what is left of my life on education for a field that I may be wrong about.

A few weeks ago, when Romero mentioned that of all the people he knew, he thought Ryan Bowling and I would be a perfect pair for The Amazing Race, I told him that I am not nearly as adventurous as I used to be. And boy, is that true. I have become critically conservative in my life's play-calling. There is too little time left, so I am unwilling to take any real risks. I have worked too hard to (almost) get out of debt, and I feel like it would just break my spirit if I got back in it again. Yet I have done nothing - NOTHING - since I got laid off to rectify this situation.

How long am I going to sit, to wait? A decade should have taught me by now that no one can fix this for me, and that it is not going to get better on its own. It is true that one person who read this (the only one?) actually called me to express concern. But I said that concern from afar is like gravity - I can't feel it. And if I can't feel it, it might as well not even be there.

I saw someone on Saturday that I went on a few dates with this summer. Nothing came of it - of course. But seeing him yesterday was not a boost, it was a real downer. Of course, his life has taken off as well, even though he has some uncertainty. At 20, he has youth and time on his side. But he also was not at all encouraging or supportive - he even suggested suicide, which is not an option for me. But he also said that my other choice was to ride out the rail and wait for death, which, by default, seems to be what I am doing.

So what the hell am I doing wrong? I know - I am not doing anything. I don't care, so why should anyone else.

I clicked through on a link yesterday about exercises for your abs (right). And in the sidebar were tips on being successful in your weight loss or exercise endeavors. One of the three keys was to have a support group - get a workout buddy, let those you eat with know about your dietary habits so that they can encourage them, have friends and family who check in on you and root for you. And this advice is good for life as well as fitness. And it's true that I don't have a buddy, I don't have a close friend in town, I don't have people encouraging me, and I don't have family or friends checking in on me. (Remember, gravity?)

If you haven't checked in lately, you're probably not my friend. And I know it's my own fault by narrowing my social circle when I defriend people. But why keep reading about how great their lives are going, via Facebook, if they never lift a finger to see what's up with me? And if gravity is the problem, how do I go about finding friends here? Who would want to be friends with me in such a state? And where or how the hell do I expect to meet new people here now, if I have had zero success for the last year? I've got to get out of this town. But if I go to Nashville, will I still stay in my cave, lonely, waiting for death?

NCAA Football, Week 2

2008-01-09T15:21:00.001-06:00

Well, apparently the Crimson Tide are not going to be a passing team or an option team this season...

I do not have the team speed to run effective routes, or to sprint to the strong side of the field on option plays. In the last two games, the quarterback has been nailed half a dozen times on option plays as soon as he receives the snap. (Yeah, part of that is the weak and tiny offensive line I have, but part of it is being too danged slow.) And when the option doesn't work, the pass is not there to bail me out (6-of-14, 85 yards, 2 INTs against Middle Tennessee). Somehow, the draw up the middle is effective - I had two touchdowns of over 65 yards develop on draw plays.

As a coach, I still develop the one of the best rush defenses in the country (20 rushes, 63 yards for Middle Tennessee). But the real secret - and the way Bama won the 1992 title - was with pass defense. I picked off five passes against the Blue Raiders (plus one fumble) and ran back three picks for six. One player had four of those picks, and two scores. Add that to 20 rushes for 228 yards and five scores, and you have a 56-7 Alabama whipping of Middle Tennessee State.

There are still some problems that need to be fixed before the next game against Arizona, and before the conference season starts in two weeks against Arkansas. I have to hold onto the ball - my +3 turnover margin in this game was only helped by an insane 5 INTs. I also need to work the short passes. I had some success with them against Arkansas State (there's a whole submenu of plays devoted to them). However, most of my short attempts were incomplete today, and one was picked off. I need to work on going through the progressions and seeing all my options, and not committing to the one receiver I will throw to before the snap. Finally, I have to hold on to the passing defense. My teams are traditionally in the bottom ten in pass defense. Today's passing defense line - 11-for-21, 135 yards, no TDs, 5 INTs - is not likely to be repeated against #9 Florida in a few weeks.

NCAA Football, Xbox-360 style - Week 1

2008-01-07T21:26:00.000-06:00

Well, because I don't really have anything else I should be doing...

I quit my job as coach of the Aggies, after five seasons and four consecutive national titles, to take over the Alabama Crimson Tide. Funny, isn't it? Except I left behind the #1 program in the country, with a 6-star rating. And I took up the reins of a program that was 2-10 the previous season, and is about ten games under .500 in the last five years. (Alabama's prestige is a D!)

I recruited my ass off in the off-season, and I landed maybe one three-star recruit. That was it. My recruiting class was next to last in the country, just ahead of Baylor's. Just for fun, I thought about scheduling them this season. But instead, I opened with the team that beat Alabama to end the last season in a bowl game - the Arkansas State Indians.

I ran out to leads of 21-7 and 28-14, but don't let the Indians fool you. They scored three unanswered touchdowns to take back the lead, the last one coming after I fumbled while running down the clock for the winning field goal. After converting a fourth-and-10, I scored the tying touchdown, and then held the Indians to three-and-out, leaving 35 seconds. After a great punt return to midfield, and a 45-yard completion on the next play, I punched it in from one yard out with 7 seconds remaining. First on my Instant Classic list, it was a 42-35 victory for the Tide, a much-needed one at that.

I wish somebody would do something about how fat I am

2008-01-05T23:10:00.000-06:00

I stayed in my pajamas all day today. I think that pretty much sums it up.

I was just thinking while I was in the bathroom - where apparently some of my best ideas come - and I realized yet again how fairly worthless my life is. Sure, my family loves me, and I am nice to the nieces and nephews when I am in the mood. But it feels like I am functionally illiterate. I don't have any friends, I definitely don't have any dates, I can't keep a job, and without my mother, I'd be homeless and unable to support myself. It's pretty pathetic that, at thirty-four, I yet again have nothing to show for my life.

I keep looking at my sad little box of work belongings in the corner of my bedroom; they are a frequent reminder of my most recent failure as a human. It doesn't matter why I got fired; well, maybe it does in a way, but I'll get to that later. The main thing is that I am without a job again. And I am more lost than I ever was about what I want to be, or what I want to do with my life.

Several people that have learned about my fate have sent stock offers of support; however, most of them are not in my town and couldn't really help me anyway. Does anyone really care after the initial words of condolence? I really don't think so, because they never come back again.

An ex of mine who lives in Michigan said yesterday, "Surely your boyfriend should be supportive and understanding." I replied, yeah, thanks for rubbing that in, but I have been single since April 2000. And in my current state of mental health, what chance do I have of finding a boyfriend, or any friend at all? No chance.

I can't work up the will to look for work. It just feels like - aside from being less in debt - the entire year of 2007 was a complete waste. Here I am in January, again, without a job, again, living in my mother's house, again. It's humiliating and depressing. Each time I think about looking, I remember all the rejections from last spring, and how it took six months to fall ass-backwards into the job I just got fired from. I knew I wasn't going to stay there for long. But I can't believe it, I just can't believe that I am this disposable, this worthless. I wasn't kidding before when I wrote that my (ex-)manager was severely affecting my mental health.

I've said it before - too many times before - that being unemployed makes you feel worthless and useless. And getting job rejections intensifies that feeling. It's like being broken up with dozens of times a month. It hurts to think about it. It hurts to try. It hurts to look at all the wasted promise and talent. It scares me to think how impossibly behind I am on saving for retirement, and how life doesn't matter and I should just go out and be all self-destructive, since nothing matters and it's all going to end eventually anyway.

I don't have a bucket list. I don't really care. It is just so frustrating to feel like I am not making any progress. I have reached out for help - repeatedly - but no one has been there. I have sought professional help, but it turned out to be a four-month waste of money and time. And now, I don't have medical insurance to cover me if I wanted to seek medical or mental health attention.

If this sounds familiar - as if anyone out there is reading this - it is because this is where my life was exactly one year ago. And in the early summer of 2006. And in the spring of 2005. And so on and so on.

Here's my best recollection of my job history. During times without regular employment, I got by on soccer and/or tennis officiating.

July 2007-January 2008: Sales, ATI Firth Sterling
October 2006-December 2006: Bank courier (320 miles daily)
September 2006: financial planner, Ameriprise (3 months and $2000 prep in the summer)
May 2006-August 2006: waiter, Trudy's Texas Star
2005-2006 school year: substitute teacher
2004-2005 school year: high school campus technologist
2003-2004 school year: high school bookkeeper
2003 spring semester: substitute teacher
2002 spring semester: substitute teacher
February 2001-October 2001: social studies editor, Barrett Kendall publishing
August 2000-February 2001: history teacher, academy@hays
January 1998-May 2000: social studies teacher, Crockett HS (longest stay in one job)
Summer 1996-summer 1997: copy center manager, Ikon Office Solutions/S&P, LLP
Fall 1995-summer 1996: general merchandise clerk, HEB grocery stores
October 1995: bank teller, Comerica Bank
August 1994-August 1995: graduate assistant, Texas A&M University
May 1993-August 1994: bank teller, AmSouth Bank
Summer 1992: Taco Casa, Tuscaloosa, AL

It's pathetic to look at. I have no drive, determination, dreams, or goals. I am the ultimate battered husband - I just go to whoever will take me. It is pretty devastating to take a look at your life and see that, but for your family, it really wouldn't have mattered if you lived at all.

No, really...love and mercy are what you need tonight

2008-01-04T22:01:00.001-06:00

Well, I got laid off today.

Actually, when I think about it, it was more of a firing. "Due to a slow down in the business cycle, we have to reduce our workforce." It is strange that they only needed to lay off exactly one person, and they laid off the only person who works independently in international sales. There were other people wasting more time and working a lot less than I was. But I guess I was 'marked for death.' Anyhow, bitterness, resentment, and anger won't help. I don't have a job now.

Believe me, there is a lot about which I could be resentful. But now I have to figure out what to do next. It seems my life for the last several years has been just that - what's next? And I never come up with good answers. I had time to think today, and looking back, I believe I've only ever held one job for more than a year in my whole life: my first teaching job for five semesters at Crockett High School in Austin, from 1998 to 2000. At some point, I will try to reconstruct my real job history - not the one I have created in my head for resumes - and it is likely that it will be damn unpretty.

So now, I guess I will file for unemployment (since I was technically "laid off"), and then look for work in Nashville. But I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up, and these are not the circumstances in which to find that. I have made error after error in my life by being backed into corners and forced into poorly timed decisions. There is a good chance that another bad choice is coming. I only have a month or two of money left. If I find employment in Nashville by the end of the month, I should be able to stay financially afloat. If I cannot find work that soon, I will be stuck here in my mother's house in Huntsville for maybe another year.

Good Christ, what a horrible year 2006 was. And 2007 showed some promise, but it cannot be viewed in a vacuum, because 2008 has started off with misery. And January 2008 was supposed to be my triumph - credit debt finally paid off, finding a new career, moving to the big city. Now, everything is on hold, my life is on hold again because I don't have a job, I don't have a career, and I have no direction. It took me the first six months of 2007 just to land this job. What the hell am I going to do now? Just when it seems I am turning a corner, I get pummeled by life again.

Once again, I am just. so. tired.

Update: Oh, and forget about the lists, the priorities, the changes I was working on. This is, what, the tenth time in my life I have finally tried to turn my life around, and only days into it, every damn time, I get derailed. I just don't care enough to try anymore.

Sometimes a fantasy is all you need

2008-01-03T19:58:00.000-06:00

This is my nephew Ethan, who was visiting from Dallas with my sister and brother-in-law this week. He's a little devil, yes, but he's a sweet angel, too. He'll be two years old at the end of May, but he is already gigantic for his age. He's very verbal, and very sweet and polite, with an adorable giggle. His visits are good for my soul, and for my mother's, too.

On some unrelated notes, I am battling between the re-broadcast of last night's new Project Runway, and the Orange Bowl (Kansas v. Virginia Tech). For once, the sports is not winning out, even though it is one of the last college games of the year. (Damn you, Ty, for not being here to watch with me.) I have found that I prefer reality television only where things are created (fashion, food, a house), and not where things are destroyed (dignity, self-respect, reputation). So Bravo has a lot of what I like - Inside the Actors' Studio; Top Chef; Project Runway. I've loved Iron Chef from the very beginning - the campy, English-dubbed Japanese version on Food Network. But trust me, I'll be peeking in on the game frequently.

(Aside: Don't make clothes out of food!)

Also in the news - the Iowa Caucuses are tonight. The more we get into a wired, connected, blogged, Interneted world, the sooner I hope people will realize how nuts this nominating process really is. Iowa has only had its wintry spot in the process since 1972, and even then, the change was made to expand the election process, and give more people in a newspaper-and-TV culture the chance to learn about the candidates. That is certainly not the case today. Anyone can find anything they want about any candidate, any time. Iowans do not represent me, and they do not represent most Americans. There's nothing special about Iowa, or New Hampshire. I've written over at dailykos.com about proposals for the nominating process, so I won't rehash that here. But I am hoping 2008 will bring a more critical eye to what goes on every four years.

I had a good breakfast-lunch-snack cycle again today, but it still left me wanting to eat too much for dinner. My stomach doesn't grumble and I don't feel like I am starving, as my niece might put it. But I don't feel satisfied even when I have a big dinner. I guess I need to keep tweaking what I do during the day to make it even out at night. And I guess it is good that I am not pigging out on sweets.

Tomorrow - let's see, how mundane - it will be Friday, and I need to go get a nice case for my new iPod nano, and probably I'll look at the iPod+ for running. It's a little cold outside to think about running...

Love and mercy are what you need tonight

2008-01-02T23:27:00.000-06:00

I made it through the first day back at work without any major issues. Of course, that is most likely because everyone was so busy from the winter break that no one had time to interact with other people. That didn't prevent the usual suspects from goofing off, of course, but I guess I was too busy to notice or care.

I put my lunch together last night so that it would be ready today. Bringing my lunch at least four times a week is on the list of changes I am making; I just haven't officially started yet because the list is not complete or rank ordered yet. But I did good by breakfast, snack, and lunch, and I wasn't really starving at the end of the day. I wanted to get a barbecue pork baked potato from Lawler's for dinner tonight, but they closed five minutes before I got there. (At 7:30 p.m. - who closes on the half hour, really, now?) So I had a good Italian sandwich and too many potato chips for dinner. But, despite my peckishness, I skipped any dessert. So it's not a formal diet, but it has to be better for my waist and my wallet than what I have been doing.

My pay stub for the last two weeks of the year came today; I lost around $200 pay for not being allowed to take vacation on the 27th and 28th of December. It still annoys me, but I am not having to try hard to let it go. If I stay with bringing my lunch to work for a month, those saving can easily offset the money lost. I did manage to save around $1000 in my 401(k) in 2007, plus around $2000 in savings and paid down $6000 credit card debt to around $500. I should be able to complete that goal of liquidating the credit debt by the end of January. That's good, because planned purchases on the horizon include new tires for the car; a new XM radio receiver for the car; a vacation to Toronto in March; new running shoes and iPod+ technology; and maybe someday a new Mac computer.

I geared up my new iPod mini tonight; I am not going to bring it anywhere until I get a protective case for it. I was a little let down with the storage capacity - double my old iPod mini - but I was very pleased with the video and photo resolution. If it really does hold seven to eight hours of video, it will be good for trips. I can half fill it with music, and leave the other half for video podcasts that I can update via my laptop when on the road.

So just to rehash my list - in no particular order yet:

* Daily shower, shave, and shine
* Brush twice daily and floss daily
* Take vitamins and supplements daily
* Do 30 minutes of walking or 10,000 steps daily (requires pedometer)
* Improve eating habits, including taking lunch to work at least four times a week
* Keeping the home tidy daily, wherever I am living
* Adopt at least one tip, exercise, recipe, or lifestyle change from Men's Fitness each month
* Write nightly, or five times a week
* Write to people weekly
* Remember birthdays, and other calendar self-discipline
* Getting to bed at a reasonable hour; or getting 6.5 hours of sleep nightly

When I come home from work, or right after I eat dinner, I need to take care of whatever tasks are still undone.

Back to the here and now

2008-01-01T21:41:00.000-06:00

While I had a great time on my trip to Dallas and Shreveport - and not so much fun in Nashville - this is not the time for recounting that. Instead, it is a look forward into 2008, and specifically the coming weeks.

When I got home from family dinner this afternoon, I prepared my lunch and my clothes for work tomorrow. (My sister and brother-in-law are sleeping in my bedroom.) I am already thinking about work, and about trying to get along, and paying off Christmas and other debt, and then about what comes next. I have not made any job or apartment moves since I initially shopped one apartment complex near work in early December. But it will be time for me to tackle this now. I have nearly completed the primary goal for 2007 - paying off debt - and the next step is a new place to live and a new career.

Although I haven't written it yet, I am working on my list of changes for myself. It is not a list of resolutions, and it has not much to do with the beginning of a new year. It is a list of changes that I want in my life, prioritized by which is most important to my physical and mental health. Personal hygiene, weight loss, financial planning, and socializing will all be covered. The projects will be tackled one at a time, for a week at a time. Once I have spent a week successfully attacking one change, I can safely add a second change to it. If I fail to complete the entire week on the targeted change, then I will have to repeat it before I can add the next change.

Some things that are already on the list: making lunch for myself every workday, or limiting myself to one lunch out per week; brushing my teeth twice daily and flossing once daily; daily shower, shave, and shine; 30 minutes of walking or exercise daily; writing daily. I'll also include other fitness and dietary goals - specifically hiking and rock climbing - and I'll have to figure out some way to quantify socialization.

I am not going to pressure myself to begin this on January 1, because I already said that these are not resolutions. But I expect to make some moves on the list this week, and have selected my first project by next Monday.

2007-11-07T06:27:00.000-06:00

I don't really know what else to say.

Mad libs vs. Pee Wee's Playhouse

2007-10-21T21:01:00.001-05:00

[Sen. John McCain, former Gov. Mitt Romney, and former Sen. Fred Thompson (l-r), point out how they have never seen former Mayor Rudy Giuliani in a man's suit before.]

I didn't listen to my mother; when she told me not to yell at the television, I did anyway. I was annoyed and disappointed at how Fox ran tonight's Republican debate. The audience was allowed to be too boisterous, and the whole she-bang came off sounding like a pep rally.

Because there was so much audience interaction, it was easy to see the Republican keyword machine in action. More times than I can count, candidates were interrupted in mid-sentence -- often in mid-topic-sentence -- by applause from a vat of Florida Republicans who heard the special words. Whether it was "terror" or "Vietnam" or "Hillary" or [insert your word here], they gave themselves away by applauding the keywords too quickly, often before the candidates had time to assemble them into complete thoughts. Did a Republican invent Mad Libs?

However, in my house, the opposite was going on. It was like Pee Wee's Playhouse here - whenever the keywords were uttered, I screamed at the television. I yelled down the hall to my mother. (Well, what can I say, the baseball game is still in the early innings as I write.) I was troubled to see how easily manipulated that audience was. They cheered for hating Hillary; they cheered for hating immigrants; they cheered for hating Muslims; they cheered for hating poor people.

I prefer my debates to be debates, and for the most part, the Democratic affairs have come off much more professionally and informative-ly. I don't want the audience to cheer or moan like someone just hit "Bankrupt" on Wheel of Fortune - it just encourages the candidates to give empty applause lines. And I don't want questioners to manufacture disputes. I want to know what candidate A thinks about an issue. And then I want to know whether candidate B agrees or disagrees, and what candidate B would do differently. Lather, rinse, repeat.

We might be favored in the coming election. But I was scared by what I saw tonight. I was scared to think that so many people are still caught in the headlights of Republicanism. The worst part is, it's not just them that will be run over by the oncoming truck - it's all of us.