Musings Archive

There's something unusual going on with the dogs here. Clearly, Chileans seem to love their dogs. You see the out walking with their pets everywhere. I've seen Yorkies, Jack Russell Terriers, Boxers, Pit Bulls and Schnauzers just to name a few. I saw a Sharpei in Santiago sporting a cone because he just had the expersive eye surgery needed to keep the folds of skin away from its eyes. Obviously a well loved dog.

Then you have the polar opposite. The strays. They are everywhere. Because they've been indicriminently breeding, they are mostly mutts, but I've some pure breds on the street. I saw a huskie on my way to the bus station and it broke my heart. I wanted to take him home. Like the other pure breds, he was probably abandoned, or possibly lost. The dog are so ubiquitious they are almost invisible. The are sleeping in the sun and the shade. Dumster diving. Fucking in the streets. Many are limping, vicitims of dog fights or the crazy Chilean traffic They are so pervasive, they are mosyl invisible. Just completely igorned.

Of course I've seen stray dogs in many countries. Indonesia and Thailand are the worst that come to mind. There, many of the dogs are neglected and diseased. Because Thailand is a Buddhist country, they would euthanize, which is really sad. I don't know what the problem is Indonesia. Perhaps laziness. In either case it's somewhat unstandable because these are no dog loving cultures. So how can Chile which is clearly a dog adoring culture tolerate it's massive stray dog population.

Certianly it costs money to go around grabbing dogs off the street and either putting them down or neutering them. Other priorities are far more important.

I just can't remember the last time I saw a stray dog at home. It just does not happen, at least not in my part of the country. I'm no saying that to be snobbish or anything. It's not like that. I'm saying for a frame of reference to understand why someone from California would find this situation so unfortunate.

*not just in Santiago, sadly

Are we really going to make a martyr of Zacarias Moussaoui? It looks like it's possible now that a jury has found him eligible for death penalty. Whatever you think of him, and I think he's complete scum and probably does deserve to die, it's not only a far, far worse punishment for him to rot in jail for the rest of his life but also it avoids turning him into cause celebre by fundamentalists. But I fear that the bloodlust that has gripped our erstwhile Christian society will not let him live.

Amazing as it seems it's getting the point in my life that I've known the friends I made in college for 15 years. Although I don't see them as often as I would like, it's so nice to get together with people, like Anita here, whom I have known for years, have a long shared history with and feel so comfortable around.

(n.b. Anita was not too thrilled to be photographed and she'll probably be even less thrilled about seeing herself on the web, but I couldn't resist. Sorry, amiga)

Want to get some action on the conclave? Just head over to paddypower.com, check out the odds, the candidates, fill yourself in on the process and the history of papal elections.

Cardinal Francis Arinze of Nigeria is the front runner, but I suspect this is mostly wishful thinking. As cool as it would be to have an African or Latin American pope, I suspect when the voting is all done, we'll find a return to traditional Western European, if not Italian, pontiff.

As a Jewish atheist, I shouldn't find this all that interesting, but I can't help but be fascinated. The papacy is such a huge part of our world culture. There's even a genre of fiction devoted to the topic. The secrecy, the pomp and circumstance, the rituals of burning the ballots, the visuals of crimson robed cardinals congregating beneath Michaelangelo's Last Judgment. It's all so intriguing.

There have been several votes so far and only plumes of black smoke have arisen from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel to signify a lack of consensus on a new pontiff. Eventually the Papal Interregnum will end and we can get on with our lives, but in the meantime, the world waits as a few old men chose a new leader and decide on the future path of the Catholic church.

Here are the odds for you punters who are thinking of placing a bet or putting together an office pool.

There seems to be a perfect storm brewing in the world at the moment.

First we have this oil situation, real or manufactured, that is going to have long term ramifications to the US economy and threatens the quality of life that Americans have enjoyed in the last half of the 20th century. If gas prices continue to rise and the analysts at Goldman Sachs are right and we'll see $105 price tag on a barrel of oil, the petroleum based economy that we have is going to crack. Lots of people are going to fall into those fissures.


Then you have Tom Friedman writing about the new realities of globalization with his thesis that the world is increasing flat, that there exists now an almost level technological playing field on which the US is slowly but surely being pushed to the sidelines as India and China ramp up both educationally and economically. While India and China are educating their people at higher rate, graduating more engineers and computer scientists, America is an education decline, falling behind in the sciences, in math, in just about everything but law. The shortfall that had existed was previously filled by importing students and their PhDs from, most notably India and China, but increasing security concerns that keep some of the best talent at home and the level playing field that ameliorates the need for educated elites to migrate to the US for employment opportunities is creating a tipping point where the balance of educational and economic power is shifting east.

Then there is this small story about library closings in Salinas that I wrote about last year and the NYT has picked up today. Salinas might be a no account small town in central California that no one would pay much attention to if it were not the hometown of John Steinbeck, but what's going on there represents on a micro scale the consequences of decisions that we as a country have been making on a global scale.

At the same time that India and China are improving access to communication pipelines that empower their populace in this increasing globalized world, Salinas is shutting down its libraries, severing critical access to information that is the key to economic prosperity and a hallmark of a healthy democracy. This is not a strategic decision. I'm sure that the politicians in Salinas are not making this choice lightly. However their hands are tied. They have a multi-million dollar budget shortfall and economic reality is forcing them to make this incredibly difficult decision. While this might now be happening only in this small farming community, you can bet your Euros that this library necrosis will be coming to a city near you, and soon.

It's very easy to look at this situation as say, well, America had a nice run, we're going to go into a long, slow decline that has befallen all the great civilizations at one time or another. And that will happen if people do nothing. And there's a good chance that people will do nothing.

I look at this moment as a great opportunity for American to take the reigns of the world and lead, however, I don't believe that our increasingly corrupt and entrenched politicians have the will to make the decisions and the sacrifices to affect change and challenge the country on the issues of education, technology and consumption.

If we don't make education our number one priority. If we don't fix our public education system. If we continue to graduate illiterates from our high schools. If the cost of education continues to rise. If we let our libraries be mothballed. If we do nothing about this crisis, then we will go into that decline, the pace of which will be inversely proportional to our lack of ability to recognize and fix this massive problem.

UPDATE: Yahoo! is on the trail of gas prices in South Lake Tahoe. Take a look at this pic. Look familiar! The prices might have changed (gone up, of course) but the place remains the same.

Last night as I was driving home from work I was listening to All Things Considered. There was this discussion about Johnnie Cochran OJ's lawyer who passed away yesterday. One of colleagues, Connie Rice, came on to speak to Robert Siegel or Michelle Norris, I can't remember. What I do remember is Ms. Rice heaping praise on Mr. Cochran and then saying something that made me sit up and think. She said that what made Johnnie Cochran special was his "Human IQ", his ability to see a jury and immediately understand and connect with them. This is a great skill to have for anyone (not connect with a jury, but with people). Why it made me prick up my ears is that it is a skill that I completely lack.

I hate bugs. I hate mosquitos. I hate centipedes. I hate roaches. Ants, spiders, flies, anything creeping or crawling or buzzing. They should be eradicated off the face of the earth, as far as I'm concerned. I hate them all. Except ladybugs. I don't know why this is. They are just bugs like everything else. They have spindly little legs. They creep all over the place. They fly off without notice or warning. I should hate them. But I don't. I actually like them. I don't mind if they walk all over me (as long as it's just one). I was thinking about this as I saved a ladybug from the crosswalk around the corner from office as I was walking to lunch. If it was a spider in the crosswalk, I would have walked on by or crushed it underfoot. But it was a ladybug, so I stopped in the middle of the road, put my hand on the ground to entice it up, and placed it in the plants opposite the sidewalk.

When I finished skiing on Sunday, I drove down to Tahoe and saw that the Chevron at the bottom of Ski Run Blvd was selling regular unleaded, supposedly the cheap stuff, for $2.65/gallon. The stations near my house in Alameda are more reasonable at $2.35/gallon, but still far above the national average and way, way more then what I remember paying when I lived in Atlanta back in 96-97 when you could find places that would sell you a gallon for less than 90 cents.

How much is gas going for in your area?

Today, George Bush handed out the Presidential Medal of Freedom to three men, Tommy Franks, Paul Bremer and George Tenent. In the New York Times article, Bush is quoted as saying the three man "made our country more secure and advanced the cause of human liberty". That's Tommy Franks who was in charge when Osama bin Laden escaped from Tora Bora. Paul Bremer, who handed over sovereignty to the Iraqi people a few days early so he could dash to his waiting helicopter and leave behind the smoldering mesh of his occupation. George Tenet who was in charge of the CIA during the biggest intelligence failure America has seen since Pearl Harbor. Presidential Medal of Freedom, my ass.

Absolutely not, if you ask me, but my guess is that most Americans wouldn't agree with me.

I had an epiphany about this while I was sitting in a huge international food court at lunch yesterday. You could get food from almost any cuisine in the world. It was incredibly convenient, but the quality was sub-par (even while the quantity was more than sufficient).

It comes down to what you value. If you value convenience or quantity over quality then America is the best place for you. But if you value quality, style, or substance, then you'd have to look elsewhere.

What is it about a little rainfall that makes Californians forget how to drive?

Those ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it.

The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honor. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. The Baghdad communiqués are belated, insincere, incomplete.

Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows. It is a disgrace to our imperial record and may soon be too inflamed for any ordinary cure.

We are today not far from a disaster. Our unfortunate troops, Indian and British, under hard conditions of climate and supply are policing an immense area, paying dearly every day in lives for the willfully wrong policy of the civil administration in Baghdad but the responsibility, in this case, is not on the army which has acted only upon the request of the civil authorities.

-T.E. Lawrence, The Sunday Times, August 1920, writing from Falluja

Is the operative word "doomed" or "ignorant"?

Thanks to Jason for the Lawrence quote.

I went to IKEA over the weekend for the time in a few years (Jennifer was looking for a TV stand. There's one in Emeryville right near where I am working. The last time I was there I almost got into a fight in the parking lot over a spot. It's a long story that I don't want to get into, but suffice it to say that the IKEA is very popular.

They've built a new parking structure to handle the crowds, but the inside of the massive store is a still a scrum of people looking for quality Scando-design at bargain basement prices. And that's the problem, at least from where I'm standing.

IKEA stuff looks great, from a distant. But the closer you get, the facade of quality falls away. Their hole showroom reminds me of a Hollywood set that looks great on camera, but up close looks like it fall over in a rain storm and if you go through a door, there's nothing but air. It's all style and no substance.

A chest of drawers might look nice, but when you open any of the drawers, it feels rickety, like the thing is going to fall apart. And these floors models are put together by trained IKEA folks. What happens when you take your box home and assemble your new desk or cabinet in your living? I'm sure you know.

I saw some nice things that I might go back to get some day like a colander or a goose down comforter, only things that require no assembly or engineering. The only thing I left with was a bottle of Swedish mustard.

God is love
Love is blind
Ray Charles is blind
Ray Charles is God

This little piece of misguided logic that I recall from my youth came flooding back to me the second I saw the streaming piece news on CNN that Ray Charles had passed away.

It's always sad to note the passing of great talent. Mr. Charles was a musical genius, a inspiration not only for his unique style, but also for his great sense of humor. Ray Charles might not be God, but he was a musical god and even before his passing, had taken his proper place in the pantheon of soul. Godspeed, Ray Charles.

Coke has come out with C2. Coors has Aspen Edge. Krispy Kreme is had their first losing quarter and the parent company of Ronzoni filed for bankruptcy. "Carb-free" and "low-carb" labeled products are ubiquitous. Kraft has signed a deal with the South Beach Diet. And on and on and on.

This and much more is the crazy legacy of the Atkins Diet craze where carbs are the enemy. They are evil. The purest form of the stuff. Wouldn't want to eat that sandwich. It's evil.

This diet is nothing new. Bodybuilders have been going on carb-fast. protein laden diets to burn fat, but only for short periods of time. The reason? Well, it's three-fold. One is that bodybuilders frequently change their diet dramatically to shock the body. Two is that a diet of protein and fat is particulary bad for the internal organs, most notably the heart, the liver and the kidneys. not to mention the vascular system which supports it all. Three is that carbs not only are not evil, we need carbs for energy.

So what's the net result of this? Are we going to turn into a country of listness no energy waifs? Doubtfully. Because the truth is that while people might be tuning out carbs in their diet, we are still essentially a country of lazy people who want to find a miracle lifestyle where excersice is not a part of good health. Fat chance.

I've always had a philosophy about books on tape (and now CD) that they were the spawn of the devil, would eventually lead to wipespread illiteracy and were best avoided, unless made necessary by an excessive long solo drive and then I would only listen to a book that I had previously read in traditional paperbound form. But I've changed my tune.

My new theory about audiobooks hasn't changed all that much. I still think they are essentially evil, however I'm now willing to listen to something different, a new genre of literature I like to call, things I will never read in a million years. With that in mind, on the drive down to San Diego, I listened to a book called "The Bushes", an unapologetic profile of America's right wing dynastic family, starting from S.P. Bush, down through Prescott, Prez #41 and all the way through to W and Jeb.

Most of it was laughable, histories, scandals and affairs glossed over, defeats taken with incredible humility and victories with uncompromising character, all delviered in assured deep baritone of Harry Chase. So much of the known history of the family, especially recent events in the lift of the current commander in chief, was ignored. I would have loved to hear something more revealing and perhaps truthful. As Jon Stewart said, you can't spend most of your adult life in a drug and alcohol induced stupor and wake up in your 40s and decide to become president. Wait!

On the other hand, the portrait painted of the family was interesting in that they are so competitive, hard working and ambitious in a way that I and most of the people from my generation can hardly comprehend. Maybe I'm not looking in the right places, but with a few notable exceptions, most of my friends and acquantainces don't want to conquer the world, but merely want to carve out a comfortable niche for themselves. That's all I really want.

This post is specific to my friends and former colleagues in Samoa. Sorry if you feel left out.

It's been over 7 months since I left Samoa and yet I can't get some Samoan words out of my head. When something is finished, it's not done, it's uma. When you are correct, you are sa'o lelei and I when I want to get someone's attention, I think sole. It's frustrating that no one will know what the hell I'm talking about.

Yesterday I was at the Wells Fargo ATM and I was shocked to see "Hmoob" as one of the language choices. Hmoob? I consider myself well-traveled and generally knowledgable about these sorts of things, but Hmoob through me for a loop.

A simple check on Google this afternoon revealed that Hmoob is actually the language of the Hmong, a hill-tribe people in Southeast Asia. Which begs the question, what the hell is Hmoob doing as option on my ATM? Not that I have a huge problem with it or anything. It just seems bizarre.

I visited the Hmong people on a trip through Northern Thailand. I stayed in the Hmong Guest House near Chang Saen. I know that a certain number of them have emigrated to the US, especially in and around Minneapolis. However, I wasn't aware of any presence of Hmong in Northern California, let alone one significant enough to have a presence on my ATM.

Anyway, as they say in Hmoob:
Niam txiv npluanuj tubki tsis kawm txuj.

Do ya think maybe I have a spam problem? Here are some of my favorite headers:

Dog treats so good your dog will never want to stop eating
(is that a good thing?)

Watch your friend's Hot Mom get Naked
(how do they know about my friend's hot mom getting naked? freaky.)

Experience The Passion Of Christ At Home
(is that a good thing?)

feasible hot milfs caught on camera (feasible?)

And this is whole the collection from Saturday:

I can remember that when I moved to Atlanta in 1996 that it took me a long time to figure out what to do with myself when I wasn't working, which was rare since I was suffering through an internhip at CNN during the day and working at an insanely busy restaurant at night. The reason was that when I was living in Santa Cruz, whenver I had any free time whatsoever, I was surfing. It was simple. I never had to think. Not doing anything. There are waves. Go surfing. Simple.

Now I'm in the same situation. When I wasn't photographing skiers on the mountain, I was skiing. On my days off, I was skiing. I never had to figure out what do. But now that Vail and Beaver Creek are closed, I'm experiencing the same feelings all over again. I read books and watch movies and play with the kittens, but I don't really know what to do beside that. It's not like it's nice outside. It's been cold with rain or snow all week. There's no place to hang out. I've actually gone into work each of the last three days to grab some photos for my portfolio, but that gets old real fast. You can't imagine how unbeleivably boring it is to sort through thousands of pictures of one horrible skier after another to find the gems. I gave up.

I know the weather will improve and there will be more to do, but in the meantime I'm going a little stir crazy with idleness.

It's almost 2am and I can't sleep.

For some reason I can't stop thinking about supermarket checkout scanners.
I don't know why I'm thinking about this, maybe because I feel like I get screwed all the time and I have to watch the readout like a hawk to make sure Safeway or whoever is charging me what they should.

The question that keeps popping into my mind is at what point do you say something if you've been overcharged. Is 30 cents too little to quibble over or do you say something on principal? Is it a buck? Two bucks? If you buy something that's advertised as two for $2.50 and get charged $2.50 each, do you pipe up?

For me, it's a matter of how I'm feeling at the time. Sometimes if I see any error at all, I will say something. Other times, I will let a few cents slide because it's not worth it, especially if there's a long line behind me. Despite, my suspicion is that these markets overcharge on purpose because no one can be bothered to check.

On a slightly different topic, City Market, one of the local chains, has a check out line where you can scan in you own groceries and pay for everything without the help of a cashier. I remember a slightly eerie feeling the first time went and checked out without the aid of a "professional". It's so anti-social. We have pay at the pump. There are computerized car washes. We do can almost everything online, order books, movies, whatever. It's getting to the point where you can go through your entire day without talking to anybody.

I think we are going to breed an entire generation without the basic communication skills that most of us have come to take for granted. Why would you need to communicate when you never see or talk to another human being? And when the supermarket scanners overcharge you, who the fuck are you going to yell at?

It's that time again. Vail closes the lifts on the 18th thus ending my job. So the big question is, what the fuck do I do next? There are lots of possibilities, but no one certain direction.

Do I stay in Vail? Everyone says the summers are nicer than the winters, but I', skeptical. If I stay, do I move to another place and get the hell out of the trailer park? Do I buy a place? I've paid rent through the end of May, so I'm sort of stuck here. I guess I could bail and not feel too bad about it despite throwing away more than 600 bucks. If I'm going to leave, I might as well leave right away because it would be silly to take on a new job and then leave in 5 weeks. I also don't know if I want to make any long term commitments to Colorado. On the other hand, the real estate market is down, interest rates are low, and you can makes good money renting condos seasonally. This might be a good place to start my real estate empire.

Do I move back to California? Most of friends live in California. I know I can find work there shooting soccer, baseball and girl's softball or even get back into web production on some level. And if I work for Sharpshooters again, I'd like to try another resort, say Heavenly in Tahoe, just for variety's sake.

What I'd really like to do is sell my car, put my stuff in storage (again) and travel to India or teach English in Cambodia, but I have the kittens to think about. They are forcing me to become a responsible human being. I could take them to the nearest Korean restaurant and be rid of them, but I don't know if I could live with myelf. Damn them for being so cute.

No, that's not a Moses Malone prediction. It's the day. Apropos of nothing, really, it's the fourth day of the fourth month of the forth year. I suppose if you were into numerology, this might have some significance, but for most ordinary folk, like myself, it just a mild amusement, like when a digital watch shows 11 minutes after 11 o'clock. I don't even know why I'm writing about this to tell the truth.

If you want to have a greater understanding and appreciation of vowels in the English language, just pick one at random and remove it from your keyboard. Then go ahead and type something, an email, a instant message, a post on your blog, and you'll have an epiphany, albeit a frustrating one, about the relative importance of AEIOU (and sometimes Y) in our odd language.

I for one have had this epiphany, because for the last few days, the O on my keyboard sticks so I have to jam down on the key to get it to work properly, and mind you, this is a new computer, and no, I haven't spilt a soda on it, and no, the kittens are not allowed to strut on it. I just had to do a complete restore because the factory settings on the computer were all fucked up. Prior to that, there was a problem with the K. Now it's the O. I don't want to do another restore only to lose functionality in another random key. I just want a computer that works. Is that too much to ask?

Kurt, my psycho manager, must like me because he offered me a job this summer working with him as a bear guide in Alaska. Can you believe that shit? He must not know in what little regard I hold him.

Anyway, the job offer is tempting, but also a little strange. We'd be working on a little island off the coast near Ketchikan taking cruise line passengers on short walks to see bears. There are no girls and no alcohol, which is not too disimilar from my current life. Room and board are included. Room is a basic dorm situation. I can live with that. The board is supposed to be really good including as much salmon as you can eat. (The cats will be in heaven). It pays 1600 a month and tips run between 100-200 bucks a day. There's nothing to spend money on, so after the ten week job is over, I'd have about 5 grand. Not bad.

The problem is A) I have to work with Kurt. B) I have to get my tuchus to Alaska C) I don't know if I can do it with the cats. On the other hand, I have always wanted to visited Alaska.

I was eating a pint of Ben & Jerry's in bed while I watching a movie last night. I didn't finish it and I didn't feel like walking upstairs to the fridge so I just opened my window and stuck it outside on the eave. It's always below freezing at night so the entire outside is like one big fridge. So no big deal right?

A few minutes later I went to move the pint so the cats could get outside and I accidently pushed it off the edge of the roof. It went sliding down into the snow bank below. Now this was a pint of "Everything but the kitchen sink" but it was damn cold outside so I figured it could wait until morning except I didn't have time in the moring and when I returned home from work it was dark and a little chilly for a search. I tried to find it the next morning but it was nowhere to be found. It's probably buried under the snow somewhere and I'm going to have to wait for the thaw to find it.

Leap Day. Leap Year. Whatever you want to call it, it's here. It's a bonus day. An extra 24 hours to earn money to pay rent, to ski, or to do nothing. A Leap Year always signifies a good year for me because it's always both an Olympic year and an election year. Definitely some things to look forward to.

Columbine

JonBenet

Kobe Bryant

CU Football

And now U.S. Representative Marilyn Musgrave from Colorado is on the forefront of legislators trying to introduce a Constitutional amendment that will ban same-sex marriage.

My latest obsession is to get my hands on one of these beautiful Dale of Norway sweaters. However they are slightly out of my price range. It's shocking when you are in a store, see something you like, such as a Dale of Norway sweater, for example, and then turn over a price tag that reads "$268". Of course, I'm not going to pay that kind of cash for a pullover no matter how nice it is. I don't care if they use Scandinavian wool hand dyed by maidens with long braided blond hair and ice blue eyes.

I do want one though. It signals to me something frightening which is that every last bit of materialism that I thought had leeched out of my body during my year in the Peace Corps has come back with a raging vengeance.

Most mornings and many days here in Vail, it's so cold you can see your breath. It's not such a big deal. In fact, it isn't a deal at all except that you can see how far away from people their breath carries. What's really disturbing about it is knowing that on worm days when you can't see your breath, it's still carrying that far. And your breath is intermingling with other people's breath and you breath it again. It's disgusting. It's enough to make me want to live in a bubble.

I saw Spalding's last monologue at PS122 in NYC a few months back. I was in the second row right in front of his little signature desk. I was struck by how sad he seemed. He lacked the energy that attracted me to his work in the first place. But as he slowly walked off stage dragging his badly damaged feet, I never got the sense that I would never see him in again. When I heard a brief story about his dissapearance on some news radio station when I was moving from Sedona to Vail, I was shocked and saddened. I really hope he is found and found soon.

I went to drop a few letters in the mailbox this morning and I was shocked to see that the mail had been delivered. Then I remembered that this backwards state that I've been living in for the past two months doesn't honor MLK day. It reminds me of a this comedian, maybe Stave White, I can't remember, but it doesn't matter. He said something like, you gotta be racist as hell not to take a day off from work. I agree. Get with the program, Arizona. Put down your guns for just a second and join us together in the 21st century. Now, doesn't that feel good?

Happy Birthday Dr. King.

This Atkins Diet thing is out of control. I was in Burger King today (not by choice) and I see that they now have a "low-carb" Whopper on the menu. "Low-carb" Whopper? Who are they kidding?

Listen up if you're on a diet, especially any of these low carb diets. If you're serious about losing weight:

WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU STOPPING AT BURGER KING FOR, FAT ASS!

The hillarious thing is that when my friend Peter ordered one, the cashier asked him if he wanted fries with it.

What is with these drugs commercials? Lipitor. Vioxx. Lavitra. They are everywhere and they are so silly. Some guy, usually a former professional football coach is telling you to ask your doctor about some drug and you have no idea what the drug is for because the commercial doesn't say anything about it. Can you the imagine the questions that doctors must have to field daily about this shit? Um, excuse me, doc, but I was wondering, do you think Zastudil is right for me?

The pharm commericals with the side effect lisitings at the end of the commercial was bad enough but these are just plain horrible ("women who are or may potential become pregnant should not even look at these pills"). I understand that pharm companies are in business to make a profit, but one of the major reasons the cost of drugs is so high and that so many people in this country, the weathiest in the history of the world, are without health insurance is because of the enormous cost of marketing these drugs.

Spending money on R&D is one thing. No one would complain about absorbing the costs of research and development of new remedies, but to pay for commericals like the ones Americans are subject to every day is absurd and should be against the law.

In case you were wondering, Zastudil is the last name of the punter for the Baltimore Ravens. Doesn't it sound like it should be a drug?

I'm usually not in the habit of offering birthday greetings to long dead rabbis, but I'll make an excpetion in this case, on this day. There are a couple of remarkable aspects about Christianity in general and Jesus in particular that have come to mind recently. So in the spirit of the season, it's sharing time.

The most important is that I look at all organized religion as brainwashing on a grandiose scale. Christianity is the worst offender. It is shocking to me how much of this religion is based on faith. Faith in the virgin birth. Faith in the ressurection. Faith that Jesus was white, with blond hair and blue eyes instead of what he most likely was, swarthy with dark brown eyes like everyone else born in the Middle East. Faith, especailly, that history's great charlatans, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are telling the truth.

I've seen the birth place of Mary in Jerusalem. I've been to Ephesus in Turkey where she died. I've ridden a bike around the Sea of Galilee where Jesus supposedly walked on water, turned loves in fishes, gave the Sermon on the Mount and all that. I've seen devout Christians bearing crosses up the via Dolorosa. I've climbed Mt. Sinai. I've walked into the depths of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. I've been to St. Peter's Cathedral in Rome and just about every major Christian site in Western Europe. It's impressive and moving, but at the same time incredibly disturbing.

So much evil has been done to so many in the name of Jesus and Christianity that makes me think that if "he" actually were the son of god, he would have come back a long time ago to put a stop to it, perhaps some time during the Crusades or the Inquisition.

What I wish on Jesus' birthday is that everyone one in the world would actually take a long hard look at the Ten Commandments and try to live by the dictums set therein. The world would be a much nicer place without all this coveting and killing.

Peace on earth and good will to men (and women)

We had a little dinner party the other night and I found out from one of the guests the real reason for the U.S. invasion of Iraq. I was surprised to discover that our motives were not the capture of Iraqi oil fields, nor the destruction of Weapons of Mass Destruction. We didn't go to Mesopotamia to rid Iraq of a cruel dictator nor to fight another battle in the endless War on Terror.

The real reason U.S. troops are in Iraq is because of the Ark of the Covenant. That's right. You heard correctly. The Ark of Covenant.

Remember the first Indiana Jones moive? They find the Ark. It then gets stolen by the Nazis who open the Ark only to have omnipotent spirits melt away their faces. At the end of the movie. The Ark is boxed up and stuck in some large warehouse.

Apparently, and this is going to be hard to believe for some of you out, there isn't a shred of truth in Spielberg's opus about the dashing archaeologist. The real truth is that the Ark is in Iraq and that the Americans are hunting for it. I only pray that we find it before the damn Nazis do. I hate them.

I saw a show the other day on HGTV about the Christmas decorations at White House, which are, as you might expect, elaborate and ostentatious. As I was watching teams of volunteers drags innumerable boxes of ornaments and trees arriving from Wisconsin and the executive pastry chef design monumental gingerbread houses and the White House florist directing groups of designers and the White House Plumber and the White House Carpenter similarly busy, I had a few thoughts.

One was, whatever happened to separation of church and state? The other was I can't believe not only how much money is being spent but how much time and effort is dedicated to turning the White House into a holiday wonderland. Laura Bush had the reigns and apparently there was no holding her back with the check book. It's all and good to have a massive Christmas decorating party when the econmoy is working, the deficit is under control and the budgets are balanced, but when we have no fiscal discipline, should we really be engaging in such conspicuous consumption?

Today, with the apprehension of Saddam Hussein, was another landmark day. There are some events like these for whatever reason that I will always remember where I was. I have a notoriously poor memory, but these events stay with me always.

Capture of Saddam - Mom's House, Sedona, AZ
Death of Princess Di - Rose & Crown Pub, Atlanta, GA
OJ Verdict - My House, Santa Cruz, CA
OJ in Trouble - Superman Restaurant, Yogyakarta, Java, Indonesia
Start of the Gulf War I - Catullus & Horace Class, Cowell College Commons Room, UC Santa Cruz
Start of the Gulf War II - Peace Corps Office, Apia, Samoa
Death of King Hussein - On a Kibbutz in Arava, Israel
WTC Attack - My Apartment, Burlingame, CA
Kirk Gibson Home Run - Cowell College, UC Santa Cruz
Loma Prieta Earthquake (SF Quake '89) - On the beach, Capitola, CA
Challenger Disaster - My House, Los Angeles, CA

There are probably a few others, but these are the ones that come to mind as I write this. Can you remember where you were?

Today has been sort of a milestone day. I haven't had as much time to think about as I would like since I've been running around like a madman dealing with things that are starting to put me in the mood of becoming a responsible human being again.

This day marks a third of a century for me (and, incidentally, my twin brother) on this wacky planet. This doesn't really mean much in concrete terms. All it means is that the Earth has traveled around the Sun 33 1/3 times since I popped out of the womb. But it also marks, barring unforeseen cirucmstance like being crushed by a bus or abducted by aliens, an end of the first third of my life.

Now, skeptics out there might say, Andrew, how can you know that you're going to live to be 100? Truthfully, I don't know, but it's a goal worth shooting for. I'm in decent health and modern medicine is such that I might even expect to live much longer.

But what's the point to all this? Could it be that I have too much free time at this point in my life and that's why I'm wasting time pondering something as capricious as time? I don't know.

Legend has it that after Alexander the Great conquered Mesopotamia, he wept because there were no more worlds to conquer. He died shortly afterwards at the age of 33. For me the opposite is true. At the age of 33, I have every world to conquer. And I'm not crying about it either.

Did you hear about the woman who was trampled at a Florida Walmart in a crush of people trying to grab 29 dollar DVD players at the after-Thanksgiving sale? If you haven't, here's the blurb:

ORANGE CITY, Fla. - A mob of shoppers rushing for a sale on DVD players trampled the first woman in line and knocked her unconscious as they scrambled for the shelves at a Wal-Mart Supercenter.

Patricia VanLester had her eye on a $29 DVD player, but when the siren blared at 6 a.m. Friday announcing the start to the post-Thanksgiving sale, the 41-year-old was knocked to the ground by the frenzy of shoppers behind her. read more

You know, this is sad. I don't understand how people can care more about saving a few bucks on personal electronic gear that about human life, but that the way it is.

Today I was pushing my mom's bike down the street to get the tires filled at one fo the local servos and I had two epiphanies (brought on either by the incredible scenery or the extreme cold).

One was that it was nice to walk down the street and not worry about being attacked by vicious dogs. Just as I was having that thought, I was scared out my boots by a piercing bark from a boxer that was thankfully tied up the porch of the house I was walking by. So much for that.

The second one was that even though I'm 33, I feel very young. I feel more like 22. I don't know how to explain this. Maybe I don't feel like I thought I would at 33 when I was 22 and thinking about how I should or would feel at 33. Whatever the case, I don't feel old. I like this feeling. Who wouldn't, right? The thing I wonder about is how long is going to last. One day, perhaps, I'm going to look in the mirror and not feel 22 anymore. Maybe I'll be 55 and feel 55. What then?

...they'll kill you!

This paraphrase comes courtesy of an acquantaince of my mom, George, whom we ran into yesterday at the checkout line at Basha's supermarket here in Sedona. George was explaining to my mom that in 1970 the US government commissioned a 30 million dollar food study. George: 30 million dollars in 1970 is like 1 billion dollars today (it's really only about 150 million).

In this study, the government discovered that cooked food is respsonsible for every disease that we have today (he said "every disease"). The government, fearing the destruction of the restaurant industry, shelved the report. However, according to George, the study was recently leaked by a government insider to the folks who are fighting the FDA over the issue of supplements and whether or not they should be regulated. Aha. A conspiracy.

I know this is just the sort of thing that keeps left-wing wackos up at night, that the government is hiding information that would protect us and keep us healthy. And maybe some of it is true, but so what? The truth is, obesity is responsbile for many (not all) of the health problems we face in this country and if George would just amend his hypothesis to "fried food" instead of "cooked food", people like me (people of reason) might not dismiss him out of hand. Then again, we're talking about Sedona here.

Thus enedth today's lesson. Excuse me while I go cook a turkey burger for lunch.

For all of us who have had shitty low-paying jobs (or even worked at McDonalds, as I have) comes the news that Merriam-Webster is not going to back down from the pressures of the corporate fast-food behemouth and that the word "McJob" is here to stay.

The dictionary now defines "McJob" as "a low-paying job that requires little skill and provides little opportunity for advancement." The CEO of MickeyD's, Jim Cantalupo, calls this a slap in the face to all the workers in the fast food industry. Whatever, dude. Let's be serious here. If McDonald's cared a wit about their employees they wouldn't consistently lead the charge against raising the minimum wage. Put your money where your mouth is Mr. Cantalupo. And I say that as shareholder.

I first heard the term "McJob" from the work of Douglas Coupland. I can't remember if it was Generation X or Shampoo Planet, probably the former, but I will always associate it with him, even though Merriam-Webster cites the New York Times and other papers around the world as the source and doesn't mention Coupland at all. Whoever coined the word, it's brilliant because it's accurate, funny, and you instantly know what it means.

Fefe (pronounced Feh-Fey) is the Samoan word for "scared". It's a great word. One of the easiest to say and very handy to use. I've been thinking about it all day. Fefe is the feeling I have when I think about looking at my credit card bill after staying a little more than a week in New York City.

I'm not saying they did or they didn't (but we all know they didn't). What I am saying is, "So what?"

I had this epiphany when I was at the holocaust museum in DC the other day. I was watching this movie about the history of anti-semitism. The movie was over the top, but it expressed the largely held universal misapprehension that the Jews killed Jesus and that this was largely responsible for the anti-semitism that has plagued my people for the last 2,000 years. Probably true.

However, I find this whole notion very odd because the Christian religion is based on the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He had to die to expiate all of our sins, right? Therefore someone had to kill to him. Who cares if it was the Jews or the Romans or the Florida Marlins? If Christians really think it was the Jews who did the deed, then they should fucking love us because without us Jesus, the Jewish carpenter from Nazareth, would have died a natural death somewhere west of the Jordan River. And then where would you be?

No man is an island, but some are landlocked former Soviet republics

You're probably wondering who Richard Kalin is. I, myself, wasn't even aware of his existence until a week ago. However his passing has hit me like a ton of bricks.

Richard Kalin was formerly the CEO of a small company called Micronetics that my father used to run back in the 80s. I have a few shares of stock in the company which I hadn't thought of in a long time until lately when shares of NOIZ (the company makes radar jamming equipment, amongst other things) started climbing precipitously.

I was reading one of their press releases and decided to write them to find out what they thought about the prospects for the company and the stock. It was only after I sent the email that I realized that the address on the release was for the Richard Kalin, the CEO of the company.

I didn't expect a response but I got one within the hour. I was shocked, but pleasantly. It's to own shares in a company that is so responsive. Here's the email:

Andrew,

RSK

This morning, when I checked my email, there was a note from my dad saying that Richard had been killed in car accident.

I didn't know this man. He had very little effect on my life. However, since I just corresponded with him last week, it seems crazy, even unreal, that he is gone.

It just shows you how quickly everything you have in world can all just vanish in an instant. It's enough to turn anyone into an existentialist.