One of these things is EXACTLY like the other

I know this statement is going to elicit a "well duh" from a lot of you, but conservative talk radio just doesn't make sense anymore. Let me qualify that statement by saying that I don't actually listen to most of talk radio. Glenn Beck is about the only show I will listen to, mostly because he is the only one who doesn't seem to be just a Republican stooge. But even he seems to have gone along with a lunacy brewing amongst all the conservative pundits lately in the form of an all out irrational fear and hatred of Barack Obama.

Look I get that conservatives would be against Obama. He is, after all, a Democrat and a liberal one at that. It's not that they hate him that has me puzzled. It's that they hate him SO MUCH MORE than Hillary Clinton. Like seriously, a lot of these guys are leading me and a lot of other people to believe that come November if the Democratic primary falls in favor Hillary, they will actually be voting for her instead of their own candidate, John McCain. You get that? They actually prefer Hillary to a Republican! But if the Democratic primary falls the other way, holy crap get ready for the apocalypse because apparenly if Obama becomes president everything in the world is just going to fall apart.

Can some rational person please please PLEASE explain this to me, because I have listened to both candidates. I've heard about where they stand on the issues. And save for a few minor details and the minutae of rhetoric, I see zero difference between the Hillary and Obama. Like none. Nothing. Zip. Don't believe me? These two graphics are from the very informative website ontheissues.org. It breaks down the political philosophy of every single senator and congressman based strictly on their voting record. Conservatives are trying to say that Obama is even more liberal than Hillary. Really?

Seriously, do you see a difference, because I really don't. Again, I get conservatives hating Obama. I just don't get how they can hate him so much more than Hillary. Really it's just a feat of logic that conservative radio has managed to dig down deep inside its soul and actually find positive things to say about a Clinton period. Isn't that a sign of the apocalypse right there? Hm... maybe they have a point about this Obama guy.

Science and Faith: The Real Missing Link

I preface this whole blog with the following statement. I am a Jesus-loving, God-fearing Christian with a firm belief that everything that we see (and a whole bunch of stuff that we have yet to see) was created by a sentient God.

That being said, I LOVE reading about evolution. I personally find the concept fascinating. And I cringe whenever I hear cases going before the Supreme Court where a well-meaning Christian dolt is trying to force a school district into teaching Intelligent Design. It’s not that I don’t believe in Intelligent Design. Quite the contrary. But I don’t understand how any reasonably non-moronic person can fail to grasp the essential difference between a science and a philosophy. You cannot test the existence of a Creator by scientific means – at least not yet – and I challenge anybody to state otherwise. Unfortunately for we Creationists, as of now evolution is the foremost scientific theory dealing with life on Earth and there is plenty of scientific evidence to back it up. And when a theory has that solid a foundation, the burden really does fall on dissenters to disprove it. And while, yes, there are flaws in the theory – which I think should be mentioned in textbooks right alongside the evidence – the fact is Creationists are going to have to present a bit more evidence of their own before they get rational school boards to allow a philosophy to be taught inside a science lab.

The book that first turned me on to how intriguing the science of evolution can be was the book How the Mind Works by Steven Pinker. Prior to that, I never really knew much about the topic beyond what I and everybody else learned in 10^th grade biology – which basically amounted to vestigal organs, a bit about dominant and recessive genes and something to do with finches and the size of their beaks. But what Pinker does in his book is to essentially “reverse engineer” a human mind, showing how every aspect of human life, from the way we see, to the way we think, to the way we interact, to the emotions we feel, to the way we “made up” the concept of “God” were all shaped by our evolutionary past. While the book was probably the hardest thing I have ever read voluntarily, it brings up a lot of fascinating points to ponder, even if you don’t fully agree with the concept of evolution (which I’m still not sure I do… for reasons I’ll get into later). It was a truly life-changing book that left me wanting to know more.

Well it’s been a couple years but I finally took another plunge into that wacky world of Charles Darwin. I just finished the book The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins – perhaps the most famous Darwinist short of Darwin himself. In a nutshell, Dawkins presents evolution and natural selection from the point of view of the gene. He paints a probable picture of how life might have originated in the “primordial soup” and shows how DNA has become the very thing that controls every aspect of life everywhere on this planet today. One can’t help but conjure up images of The Matrix as Dawkins talks about a gene’s selfish, almost maniacal need to survive in the form of exact replicas and copies of itself – passing itself down through generations upon generations of engineered “survival machines” (a.k.a. “us”). Yes, according to Dawkins, humans, plants, insects, fungus, everything on earth that can be considered “alive” are nothing more than just elaborate “vehicles” designed for one reason and one reason only: to protect genes for long enough to produce more copies. Of course, unlike the machines in The Matrix, everything the genes do is unconscious and brought about purely by random chance. Nothing happens for a reason. It’s all accidental. Genes do nothing by effort or foresight. If a mutation gives its “survival machine” an edge on a competition, it’s purely by mistake, with natural selection giving it blind creedence.

Even as somebody who believes in God, it’s hard not to be swayed by people like Dawkins and Pinker. Beyond being brilliant scientists in their respective fields, they have such a way with words and metaphors that they break down highly mathematical concepts and make them so a completely science-illiterate person such as myself can understand. (Dawkins in particular weaves such stimulating prose, producing such droll and compelling lines like “Sex: that bizarre perversion of straightforward replication.”) What I often find myself saying is, “If evolution really happens, then it makes total sense that this is the way it would work.” But there is one thing that I have yet to glean from anything I’ve read about evolution thus far. It’s the one thing that gives me hope that the theory might one day be disproved: TIME.

There is an adage that if you give an infinite number of monkeys an infinite number of typewriters and an infinite amount of time, they will eventually produce the complete works of William Shakespeare. With just a bit of trivial mathematical understanding, this makes perfect sense. Sure, give anything an infinite amount of time and they’ll write just about any damn thing you want. The evolution of complex organisms such as ourselves seems to evoke that adage, with each successive generation (from primordial soup to all modern life forms) representing another “monkey keystroke”, and the long and intricate spiral of DNA representing their Shakespearian text of choice. Except in this analogy, the number of monkeys is FINITE, as is the duration of typing time. In this analogy, the monkeys haven’t had all the time in the universe to produce their magnum opus. And rather than banging out the complete works of Shakespeare just once, they have apparently done it a couple billion times – once for every complex species that has ever lived. How the hell does that happen, even once, purely by accident? Especially when, as Dawkins says, most mutations (which are necessary for evolution to happen) end up being a detriment to the new offspring, resulting in its death to natural selection. As near as I can see, in my admittedly puny scientific mind, there just doesn’t seem to have been enough time for evolution (as Darwinists present it) to have produced the insanely complex and diverse forms of life that exist today. The only thing that makes logical (albeit not scientifically verifiable) sense is if evolution was at least guided by an intelligent being.

I know to some Christians, even this is an unacceptable view of life on this planet. Anything short of the divine creation of the sun, the moon, and every living being on earth – completed in seven days less than 10,000 years ago – is a sinful mockery of God. I see their point, but I sometimes wonder if it’s necessarily an either/or thing. I personally look at evolution as being the “Helio-Centric Heresy” of our time. For those of you who flunked history, Galileo was nearly put to death for making the extremely sinful suggestion that it is the sun, not the earth, which is center of our universe. The faithful of that time thought it was a mockery of God to even suggest that we weren’t the very thing that all of Creation revolved around. Today we, of course, know the truth… turns out it was even worse than Galileo let on. But I daresay there isn’t a religious or secular person alive who thinks this scientific revelation in any way diminishes the power and majesty of God. And how silly do you think the scoffers of Galileo’s theory felt when they got to heaven and realized they had been invoking God’s name over a complete and total farce? I can’t help but wonder how many antagonists of evolution might end up getting to heaven and realizing the same thing. Yes, evolution may be wrong. We may have all simply appeared here in the blink of an eye. The devil may have even placed all those fossils just to throw us off the straight and narrow path. But won’t we feel silly to have spent so much time saying, “God does NOT work that way,” only to get to heaven and have Him say, “Uh… yes I do.”

Ben Stein is coming out with a documentary this year called EXPELLED which explores a growing group of scientists who are using actual science to try and prove Intelligent Design. Further, it explores how the science community as a whole has been systematically silencing anyone who even suggests that Darwin might have been wrong. While I’m initially leery of the film (based on research I’ve done into the blacklisted scientists) I am actually very intrigued to see what kind of new experiments are being done in this field. Short of a gloriously unexpected scientific revelation (like realizing our carbon dating methods were WAY off or, ya know, somebody inventing a time machine to actually go back into the primordial soup) I can’t imagine evolution will be disproved in our lifetime.

But that’s okay. The way I see it, somewhere between Science’s inherently flawed interpretation of the universe (the foremost theory in physics today can’t even be tested!) and Religion’s inherently flawed interpretation of the Bible (nearly every passage, according to scholars, can have as many as seventy possible interpretations!)… somewhere between these two extremes of thought lies the Truth. God is in there. Science is in there. There is room for both. We just need to figure out where they meet. Or not. When the end of our life comes and we meet Jesus in the sky, will any of these trivialities really matter? I doubt it. As such, I will continue to read about evolution (or quantum physics, or string theory or any other “ungodly” science), allowing myself to be fascinated and filled with wonder – while at the same time remaining skeptical of the evidence… the way any good scientist should.

Coolness and puke do not mix

Everyone knows that becoming a parent changes you, often in ways you never expect. First of all, whether you know it or not, whether you accept it or not, once you have a kid, you are no longer cool. It just doesn’t happen. You can try and hang onto it, try and tell yourself and others, “Hey, I’m still the same guy I was before,” but no, it’s gone. All of it. The only thing to do is to reinvent yourself as a different kind of cool. You know the kind of cool where you know lyrics to Laurie Berkner and High School Musical songs. Nick Jr. cool.

Still the thing that changes most once you become a parent, is your level of tolerance for gross things. You obviously have to get past what a normal person’s gag reflex would be since you’ll be changing about nine thousand diapers per week. But it doesn’t stop there. What ends up happening is that grossness actually becomes a matter of convenience. That’s why you see mothers upending their infants, putting a nose to their diaper and sniffing. It’s just faster and easier to smell for poop than to undo a onesie, pull back the elastic on a Huggies and check to see if there’s something inside. When you see a dad pick a booger out of his toddler’s nose, the ick factor is simply more convenient than searching the house for one of those little bulb suction thingies—which said toddler probably hid inside the VCR anyway. This elevated yuck threshold obviously goes hand-in-hand with the loss of coolness I mentioned, because you simply cannot be cool while sniffing a person’s butt on a daily basis. It just doesn’t happen.

But this grossness thing reached new levels of abominableness when my entire family was recently sick with the flu. On one of those fun-filled nights my one-year-old, Jesse threw up on Lauren. But he didn’t just throw up on her. He threw up on her while he was nursing. You get that? He threw up… on her breast. This wasn’t just some relatively harmless baby spittle. This was full on, chunky, stomach flu ralphage. And do you know what Lauren’s response was? After her initial, knee-jerk, “aw gross” reaction, she quickly composed herself and said, “Okay, well at least it didn’t get on the couch.”

The couch? She has vomit on her boobs and yet she’s happy because it didn’t get on the couch? That’s how far we’ve come as parents—getting thrown up on has somehow become the preferable alternative to something else. When the hell does that happen anywhere else in life? Short of getting killed by an axe-wielding psychopath, how is getting thrown up on not the worst possible outcome of any social situation? I mean imagine you’re walking through the ethnic foods section of the supermarket and some guy just walks up and blows chunks all over you—lifting up your shirt and exposing your chest before doing so of course. Could you ever find a silver lining in that? Yet somehow, as a parent, having somebody puke all over your bare naked BOOBS is actually seen as a somewhat positive thing!

Man, I really hope my kids grow up to be rockstars because it would be a shame for them to siphon so much coolness out of me and Lauren and not put it to good use.

Would you like retards with that?

There are many reasons why I never ever ever eat at McDonald's, not the least of which being that I start farting about halfway through my burger and then don't stop for three and a half days. But also, I just find it utterly depressing that I have to deal with an entire team of people who are quite literally as stupid as a person can possibly get without qualifying for a bona fide "disorder."

I ordered a Happy Meal for my daughter tonight. A Chicken McNugget Happy Meal. There are two choices when one orders a McNugget Happy Meal: a 4-McNugget meal or a 6-McNugget meal. So when I stepped up to the register and placed my order with Tardface, I said, "Yes I'd like a four McNugget Happy Meal, please." So you can imagine my shock when I looked at my receipt ten seconds later and realized my credit card had just been charged fourteen dollars for a Happy Meal that should have cost about $4.50.

"Well you said you wanted four Happy Meals," responds Tardface.

Okay, I'm sorry, Tardface. I know you're stupid. But I also know that the corporation that employs you understands that you're stupid and so has broken down everything you must do into about thirty simple phrases: Big Mac, Fries, Number Six, Super Size... I simply can't imagine that I am the first person to ever come in here and verbalize this particular order to you. I know that you know that you have a four McNugget meal, so... why, Mister McDonald's employee wouldn't you have at least clarified what you thought you heard me say before charging me for four freakin' Happy Meals? Especially when you can clearly see I am standing her with ONE DAMN KID!

Now please go get your slightly-smarter manager to come give me a refund while I continue to fart in your general direction.

Mo-o-om... Marvin keeps taking my miles!

My family recently booked a flight on US Airways. A few days later I got an email from them encouraging me to sign up for their “Dividend Miles” club. The basic gist of the email was, “Hey, if you sign up right now you can still get these miles.” But they didn’t stop there. The email continues on to say, “If you don’t sign up right now, we’re going to give your miles to Marvin!” I’m sorry, but why should that be the detail that ultimately convinces somebody to sign up for this program? If you’re not inspired enough to earn frequent flier miles for yourself, why should losing them to “Marvin” (swear I’m not even making that name up) in any way sway your decision?

Apparently US Airways is trying to appeal to the three-year-old sensibilities in all of us. I can’t tell you how many times my daughter and niece—who are three and four respectively—have broken down crying simply because one of them wanted to play with a toy that the other one already had. “Mommy, I want the Littlest Pet Shop Bulldog!” Mind you, the crying child wanted nothing to do with that stupid bulldog thirty seconds ago, but now that her cousin has decided to play with it, that is suddenly the only thing on earth that could ever possibly make her happy. You can try distracting her with food, movies, other toys, but no. As long as her cousin continues to possess a bulldog that should have been hers, nothing else will make her happy. The three-year-old mantra seems to be: “I don’t want this. I don’t want that. I want what YOU have!"

I guess we never really grow out of that. That’s where the whole “keeping up with the Joneses” mentality derives from. Your big screen standard def TV was just fine two years ago until everybody around you started buying plasma HD. Now, god forbid they have something you don’t have. US Airways understands this mentality better than we do apparently. And the thing is, I’m almost certain the scare tactic works amazingly well on their customers: “Oh god no! I can’t imagine that I’ll ever fly enough to make these Dividend Miles worth the effort of signing up, but damnit I will not let that bastard Marvin (who might actually find some use for them) get his grubby little hands anywhere near my miles.”

Well hey Marvin, you can have our miles. I don’t think my three-year-old is going to notice.

Home runs or, ya know... HOME RUNS?

So Roger Clemens just went before Congress to testify about his “alleged” steroid use. I know I may not be the best person to comment about this whole matter considering I could really give a damn about any sport that I am not actively engaged in, but who the hell even cares if a baseball player wants to take steroids? If the Major League Baseball Commission (or whatever that ruling body is) doesn’t care enough to give frequent and mandatory drug screenings to their players, why should the government even get involved? If the powers that be want to ruin their own sport (have you noticed that, unless it’s the Red Sox, Yankees or Cubs, nobody REALLY cares about who goes to the World Series anymore?) I say let them – it’ll be one less game that makes me feel like a little girl because I can’t name any of the players or their stats.

Frankly I just don’t get the whole steroid thing anyway. Why somebody would willingly inject a foreign substance into their body – something that has been shown to cause (amongst other things) heart attacks, strokes, tumors and kidney failure – just so they can hit a ball a little bit farther is beyond me… especially when you consider the reason why a guy becomes an athlete in the first place. Professional athletes may feed you a line of crap about their “love of the game” or the “thrill of competition” blah blah blah. If that were really the reason the started playing baseball there would be no twenty million dollar contracts. The main overriding reason why guys desire to become big time athletes is simple: to get… LAID. Even those ridiculously lucrative contracts are only there to serve that main purpose. So if the main reason you got into professional sports was to get laid, then why would you take a substance that also shrinks your penis, makes you impotent and gives you acne and man boobs? Wouldn’t that pretty much rule out any laying of any kind? People talk about ‘roid rage as another side effect of steroids. Personally, I don’t think it’s the steroids. I think it’s the realization that after doing everything humanly (and chemically) possible to become the best athlete they can possibly be, in the end these guys are nothing but flaccid, tiny pricked neo-virgins with slightly better batting averages. I’d want to kick the shit out of somebody too if that happened to me.

So I say open up all professional sports to steroid use. If Roger Clemens, or whoever, wants bigger muscles and doesn't care about the eenie weenie peenie, more power to him. Once the women of the world realize that all those athletes they’ve been lusting after can’t even hold an erection, it’ll give my fellow audio/visual geeks a little more bedtime action.

How Ron Paul Cured My Apathy

I swore off politics over a year ago. Actually let me clarify: I swore off politicians over a year ago. Believe me, I've got opinions on just about every issue (global warming, healthcare, Michael Moore, Abu Ghraib, voting in general) that I'm always willing to share with anyone who will listen. There are all sorts of aspects about this country that I would like to see changed. The thing is, I've stopped believing that any real change would ever come about because of a politician. I mean did segregation end because of the politicians who were in office at the time? No, as near as I can tell it ended because the attitude of the public was finally starting to shift in that direction. Did the Cold War end because a Republican president figured out a way to bankrupt the Russian economy? No, it ended because the Russian way of government was inherently flawed and it bankrupted itself. Did our economy boom in the nineties because a Democrat took over as president? No, it boomed because the personal computer simplified entrepreneurship while the internet encouraged faster buying and selling. And did the Iraq War end because congress finally had a Democratic majority? No. In fact most of the Democrats who campaigned under the anti-war banner ultimately voted to keep funding the operation! As near as I can see, politicians don't tend to change things that aren't about to change anyway on their own.

As voters I think we understand this, at least subconsciously, which is why we tend to vote for politicians based more on what they believe than on what they'll actually do. We vote for somebody because they believe abortion should be abolished… even though they won't really push to overturn Roe vs. Wade. We vote for somebody because they think there should be a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage… even though they won't attend more than a token assembly on the matter. We vote for somebody because they oppose the war… even though they won't actually do anything to stop it when the vote comes up.

I have barely lent a moment's worth of attention to the presidential primaries these last several months. I figured all the candidates would be saying pretty much the same things anyway. The Republicans would emphasize the war on terror while the Democrats rallied us toward universal healthcare. The Red states would be placated with speeches about the 2^nd Amendment and the sanctity of marriage, while the Blue states would be whipped into a frenzy over global warming and taxes on the rich. Come November, I felt pretty confident that we would be deciding between two candidates who had been deemed "most electable" by their respective parties, but whose ideas wouldn't vary all that much from the status quo… or even from their opponent's talking points.

Then I started reading about Ron Paul. I'd heard his name mentioned before, mostly by conservative talkshow hosts who considered him to be the token fruitcake of the Republican Party. Even though he operates under the Republican banner, Ron Paul's voting record shows a philosophy centered more in Libertarian than Conservative thought. What's more, he apparently has no problem telling his compadres in the Grand Old Party exactly when and how he thinks they're wrong. And his ideas, doled out in convenient-for-TV sound bites, did sound ridiculous. I mean he wants to eliminate the income tax and not replace it with an alternative source of funding! He wants to cut back or completely dissolve various government agencies including the IRS, the FBI and the Department of Education! He thinks the federal government has no right to determine the legality of moral issues like abortion, drug use or even prostitution! And, perhaps most insanely, he wants to pull back all of our troops, not just from Iraq, but from every single foreign base we have! This guy is a Republican?!? I was ready to write Ron Paul off as just some political nut who would never make it past the primaries.

Still, there was something intriguing about a presidential candidate who was so unapologetically different from any of his opponents. More than anything, Ron Paul struck me as the kind of person who, given the chance, would actually follow through on his ideas… even if those ideas made him inherently "unelectable." Even though I didn't agree with everything he had to say (or even most of it), I went to the internet to learn more about him. I read about the issues on his website. I listened to his interviews on YouTube. I scanned the blogs that painted him in a good light and compared them against the ones preaching his insanity. And the more I delved into the logic behind his "crazy" ideas the more I found myself saying, "Hey, you know what, that actually sounds crazy enough to work."

Where will our country get money if we eliminate the income tax?
Well, eliminating the tax has to go hand-in-hand with cutting trillions of dollars from our budget by eliminating useless drains like our military presence overseas.

Won't pulling our troops back make the terrorists come fight us on our own soil?
It may briefly encourage the leaders and the true zealots. But if they can no longer point to an American base in their neighborhood and tell people, "That is the enemy!" it's going to be rather hard inspiring people to fly thousands of miles to blow themselves up.

But is he really going to cut education from the federal budget?
Well why not let the local districts decide how best to impart knowledge to the children of their particular demographics… as opposed to teaching everyone towards some federally (and subjectively) standardized test.

And he could actually pave the way for legalizing marijuana?
Hey, if a guy suffering from chronic pain can get relief from a ten-dollar bag of weed purchased in the free market, maybe it'll encourage the drug companies to stop their price gouging.

But how can the free market solve the entire healthcare crisis without government oversight?
When you look at it, the cost of healthcare didn't start going through the roof until the government got involved with HMO's during the seventies. Politicians are obviously incompetent with this sort of thing so why not go back to a working system?

The more I read, the more I watched, the more I listened, the more it became apparent that Ron Paul wasn't merely a "one issue" candidate. Rather, he seems to view all the issues as inextricably linked to each other. We need to cut federal programs like military and healthcare to retain enough money in the budget so that we no longer need the income tax… which will leave more money in the pockets of citizens to afford healthcare. By getting the government out of the global warming arms race, you let the market – with its inventors and entrepreneurs – find us a more efficient fuel source. The moment some privately held corporation can turn a lucrative profit by producing energy that is cleaner, cheaper and safer than oil, you better believe we'll be spewing less carbon into the air… which would eliminate our dependence on foreign oil… which would eliminate our need to police the Middle East… which, in turn, would save us trillions of dollars and produce fewer terrorists.

No wonder it's been difficult for the pundits to sum up Ron Paul in thirty-second sound bites! He's not suggesting falsely simple band-aids for individual problems. Instead he's proposing an entirely holistic approach to success, trusting that each and every reform (aided by nothing more than the spirit of capitalism) will naturally lend itself to the next, ultimately producing a cure for everything that ails us… well maybe not "everything", but a lot of things.

I can't tell you how long I've been waiting for a politician like this. A politician who understands that no issue exists in a vacuum. A politician who realizes that a strictly liberal or strictly conservative stance is not an effective way to solve complex issues. A politician who doesn't mind sounding crazy in thirty-second sound bites, but remains confident that the whole overall message will eventually get through to people… and that the message will appeal to a lot of them. What's more, this is a politician who doesn't sound like a politician, which I think I appreciate most of all. When somebody asks Ron a question, he doesn't launch into a circuitous line of rhetoric, striving for a happy balance of "electable ambiguity." He'll actually say, "Yes" or "No" before defining where that "yes" or "no" fits into his "big picture."

Even though my knee-jerk reaction has been to cringe at a lot of Ron Paul's ideas, I have found myself (quite unexpectedly, and in stages) agreeing with them wholeheartedly. Even more unexpectedly, I have found myself believing that this is a guy who will actually follow through on those ideas. That's right. After swearing off politicians altogether, I have found myself trusting in one to be my president. Oh the horror. I initially tempered that grinding shift of gears with the realization that Ron Paul would likely never make it past the primaries anyway. In an age where people want increasingly quick and easy fixes to their problems, a guy like Ron Paul, with all of his complex and un-sound-bite-friendly ideas, remains, as ever, unelectable.

But you know how buying a new car suddenly makes you notice the same make and model on the road everywhere you go? After deciding that Ron Paul was the kind of candidate I would actually vote for, I immediately discovered that I was hardly alone in my thinking. I started seeing his signs everywhere. I started hearing friends and family dropping his name into conversations. Even the talkshow hosts seemed to be giving him ample airtime now. According to news reports, even though Rudy, Mitt and Huckabee were routinely topping the official polls, Ron Paul somehow managed to raise more campaign money than any of them. To believe the buzz in forums like MySpace, YouTube and the always-lively blogosphere, Ron will likely command the entire market of Republicans (about 25% of them) who oppose the war, and may actually be the go-to candidate for all those "undecided" folks. The more I look into it, the more plausible it seems that this guy could be a real and viable competitor in the primaries, and not just someone with a small but vocal cult following.

I realized I could no longer be cavalier in my support of Ron Paul. If there was a legitimate chance that he could effect an upset victory in the Republican primary, well then it was my duty to help make it happen. I've donated money to the campaign. I'm registering Republican for the first time in my life so that I can vote in my state's primary. And I'm focusing as much effort as possible encouraging people to at least look into Ron Paul and see what he's about. It will require a bit of time and effort to understand the whole truth behind his positions. It will mean reading a few paragraphs on his website and not depending on those one-sentence blurbs from AOL's front page. It will mean watching an entire ten-, twenty- or even sixty-minute interview on YouTube, and not just those short-but-meaningless sound bites on Fox News.

The cynics and the pundits say the general public has neither the patience nor the interest to invest that kind of time into researching a candidate. The very fact that Ron Paul's ideas can't be expressed as TV-friendly blurbs would seem to be a crippling hindrance. Frankly I tend to think just the opposite. As a nation I think we're eager for somebody who is a bit more complex; somebody whose ideas can't be categorized with simplistic terms like "Red State" or "Blue State." We don't want to get into another election cycle where our only two choices for commander in chief are an apparent imbecile and a guy who can't seem to decide how he voted on something. I find it hard to believe that I'm the only one who has been waiting for a candidate like Ron Paul. I think there are a lot more like us out there.

I think my generation in particular has the unique desire and the ability to push for real change in this election year. We're in our mid-20's to late-30's – old enough to start caring about the issues, educated enough to sort out our own decisions, yet still young and idealistic enough to take a chance on something new and different. In a recent blog, I called this Generation X/Y hybrid "The MySpace Generation", and I defended our poor voting record and general apathy toward the current "Us and Them" state of politics:

Perhaps what looks like apathy is just "our generation" unconsciously biding its time, watching and waiting until "they" vacate the premises. We know there's nothing we can really do as long as "they" are still in control, so why waste "our" time and "our" energy on useless rallies and campaigns that will only serve to get another one of "them" elected?

I went on to suggest, completely tongue-in-cheek mind you, that perhaps MySpace would become "the platform where the new revolution begins." If numbers are anything to go by, that little joke may have been more prophetic than intended. Ron Paul's page on MySpace currently boasts over 107,000 friends. Compare that to frontrunners Rudy, Mitt and Huckabee, who have only 64,000 friends combined. There is a political passion running through the younger generation, and Ron Paul has tapped into it in a way that no other Republican has. And now that I'm on that bandwagon I can sense the momentum building. It's palpable and I'm daring to believe that we have not only a politician who is "crazy enough" to get the job done, but a fed up public who is ready and eager to embrace a little craziness.

I encourage everyone – but especially my proverbial "peeps" from the MySpace Generation – to spend an hour looking into Ron Paul. Look beyond the labels. Look beyond the sound bites. Look beyond the polls. Look at the big picture. And when you find yourself agreeing with his ideas for America (perhaps in spite of everything you previously believed) . Get registered now – not just as a voter, but as a Republican. Get out to the primaries and make your vote count for once by electing someone who promises real change and not more empty talking points. And while you're at it, encourage others to do the same thing. I think we can actually make a difference with the right person this time around – though it's going to require more than simply "friending" that person on MySpace.

So in the words of my generation: "Just Do It." Ron Paul cured my apathy. He made me believe again in the power of a politician. Maybe he can do the same for you. The Ron Paul revolution is on. Get in on it while there's still time.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED LINKS:

RonPaul2008.com - The official campaign site. Start by clicking on the Issues link and familiarize yourself with Ron's ideas.

The Ron Paul Library - Delve a little deeper into the issues with this archive of Ron Paul speeches and letters

The Google Interview - An hour-long dialogue with Google exec Elliot Shrage. Ron Paul takes the necessary the time to speak freely and fully about his stances on the issues.

The Glenn Beck Interview - A series of clips (5-10 minutes long) shot on December 18 where Ron once again has the time and freedom to express his views in more than just a sound bite.

Clip 1 - Our National Sovreignty Under Threat / A Grass Roots Majority
Clip 2 - The Economy and Government Spending
Clip 3 - The Currency Crisis / Eliminate the Federal Income Tax
Clip 4 - Iraq and the War on Terror
Clip 5 - Prosperity and the Power of the Free Market
Clip 6 - Ron Paul's Supporters
Clip 7 - Libertarianism and the Responbilitiy of Freedom

Oh and how about...

...anybody who has to work Labor Day weekend?

...and for that matter

Why doesn't "Happy New Year" piss Chinese people off?

And XMAS isn't a political statement... it's just easier

Hey look, I get it that people are fed up with the whole not being able to say, "Merry Christmas" thing. I really do see how putting "Happy Holidays" all over everything, especially images that are undeniably CHRISTMAS in nature (Christmas trees, Santa Claus, big bright stars shining over snow-covered stables), makes the 90% of us who celebrate Christmas annoyed. It doesn't bother me nearly as much as others, but I do get it. But then again, I also get why the stores are forced to do it the way they do. The fact is, nobody who celebrates Christmas is going to stop buying presents simply because the banner says, "Happy Holidays." I'm certainly not. So unless you're prepared to boycott every store that doesn't say "Merry Christmas," stop yer bitching.

All that being said, I had to laugh at an e-mail I got from Amazon.com today. "LAST CHANCE TO ORDER IN TIME FOR THE HOLIDAYS!" Okay, you DO realize, Amazon.com, that Hanukah is over right? So like... what other holiday do you think people are actually going out and buying presents for? New Years? Kwanzaa? Solstice? While I'm not taking away that these are more or less legitimate holidays, they are the equivalent of, let us say, Memorial Day as far as gift giving goes. We all know what you really mean, so just say Christmas for Pete's sake. It's okay now.

Put a lead-based sock in it Boomers

I recently received this email forward from an older relative. Even though I can appreciate where the writer is coming from, and even tend to agree with a lot of the sentiment contained within the composition, for some reason it just pissed me off. It's a typical "Our generation is better than the new generation" tirade, which acknowledges all the things that made the previous generation great, but fails to recognize all the things THEY DID to screw it up for the generations who followed. So just to set the record straight, here is the original email in its entirety with my comments in bold italics.

======================================

Those Born 1930-1979!
TO ALL THE KIDS WHO SURVIVED the 1930's 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's !!

First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they were pregnant.

Yes and I’m sure many of you are still dealing with health problems and your own addictions to the same substances to this day as a result.

They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes.

Of course, the oceans weren’t nearly as polluted back then as they were now thanks to you, so mercury contamination in tuna wasn’t as much of a concern back then.

Then after that trauma, we were put to sleep on our tummies in baby cribs covered with bright colored lead-based paints.

Look around at the gluttony of TV ads for designer pills intended to take care of everything from chronic asthma to irritable bowl syndrome to erectile dysfunction. Look at all the fun new forms of cancer you’re getting that your parents never had. Apparently all that lead-based paint and other chemicals you’ve been introducing into every product on the market had some unexpected long-term effects.

As infants & children, we would ride in cars with no car seats, booster seats, seat belts or air bags.
Riding in the back of a pick up on a warm day was always a special treat.

This was all during a time when all your parents had to navigate were rural two lane roads with 45m.p.h. speed limits where you encountered maybe ten other cars on your way to work. There were two intersections and one blinking traffic light in town. Unless your parents were particularly idiotic drivers, the only chance they had of getting into an accident was if a deer jumped out in front of them.

Today we’re driving on multi-laned highways with heavy merges, multiple exits to left and right, hundreds of signs pointing this way and that so that you’re never sure if you’re heading in the right direction. Not to mention the fact that we’re trying to run this gauntlet with about a hundred other cars surrounding us, all going the same 65m.p.h. So forgive us if we’re a little more worried about what might happen to our children if we ended up in the middle of a ten-car pileup.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking.

Again, back then you actually had roads that weren’t jammed with other cars, and nice soft grass to ride on. But you’ve paved over everything since then, meaning we’re riding our bikes on asphalt. So yeah, we want a little more protection for our head in case we wipe out on yet another of your oil stained parking lots.

We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.

Great, and maybe if you hadn’t gone and polluted the water supply we’d be drinking from the hose too.

We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.

This seems a bit disingenuous. Somehow I don’t think the “cootie” argument began with our generation.

We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank koolade made with sugar, but we weren't overweight because :

WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING !

We’d be outside playing too, except for the fact that you bulldozed the baseball diamond to put up luxury condominiums, you tore down the YMCA to build a WalMart and you drained the swimming hole to put in yet another massive parking lot for yet another massive strip mall (which you won’t allow us to skateboard on). You’ve kind of taken away all our outdoor places to go. We’d ride our bikes there, but again refer to the previous bit about those roads that you’ve made entirely unsafe for us to be riding on.

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.
No one was able to reach us all day.
And we were O.K.

Of course chances are you were playing at or near one of your friend’s houses with at least one parent or trusted neighbor at home who was keeping a loose watch on everything. Today, our neighbors are strangers and both parents need to work just to keep up in this two-income trap that you somehow managed to set for us.


We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.

Do you really expect us to believe that you’re going to allow us to race a handmade go-kart down your hill? You won’t even let us SKATEBOARD on all those nice big parking lots you built.

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo's, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 150 channels on cable, no video movies or DVD's, no surround-sound or CD's, no cell phones, no personal computer’s, no Internet or chat rooms.......

WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!

Your friends lived across the street. Our friends live ten miles across town via one of those multi-laned highways we mentioned earlier. You know what we find when we go outside? Traffic.

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents.

Those trees were in the backyards of your own houses. But since you’ve created a housing race encouraged by zero-interest loans you’ve priced us out of our own neighborhoods. We live in crammed-together suburbs and apartment complexes where the only trees around are owned by somebody else who puts a fence around the thing so that we risk impaling our testicles more than breaking our teeth should we fall out.

We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.

Okay, but then YOU yelled at US for swallowing gum. Which way do you want it?

We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays, made up games with sticks and tennis balls and, although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes.

Again, you had your own backyards to do that stuff in. Our downstairs neighbors tend to call the police when they see us holding a gun, any kind of gun, in our common yard.


We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them!

Yet again, your friends were a two-minute walk across the street. You’ve destroyed the idea of a town center so all our friends are scattered across a thirty-mile radius. We need phones and email if we’re ever going to talk to them outside of school.

Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!

Because you still had parks and public pools and something called “recess”, it probably wasn’t such a big deal if you didn’t make the team. You had other things to keep you active. Since you’ve graciously ELIMINATED all these things for us, maybe we don’t mind creating a few extra Little League teams so that more of our kids have the opportunity to do something other than play those X-Boxes and Playstations you mocked just a couple paragraphs ago.

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!

Okay fine, I’m with you on this one.

These generations have produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever!

It has also produced some of the most soulless, narcissistic, toy-hoarding, money grubbing greedy generations ever to grace this earth. People who gave up on the idea of "changing the world" to make it a better place once they realized that they could drive a BMW , own a condo and go on a cruise every year… Just sayin’.

The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas.

It’s also been an explosion of land, water and air pollution as you search for easier and cheaper ways to mass-produce all those innovations of yours.

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL!

And you dealt with it by selling out the idealism of your youth in favor of stock options, middle-management positions and items that sell for thirty-nine cents less at WalMart even though it put some of your friends out of business. Quite frankly, I’m not impressed with what you did with all that freedom, success and responsibility.

If YOU are one of them . . CONGRATULATIONS!

You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated so much of our lives for our own good

Okay, excuse me but YOU PEOPLE are the ones IN CHARGE of the government right now!!! YOU are the ones who made these rules and regulations. If you don’t like the way the world has gone, you have nobody to blame but your old self-righteous self.

And while you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave (and lucky) their parents were.

Brave? BRAVE??? Are these the same "brave" people who spit, cursed and threw blood at the soldiers who returned from Vietnam in the late 60’s? Yes, your generation turned out a few gems, but so does every generation... ours included.

Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn't it?

No, it makes me want to strangle all you sell outs from the older generation for ruining it for us. God willing we'll do a better job with it for OUR children.

Zap Zap! Free Speech! Blah Blah!

I don't usually post random YouTube videos to this blog, but I've had two people bring this video to my attention thus far today and I just wanted to put my own two cents in before the media cacophony begins. The video shows a college student attempting to ask John Kerry a question during a Q&A session and then the escalation of events until he is arrested and eventually tasered. Watch first, then read my thoughts below:




Hm... I don't really even know what to think about this. Yes, the kid was exercising his fundamental right to free speech. Yes, he was trying to engage John Kerry in a dialogue of pertinent questions. And yes, he had his mic cut off and yes he was arrested and yes he was tasered because of all of this.

Unfortunately I can see this getting blown out of proportion as some kind of "free speech violation" when the fact is, the kid stood up and attempted to monopolize what appears to be a more or less informal Q&A session. He was told repeatedly to ask his question, but rather than asking kept spouting information from a book he'd read. Then once he asked the question, he asked MORE questions and then MORE questions after that. Yes, I get the point that this was his only available forum to ask these pertinent questions to John Kerry's face, so I AM tempted to react the way others are surely reacting, with anger at the fact that he was silenced and arrested, anger at the overreaction of the police.

Then again, he DID try to monopolize an event that was not his to monopolize. And when he was escorted away, he DID resist arrest to the point where it required half a dozen police officers to subdue him, and even then he fought. Personally I don't blame the police for tasering him when they did.

What this brings up is a larger problem, a larger question of: How do WE as normal everyday constituents find a forum to air our questions and grievances and expect to have them actually ANSWERED. Unless you are a member of the press, you can't ask these questions directly to a politician's face. And even then you certainly can't expect a real and legitimate answer to your queries and the opportunity to say, "No, excuse me sir but you DID NOT answer my question."

No clear answers on this one as far as I'm concerned. I just hope this opens up a HEALTHY debate and not just a bunch of crybaby activists whining about "free speech" this and "free speech" that.

Always so fowl?

Was there ever a point in time when the chicken joke was funny? The original one I mean. The one that has come to represent the quintessential definition of a joke in general, and a bad joke in particular.

Q: Why did the chicken cross the road?
A: To get to the other side.

It’s a reversal technique that gives this joke its intended humor. The setup indicates that the chicken in question had some higher purpose for crossing the road. But the punchline indicates that he was crossing the road just simply for the purpose OF crossing the road. A modern equivalent of this joke (at least the only one I can think of at 4:00 in the morning as I sit in a production trailer babysitting editors) comes from an episode of Friends.

FRANK: We were down at the courthouse, we were having lunch and we just decided to get married.
PHOEBE: Oh my god, what were you doing at the courthouse?
FRANK: We were having lunch.

The idea behind the chicken joke is this same kind of funny, but the thing is by the time we’re actually old enough to get the punchline, we’ve heard it like a million times in some other patently not funny context. So by the time we have the intellectual maturity to actually be able to find it funny, the joke has already lost any chance of eliciting a laugh because, well, it’s just “that stupid chicken joke.” Really, the only time anyone ever laughs at the chicken joke is when somebody (not unlike the original joke teller) throws out some kind of reversal on the expected punchline.

It can be done via a pun like:

Q: Why did the chicken cross the playground?
A: To get to the other slide.

It can be done with absurdity:

Q: Why did the frog cross the road?
A: Because he was stapled to the chicken.

Or it can be done by applying a third party personality to the punchline:

Q: Why did the chicken cross the road?
A (by Einstein): Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road moved beneath it depends on your point of reference.
A (by Martin Luther King): I envision a world where chickens are free to cross roads without having their motives called into question.
A (by Buddha): To ask this question is to deny your own chicken nature.
A (by Colonel Sanders): Wait, you mean I missed one?

But just where the heck did the original joke come from? And moreover, was there ever a point in time when people found it funny? Like did the first adult to ever hear this joke laugh when he heard it? As I said, the joke has become kind of a stock character of sorts representing all jokes everywhere and all bad jokes specifically. But that iconic status couldn’t have just materialized out of thin air. Was it a really popular joke that just got told too much, making people sick of it to the point where they finally started mocking the thing? It must have been based in something somewhere in the past. Catch phrases are like that too. We say them and we know what they mean, but when we really stop and look at them, we realize they don’t actually make any sense in our modern context.

Example: “Close but no cigar.”

Heh? What the heck does a cigar have to do with guessing the wrong answer? Well, fairground games used to give away cigars as prizes. So when a patron missed the ring toss by an inch, the guy running the game would let loose with a phrase that actually meant something in contemporary context. And even though the context has disappeared over the years, the phrase still holds meaning.

Likewise, even though the chicken joke is no longer funny, we still recognize it, not only as a joke, but as THE joke. But where? When? Why? How did this particular joke earn such dubious longevity?

And moreover… why a chicken?

You Got Wagged

Whenever I think back on the first year or so of this war (the one in Iraq in case there’s any confusion), I can’t help but think of the movie Wag the Dog. For the uninformed, the basic plot of the movie is that the president of the United States, in order to take people’s mind off a scandal he’s involved in, hires a Hollywood producer to “stage a war.” They rally the American people behind the phony war by using every possible gimmick they can think of to tug at the heartstrings and foster a sense of unity and patriotism. I actually hadn’t seen Wag the Dog until the Iraq war was about six months in and even though the movie was already several years old by that point the similarities between reality and fiction were downright eerie.

There was the compelling footage: In the movie it was video of a young girl running through the streets, dodging bullets while clutching a cat (which they CGI’ed in later) to her chest. In real life, there was footage of the Saddam statues being pulled down and the shots of Jessica Lynch being wheeled by on a stretcher.

There were the hit songs: In the movie, they hired Willie Nelson to compose numerous uplifting songs that would get people emotionally attached to the war. In real life, Toby Keith released “American Soldier” while the Top 40 producers infused quotes from soldiers, their families and the president into sappy pop songs.

There were media created heroes: In the movie, Woody Harrelson plays the war hero William Shuman (“Old Shoe”). In real life, Jessica Lynch gets a book deal and a movie of the week for being a cutie pie caught in the middle of a dramatic rescue attempt.

Then of course there were all the symbols: In the movie, the architects behind the war threw “old shoes” into trees and onto power lines in honor of the aforementioned hero. In real life, yellow magnetic ribbons and American flags with some variation of the slogan “Support the Troops” went on the back of every car on the road.

With the exception of the far-fetched idea that the entire war in the movie was completely made up Wag the Dog was, almost without exception, strangely prophetic of what would start happening in 2003. I’ve been thinking about that movie and its similarities to reality a lot over the last couple days as I read the book Last One In by Nicholas Kulish. The story is about a gossip columnist who gets embedded with the Marines at the beginning of the Iraq war. Amongst other things it explores how the media in this war totally dropped the ball and made a farce out of the whole operation by presenting a completely distorted picture of the truth, all in the name of better ratings of course. It talks about reporters smearing grease and dirt on their faces and posing for stand-ups in front of burning vehicles to make it seem as though they were right in the middle of some important battle. It talks about reporters making up stories about anything, even if it was ninety percent bullshit, just so they could fill airtime or print space. It’s a very intriguing (and funny) read, which I highly recommend.

Anyway, all that lead up was to preface the fact that Lynndie England has been in my head. Remember Lynndie England? She was the soldier who became the face of the whole Abu Ghraib scandal because of an infamous picture of her pointing at a naked prisoner while smoking a cigarette. She was sentenced to eleven years in prison for her part in the “torture” of Abu Ghraib prisoners. From the very outset of that whole Abu Ghraib thing, my spider senses were tingling. Something just didn’t sit right with me about the way it was handled, or covered, or just plain perceived. And even to this day, I can’t help but wonder if the whole thing was just another incident of the tail wagging the dog – like it was nothing more than a big smoke screen intended to rally us together while distracting us from something else.

There’s no question that this war has been far from popular. Even before the decision was made to invade there were people screaming, protesting, sending up righteous anger at what they viewed to be evil and arrogant American imperialism. The “architects behind the war” did everything they could to rally people together with the aforementioned songs, symbols, heroes and whatnot. But I think they also sensed that even the people who were in support of the war needed some kind of outlet for their own anger. Supporters needed to show everyone that they only supported the “noble” aspects of the war. They needed everyone to see that they weren’t merely blind “let’s-just-kill-them-all” warmongers who had no respect for human life. Abu Ghraib and the accusations of torture gave them that opportunity. It allowed war supporters and detractors alike to meet on common ground where they could direct their anger at a few mutually agreed upon patsies. And the media, as predicted, went right along for the ride.

In case we’ve all forgotten, the “torture” in question at Abu Ghraib involved stripping prisoners naked, letting dogs bark at them and forcing them (the prisoners) to form naked human pyramids. As far as I was concerned, that always qualified more as a dumbass fraternity prank than anything that might resemble torture. And at first it seemed like a lot of the conservative radio shows I listened to thought the same thing. But then all of a sudden even they joined the angry throngs in condemning the “torture”, boldly stating that those involved should be punished to the fullest extent of the law. And as I said, Lynndie England became the ultimate face of evil in the whole thing. So much so that I can’t help but wonder if she’s in jail right now because she was simply a pawn in some evil and fucked up game of wag the dog.

She really did make the perfect villain. Unlike Jessica Lynch who was cute with long and pretty hair, Lynndie England had short hair and mannish features. The infamous picture that everyone has seen shows her with a cigarette not only in her mouth – an obvious “dirty” habit – but actually dangling from her lips i