Bad News?

Not really. This blog is done, but I'm moving over to a new website called Zombie Zebra, where I will continue to regularly post.

Read my exit/entrance interview here: http://zombiezebra.com/2009/02/25/please-allow-me-to-introduce-myself/

This was fun, I'm moving it to my own .com because of how much I'm digging it. I'll miss you most of all Mr. Scarecrow.

Holidaze

I should have had a pretty shitty week. I worked 8:30 AM - 10:00 PM most of the week, came in on Saturday, worked from home a bit on Sunday, and so I pretty much didn't have anytime for myself. But in a weird way, I find that comforting and I can usually make the most of the time I have when I'm super-busy. It enables a kind of focused clarity that otherwise is impossible. So, in my mind, I actually had a pretty good week. I mean, I still had a good time Friday night with a bunch of friends, got some shit off my chest that I needed to talk about to someone, relaxed a bit on Sunday, got my deposit back from my last apartment, and I think later today I might go buy a new TV. Also, it was Valentine's Day yesterday. I have no problems with that holiday.

Valentine's Day is a weird holiday, because (apparently) it's supposed to be a day of forced romance if you're in a relationship and it's supposed to be depressing if you're not. Personally, I never minded the holiday either way, single or not, because some people have a good spirit to them regardless, and I'm really into holidays with spirit. So what if you're single? Is it really that bad? There are so many wonderful things about being single and you should celebrate that; there are so many people in this city and this world that are single right along with you, and this holiday is for you too. Being in a relationship on this day is good too, guys may complain that they "have" to do this or that, but really? Really? Most of you love it. I think it's pretty awful when I hear about people that needs days like this to remember a little romance; by necessity the Super Bowl can only be one day a year, but you can cherish your Valentine all year. Really, boil it down to the purest components and this is a Holiday about Love, and who can't get behind that? Whether you're single, married, or anything above or between, isn't there something you could have celebrated? Personally, I think the world would be a better place if every once in a while we were all able to come out of our shells and just embrace and love love. It doesn't need to be just romantic love, but also love of everything and everyone, to give love to your fellow man, to just take it in and realize that what we have here is a pretty sweet deal. I don't know, maybe I'm just wearing rose-colored glasses today.

There are a couple of particular things about Valentine's Day that I would like to talk about more specifically. First off, I've begun taking a more scenic route to the subway (walking to a further stop) that takes me right by this church, and Saturday while I was walking to work I noticed that they had all these balloons that said "Happy St. Valentine's Day" on them and it hit me that this actually is/was supposed to be a day celebrating a saint. Now I don't claim to know what St. Valentine is or what he did to achieve sainthood, if I had to guess I'd say it has something to do with killing gangsters, but I'm not sure. It started getting me wondering about how many other holidays have really lost their true meaning and became a "thing". I'll come back to this in a second, while I bring up the other thing, which is a family tradition. On Friday, I checked the mail, and saw that there was a large package for me. It was from my mom, and I was not expecting it. I should have. It was, as she's sent every year since my freshman year of college, a Valentine's Day package with a card and a box of heart-shaped chocolates. The fact that it never occurred to me that this would come, despite the fact that she does it every year, brought a little extra joy to my world. It reminded me that I really do love my mother, and again, isn't that what this day is about? Love of all kinds? Well, it's about that, and it's also about chocolate. Along with Halloween, Valentine's Day is one of the most candy-centric holidays. It really makes me wonder if before candy and card companies got involved if this was ever a serious religious Holiday, and it got me thinking about the other holidays we typically celebrate in modern American society:

Valentine's Day
What it's supposed to be about: Love, showing affection to those that you care about.
What it's really about: Special lingerie, expensive dinners, getting just drunk enough (on wine, of course) to get a little freaky but still sober enough to really enjoy it. OR, getting depressed, eating an entire heart-shaped box of candy by yourself while watching clips from "Models, Inc." on YouTube.

Presidents' Day
What it's supposed to be about: Celebrating the great leaders of this nation we call home and how they have enriched our culture and history.
What it's really about: up to 20% off at most department stores.

St Patrick's Day
What it's supposed to be about: Being Irish.
What it's really about: Getting completely shithoused. This one is actually pretty close.

Easter
What it's supposed to be about: Jesus dying for our sins, coming back, spring, renewal, jew bashing
What it's really about: Finding colored eggs, jelly beans, marshmallow poultry, fake plastic grass, other candy, rabbits, and in my family's case presents. It wasn't until about a year ago I found out that not everyone got presents on Easter Sunday. This blew my mind, it was like a second Christmas in my house growing up.

Memorial Day
What it's supposed to be about: I'm going to go with people dying, or something like that? Am I close? Is this exactly the same as Veteran's Day?
What it's really about: the start of the Summer Movie season. Spider-Man or Wolverine are likely to make an appearance. This year we get Terminators. Oh... I get it, it's a memorial to all the people that died in Judgment day after skynet launched. Makes sense.

Independence Day
What it's supposed to be about: the adoption of the declaration of independence and the formal birth of our nation (and essentially modern society).
What it's really about: Fireworks, Barbecues, Baseball. To me, that is America, so I'm totally ok with all this. Bonus points to this holiday because (I think) most Americans actually do know why we don't work on this day, even if they think "The Forth of July" is the actually name of the holiday.

Labor Day
What it's supposed to be about: working? I don't have the slightest clue.
What it's really about: parties hosted by Puff Daddy, the last day to have a summer party, wearing white for the last time for a few months.

Jimbo's Birthday
What it's supposed to be about: peace on earth and good will towards all men.
What it's really about: people always eff this one up and make it all about me. Seriously, I'm not like that, you shouldn't celebrate me, you should celebrate that you all get to share a world WITH me.

Columbus Day
What it's supposed to be about: Christopher Columbus "discovering" the new world.
What it's really about: apparently being Italian.

Halloween
What it's supposed to be about: Candy.
What it's really about: Candy. Egging houses. Channel 11 showing scary movies for "Shocktober".

Veteran's Day
What it's supposed to be about: See "Day, Memorial". I have no idea what the difference is. Is memorial day for those that died and this is for the guys that didn't?
What it's really about: no clue. I don't even think I have off this day. I had to look up when it was. I'd be willing to bed department stores have sales for this, but not as good as Presidents' Day.

Thanksgiving
What it's supposed to be about: Acknowledging the fact that different people can give thanks to each other and celebrate that only through unity can we endure.
What it's really about: Getting drunk and over-eating, fighting with family, starting Christmas shopping and getting an extra day off from work after Thanksgiving, because fuck it, that's why.

Christmas
What it's supposed to be about: Jesus being born.
What it's really about: Santa giving presents. I'll cede that most people PROBABLY know what the real reason for Christmas is, but I'd wager most don't really give two shits and just like the presents part. Especially kids, who I think we can all agree is who this holiday is mostly for. Whatever, I have no beef with X-Mas, I love it even if it is a painted whore of a holiday at this point.

New Year's
What it's supposed to be about: The arbitrary designation of where a year "ends" and a new one "begins"
What it's really about: Getting super-duper drunk, kissing someone at midnight if you're sober enough, and then deciding you're going to start or stop doing something for the rest of your life and then following through with it for anywhere between 2 and 60 days.

Martin Luther King Day
What it's supposed to be about: Celebrating human rights with specific emphasis on a man who taught the world that Knowledge is Power and that all men truly are created equal.
What it's really about: Having a quick holiday to recover from having a whole week of work after the Christmas/New Year 1-2 punch. Seriously, his birthday is 1/15, yet we always celebrate it on a Monday. Doesn't that seem suspicious to anyone else?

Groundhog Day
What it's supposed to be about: seeing whether nature's great forecaster thinks we're going to have an early spring or long winter.
What it's really about: getting drunk and making babies

I think that covers the major ones, but I suppose it's possible I forgot one if it's even more obscure than Veteran's Day (Father's Day and Mother's Day don't count). I think we're about due for a new Holiday, it seems like we don't really celebrate half of these at this point anyway, so let's mix in some new ones. Like, shouldn't we have a day celebrating the invention of the Internet or something? I think we have enough summer movies at this point that we need another weekend in the summer to get a bunch of these, maybe we could take Boxing Day and put it in the summer or something? Well, that's all the time I have for now, hopefully I'll stay too busy to watch entire movies so that I can instead take 20 minutes to write blogs.

My Bucket List

OK, I had an idea the other day that I would make a "Bucket List" on the blog. I never saw the movie, so I'm just guessing that it's a list of things you want to do before you die. Well, here's my totally reasonable list:

• Learn to play at least one decent Billy Joel or Elton John song on the piano and be able to sing along to it. The whole song.
  
  
• Go whale watching.
  
  
• Finishing writing one of my stupid screenplays and actually send it around for honest feedback.
  
  
• Watch every episode of “The Wire”
  
  
• Bet enough money on a hand of poker that losing would ruin my life and win.
  
  
• Come into a sold-out baseball game in the bottom of the ninth inning to record a 1-out save on a three pitch strike-out (the third of which MUST be swinging).
  
  
• Read “Maus”
  
  
• Get bitten by a radioactive spider and gain the proportionate strength of a spider and some other more-vaguely described super powers.
  
  
• Get to Pakistan when they finally corner Osama Bin Laden. While all his men are in a firefight with American forces, slowly enter his dark cave quarters smoking a cigarette. After a deep exhale, look up and tell him “You know what they say... smoking will be the death... of YOU!” and then somehow murder him with the filter.
  
  
• Grow a mustache.
  
  
• Play a game of one-on-one with an also mustached David Lee, who is at that time second only to myself in being the toast of New York.
  
  
• Marry a gorgeous woman that allows me to see other women while she's pregnant because she knows I think that's gross.
  
  
• Leave her after the kids are no longer cute/fun/interesting.
  
  
• Get banned from a country (either my person, or my work)
  
  
• Start advertising on blog.
  
  
• Rescue a beautiful, busty woman from thieves, get rewarded with mind-blowing oral sex.
  
  
• Rob a bank in broad daylight without harming any customers.
  
  
• Hold an entire nation (somewhere rich but small that I've not year heard of or barely know) hostage with some elaborate scheme where I will use my powers and genius to lower the entire land mass by 2 meters, thus flooding. Thwart any attempts to stop me.
  
  
• Learn enough French to be able to competently order from an authentic French restaurant.
  
  
• Buy the Eiffel Tower with nation-hostage money. Use it only for public displays of love making, if you can even call it love after all the filthy things I will have gotten into at this point.
  
  


• Record a #1 Selling Rap Album, earn the respect of the entire industry.

• Develop an arch-foeship with a do-gooder. Use lots of good puns when bantering with him.
  
  
• Have my son (now in his 20's) track me down and confront me about leaving. Tell him that his mother drove him away and that I'm proud of him and then try to mold him into becoming me exactly.
  
  
• Conduct experiments on son to get him super-powers. If it works, then have him be my #2 until he's too powerful and then strike him down as an example to the others. If it doesn't work, discard body in a way so that no one knows if he ever found me.
  
  
• Go back to school for writing.
  
  
  
• Win a World Championship of boxing, retire undefeated.
  
  
• Be on my private boat when it's attacked by a giant Sea Monster, the last of it's kind and realize that I don't need to be who I was anymore and go out to battle the great beast as everyone else flees below deck. Light a cigarette, look up and deadpan “only one of us is walking away from this... and I'm the one with legs” before running and leaping onto the creature. Battle it for 2 days straight before it falls beneath my hands, dead.
  
  
• Try at an open mic and/or audition for a comedy troupe
  
  
• Ride the serpent corpse down to a hidden underwater kingdom, learn to breathe underwater and take a potion that allows for live forever in this kingdom, where I am loved by throngs of beautiful mermaid women that live only to bring me satisfaction and never ever die.

The Whistlepig

OK, so I've been super-duper-uper busy lately, and I don't mean just my usual "only 1 movie after the Knicks game before my pre-bed episodes of 30 Rock" either, I'm actually watching less than 2 hours of TV a day and everything. Crazy. Also, I'm coming down with a little something. I was feeling a little cold coming on, then I accidentally turned on my A/C during the night so I woke up frozen. Then I got out of the shower and immediately went into the snow. I never said I was smart. OK, I say that all the time, but I'm a stupid kind of smart, I think.

Anyway, I know I'm a little late for Groundhog Day, but I'm unvailing my latest Holiday-themed poem for you to all enjoy ahead of my annual Gala of the Groundhog occuring this weekend. Why am I doing this? Well because I don't have time for a real entry (let alone either of the beasts I spoke of in the last one) and I like to update regularly AND because of a little truth you might not be aware of -- every blogger tries to be funny enough for people to come back and maybe give his weary attempts at prose a whirl because he always thought he could make it as a poet and secretly hates his father for making him get into "computer stuff" in college.

So without further adon't...

The Whistlepig

Awake from the slumber, the first great sleep of his young life, the whistlepig rises.

Inside him, something yearns, a sensation that cannot be denied.

The den must be abandoned as he climbs out of one of his diligently burrowed tunnels into the open world.

He is sluggish but aware, there are those that would try to catch him, he must make it to surface.

The cold wind greets him more harshly then he would have thought, but he must persevere.

Never losing sight of his surroundings the majestic chuck compiles the fresh berries he can muster.

Masticating upon his ambrosial fortunes, he never looks down or loses his awareness.

As threats abound in the wondrous landscape so too does opportunity, and soon enough the land beaver will claim that which roused him.

Avoiding predation, a simple task, but his charge requires other dangers of the prodigious rodent.

His peers are brutal, nasty, aggressive; attempting to assert dominance to no avail.

Finally the exalted beast lays his eyes upon the ineluctable and is able to savor his corporeal destiny.

As the world was borne anew so it too falls, as the whistlepig retreats into the tangible earth beneath him once more, shadow and all.

Get it? Adon't? That's not a word! Genius!!!

Year of the Ox meet Son of the Surfing Doberman

Not trying to be racist, this is the first google image for "chinese new year ox dragon" since this post is about Chinese New Year, it's the year of the ox and dragons are factually awesome.

Let's review what Yahoo and Astrology.com think is going on with me horoscopically, since it's Chinese New Year time. I'm Year of the Dog,^* so I just need to click away at that, and let's see what they think:

"2009 will present the Dog with a number of challenges. Your patience will certainly be tested in more than one instance."
Already I don't like this, but I feel like that's general horoscope B.S. that you always see.

"You may not necessarily gain the notoriety you desire in your career, but certain advancement opportunities will surface throughout the year."
This is not something I wanted to hear. Also, are they talking about my current career or my dream one where I hit the big time, ghost-writing blogs for uninteresting celebrities?

"You will find comfort with your family and solidify bonds that are necessary for your well being."
OK, I still haven't heard anything about how much I'm going to get laid. BORING!!

"You may have issues juggling your family life with your work schedule, but you will make great strides in both areas by the end of the year."
What about my boning schedule? All I want to know is how much money will I make, how many times will I get laid, is anyone I care about going to die, and are the Yankees going to win the Series? That's it. As much as I'd like to know if the Wild Mountain Chicken will be back at Wendy's, I'd prefer that to remain a surprise.

"Dog Rating - 52% (5 favorable, 4 neutral and 3 unfavorable months)"
I don't have the slightest idea what this means. Also, can you tell me what my unfavorable months are going to be? I'd like to know, even if I don't know what that means.

"Dog Career - Your work will play a large role in the year of the Ox."
Interesting... a Chinese girl I work with just told me she was the year of the Ox, then we argued about what an Ox was exactly with both of us being wrong (it's just a draught bovine, oddly both more and less specific than we thought). I can't see how she could make or destroy me, so I'll need to keep looking.

"You may find yourself working long hours to achieve a promotion or to further your pursuits."
Also true: every other year

"Though you may only see minor results this year from your hard work, your ethics do not go unnoticed."
See Also: 2008, 2007, 2006... is this for people who are normally shitty at their jobs?

"Later in the year, you may be offered a step in the right direction, which will flourish sometime next year. Stay focused and be willing to listen to the advice of others and you should have a promising year with your work."
This must be about my celebrity faux-blogging, because all this stuff was more true of me LAST YEAR. I think I hate Chinese New Year.

"Dog Relationships"
Yeah, doggie style. Hot!

"Domestically, the Dog can achieve new levels in a relationship this year."
I'm sure what they mean is new levels of lady-pleasuring sexual ecstasy.

"People who know you think highly of you, as you are a well respected individual for your work ethics..."
Yes, I'm sure they will erect a great marble statue of me in the coming year. Finally, it's been a long time coming. Is this really part of relationships?

"... and your devotion to the ones you love."
Like a dog. I get it.

"Be open to communication, as you may, at times, be unwilling to change your views even when your partner has a valid point."
I may be stubborn or downright obstinate at times, but... ok, you're totally right on this one. Is this not true of everyone? I sometimes forget how reasonable people who aren't me can be.

"If you can work on this issue, then you will find your relations with family members and friends very gratifying this year."
Fuck anyone that disagrees with me. That's on the record now. That happened.

"Dog Health - Your strong work ethics leave you working long hours, sometimes denying the warning signs of the effects on your health."
Yeah, it's WORK that'll cause any health problems I might have. Certainly not any other lifestyle factors. You nailed this one. Bravo!

"Take the proper breaks and give yourself the time to recuperate from your busy work schedule or you may be out longer than you desire."
So... take more time off? I think I can do that. Does it count as time off when I spend it blogging?

"You are instinctively a very active person and exercise is not something that you need to remind yourself to do."
I love you Astrology.com partnership with Yahoo! Got it here first. I'm going to buy a segway tomorrow.

"Dog Wealth - Financially, you may not achieve the results you seek, but you are well on your way."
Fuck you.

"Keep your spending within your budget, even though there may be items that you desire to purchase to enrich your home."
Oh, now you've played your hand 'strolly (that's what I've been calling this article in my head the entire time). Clearly, you don't know me at all if you think this could possibly happen. I still have an extra Wii nunchuck that's still in the shrink-wrap. I once bought some rare artwork off eBay, paid the money, it never came and I never even tried to get my money back. I drink in Manhattan, REGULARLY. I once commissioned my father a custom oil painting of the Mona Lisa with his face painted over hers. This just isn't in the cards. Epic Fail. Also, isn't this more advise than a horoscope?

"The time will come to make the changes, just focus on the basics for now. There may be a change for the better towards the end of the year, so be patient and exercise care when it comes to spending."
Exercise care? I thought you said I didn't need to exercise? This makes me mad and want to buy Yankees season tickets.

OK, so that only took about 6 minutes to write, so let me look up my normal daily Libra horoscope for YESTERDAY to see how it did:

"Your big brain is helping you to figure out what needs to happen next and it could very well be that you're going to have to connect with someone on a new level in order to make progress."
WRONG!!!! All I did yesterday was watch 30 Rock in bed and wonder how my family would react if I quit my job and went to clown college. Wait... what if that is what needs to happen next? Do I need to connect on a new level with famed clown/instructor Barry Lubin? On a level other than stalker? Well... if I gave my two weeks notice today, I could start something else on February 10th... let's check my horoscope for then:

"Sometimes, following the rules is not the best way to get by. Make your own rules. "
Oh my sweet baby Jesus... it's like they looked right into my soul... and saw a Clown... a Clown that never cries when people on the internet beat him at Mario Kart.

^* for the record I consider this dog to be a giant Doberman riding a surfboard atop a tsunami with the ability to bark out adorable but lethally posonious mini-dragons at will. He has the spirit of a honorable samurai, and the sexual appetite of... well a normal doberman really, they're all pretty horny.

---

I'm planning on two rather lengthy volumes soon, as soon as I have time to really tear into them. One is a little more serious, about communication in the 21st century (but not in the way you think) and may even be split up into 2-parts, but the other one is what I'm hoping will be my pièce de résistance. It's about farts. Later bitches.

Barack me Amadeus

OK, I suppose it's my duty as a blog-owner to talk a little bit about what just happened. Of course, I'm not referring to the senses shattering mindfuck* that is the Arizona Cardinals in the Super Bowl, but the less surprising fact that we have a Commander-in-Chief with a Kenyan father. Yesterday was a historic day. Regardless of whatever else happens he will be one of the presidents that goes down with Madison, Kennedy, and the guys we see every day on our money as one of those leaders that even the kids that didn't go to college remember. Electing him was a profoundly good idea because he represents something that exists outside of himself and he is fully aware of this fact.

Whether you were pro- or anti-Democrat, you at least "get" why yesterday was a big day, and you can't be wholly against it. You get that people voted for an idea, you get that people looked at those "hope" posters and actually felt something. Everyone and their mother knew that the democratic party was going to win this election, it was inevitable. When the battle was Barack v. Hillary, we all knew that one way or another, revolutionary change was going to happen, that history would unfold. I think the reason that it had to be Barack is that in addition to his being of African descent and having a dark complexion, he is a man that is able to speak to us, he is a man that knows how to create an ideal. The spirit of this event was clear, the power of the event was felt by the masses, but we shouldn't just pat ourselves on the back, the job is not done, change needs to happen.

The problem with Barack Obama is that we all know the broad ideals he is meant to represent, but we're unclear of how specific policies will be leveraged to enact a better tomorrow for our republic. Outside of NCAA Football, we don't know his specific plans for anything, and oh, by the way, there's nothing he can really do about the NCAA without dicking over a ton of people. The biggest problem we have is the economy, that is the one thing that is going to impact us (and by us I mean people under 40) and our children the most in the long run. Right now we have a very large deficit. It was already incomprehensibly large, and now the only way to compare it is to say how much it's grown by factors of it's own former size since we're using the type of cartoonish numbers that you make up in kindergarten when estimating how many home runs you think Don Mattingly would retire with or how many men your floozy teacher had slept with. We have a serious problem in that no one thinks of this as a real thing. We're thinking of it the way you think of your student loans when you're buying a quarter from that kid you had that one class with junior year, but the thing is, eventually you're not going to be in school anymore, and guess what? You have to pay that money. The only way for us to magically pay this debt would be to circulate more money, thus devaluing every note of tender that we have. I don't think I need to explain why that's a bad idea. We've grown used to being the world's only economic super-power, but that's not a birthright, it can change. By my understanding of things, Obama is planning on ADDING to our national debt. No no no no no!!!! What we have to do (and no one wants to hear this) is increase taxes and decrease government spending. I know, no Democrat wants budget cuts and no Republican wants to pay more taxes, but unfortunately there isn't a virtuous unicorn of justice that's going to magically make our debt go away... what we're doing now is akin to living off a credit card without looking for a job or having any way to pay the bill when it comes, and personally I'd rather not see our nation in bankruptcy court.

I'm not even going to get into all this bailout stuff in too much detail, because I really don't know Obama's stance on it, and I think both situations are totally different. With banking we basically had no choice, the damage was already done and we needed to put the genie back in the bottle. Clearly, changes need to be made so that this cannot happen again and that people are held legally and financially responsible for their actions. The issue of nationalizing banking is an interesting option, but between that and talk about nationalized health-care** we'd be in serious jeopardy of looking socialist, something that traditionally been thought of as a dirty word in this country. In Detroit, I personally think we should not have given the bailout. American cars, by and large, suck; I'm sure there are a few individual models that are cool, but for the most part NO MAJOR INNOVATION in that sector has come from our country. Some people currently pay more to buy an American car, for no other reason than to buy American. WHY? When you buy wine, do you make sure it's always from America rather than France, Spain, or Italy? Do people honestly think that American cars are better even though every conceivable metric says otherwise? I say don't bail them out and the market will work itself out, survival of the fittest. I understand a lot of workers would potentially get laid off, and of course I sympathize, but automotive workers would see incresed openings at plants for foreign companies, which would expand to meet the demand, and quite frankly I would hope they would be retiring off at some point. I have no sympathy for any young man or woman that, in this day and age, gets into an occupation with the full understanding that they could be replaced by a machine at some point in the future. I also understand that some of these foreign companies may pay less as the demand curves for work are changing. Again, this is a normal fluctuation that is simply righting the fact that maybe, just maybe, these workers were making too much money to begin with, and may have been contributing to the lack of quality and innovation in American machines.

Logically, the next place to go from automotive workers is to energy. Quite simply, the regulations we have in place are insulting. The environment is another REAL problem (just like the economy) that needs to be dealt with. Trust me, I know as well as anyone that it's always easier to push back real things you don't want to deal with, but I hope everyone that's ever gone through a breakup knows: the quicker you can get it over with, the sooner the healing can begin and the sooner you can go back to being carefree. We are killing our planet. To say that you don't believe in global warming is good and fine, I disagree, but there's no way you can say that humanity is currently having a POSITIVE impact on things. In addition, there are limits to the amount of consumable fossil fuels we have available and we are in the unfortunate position of buying large quantities of it from nations that we would otherwise prefer not to have us over a barrel (pun fully intended), so why not make a change now? Why don't we demand that the auto industry have us an alternate way to power cars by a certain date? These are the things that can fuel innovation, this can be how Detroit can come back. If we saw (just a for instance, I have no idea the feasibility of this) we said that all new cars needed to be 100% electric by 2014, do you think we couldn't make that happen? Can't we at least try? Also, let's stop burning so much coal, it's totally gross. Nuclear power is not evil, and there are so many reusable power sources that haven't been tapped nearly as much as they used to be. Personally, I don't want to use my iPod or my TV less, so we need a way to make power more plentiful. I know it seems ridiculous to think of a world where all homes have their heating/air conditioning powered by solar panels, but not so long ago the paperless office seemed like a pipe dream, in college I even did a presentation about it. How many things have you printed at work this week? Do you think the same person doing your job 20 or even 10 years ago used more or less paper? Also, who do you think did their job more efficiently? All I'm saying is, we NEED to change, otherwise we will replenish the fossil fuels the same way they were created the first time... by having a mass extinction because of an ice age.

Iraq... that is one topic I'm not touching with a ten foot pole.***

Finally, I have one suggestion for Mr. Obama. Think about legalization. Don't ask legalization of what, you all know what I'm talking about. Personally, I don't really partake of the stuff that much, so don't think I'm some stoner with an agenda. The reason I'm suggesting that is that it's already clear that Obama is going to earn the title of "cool president," but if he wants to stand with the historically cool presidents like Teddy Roosevelt, Taft, Kennedy, and Clinton, he's going to need to do something historically cool, and what would be cooler than the president that came out as pro-legalization? Also, there are other facts such as cigarettes and alcohol are similar and legal, everyone in the country is able to get marijuana (there, I said it) more or less consequence-free anytime they want it, and we would be able to regulate it in a way so that it would actually be harder for minors to get it. PLUS, it would be cheaper, all the supplemental crime would go away, and we could tax the living shit out of it (in case you're coming in late, we could use the money).

To close, I'd like to reiterate that we have a good thing here, we've realized we need to make the change. We've taken the first step, but there are still 11 more that we need to go through with. On the inauguration day my friend Meagan told me "we should have set our DVRs" and I agreed. Then she said, "there's always in 4 more years" to which I replied "No, not like this. There will never been an inauguration like this ever again. At least, I hope not." That's because I hope that we never need change like this again, I hope we're never in a hole like this again. We cannot forget the message, we cannot forget why this was important. This was not about an issue of race, this was about change, this was about believing that it's possible to go to sleep at night and wake up in a better world the next day, and that can happen every night if you want it enough. The only way we'll have an inauguration that we'll remember this much, have an event that we all agree is packed with this much meaning, would be if a giant sea monster attacked us and we either elect a president that vows to personally fight it with his (or her) bare hands, or we just decide to elect it president because nothing says more about hope than electing a sea monster. Did that sound racist? I should have stopped with the better tomorrow thing. Ignore these last few sentences.

* I love that spell check wants me to change that to "mind fuck," the little red squiggly reminds me of freedom

** (which I'm also against, but not for the reasons you'd think, I may get into that at a later time if and when talks about that become a little more serious)

*** and by topic I mean vagina, and by Iraq I mean (some random girl's name) from accounting.

PostScript: I now realize that the Daily Show had a segment with a similar title to the name of this post. Sorry, I swear I came up with it independently and it's too late for me to come up with another pun now.

Just sharing a link...

http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/blog/shutdown_corner/post/Pittsburgh-mayor-Luke-Ravenstahl-is-now-Luke-Ste?urn=nfl,134346

I liked reading this. A lot of people don't understand why I love sports so much, but this really encapsulates everything I love about it. Everything that's right about sports. It's something so fleeting and worthless, yet can be so whimsical and transcendent at the same time. This article shows me that sports are worth investing in, that they're important (even though by their nature they're so unimportant). Luke Ravenstahl understands this.