Fun With Politics

Weigel, I thank thee for linking to me. Code Red-type virus, I curse thee for making me unable to respond in detail to the article Dave's venting about.

However, my opinion on antiwar-protesters boils down to this: Dissent = good; Uninformed dissent = stupid and counterproductive.

Perhaps it's my 18 years in DC, but my enthusiasm for protest is very, very low, mostly because I've repeatedly seen how ineffective it is. Then again, I'm also so cynical that unless the government does something that really pisses me off, I pretty much ignore it.

The antiwar protesters say that people are less concerned and informed about Iraq than they should be, which is true, but one must remember that a huge chunk of these protesters are college students.

College students tend to have far more free time than the vast majority of people to find out more about things, since most have little responsibility (not all, I know. I know many people working multiple jobs to pay for college).

The problem is that a lot of the antiwar protesters are protesting based on opposition to all war and not this specific war, and the rest are simply shouting "No Blood For Oil!" when the matters in this war are not quite that simple.

I do believe that there is a genuine danger in allowing Saddam to continue his weapons program, but I also do believe that the desire to remove him permanently is not unrelated to the enormous amount of oil sitting directly under Iraq.

There are times when war is necessary, but, like I suspect many Americans are, I'm somewhat conflicted on whether this is really one of them or not. The thing that really gets me is the different treatment that North Korea and Iraq are getting.

North Korea is really far more of a danger to either shoot a nuke-tipped missile at Japan, China, or South Korea and/or sell some of their nukes and missile technology to groups like Al-Qaeda. So why go after Saddam first?

I think it's pretty much universally agreed that the U.S. Army is no longer equipped to fight a two-front war. Fine, whatever. But take this example (and yes, I realize this is not exactly the same circumstance, but this is for illustrative purposes only):

You're walking down the street and you see a guy with a knife about two blocks away. You turn and start running, only to have a guy pull a gun right in front of your face. You know you're going to have to fight them both. Why in the world wouldn't you try and disarm the guy with the gun first?

A lot of people think negotiations with North Korea need to go first. Okay, I agree.

But when the U.S. offered to restart most of the aid to North Korea in exchange for them giving up their nuke problem and the North Koreans told the U.S. to stick it where the sun don't shine, to me, that's an indication that you're not dealing with rational people.

And that, to me, is a much better case for regime change than, "Oooh, Saddam might have weapons."

And in case anyone wants to break out the "Saddam's hurting his people" argument, I give you last week's Newsweek article about how Kim Jong Il lives like a king while the vast majority of his people starve to death.

So in short, I'm not really sure we need to be raising hell about Getting Saddam Right Fucking Now when Kim Jong Il has turned down some fairly reasonable requests and seems (to me, at least) to pose a much greater danger.

End Politics. Back to Silly Shit next post.

Famousblog

Dave Barry seems to have hopped on the bandwagon. It's linked off his official website, so I can only presume that this is actually him.

Fun note: He's using the same template I started out with before I transformed it into what you see before you. He too, hates the dogs on the side. Anyone else using this template, look for an "img src = ....jpg" source tag, and just delete that single tag.

It gets rid of those cutesy little mutts in no time.

Ah, Chicago

Yay for dumb cops: Police Discover Supposed $660,000 Weed Bust Is Actually Hay.

Some days I think D.C. and Chicago cops should have a contest to see who's dumber. Clearly, it would go into multiple rounds...

Brrrr...

When I left my apartment this morning, the temperature (not the wind chill, the temperature) was -4 degrees.

One of the main reasons I moved here to Chicago is because I hate heat, and I swore that in exchange for non-brutal summers, I would never complain about the cold.

I lied.

I thought my eyeballs were going to freeze open when I was waiting for the train this morning, which was, not suprisingly, not too crowded. This is utterly absurd.

Fortunately, it's supposed to warm up a bit...highs in the teens! Yeah.

I must be clinically insane to want to live here on some sort of permanent basis...

On The Bandwagon

Sarah posted this, a link to a "Past Life Diagnosis" thingy, and people have been having themselves diagnosed left and right. My Diagnosis:


Your past life diagnosis:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I don't know how you feel about it, but you were female in your last earthly incarnation.
You were born somewhere in the territory of modern Korea around the year 1450.
Your profession was that of a chemist, alchemist or poison manufacturer.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Your brief psychological profile in your past life:
You were a sane, practical person, a materialist with no spiritual consciousness. Your simple wisdom helped the weaker and the poor.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The lesson that your last past life brought to your present incarnation:
You should develop your talent for love, happiness and enthusiasm and you should distribute these feelings to all people.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Do you remember now?


Ha! I've never been sane, in this life or any other. Although given my current choice of profession, I think my previous profession of Alchemist and advice to spread happiness and enthusiasm make sense. I am, however, now conscious of spirits (rim shot).

The Korea part, however, makes absolutely no sense. Maybe it explains why I like Margaret Cho so much...

In Other Good News

Adam, my roommate, has been appointed Editor in Chief of the Daily Northwestern!

And there was much rejoicing, but a little sadness, since he will pretty much disappear from our apartment until June. I might see him when I come back from bartending, but otherwise, he's gonna live at the Daily. Yay for journalistic masochism.

I'm told I'm being drafted into practicing my bartending skills this weekend at a celebration for him. This is gonna be fun...

Mmm, Brains...

I just did 2 shots! God, I love my homework now.

I was filling out index cards for all these random shots, and I saw 2 that I could easily make with stuff I had sitting around (the Brain and the Bloody Brain, which involve Peach Schnapps, Bailey's, and Grenadine), so I figured, well, I oughta know what these damn things taste like.

So my sincerest apologies for the spectacular lack of blogorificness lately. This is the week I'm doing 2 weeks of bartending school in one, so I'm out the door shortly before 8am and back at 6:30pm. This wouldn't be as much of a problem if I weren't nocturnal.

I really cannot function if I try to get up before about 11am. It's kind of sad, but it's also a big reason why I think I'd do really well as a bartender. The biggest complaint I've heard from people who bartend is about the hours, but for me, it's one of the biggest advantages.

The other thing that sucks is 2 days' worth of homework that I have to do when I get back. Granted, this is the equivelant of about half a class's worth of NU homework, but nevermind. So I come home, I fuck around, I do my homework, then I have to sleep so I don't pass out during class.

The funniest thing is that I've now become even more anal about grades. Since I got 100's on my Alcohol Awareness (aka Why Not To Let Dumb Fucks Drink And Drive) and 5 drinks in 5 minutes test, I am now obsessed with getting 100% on my final, 15 drinks in 10 minutes.

However, this is something that will probably earn me a lot more money than my NU degree (despite costing 1/216th of said degree), so I figure I really gotta nail this one. Plus, I seem to have a knack for memorizing drinks which I didn't have for analyzing films.

Anyway, further adventures in bartending to come. For now, sweet, sweet sleep.

Hee

One of the better columns the Daily Northwestern has ever published: Friends, Your Sex Is Making Me Too Jealous.

And All That Jazz

I gotta heartily recommend you go see Chicago. If you know you hate musicals, then skip it. Otherwise, definitely check it out, it's really, really well done, with a nice balance between the fantasy musical sequences and the movie-like sequences that move the plot along.

Yay good movies! Although I'd like to see them a bit more spread out. There's like 15 movies out right now I want to see, and then there probably won't be any more until about May or June. Oh well. I'll feast whilst the feastin's good.

Uncle

Continuing with the roadtrip...I swear, I'm gonna finish this this week...

From Shamrock, Texas, where last we left off, I headed off to my uncle James (my dad's brother, who I still call uncle Jimmy)'s house in Springfield, Missouri. In order to get there, you have to cross Oklahoma. All of it.

Oklahoma is a huge comedown from Arizona and New Mexico. It's relatively flat, there's not much along the highway but cows, and the scenery can't hold a candle to the West. There's also not as much in the way of entertaining silliness along the way that caused me to stop.

Therefore, I chose to shoot through Oklahoma at the fastest prudent speed, which was 10 miles above the posted limit.

I refer to this measure as the "real speed limit," since most cops will not pull you over for it, because they know some dickhead going 15 miles over the limit will be coming along soon, and they'll be able to write a much bigger ticket.

You of course have to gague how fast the other drivers on the road are going, so that if you're in a strict-enforcement zone, you don't get pulled over. But in most parts of the country, 10 miles over the speed limit is about right.

In metropolitan Atlanta, however, the speed limits are simply suggestions and the actual speed limit is the speed of light. Drivers there refuse to obey even the laws of physics. They're almost as bad as Boston and Miami drivers.

Anyway, my uncle lives out on a farm about 10 miles outside of Springfield (he's actually a pediatric cardiologist, but he and his ex-wife, Allison, ran a business breeding Arabian show horses, thus the farm). Staying with him is always entertaining because he really is an overgrown college student.

He's 56 years old but talks about the audiophile surround sound system with gigantic plasma TV that he's having put in his new house (he's selling the farm) with the same glee that I talk about guitars. Which is to say, much.

He is a character. His new house is going to be gorgeous when he's done renovating it, although he explained to me a couple of his "fabulous" design choices, like painting the dining room with bright red paint with copper flecks in it, that I would question were he not so enthusiastic about it.

I'm always amused by the fact that my dad thinks that he and I are kindred spirits, especially when he talks about design. He'll be talking and talking and something sounds good and then he takes a turn and I'm just like, whoa, wait, you want to do what?

I'd say I'm probably a lot more similar to him than I am to a lot of my other relatives, especially on my dad's side. We're both horribly obsessed with music (he burned me a copy of The Eminem Show on his new IMac with a burner that he thinks is the Greatest. Thing. Ever., which is fun) and have a fairly similar sense of humor.

It was kind of funny when I was flirting with the incredibly cute chef at the Benihana-type restaurant we went to (although since this was southwestern Missouri, I think she probably thought I was just being nice), and I could tell he was jealous that I got to do this.

When she left, he muttered, "I wish I was young again." I told him it's probably not the daze of wine and roses he remembers. Or, more than likely, doesn't, since he was a big ol' hippie back in the late '60's, and did copious amounts of drugs.

But still, being young is not exactly the giant swath of happiness he likely remembers it as. People have very selective memories as they age, and they tend to remember only the extremes: Extreme happiness, extreme pain, etc.

I don't think he wants to go back to pulling 36-hour shifts as an intern again, go back to doing nothing but scut work and going through the MCAT's again. He wants to get back the thrill of saying "I'm a medical student" or "I'm a doctor" for the first time.

Perhaps I'm projecting, but I felt like shaking him and saying, "Are you nuts?!"

The funniest part was that my dad turned to each of us for a report on the other. He has a hard time getting Jimmy to tell him anything other than, "Oh, I'm fine. Not much going on," which is occasionally a problem with me as well.

So he told me when I called him to let him know I had arrived in one piece (a daily ritual throughout this trip to calm Señor Paranoia), he told me to get the dirt on what was going on with Jimmy.

He then made the dumb mistake of telling me he was going to ask Jimmy for a report on me. I was like, dad, don't tell me that if you actually want to know anything. Now I know not to tell Jimmy anything really gossipy!

Of course, that would be more of a concern if there was anything really gossipy going on in my life. I finally came out to him (before I hit on the chef), and he was, of course, not terribly surprised. Probably partly because his Allison (who knew) told him, although I couldn't confirm that suspicion.

However, my dad already knows about that minor detail of my life, so no biggie.

Anyway, it was fun visiting him, and I did feel a bit guilty after leaving, since I hadn't talked to him in quite some time before that, and I really don't talk to my entire extended family all that much in the first place.

So I guess now I've got another thing for my "List Of Things I Need To Get Off My Ass And Do..."

Just When You Thought It Was Safe...

Or really, just when you felt like you were really starting to be completely fine with being alone, you get something to remind you that your hormones still have a say in all this. To wit:

I was going through and writing down shot recipies when I came upon the following list of shot names, in their exact order:

- Screw-Meup
- A Piece Of Ass
- Absolut Sex
- Blow Job
- Muff Dive
- Orgasm
- Screaming Orgasm
- Multiple Orgasm
- Screaming Multiple Orgasm
- Sex On The Beach
- Red Headed Slut
- Purple Hooter

And I thought, I need to make sure I get a job at a lesbian bar so I have some remote chance in hell of getting laid ever again. Hopefully with a red-headed slut.

Though hopefully not with anyone with purple hooters. That's gotta be a sign of some sort of vascular disorder or something...

Numbers Game

From Coop: Bible College Shuns 666 Phone Number.

Back To The Future

I'm sort of jumping around in the time-space continuum as I continue to finish up writing about the end of my roadtrip, since I didn't have internet access for almost 10 days (which for me, is a ridiculous period of time, proving that I need a laptop).

So let me bring you all up to speed on what's happening right now.

- I got rejected for the final outstanding Real Job I had applied for before I left, but right now I'm thinking that's not really such a bad thing, since I'm thinking I just got out of college, why in the world do I want to rush into sticking myself behind a desk?

- Following that line of logic, and also the logic that you can make a fuckload of money bartending, I'm currently in bartending school, learning all sorts of trade secrets and trying to memorize a ridiculous number of drinks.

- I've started playing the guitar a lot more than I was during school. I've actually practiced every day for about the last two weeks, something I have not been able to say since early in my freshman year of college.

- I have actually relaxed for once, which has the utterly bizarre side effect of bringing out a dormant Southern Accent, which I'm not entirely sure where it came from. My dad grew up in Atlanta, and his has come roaring back since he moved there, and every time I talk to him, mine comes out.

This drove my ex nuts. I'd call her after I got off the phone with my dad and say something like, "Hey huhney, how are yew all doin' over there?" and she'd say, "You've been talking to your dad, haven't you?" I'd hang my head in shame and say, "Yep."

But now it's gotten weirder. Some days it's so thick, it's worse than my dad's. It was really bad when we were in Las Vegas. People must have thought I was from Alabama or Northern Louisiana (it clearly wasn't a N'awlins accent).

Some days I speak in my good old neutral Washington, D.C. accent. D.C. is neutral because all the accents coming together from all over the country (and all over the world, really) cancel each other out and you end up with Generic American.

When I went to sign up for bartending school, the woman I had to pay tuititon to asked where I was from, because she said my accent sounded like a weird combination of Southern and British. D.C. surprised her, though when I told her my folks were Atlanta and Connecticut raised, she claimed this made more sense.

I'm finished with bartending school a week from monday, and I'll update y'all (ack! there I go again!) on where I'm working. I'm currently debating what sort of establishment I should work in (sports bar or Irish pub seem to be front runners), but whatever. I'll find something.

I must say, however, that it is really nice to be finished with College. This is kind of a weird period where I really have no responsibility to anyone except myself, and I think I'm going to take full advantage of it while it lasts.

The Worst Smelling Stretch of Highway in America

This prestigious award goes to the stretch of U.S. 60 betweent Clovis, New Mexico and Amarillo, Texas.

When I was heading back to Interstate 40 from Roswell, I decided to head straight back up to I-40 through Amarillo rather than going through Lubbock, Texas. U.S. 60 picks up in Clovis and takes you all the way to Amarillo.

The stench that got to me? Cow shit. By the goddamn ton.

Now I've driven through areas where there are hundreds, even thousands, of cows before, but I've never smelled anything this wretched in my entire life. I think what probably happened is that I drove through shortly after all the farms in the area had fertilized their fields.

For city kids, if you've ever walked through a freshly mulched area, you know what I'm talking about. It smells like shit for about a week after the mulch is put down. However, for farm areas, the fertilizer is far more shit-intensive than urban mulch, so the stench is about 20 times more powerful.

My friend Joanna, who used to date a guy from a farm town in upstate New York, explained that she also found out the hard way that farmers all tend to fertilize at the same time, creating one horrific stench instead of an overall, seeping stench.

The worst part came from my own stupidity. When I first smelled it, I thought it was an isolated smell, so I rolled down my window to let some fresh air in.

Big mistake.

I almost threw up about four times during this hour and a half ordeal, but I knew if I pulled over, it was all over. I stepped on it and figured that no Texas Highway Patrolman wanted to sit in this shit stink trying to catch speeders, then step outside into it when they had to write a ticket.

I kept smelling it right up until I got just outside of Amarillo. I was so obsessed with getting away from it that I decided to get as far to the west side of Amarillo as possible, and ended up overshooting Amarillo completely.

I ended up driving an extra 100 miles or so before I stopped in Shamrock, Texas, just to get away from this smell. Well, actually, that's not entirely true. I could have stopped in Groom, Texas, about 40 miles east of Amarillo, but for one thing.

They had a 100-foot tall cross, brightly lit up by about 50,000 watts of electricity, by the exit to get off the interstate.

Now I try not to be too stereotypical, but when you're a) not christian, b) not straight, and c) in an area you know to contain many Southern Baptists, 100-foot tall crosses do not tend to make you think, "Wow, what an accepting bunch of people!"

So I decided, well, I feel okay driving farther, and I am definitely not staying here. Of course, it was not until after I made this decision that I saw a sign that showed Shamrock as being 60 more miles down the road. Whoops...

But at least it didn't smell like shit anymore.