2008

I should be sleeping instead I’m rambling

Kill your television

I’ve clearly fallen back to the “overthink it and never end up doing it” side of blogging from my previous snuggly home over on the “don’t think about it at all just vomit it out and hit publish” side. I’m sure there’s a happy medium between the two I just haven’t had luck yet putting my finger on it. What I do know is it turns out you can’t say “I’m going to blog every day” and “I’m only going to blog well written thought out and edited pieces” and expect that to happen overnight. Or in the next day or two. I guess it’s more of a gradual change from one to another. But I’m done talking about blogging for the moment.

For the first time since I first set foot in SoCal Los Angeles hasn’t been feeling like home. It’s a weird thing to describe, I love this city like no other I’ve ever lived in. When describing that to people in the past I would usually note that I moved around a lot as a kid and once I moved out on my own I kind of kept up that pattern. I’d be in an apartment for a little over a year, or in a city for around 3 years before I started feeling the urge to move on. That all changed when I moved to LA and it was the first time that I could remember that I just felt at home the moment I got here. Years later I felt that same spark when I’d go on a trip and come back. I thought this meant I found the place I’d probably be forever. But that’s all changed in the past few months.

There’s many things that probably play into that – my amazing girlfriend living in another city; the fact that I sold my car last year and now commute by bike and the increasingly hot weather here makes it less than fun to get around many hours of the day; the fact that I recently moved back into an apartment I lived in for years in a past life; the fact that I went from a fairly free travel schedule to being constantly stressed about who would take care of the cats I suddenly ended up with and need find a home for; and just that I’ve lived here for almost 8 years now which is almost twice as long as I lived anywhere else in my life. A few months ago I started thinking about what it would be like to live somewhere else. I didn’t get a good answer then, but the question was officially planted.

All this has me thinking a lot about new chapters in life. A few friends have moved recently, gotten married, sold companies, all kinds of things that begin new chapters in their lives and close up old ones. In books chapters are so clear, the text ends there’s some white space, and then a number signifying the next one. It would be awesome if things were that clear in life. What I know is that the last few times I’ve come back to LA I haven’t gotten that overwhelming wave of “I’m home!” and that’s something that I haven’t taken lightly. In fact it’s something I can’t really stop thinking about.

In addition to where I’m at I’ve been thinking about what I’m doing. It’s immensely important to me that I’m proud of what I’m doing each day, and that I feel like it’s making a difference. I don’t have much more to say about that right now – I think I just need to remind myself of that from time to time. I blame punk rock and hearing Ian MacKaye scream “What the fuck have you done?!” too many times as a kid. Of course I wouldn’t change a thing about that. It’s good to have a reason to keep pushing.

This is going to give me nightmares

My friend Coop just sent me this Obama video which was linked on Reason’s Hit & Run blog. I watched it. I wish I hadn’t. Click play if you dare:

Maybe I’ve just payed too much attention to politics in my life, maybe I’m just too cynical, but anytime I see parents pushing their views on children I cringe. If you don’t think there’s anything wrong with that video, pretend it’s a room full of young impressionable children singing about marriage only being something between a man and a woman, or about how awesome Guantanamo Bay is. Think about how you’d feel if instead of wearing Obama t-shirts they were wearing something like this:

The message doesn’t make this kind of thing OK. In fact it fact it hurts the cause these people are trying to support. Using children to push your political, religious, or any other kind of ideals is just wrong. I’m really kind of disgusted.

I just got dropped

Wolfpack

I’ve written a few times on here about the wolfpack hustle ride in LA. It’s my favorite ride to go on and if I’m in LA on Monday night that’s where you will find me. That said, I haven’t been in LA many Monday nights recently and so I knew when I was getting on my bike and heading over there it was going to be rough. You see I get dropped on Wolfpack a lot. I generally need to do 3 weeks in a row to be able to finish it and depending on the route that could be more. Well tonight started off with a blast down Sunset which I was all in for, and then a sharp climb up Elysian Park and I just couldn’t pull that off tonight. I knew it right away and even though I’ve been working on hills, that was just too fast and my gearing was too high and a million other excuses why I couldn’t pull it off. But I knew that right away and so that was that. I’ll be in town next week and will give it another go then. It kicks my ass every time, but that’s kinda why I love it.

On qualifications

In the past week or so I’ve had close to 87 million people send me this poll on PBS.org. The poll is asking if Sarah Palin is qualified to be the Vice President or not. Let’s ignore the fact that polls like this are insanely hackable for just a moment, and ask the larger question, why does anyone care? People are acting like this is the actual vote and the outcome of this poll will some how have an impact on, well, anything except the traffic to PBS.org. It won’t. So what the hell?

But the larger question is about this “qualifications” thing. Is she qualified? Well let’s look at what the qualifications are:

Qualifications for the Office of President

Age and Citizenship requirements – US Constitution, Article II, Section 1

No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty-five years, and been fourteen years a resident within the United States.

Term limit amendment – US Constitution, Amendment XXII, Section 1 – ratified February 27, 1951

No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.

So is she qualified? Yes she is. But being elected to this isn’t really about who is qualified is it? It’s about who is the best person for the job, and that’s a much better question. Is she the best person for this job? The person who can do a better job than anyone else in the country? I don’t know how anyone can answer that question with a “yes.” She didn’t have a passport until last year, that alone tells me she isn’t the best person for the job. I should not be more well traveled than the president of the united states. I shouldn’t be more well traveled than anyone in major public national office. A major part of running a country is relating to other countries, which requires having been to them. That alone is enough reason for me to know she isn’t the best person for the job.

This on the other hand, is enough to scare the piss out of me. In this Newsweek piece, Sam Harris makes one of the best cases against I’ve seen yet. He writes about her religion:

“In the churches where Palin has worshiped for decades, parishioners enjoy “baptism in the Holy Spirit,” “miraculous healings” and “the gift of tongues.” Invariably, they offer astonishingly irrational accounts of this behavior and of its significance for the entire cosmos. Palin’s spiritual colleagues describe themselves as part of “the final generation,” engaged in “spiritual warfare” to purge the earth of “demonic strongholds.” Palin has spent her entire adult life immersed in this apocalyptic hysteria. Ask yourself: Is it a good idea to place the most powerful military on earth at her disposal? Do we actually want our leaders thinking about the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy when it comes time to say to the Iranians, or to the North Koreans, or to the Pakistanis, or to the Russians or to the Chinese: “All options remain on the table”?

Also, isn’t it somewhat telling that all the sudden the discussion is no longer Obama vs. McCain but now Obama vs. Palin. And what does it mean that half the country is ask “who the hell is this woman and is anyone really serious about her being VP?” while the other half is spending all their time making up excuses to justify everything she says and does?

links for 2008-09-24