Hilarious.

Obama came out a few days ago and reversed his position on the FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) bill that’s before the Senate right now. This bill would give telecommunication companies (phone and/or Internet service providers a la AT&T) retroactive immunity from prosecution for breaking the law.

Basically, the Bush administration went to the telecoms and said, “we’d like the power to monitor people’s phone calls and emails without ever asking for permission.” There were many rules in place that would allow the administration to do this with permission, but I guess they didn’t want to bother with all that messy paperwork. Most of the telecoms said yes … I’m pretty sure one of the major firms refused, but don’t quote me on that.

So now, there’s a bill before the Senate that will change the law to say that spying on us without permission was okay, it will be okay in the future, and the telecoms were justified in breaking the law when the president asked them to. Obama has spoken strongly against this legislation in the past, but just last week he changed his mind, presumably so he won’t look soft on terrorism.

Russ Feingold isn’t taking this lying down (see the awesome video below). He’s continuing to fight the bill, and this week they managed to push the vote back past the July 4th weekend. If you think it’s bullshit that our presidential candidate would support this violation of our privacy, please join this group on his website that’s urging him to change his mind. I’m sure there are people you can call, but I’ll give you that info when I get it. And Harmon … I know you’re an Obama man … if you have any suggestions, please contribute!

Saturday’s Washington Post featured an interesting article about a woman trying to track down the source of the “Obama is a Muslim” rumors. I was listening to the radio the other day and I heard a forum of swing voters talking about this very topic. Here’s what I learned from this discussion: never trust an important task to a swing voter, because I have rarely heard a group of people so confused about basic facts.

Figuring out who started the rumors is beside the point, anyway. His father is a Muslim and his middle name is Hussein. It doesn’t take a creative genius to figure out where the GOP and the ignorant are going to turn for their attack fix. The point is, anyone who seriously believes a man could run for president as a secret, ticking-time bomb Muslim agent lives in a fantasy world. That a significant portion of our population believes movies are reality is far more distressing to me than the fact that GOP operatives would use this ignorance to their advantage. Not to mention the reality that Islam is the world’s second biggest religion, one of our founding principles is freedom of religion, and that religion should have nothing to do with politics in the first place.

I was at 7-11 this morning buying my Gatorade, which is what I do now instead of coffee when it’s hot. The woman in front of me (who I shall call “the bubbly woman” from here on out) spoke to the 7-11 worker as though they were thick as thieves. I would have assumed the bubbly woman was in there every morning and had established one of those “I kind of know you” relationships with the woman behind the counter, but the 7-11 worker registered no recognition on her face or in her attitude. The bubbly woman said hello as though she was greeting an old friend and put her diet Mountain Dew on the counter. The 7-11 worker lazily swiped the bottle over the scanner.

“So … how’s your Monday going?” the bubbly woman asked.

“Oh … Monday …” the 7-11 worker said with a blank face.

The bubbly woman nodded knowingly. “Mondays, huh?” she said.

I’m stuck on this question lately of what to do with myself. When I moved out to Los Angeles, I started freelancing for educational companies based in New York. I had a great year last year and made a tidy little income. Lately, though, the jobs haven’t been coming in as fast and furious as they had been, and I’m contemplating a career change. But what to do? Here’s what I can do: write. Pretty much anything. Need a catchy tagline for a movie poster? No problem. Here are a few, just off the top of my head:

• For a horror movie: He’s just hanging around … UPSIDE-DOWN. He is a vampire.
• For a romance: Sometimes the thing you’re looking for is right behind you: love. (This would be for a movie called Love Is Right Behind You.)
• For a buddy comedy about old people: The only thing they forgot was their teeth.

So, obviously I can do that kind of work. But I can’t get that kind of work, because nowhere on my resume does it say, “comes up with amazing taglines for movies that don’t exist.” And now that I think about it, even if it did, it probably wouldn’t help me much. If you look at my resume, you would think that the only thing I knew how to write was brief, 1 page stories and questions for standardized tests, because that’s how I earn my living. But I also know how to start publishing companies, write novels, program websites, and write catchy songs on demand. I believe I am a highly marketable person, but the marketplace does not seem to agree with me. No matter what you might hear on the Today Show “Job Watch” segment, it is far more important to have a rigid career definition than the ability to think outside the box.

And that even goes for jobs for which I have gobs of experience. Even though I’ve been a founding member of two publishing companies, I could never get a job at a publishing house, because I only know how to run them, not how to be employed by them. I’ve written a 250-page spelling review book and a vocabulary book of similar length, but where does that skill get me? More anonymity.

Here is my challenge to the universe: give me a sign that I can make a living doing the kind of writing I enjoy. Wake me up tomorrow morning to find that I’ve gotten 500,000 hits on my website and publications everywhere are clamoring for an opinion column from me. Make George Clooney call me in the morning and say that he simply must buy the rights to Johnny Astronaut or I, An Actress immediately.

Or just give me another crappy test-writing job, really. I’m not that picky.

Sarah and I recently went to Portland to visit my sister (Mandy) and brother-in-law (Mark) and their kids (Lexi and Noah). It was a really nice time. I’ve only seen her kids a handful of times in my life, so it’s a nice treat to get to hang out with them. She’s done an excellent job of propping us up as superstars to them, so when Aunt Sarah and Uncle Jeff come to visit they’re really excited to spend time with us, which is cool.

Lexi is three and she’s just getting into the understanding that she can use logic to get her way. One day I took her for a walk on the bike trails behind Mandy’s house. She’s done this walk many times and she has a share of landmarks that she has to stop at, mostly to prolong her time spent away from home and the rules that go with it. She’s either not prepared to admit this or not quite old enough to grasp her real motivations, so she has to develop a logical reason for each side trip.

The first stop was the fountain in their neighbor’s yard. She loves to stick her hands in it and grab at the bubbling streams of water. On this trip, she decided her hands were dirty and she really need to clean them. The day before, there was a rock that really needed a good washing. I recognized her stalling tactic but admired her determination all the same.

The next landmark was a park bench on the trail, which we had to stop at because she was tired. Never mind that the minute we stopped at the bench she had no interest in sitting on it. It was a valuable way to kill a few minutes, so it went in the travel guide as a bike trail must-see.

Next stop was a little bridge overlooking a somewhat rancid-looking stream. Here, I decided to stretch my creative muscles by suggesting that we throw some crap in the water to see what happened. She immediately ascertained that the more things she could find to throw in the water, the longer she could avoid returning to her normal life. So we gathered up a bunch of pinecones and tossed them over the bridge, me hanging on to her for dear life with the overwhelming fear that I would have to explain to my sister how one of her children had come to have her brains dashed against a bunch of rocks while under my supervision.

Of course, one batch wasn’t enough, so we had to go back and get more pinecones “because [she] had to throw her pinecones because [she] liked throwing pinecones and that’s why [she] had to throw them because [she] liked it.” And then another batch, and then another batch. And then rocks. And then dandelions. As we were throwing things into the water, a giant sea otter or water weasel or something floated by. I pointed it out to her excitedly, but she didn’t really see how an otter would help her kill more time and went about her business, unimpressed.

After a good 20 minutes of polluting the creek, I decided it was time to go home. Lexi was smart enough to know that “just one more time” could quickly stretch into “just 30 more times” if she played her cards right. And this is when one has to weigh the benefits of being a cool uncle against the benefits of not having to waste anymore of my day tossing pinecones from an eight foot high bridge. As much as I admired Lexi’s logic that the rest of the pinecones needed to join their friends in the water, I had to rely on the illogical explanation that we had to leave because I said so. Sometimes, reasoning is no match for the ability to pick a child up and carry her wherever you need to go.

Noah went out with us the next day and came back beet red after about 5 minutes in the sun. He’s a little too young to mess with logic, but Sarah had a field day trying to explain to Mandy that we weren’t trying to break her kids. Luckily, Mandy’s pretty unconcerned about what shape her kids come back in, as long as they’re still breathing and she doesn’t have to deal with them for awhile. A few days later he sprained his leg while going down a slide and has to spend the next four weeks in a cast. Sarah and I managed to hotfoot it out of town before we could take the blame.

But that’s all a tangent. The reason I wrote this post is to explain that my sister has ruined all hopes of me leading a productive life by sending me home with a Nintendo DS game called Professor Layton and the Curious Village. It’s painfully addictive.

I’ll leave you with a picture of Noah and Lexi dressed as Sonny and Cher, as kids are known to do every now and again.

There’s an article in the Washington Post today about how Obama is trying to bring evangelicals into the Democratic party. Fantastic. There’s gotta be a segment of the evangelical population who would rather help the downtrodden than murder abortion doctors. As could be expected, Republicans aren’t quite sure what to do about this:

It’s a move that’s caught some conservative evangelicals off guard. They say they are surprised and dismayed to see a liberal-minded politician attempting to conscript their troops. At the same time, they say that Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) has done little to court their affections.

“I’ve never seen anything quite like it before,” said evangelical author Stephen Mansfield, who wrote “The Faith of George W. Bush” and has a forthcoming book about Obama.

“To be running against a dyed-in-the-wool Republican, and to be reaching into the Christian community as wisely and knowledgeably as (Obama) is — understanding their terms and their values — is just remarkable.”

Oh no! He’s conscripting our troops! Who will we get to protest the funerals of gay teenagers?

Thankfully, the liberal media is right there to show us there are two sides to every story:

Still, some religious leaders wonder whether Obama’s Christian-focused outreach might alienate Jewish and Muslim voters, for example, not to mention the Democratic Party’s large secular wing.

“You really have to consider the question: What message does this send to people of other faiths?” said the Rev. Romal J. Tune, a Washington pastor who works on religious outreach with the Democratic National Committee.

So, Republicans have owned Evangelicals for the last God-knows-how-many years, but the second Obama makes the (incredibly wise) move of trying to include them, he gets criticized for disenfranchising Jews and Muslims. Here’s a little tip for reading articles like this: whenever a reporter uses a nonspecific phrase like “some religious leaders,” it generally means “we found one guy who expressed doubt.” Sometimes it means “we couldn’t find anyone who expressed doubt, but there’s probably someone out there who feels this way.”

Along these lines, I was at the gym yesterday when I saw footage from a press conference that Mike Bloomberg gave in Florida explaining to “a Jewish group” that Obama is not actually a secret Muslim. Now, really. I don’t mean to stereotype, but it seems to me that Jews tend to be more educated than the general public. The people who believe the Obama Muslim rumors aren’t Jewish voters in Boca Raton, they’re undereducated rednecks who are just itching for a reason to not vote for a black guy. And I don’t really think the mayor of Queer and Degenerate-ville USA is the best person to convince them otherwise. Now, if we could get Larry the Cable Guy to spread the good word, that would be a coup.

It seems like every day, there’s some niggling little problem that obsesses me and prevents me from doing whatever it is I actually do for a living. This morning, the problem was figuring out how to organize my life with to-do-lists and calenders. Now, whenever I’ve encountered these sorts of issues in the past, I’ve said to myself, “why don’t I post the solutions to these problems on my blog, so that if anyone else is trying to accomplish the same thing, they might stumble across my blog and find some helpful hints?” And then I’m selfish and lazy and keep my information to myself.

Well, not today, friends. Here you have my first ever attempt at a primer that may or may not someday simplify your life. The jury is still out on whether or not it has simplified mine.

Please note: this helpful primer is only for people with PCs. People with Macs probably already have some simplistic solution at their fingertips that accomplishes the same task in a much more elegant and impressive way. Also, this post is bound to be pretty uninteresting to anyone who reads my blog for my heelarious stories, so I’m posting the bulk of it after the jump.

The problem: I want to be able to enter something on my calendar or to do list without having to open up Outlook and click around a bunch of boxes.
(more…)

Two executives from Bear Stearns are being indicted today for their part in the subprime market crisis:

Barclays accused Bear Stearns of knowing for months that certain assets in the Bear Stearns High-Grade Structured Credit Strategies Enhanced Leverage Master Fund were worth “far less” than their stated values.

Now, really. Isn’t this sort of like suing your friend because you got hurt when you jumped off a building after him? The market collapsed because loans were being given to people who could not afford to pay those loans back. Everyone knew that part of the equation. And I guess the reason why the Bear Stearns guys are being indicted is because they claimed to have a magic formula where you could make money off of something that cost more than it was worth. While they should not be rewarded for claiming they had magical powers, anyone who bought into this scam should also accept responsibility for believing they had magical powers.

It has somehow become a sign of strength in our culture to point the fingers at others when you’re caught making a mistake. Well, I’m sick of it. Starting right here and now, I am going to fess up to everything I have done wrong in the hopes that my small gesture will create a Pay It Forward-esque shockwave that will permanently affect America’s value system. Here we go …

• To Matt Rasmussen: in 7th grade gym class, I told Brad something-or-other to throw a basketball at you because I was afraid he would throw it at me instead. And I am sorry.
• To Alan Head: Mike Tygeson smashed your graphing calculator and threw its pieces all over the hall when he removed it from our locker, and I let him, because I wanted him to think I was cool. And then when you asked me about it, I lied and told you I didn’t know what happened. For this, I will always be sorry.
• To Jon McCarron: I blew up at you when your dad called and asked me when you were going to get your copies of Danger City II, and I am still mighty embarrassed by it. I’m sorry.
• To Jon Harmon: Sometimes in high school I was kind of just a dick to you for no good reason. You were a good friend and I’m sorry.
• To Don Brewer: I could get pretty snippy and condescending sometimes when we were roommates, and I hope you know I’ve matured and I’m sorry.
• To Jeff Rosenberg: I talked to you on the phone at Silvio’s two summers ago and said I was going to call you. I still haven’t. You were one of the best friends a guy could have and I have totally lost touch with you and it’s easier to not call than to think about catching up on 8 years of lost time, and I’m sorry about that almost every day.
• To Ginni Biggs: you wrote me an email about 6 months ago saying you missed me and wanted me to come to Flagstaff, and it’s still sitting, unanswered, somewhere in my inbox. I miss you too and I’m sorry.

That pretty much covers it. I’ve done 7 wrong things in my life, and now they’re all better. If, however, I’ve wronged you somehow and forgotten about it, please feel free to write to me and get your very own well-deserved apology. The buck stops here.

I’m just catching up on my friend Josh’s blog at the Arizona Daily Sun. Man, is he a good photographer. Here are a couple of my favorite shots, which I’m reprinting without anyone’s permission and if you try to stop me I’ll cut you:

He’s also an excellent writer. Sarah particularly liked this bit of information:

It takes an entire can of hairspray to ready a poodle for competition.

Also, he came to my wedding in a gorilla suit: