Fat Kid Friday.

I am so unbelievably confused in my classes that I'm on the verge of breakdown. I simply haven't been preparing for class OR taking notes for a variety of reasons...and these are the two most difficult classes I've ever taken. Sweet. Now I will never get a clerkship. I should have applied this year.

Anyway, in honor of my incipient failure, I declare today Fat Kid Friday.

This one is a classic. Fat Hispanic kid falls in water because of his dickhead friend.


This one begins in awe inspiring form. This kid is CRAZY! And it ends...well...you'll see.


One of my all-time favorites. Fat kid interrupted in the middle of making some embarassing nature video getting shot at by paintballs.


This one is not funny. It's disturbing. Not for any particular reason except for the crystal clear proposition that Janice is a total fucking bitch. Fat girl almost falls out of a ride at an amusement park.

Food Continued.

This is not really a post. And I'm emphatically not on any sort of diet. But seriously, check this shit out...These are totally things I would order two of in a single day. Not cool.

Outback Steakhouse Aussie Cheese Fries with Ranch Dressing

2,900 calories 182 g fat

(This one we always get when I went to Outback with a group of people...jesus christ.)

Macaroni Grill Spaghetti and Meatballs with Meat Sauce

2,430 calories 128 g fat

(I don't understand.)

Quiznos Classic Italian (large)

1,528 calories 92 g fat

(What I eat before I start looking for another sandwich.)

On the Border Grande Taco Salad with Taco Beef

1,450 calories 102 g fat 78 g carbs 2,410 mg sodium

(It's a fuckin' taco salad. You're a retard if you're surprised)

Chili's Awesome Blossom

2,710 calories 203 g fat 194 g carbs (correct. awesome. worth it.)

Lonestar 20 oz T-bone

1,540 calories 124 g fat

(see above)

Your Mother, 200 lbs.

Minus 2,000 calories

(see above.)

Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.

So I begin with a famous quotation from Oscar Wilde. And you might think this heralds something pompous. Something heady. Some fundamental shift in my way of thinking. You would be correct. You would also be correct that the topic and tone of this upcoming post is the reason that Blogs are useless. It's about one of my two favorite topics. And it's not Angus.

Because today, I have decided that in spite of my longstanding support for large, enormous, succulent prehistoric super-sized leaves...
I am starting to support tiny, young, baby greens. (Holy shit, after seeing this picture, I might change my mind. Those leaves are AWESOME!!!)
So now we turn to baby green vegetables. Just look at that baby spinach. It's...almost buttery. I've recently been overcome by how utterly satisfying it is to take a big, fluffy fork loaded with shards of tender, deep green vegetables, and then shoving it all in my mouth and chewing away like the brontosaurus I am. (Ok, fine, jojo, Brachiosaurus.) I can't really describe why. Part of it is because leafy greens don't really seem like food to me. Pizza seems like food. Meat patty seems like food. Large helpings of warm smooth starches and big chunks of protein seem like food. They're created and manufactured for our consumption.

But salad greens seem so different. They're just leaves off plants that, unless I've been fooled, pack massive amounts of nutrients into these tiny organic little sheets. And the baby ones are just so vibrantly green, so flawlessly formed with perfect complexions, flawless veining, and tenderness like your mother's touch. I mean, look at this picture...
Don't tell me you don't want to just swoop down and take huge bites out of fields of this stuff.
(Note: This picture came from a news story about tainted e. coli spinach.) I think my first real exposure to this satisfaction of eating greens came with buying "Live Butter Lettuce." I'm not sure if you've ever seen it before, but some grocery stores carry lettuce with its roots that is still alive when you buy it. When I first opened the thing, I just remember how the surface of the lettuce was so...(goddammit...) alive and fresh, and the texture of it it my finger tips was smooth and cool to the touch, but just the slightest bit tacky. And then I tore it with my fingers, and for some reason THAT was awesome too.

It just seems like we're so far removed from such basic foods, that it seems so strange to be shoveling raw plant leaves into our mouths. It's probably stranger to THINK that it's strange to be eating raw vegetables...but it is sorta primal.

Now I want to make clear: I generally don't like vegetables. I hate ordering steamed vegetables at restaurants. I pick the carrots off my salads. I eat cucumbers but always dread the chore of it. I don't understand why people eat Beets. (Bears eat beets.) I think Romaine lettuce is lifeless, boring, nutritiously devoid crap, I think Iceberg lettuce is even worse, and I generally don't understand Caesar salad, unless it's made very well, and without huge standalone chunks of white lettuce spine fouling up the whole thing. I don't like broccoli, but I like the satisfaction of eating something so clearly bizarre, and undisputably nutritious that at least I can feel some satisfaction that some good will come from it. I don't feel any sense of satisfaction in eating most fruit either. An apple? What sorta satisfaction do you get from THAT? Hey, semi-sore gums from biting into a geometrical shape not meant to be bitten straight into and a flavor that's never all that satisfying. (Note: Mango does rule.) Point? I don't actually like most vegetables. For example, THIS?

...is God's joke on humanity. Pure Suck. It's like seeing what stupid shit you can get fish to eat in those parks with fish food dispenser. After you run out of cat food to throw at the disgusting fish, people invariably turn to rocks, loogies, and wood chips to see what the fish will eat. (Have you never noticed that the areas around those feeding spots are invariably stripped bare of pebbles and loose debris?) God started with steak, moved to broccoli, and then celery. Hence, celery eaters are God's disgusting moron fish that all of God's friends go "EWWWWW GROSS!!!" at.

Although the obsession doesn't run as deep, I do enjoy the occasional salad mix
I'm not sure that I actually like the flavors so much as the wide variety of colors, shapes, and other novelties. I especially like those little spiky seeming fuckers, sorta like the one in the picture above the word "Green." I also get immense satisfaction from eating dandelion greens. Why? Because they're dandelion greens.

This post was by far the most ridiculous thing I've written in awhile...but i'm sorta freaking about secured transactions and I'm scared to open my book...sigh.

Disclaimer: Author has just bought 1 share in Earthbound Organics.

Amtrak: Suck It.

Note: This post was written in several pieces. The first time was after 2 hours of intense boredom. The second time was after 2 hours more. This post is horribly repetitive, long, uninteresting, and reads like the Diary of Anne Frank, except with slightly more intensity and meaningfulness. And it happens to literally be me whining for hours and hours. This is me live blogging one of the least interesting, most boring, most irritating non-events of my life. And this is exactly why blogs rule (fucking suck as self-indulgent uselessness.)

Enjoy!


This life of mine has little to report. Apart from the obvious things that everyone is aware but of which no one speaks, my life has been pretty stressful, albeit it entirely uneventful.

At this very moment, instead of doing something productive, I am sitting on a broken down Amtrak train in the middle of Connecticut. It is 11:11 pm. The train has been broken down for the past 2 hours. The train was operating just fine, mind you, until the internal cabins suffered some sort of failure, meaning that the cabins were a little dim. Sure sure, that was slightly inconvenient. And to remedy this problem, the “engineer” (Yes, that’s how he was described to us), decided that the best solution would be to power down the train, turn off the engine, and attempt to recycle the engine. Whatever the hell that means. The result, as you could surmise, is that once the engine was turned off, the life force was gone. And we sit, broken down, inside of a drafty Amtrak beast, with a large Asian in coach class, feeling forlorn as the cold breeze creeps in under the train doors, and feeling a sense of regret at sitting so near the Café Cart and restrooms, both of which have turned out to be spectacularly annoying during a stranded train situation.

We’re currently awaiting the arrival of a “Rescue Engine” which, if I understand correctly, will pulls us the rest of the way. What this means for me, is that I will spend 10 hours on a train on this fine Black Friday instead of eating leftovers, doing homework, or even sitting in the warmth and comfort of my own home. Without even light enough to do my homework. For shame. (Fortunately, there was beer in the café cart, so Sam Adams is keeping me company, helping me pass the time.)

Now, if I could smoke a cigarette, things would be slightly better. But since contracting a respiratory infection of some sort, I have been over 48 hours without a cigarette, and think it’s probably a bad idea. (Now, you may be asking why, if I can stop smoking for 48 hours, why I don’t just quit. Answer? Four words: It’s awesome. Shut up.)

Since it appears I have all the time in the world I can fill you in on some of the boring inanity that my legal life is comprised of.

1) My brother has acquired “Rock Star,”
(….ah crap, I just saw a train go past us…sigh….)
…a video game where you actually play guitar, bass, and drums with electronic versions. Here’s a picture. Anyway, turns out I’m awesome. Not at the game…but at life. But also at the game. Or at least, I can play Hard versions of some songs.
ME  Awesome.

2) Thanksgiving was good.

3) Your mother was better.

4) I have nothing else to report. Peace out.

Edit: It is now 11:40 pm. We were just informed we were going to move the train forward. And then, in this next forward area, we are going to REPLACE one of the engines on the train…because…..as it turns out, they just realized that 1) The rescue engine couldn’t attach to the front of the train, and 2) If it Did, we still wouldn’t have power. It seems to me that either of these problems was perfectly foreseeable before sitting on the track for over 2 hours.

Edit 2: It is now 1:17 a.m. We haven’t moved. It has gotten much colder. Things are much much worse. So now, that is has become a full-blown event, I’m going to lay the situation for you…

I went to Thanksgiving with a bit of a chest cold. I had just managed to dodge a rapidly emerging sore throat, and felt it spread into my upper lungs. I was also exhausted. So exhausted that I passed out on the floor of the Thanksgiving get together and had my picture taken with a shoe in front of my face. (See Facebook.) Anyhow, I feel worn, torn, and feel constantly on the verge of catastrophic illness. (mistake #1)

So I get up feeling much better this Friday morning, a morning which also brought a 20+ degree drop in temperature. I went through the day in typical manner, slightly dreading the 8 hour train ride in coach I was to embark upon later in the afternoon, but I wasn’t all that worried. I mean, the train was supposed to arrive at 11:50 pm, and the subway stopped running at 12:15, so I didn’t have anything to stress out about, right? I could work on the train for a nice 8 hours, sleep a little, take the last subway out, and walk home to a warm apartment full of beer, and freshly made Chinese food from my mother.
So I started packing things up, and I decided I didn’t really need to charge my phone overnight. I mean, why bother, right? (mistake #2)

So I begin packing up my stuff, and my mother tells me to wear my sweater. I say, “no, why?” and wear my long sleeve t-shirt. (mistake #3). I carefully move my computer gear out to the main room in my bro’s apartment in order to pack it up properly, and, as it turns out, I forget to put the power adapter in my bag. (mistake #4)

And so I get on the train…and I sit on the cabin right next to the Café Car (mistake #5), and next to the main toilets (mistake #6)…

4:32 -The train ride begins. It’s boring, and once on the train, I realize I don’t have my power adapter, and stare wistfully at the power outlets next to me in the train. A sense of longing comes over me. I want my AC adapter.

4:33 - I get over it. And I open up my secured transactions book and read for 4 hours, falling asleep for 3 hours. I manage to eat two Chinese pineapple cakes in the next 4 hours.

8:33 - It’s smooth sailing all the way past New York, past New Haven, and I’m on my way home. At some point in the midst of Connecticut, the train’s internal power seems to go out. Now I’d like to note that this power goes out on trains like, 20 times per trip. This time it just didn’t come on. So what does this mean? This means, you can’t plug in your computers or phones (see mistake #2 and counterfactual mistake #4). It also means that the cabin lights are slightly dimmer. No biggie. There’s really no need for either of these amenities. It’s a train. It’s 9:30 pm. It’s not a big deal. The train is clearly running just fine, and it just seems to be an internal wiring problem. The train is running JUST FINE.

9:30 - For this tiny little problem, they tell us that the Engineer wants to shut the whole engine down and recycle it, and fix the internal power problem.

9:35 - The train shuts down. We are told this process will take 5 to 10 minutes. I start to get mildly anxious about catching the subway back. But I reassure myself, 5 or 10 minutes will allow me to barely catch the last subway car, save 50 bucks, and the hassle of fighting hundreds of people for a midnight cab. No electricity means low light, no heat, and annoying teenage girls behind me.

10:30 - Silence. I go and buy a beer. The bathrooms are constantly in use with jackasses leaving the bathroom doors wide open after use. I can smell the blue. The deep lovely blue of train toilet water. Over the last hour, over 100 people have visited the café car for beer and food. Each trip opens the cabin door to the outside temperatures and lets in a breeze that whips around my ankles. It’s cold. The temperature is dropping. My feet take on that clammy wet feeling they get when it’s cold.

11:00 - We are informed that the Engineer, who is on the phone by the way, and not on the train, cannot get the train started again. A rescue engine is on its way from New Haven. That will take an hour. Another 100+ people thought café car was a good idea letting in another 100+ bursts of cold draft into the train. My beer runs out. I consider getting another, but it seems a mite excessive to start pounding beers on the train.

11:40 - The Rescue Engine arrives. Whoops. Apparently it can’t attach to the train, thus it cannot pull us. And, even if it did, we still would not have heat. This sounds to me like sending a crane to pick up the ocean…and realizing that you can’t use a fucking crane to pick up the ocean….but only after you got there and noticed that THIS, does not pick up Ocean. It remains cold. I want beer. I get concerned about starving, and eat a pineapple cake. (translated: me want food.)

11:41 - We are informed that the new plan is to await a brand new replacement engine which will be swapped out with the old Engine. That way the train will be back to normal. It is colder than it was a minute ago, my cough is getting worse, my nose is running, and I want beer.

11:50 - Our original ETA passes by. And smirks. That fucking bastard.

12:15 - The New Engine Arrives! Huzzah! I eat a taro cake in celebration.

12:35 - The lights flicker and turn on! The New Engine Lives! Heat begins to fill the cabin. Hope springs etern…

12:37 - …the lights turn off. The whiplash I give myself when my head sinks forward in disgust and disappointment will give rise to articles in medical journals about me being the first person to survive a neck whipping equal to that of a medieval hanging. I’m cold. I suck it up and go to get another beer. NONE LEFT! NO MORE ALCOHOL.

12:50 - We are forlornly informed that the brand new engine the put it simply died. They don’t know why. The plan is now to have another train come from New Haven, pull us back to New Haven, strap on (heh, strap on) diesel engines onto the train and THEN depart for Boston. My internal calculations tell me this will get me home no earlier than 4 am even if I caught a cab immediately upon my return.

1:15 - We’re told there are three plans now, working all at the same time. Plan 1, we will be towed back to New Haven where the trains will be repaired. Plan 2, the diesel engines will be brought out to us. Plan 3, I forget. In any case, the plans don’t make any sense.

1:20 - My computer battery begins to drain dangerously, since I won’t have my adapter until Monday, and I will need the computer to have power for things like, oh, exam studying? Transferring crucial files? Not blogging on the fucking train. (See mistake #4). My constant text messaging with my brother and a few others, which I have to this point used to keep me occupied, has dwindled my cell phone battery dangerously. (See mistake #2). And I’m fucking cold, bored, and hating the idea that this is going to last until late into the morning and that my plans for Saturday are now completely fucked.

1:37 - The backwards tow to New Haven begins
1:38 - The backwards tow to New Haven abruptly ends.
1:39 - The backwards tow to New Haven starts again…….and stops. Head explodes.
1:41 - The backwards tow to New Haven starts again. I am now wearing a full winter coat, my awesome black hat, a scarf, and I have consumed 3 pineapple cakes, 1 taro cake, 1 sam adams, 1 mini bottle of water (seriously, why do these exist?) 1 cracker, 1 oatmeal cookie, and some sort of dried fruit mix that I ate after holding the package under the light of my cell phone and scrutinizing the ingredients for the word “peanuts.”

1:42 - I whip out the Macbook and start to blog about this. And that brings me up to now…

1:52 - I type the words “I type the words ‘I type the words’”. Yes. I did just do that. And now I’m bored. Luckily I still have 6 pineapple cakes left. But I want beer. And I want a cigarette I can’t smoke. And I want sleep I can’t have. And an AC adapter, and a stronger phone battery. Everyone else is asleep. I hate that. I hate being the only one awake on the plane. Or in this case, on the train. But it always fucking happens. Everyone falls asleep happily for 10 hours, while I sit there glumly, silently, in the dark, thinking about whether it is ok to turn on my super bright reading light. Except today, there’s no power, so I can’t.

2:00 - We have arrived in New Haven. Now we await the Strap-Ons. Or more appropriately, I await the Strap Ons while the rest of the happy fucks slumber the misery away. My feet are cold. I haven’t taken my contacts out in 40 hours.

2:04 - HA!! The intercom lady wakes everyone up with a peal of feedback through the PA system and announces that they are “tying on some diesels.” (translated: Lubing up the Strap-Ons.)

2:05 - I experience a sense of smug satisfaction that I’ve been coughing my respiratory plague into a closed and sealed tube with no air circulation for the last 4 hours. Pasiant Zero! (Pasiant = Patient + Asian). I’ve unleashed Asian Dude Flu unto this foul world.

2:10 - Step outside to stretch out. It’s fucking cold. Stewardess looks at me, suspiciously says “are you a passenger sir?” My brimmed black hat hobo look apparently doesn’t inspire confidence. Because, there are, in fact, Asian hoodlums who wait around train stations at 2 am in the off chance this happens. And then who stand there looking miserable.

2:15 - Still cold. And I want chap stick.

2:16 - I found Chapstick. Thank the lord for small miracles.

2:23 -I take some solace in the realization that somewhere, on this train, the odds are that someone got some sort of food poisoning from eating massive amounts of undercooked poultry or underheated stuffing from inside an undercooked bird (Stuffing is Evil!) or suffers from some sort of IBS that they are totally and utterly in hell right now. (The water for the toilets no longer runs.) My thoughts go out to you.

2:26 - I have a thought. I think it would have been very easy for me to have become VERY upset about this whole situation. To be totally indignant about this. To feel burning anger and injustice. But, I sorta haven’t. I have maintained a total Zen-like calm this whole time. Now, that doesn’t mean I haven’t been absolutely fucking MISERABLE this whole time. Because I have been…

2:28 - Lights come on!!!

2:28 - …fucking miserable. Cold, tired, hungry, far from home, and bored out of my fucking mind. And too goddamned tall to sleep in these seats laying down.

2:30 - The train crawls forward out of New Haven. My calculations get us back to Boston sometime in the morning, probably by 5:30. That means I might actually make the Subway! …for the first train of the morning…I’m totally suing.

3:10 - I fall asleep, laying down on a seat approximately 3 feet across. Note that that I am 6'2".

5:10 – We arrive at Boston South Station. Finally. I stumble out into the very cold weather and stumble down to the Subway stop.

5:22 – No train yet. Argh.

5:32 – 22 minute wait for a subway car? I am going to fucking kill some.

5:33 – Yay!

6:05 – Stumble into my warm apartment. Ahhh…..

6:06 – Turn on Sportscenter, cracked a beer, sat on couch.

24: season hell.

This episode takes place between Sunday and Monday. (So it's really 24, but fuck you.)

.......Boop...beep....boop....beep.........

1) 10:00 - 6:00 pm Sunday. Ate a sandwich at noon. Sat in the journals office working on a final vet for a piece about to go out to the printers for our first set of proofs.

2) 6:01 - 6:30. Had a cup of hot chocolate and a small piece of cake. (not my idea. but totally awesome.)

3) 6:30p.m.-2:00 a.m. Sat in the library and slaved over this research paper. (seriously, it has ruined my life.)

4) 2:00a.m.-5:00a.m. For undisclosed, but highly legitimate reasons, I ended up drinking 64 ozs of beer from 3-5 am and did no work. Note, I had not eaten since the small sliver of cake at 6:10 or so.

5) 10:00 a.m. Monday: Slept through an extremely important secured transactions lecture.

..........Boop...beep....boop....beep........

Um...

I was recently sent this video by someone who understands my adoration for awkwardness, and things that are funny. See, e.g., Samwell, What What (In the Butt), YouTube (last visited 10 seconds ago). (I'm locked in the journal office reviewing an article about mercenaries before publication, sue me.)

Anyhow...here is the video. It's...Something. I don't know what. I just sat there, stunned, watching it...not quite sure what to think. Does she think it's funny? Or...what? I...uh...



Uh. My favorite part is around 1:48.

Edit: I changed my mind. The volume was too low when I first heard it. The video is actually adorable, in a very sad way. But funny nonetheless.

Beowulf.

Does anyone else just feel mildly embarrassed and cringe slightly every time they see a Beowulf trailer? The same sort of feeling when you watch your friends get up in front of large groups of people and say something cringe worthy? Its not like I know anyone in the movie, but whenever I hear the guy yell "I am beowulf!" to cheesy metal soundtracks, I get embarrassed for him.

Ignore the Gay...

...and simply be charitable.

As I mention too often, I am embarking on a mission of not really cutting my hair until after my Post-bar trip when I return to the Street of Walls in a pressed, charcoal, corporate suit and my day job that will keep me working late into the nights.

Anyhow, the fact is, that my hair is now entering massive dildo asian fro phase (or as AT&T/Cingular would term it, Massdilasiaphroase) and I sorta want to make some sort of modification to it so that I can allow it to keep growing without looking like I have a massdilasiaphroase. (Mark my words, this word will survive this post and one day into the OED.)

Anyhow, as possibilities into the future, or maybe just for stasis, I have picked a few pictures of haircuts. They are all the same guy, so you don't get distracted making fun of Asian faces...so I'd like to get your opinion on which or NONE I should start considering. And yes, I am aware that all of the pictures i have chosen are of one asian dude. but...lets be real, right?

...and as request. Please ignore the gay.


This first one is the closest to what I have now. Though I'm not at all sure how he got asian hair to have texture beyond "straightblack". I think I like this one.
Lets not pretend this next one is anything but absurd. I merely want to demonstrate the limited options I have as this race.

This one is possible, but I think a little too short.
Finally, here's my favorite.
P.S. I am also disappointed by how typing the word "Asian" into Google Image search, even for variants on the phrase "Asian Haircut" invariably brings up waves of porn and naked Asian chicks. What the hell (white) guys?

Magazine upon Magazine.

Shitty Still, so I'm posting.

So during a week when I was home this summer, my mother gave me a little piece of paper from her airline telling her that she had a few thousand miles left that were on the verge of expiration. On the other side of the paper were all those lovely magazines you can subscribe to, which, to be honest, is kinda exciting...

First thing I noticed? Wall Street Journal? Every Day? For a YEAR?!
....No. I was 300 miles short.

The Economist?
...Not availabe.

How about Penthouse then?
...Right.

That left me with a smorgasbord of supercrap: Maxim, FHM, Blender, Rolling Stone, Us Weekly, People, National Enquirer, Men's Health, GQ, Cosmo, Vogue, Mademoiselle, etc.

So given that she had tons of miles and nowhere to put them, I just did some math and got a bunch of subscriptions, which I subsequently forgot about.
...Until recently.

An avalanche of crappy embarrassing magazines has arrived at my doorstep. In isolation, I think any of these magazines might be acceptable, but coming in bundles of 3, all together, seems excessive, desperate, and lame. For example, upon arriving home from school at 11pm one day (yes, life rules), I noticed a huge wad of magazines stuffed into, and falling out of my mailbox. Men's Health, GQ, and something called Best Life? (There's no WAY I signed up for Best Life, fuckin Bon Jovi is on the cover of this months, although I'm still wondering if I in fact subscribed to GQ.) To add to the loveliness of it, it turns out they were also shipping back issues. So I had TWO Men's Health magazines, and TWO Best Lifes.

So there were 5 magazines overflowing my tiny little mailbox happily signaling to the world that I 1) am fat and out of shape, 2) am not successful with women, 3) cannot manage my finances in order to have my "best life" (shakes head), 4) need fashion help, 5) like reading about male role models for 20-somethings, and 6) might just have a gay hankering for pretty men with Rock Hard Abs!, and 7) that I subscribed to SEVERAL magazines to fix all of these problems. Because I'm a fucking moron.

The next question is what to do with all of them. I am simply not comfortable having a 3 foot stack of "how to be man" magazines sitting on my coffee table next to my two video game consoles and just a few feet away from my ever present display of alcoholism perched atop my kitchen cabinets.

Anyway got a shitty life and need a magazine's assistance?

More importantly, this is not why I posted this time. It turns out I did subscribe to one fairly respectable magazine, The Atlantic, which featured a story by Andrew Sullivan about Barack Obama. For those of you who've known me for at least a few months, you know both that I read and (generally) respect Andrew Sullivan, and that I (though increasingly lukewarm) support Obama's candidacy. If you want to read it, it's here. It's not spectacular, but it envisions American politics as a remnant of the Baby Boomer generation and their half-century of culture wars and fucked-up mentalities...and the argues that Obama is the necessary break. I just thought I'd drop a few bits from the article, in case your classes are boring you to death:

On Hillary:

As a liberal, she has spent years in a defensive crouch against triumphant post-Reagan conservatism. The mau-mauing that greeted her health-care plan and the endless nightmares of her husband’s scandals drove her deeper into her political bunker. Her liberalism is warped by what you might call a Political Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome. Reagan spooked people on the left, especially those, like Clinton, who were interested primarily in winning power. She has internalized what most Democrats of her generation have internalized: They suspect that the majority is not with them, and so some quotient of discretion, fear, or plain deception is required if they are to advance their objectives. And so the less-adept ones seem deceptive, and the more-practiced ones, like Clinton, exhibit the plastic-ness and inauthenticity that still plague her candidacy. She’s hiding her true feelings. We know it, she knows we know it, and there is no way out of it.

On Obama v. Clinton

The paradox is that Hillary makes far more sense if you believe that times are actually pretty good. If you believe that America’s current crisis is not a deep one, if you think that pragmatism alone will be enough to navigate a world on the verge of even more religious warfare, if you believe that today’s ideological polarization is not dangerous, and that what appears dark today is an illusion fostered by the lingering trauma of the Bush presidency, then the argument for Obama is not that strong. Clinton will do...

But if you sense, as I do, that greater danger lies ahead, and that our divisions and recent history have combined to make the American polity and constitutional order increasingly vulnerable, then the calculus of risk changes. Sometimes, when the world is changing rapidly, the greater risk is caution. Close-up in this election campaign, Obama is unlikely. From a distance, he is necessary. At a time when America’s estrangement from the world risks tipping into dangerous imbalance, when a country at war with lethal enemies is also increasingly at war with itself, when humankind’s spiritual yearnings veer between an excess of certainty and an inability to believe anything at all, and when sectarian and racial divides seem as intractable as ever, a man who is a bridge between these worlds may be indispensable.

On Religion (and Bush.)

This struggle to embrace modernity without abandoning faith falls on one of the fault lines in the modern world. It is arguably the critical fault line, the tectonic rift that is advancing the bloody borders of Islam and the increasingly sectarian boundaries of American politics...

You cannot confront the complex challenges of domestic or foreign policy today unless you understand this gulf and its seriousness. You cannot lead the United States without having a foot in both the religious and secular camps. This, surely, is where Bush has failed most profoundly. By aligning himself with the most extreme and basic of religious orientations, he has lost many moderate believers and alienated the secular and agnostic in the West. If you cannot bring the agnostics along in a campaign against religious terrorism, you have a problem.

That last section was meaningless, except the last sentence, which is AWESOME.

Anyhow, I certainly doubt this was informative for any of you. Reading what I just posted, I think none of it was particularly interesting, and I apologize.

...But not really.

Why I watch football.

Edit: Shit. I posted the wrong clip. The correct clip, with slo-mo is now available. Take the time. It's incredible.

So in light of recent events in my light, I came home and spent the entire day in front of the TV on a Monday night with the television on ESPN. The date, was October 22. The game, was the Colts one-time appearance on Monday Night Football. The talk all day was the same hyped-out drivel about Pats-Colts, Pats-Colts and Tom Brady's ridiculous numbers for the season...leaving me aware that the entire football season was going to be about the Pats and Colts.

But I digress. On my first dedicated night of football watching for the year, I stared at the screen, watched the complexities of the game and tried to grasp the intricacies of the strategies, and sort of glazed over as the camera turned to the fans. And then it happened.

It took me a second to realize that this wasn't a simple D-Fence prop. It took me another second to realize that it was something else. That...this was truly the coolest football fan in history. That I was destined to be a football fan, forever. And then in conversation, I was told that the clip was up on YouTube. And here it is, in all its glory.

Masterful. The Slow-Motion is key. Notice how poised and controlled he is all the way from start to finish. He sees his moment. He doesn't lose his shit. He doesn't get excited. His eyes don't even look to the prop. He doesn't give away a thing. And then beauty itself is born.

Asians: Part 7,562,3945

I cannot but be dismayed at my interactions with Asians this semester, and, as my facebook status update indicates, they are driving me batshit crazy at every turn.

1) On the law journal, two of the article editors (who happen to be Asian girls) are driving their co-editors crazy. They behave meekly, they won't make decisions, they don't take responsibility for their actions, and they're causing all of the responsibility to fall squarely on the shoulders of their co-White Girl editors. We're getting complaints daily about their constantly disappointing performance, and I've already made several mentions about instituting a no-asian-girl policy for promotions. One of them, however, seems to be ok. And, of course, my co-executive editor is an Asian female, and she's great. But, still.

2) I am working on projects with actual Asian men. The first project is writing a chapter on the Chinese financial system for a professor's textbook, on which have been staffed two Chinese LLMs. Both highly accomplished individuals who work for the People's Bank of China, the China Securities Regulation Commission, and the Agricultural Bank of China. These are actual Asians. From Asia. And they are driving me crazy.

Besides being kneejerk super reactionary defenders of China when anyone deigns to suggest that reality and the facts prevailing in the Chinese economic and political system are as they are and that the facts indicate that China is still in developing stages and is in fact NOT a utopian society where lemurs fetch your daily wank job handmaid on emerald dragonboats and the regulatory system hums along in utter perfection in a manner far surpassing those of the most sophisticated economies in the world, they cannot seem to grasp that not every forum is the place to argue about or justify why China is in the state that it is. (long sentence. wow.) They've been drinking the Red Kool-aid with such enthusiasm that it terrifies me to imagine what work product I'm going to get back from them when I have to finally pull this whole chapter together. I delegated this work to 3 other people, and yet I've written 85% of the chapter myself, receive continual confusion about the whole process, and constantly get challenges on the parameters I have given them to work within.

This is not to say that I don't listen, nor is it to suggest that the parameters I have laid out are perfect. It is more to establish the fact that more than anyone else in the world, foreign students have a bizarre tendency to "fight the hypothetical" so to speak, and simply refuse to accept what is being asked of them. For example, if someone were to ask you, would you save a drowning old man or an infant from the ocean, you would generally understand that my question is not logistical. I am asking you a philosophical question about your values, how they are expressed, and what choice you will make. For some reason, when these sorts of questions are asked to these students, the responses invariably include questions like:

"Well, how deep is the water? What if there is a sandbar underneath the old man? Does the baby know how to swim? How long until low tide? Is there a motor boat around? What color is the water? Is this a world where God directly intervenes and could just like, save them both? Can I see if Seman is around?(Sea Man!)"

Anyhow, you can just tell I spent like 1 hour with the ex-deputy director of the People's Bank of China who drove me up the fucking wall...and now, apparently, he's on my "team" for this project which can only end in humiliation, shame, and absolutely ass-wrenching stress.

(I typed in "FOB" to try find some Asian pictures to supplement this post, but all i came up with was pictures of Fall Out Boy, which annoyed me even more....so no."

Did it.

My computer has been going nuts (ie. erasing all of my bookmarks and clearing all of my internet history randomly, not recognizing the existence of a battery, lagging and freaking out.)

So I bought a Mac.

And I don't know how to use it. I'm constantly stressed out by the thing. Is this going to get easier? Is there somewhere that explains very basic concepts? (Like what replaces the concept of a right click?)

Picture of the Day.

Discuss.