We've Got Spirit, Yes We Do

Let's go crazy, bullet-point style!

Spirit Airlines is low rent. I mean, this is obvious given the cost of their flights (low), but they're also oddly located in the International terminal at SFO (I was flying to Detroit... Make all the jokes you want, but Michigan has yet to be sold to Canada).

Mini book review #1: The Kite Runner -- Highly enjoyed it, even though it was seriously depressing. Very interesting look at Afghanistan through a fictional account. Plus, the author is from, and some parts take place in, San Francisco. Gotta support the team. Recommended!

Mini book review #2: Running with Scissors -- the author is now being sued by the people he memoirizes (it's early and if there's a word for that, it ain't in my vocabulary), probably because if the account is even half true, they're drug dealers, statutory rapists, and frauds. Oh and actual rapists. The book itself was entertaining but lacked a strong narrative to tie all the funny stories together. Like David Sedaris but only 40% as funny. Mildly recommended.

Chickens I am not counting: The job hunt is looking up. I'll say more when I have actual news, but things are progressing for once. That's nice. Added bonus: freaking out my sister by telling her that when I go to interviews, I'm going to bring beer and give high-fives and say things like "aw hell no, dawg, I ain't playin like that!"

Hey, a Blog!

I almost forgot I had one of these! Fortunately, fates have smiled on my reading public (fates being, well, me) and have conspired to give me much more free time again.

That's right, I've rejoined the ranks of the unemployed. Not for too long, I hope, but as of yesterday I'm home again in my sweats surfing the Internet for girls games jobs. There comes a time in any crappy, low-paying job when one must weigh the benefits of said job (actual money coming in) against the detrimental side-effects (not enough money to pay bills, job is painfully unsatisfying in most aspects, and worst: job kills energy for job-hunting during off hours). I have done this, and I now sit before you, a bum.

I am far less bitter about job searching now, probably because I've taken the edge off by actually having a job and by knowing that some amount of work DOES exist out there. But I am now the last of my loser friends to get a job (a feat, considering that only 1 of 5 from law school had one back in the fall, and she had to move to Europe and get paid in Ramen), and such an ignoble honor does not suit me.

In other news, my car got "broken into" the other day, leaving me pissed and my ashtray/change holder missing. I used quotes because it's quite possible I left it unlocked--even though I never do--given the simplicity of the hoodlums that got in. They took everything out of the glove compartment and pulled out the change thing, but left the stereo (!) and didn't bother to check the trunk at all. Amateur hour, I tells ya!

In other, other news, I'm headed to Michigan for a week starting next Friday, so that will be nice. Not that I need a vacation, really, but it's good to see family. Sad that 11 months after the last summer visit and I'm in pretty much the same financial position. At least this time I can get into arguments with my uncle about pharmaceutical litigation.

No more, you fiends! I return to my leisure job-searching.

That's why he's The King

Larry King is interviewing the President at some point in the near
future (tonight?) and CNN.com has a brief interview with King about
the interview. A bit... meta for my taste, and largely
inconsequential, but it did reveal this tidbit to which I, naturally,
took offense:

"I want to learn as much as I can about as many things as I can. I'm
as interested in feelings as I am about facts. I know we have 139,000
troops in Iraq, but I want to know about how he feels about all the
troops."

He wants to know how the President feels about the troops. The
President. Of the United States. Is there any more softball,
feel-good, useless question to ask him? Is there any chance the
President will say "Larry, honestly, I think they're disgraceful," or
"I respect them and the failures have been mine and mine alone"?

No. It's a stupid question, and it's a waste of journalism to have
someone asking the most powerful man in the free world numerous
questions, and instead he's going to repeatedly punt (other questions
will include the prez's feelings on Ken Lay--given that the man just
died, I doubt it will get into their very shady relationship).

Nobody wants to ask real questions. And when they do ask real
questions, they don't care when the answer completely dodges it. There
have been signs that the media is waking back up a bit, and perhaps
the esteemed Mr. King isn't exactly a hard journalist these days, but
it certainly doesn't make me remotely interested to tune in. Tonight,
on CNN: the President reviews his talking points while Larry King nods
approvingly.

An Inconvenient Truth

Yeah, I saw An Inconvenient Truth. Of course I agree. It's not like I can have any less respect for the current administration, so the eye-opening stuff was just more of the same.

I could write an entire diatribe, but what would be the point? Few people who read my blog would disagree, and those who do are so blatantly partisan--you'd have to be, to ignore that much science--that there's no point in arguing.

I really, really wish "we" (I didn't vote for him, of course) hadn't gone and screwed over the planet by electing the wrong person as President. Twice. Gore in '08. Hillary can rot in the Senate for all I care (old link but she's still sponsoring it as a "alternative" to a Constitutional Amendment. I'm really beginning to loathe that woman, politically speaking.)

Boo Friggin' Hoo

Please allow me to once again inject my own brand of self-righteous
indignation (or "poorly-constructed rant") into the current topic du jour: the male crisis.

I've been hearing (or reading, rather) a lot lately about men and boys in crisis. They have crappy test scores, chick-lit is all the rage, there are too many hair-care products, etc. Some individuals have "risen up" against this terrible wussification of our culture to fight back. I guess. The problem is, they're fighting back against a nonexistent threat.

Take today's WP article on how boys' test scores aren't really lagging. Add to that the rise in "frat lit" as a response to chick lit, and you have a weird juxtaposition: everybody's crying about males doing badly while also saying males need to stop crying about everything and man up.

I agree with the second part. But that's not a male- or female-specific problem, people just need to learn to differentiate between actual problems (lost your job, got hit by a car, got cancer) and perceived problems (broke up with boyfriend of 3 weeks; didn't get to go to baseball game last night; gender doing slightly less well in mathematics exams).

My point is this: there are many things in the world you can't just "walk off". These things include African genocide, middle east conflict, mass tort litigation, and ice cream headaches. If there's anything "wussier" about society today, it's that both genders often fail to realize that you don't actually deserve to have happiness handed to you on a silver platter. When things go bad, or wrong, or poorly, suck it up and stop complaining about how unfair it all.* It's not unfair, it's life. It's up and down. You are no more inherently deserving of the ups than you are of the downs.

* I realize it's super-funny to my family that I of all people am now
claiming that life isn't fair. But I only mean you have to MAKE it
fair, you can't just sit around and wait for it to naturally exist
that way.

UPDATE: Hyperlinks that don't hyperlink 1, blogging by email 0.

Giants Among Men

I went to my first San Francisco Giants game last night, at the very
convenient and charming AT&T Park (or is it SBC? I can't keep up).
Some observations:

The Giants are, in a word, craptacular this season. I mean, there are
worse teams (there always are) but they certainly haven't been doing
much to keep themselves out of the dregs of the league. Despite this,
the Giants still have a much better fan showing on a Tuesday night
than, say, the 1st-place Detroit Tigers, who after years of neglect
(read: craptacularness) still don't sell out games even though they
have one of the best records in the majors.

A fact I still cannot believe, by the way. Armed with my new Detroit
hat (wearing with pride again! for the first time? who knows...) it
has become difficult to convince people that I'm not a fair-weather
Tigers fan. Those who remember me in high school and college know
differently, but the recent appearance of many, many Detroit hats
around the country casts my own loyalties in suspicion, I guess.

Back to the team at hand, however. The Giants played the Angels
(Anaheim for those who don't know/care) and, despite a fairly
lackluster effort on both sides, managed to come away with a win
(3-2). The night was made even better by the spectacular seats--club
level, right behind home plate. You could smell Omar Vizquel's cologne
and (insert obvious steroid/Bonds joke). One of the partner's in the
firm has season tickets that he gives away when he can't go, and I was
lucky enough to be invited by the lovely lass who won 'em.

Night at the ballpark: highly recommended.

It's like the Olympics, or Haley's Comet

Apparently, every ten years we give the President the ability to legislate.

I didn't have a blog in 1996. I'm not actually sure that anyone did. But I didn't agree with the line-item veto then, and I certainly don't agree with it now. Granted, this newest version isn't as powerful as Clinton's brief foray into legislating, but it still undermines the process.

Nobody likes pork-barrel projects except congresspersons. Often times the people they benefit don't even care; they're just there to enhance image and waste some of the trillions the government has to spend.

But that doesn't mean we need to upend the democratic process to get rid of them. Pork is there because legislation is all about compromise and consensus. Sure, one party holds sway most of the time, but consensus is still necessary. Senators barter. Representatives bargain. If you give the President carte blanche to eliminate the fruits of those bargains, it dampens the entire process.

Example: Barbara Boxer wants funding for tree-huggers in Marin, and Trent Lott isn't terribly interested in helping her out. But she says she'll stop opposing some conservative social issue if he'll fund her pet project. They agree. Now, Lott didn't necessarily need Boxer's actual vote for the budget, because he's got the majority. But now he can count on less of a media fuss about his issue, so in their eyes, everyone wins.

Now enter the President, who thinks tree-hugging is for pinkos and vetoes that item out. Congress--Republicans out of principle and some Democrats out of anti-pork feelings--agrees and easily votes to agree. The end result is that Boxer has lost her half of the bargain, because we let the President muck around.

It's a simplistic example, I know, but I threw it together in 10 minutes. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter who heads up the Executive Branch (even if it's me); that's not one of the powers of the President, and it tips the scales too far in his already-lopsided favor (executive orders, anyone?).

Muzak

Another good meme from Dennis!, and everybody knows I'm a sucker for easy content. You can read the "rules" on his blog, but a quick summary is thus: these are the first lines of the first 20 songs (roughly...) that played when I opened iTunes and hit random. You could guess what they are, but methinks nobody will bother so I just did it out of curiosity.

My own pathetic attempts at defending my weird musical tastes are also included. Let's begin!

1. "Well beer, we've had some good times..."

2. "Humming... all the way to Reno."

3. "I've been looking so long at these pictures of you."
If you don't get this one, and you're under 35, punch yourself in the face.

4. "Come on, oh my star is fading. And I swerve out of control"

5. "May god bless and keep you always, may your wishes all come true."
Okay this is pretty unmasculine so far. I hope it gets better.

6. "You let me violate you. You let me desecrate you."
Woah. You ask for it, you got it.

7. "Suzanne! You're all that I wanted of a girl."
Not too hard when the title is the first word of the song...

8. "This or that. This or that. This or that. This or that."
Rap really is repetitive.

9. "Sometimes in our lives, we all have pain. We all have sorrow."

10. "You and I in a little toy show buy a bag of balloons with the money we've got."
Hmm. It's better in German.

11. "At last, my love has come along."
I swear to God my music collection isn't really this wussy.

At which point iTunes crashes my computer. Or rather, "Bye Bye Blackbird" by Ray Charles crashes it. I don't blame iTunes. Reboot and let's go!

12. "I wish I would have met you. Now it's a little late."

Interlude: Polaris, by Zero 7. No words.

13. "He came riding fast like a phoenix out of fire flames."

Another interlude: War Cry, from the Grosse Pointe Blank soundtrack.

14. "Here comes the hot stepper (murderer), I'm the lyrical gangster (murderer)."

15. "Lights go out and I can't be saved. Tides that I tried to swim against."

16. "Stand in the place where you live, now face north."
Man, two R.E.M. and two Coldplay? Whiny-rock represent!

17. "I want to break free. I want to break free."

18. "I know what you want. I wanna take you to a midnight show tonight."

19. "Manic depression is touching my soul."
This one goes out to all my Zyprexa homies. I feel ya.

20. "We got married in a fever hotter than a pepper sprout."
There's no one like the original, damn you.

Well that was frightening for all involved (me and the neighbors). Turns out, it really IS Bye Bye Blackbird that crashes it (not iTunes) because it just did it again. What the hell, Ray? Why you gotta hate on iTunes?