Is it socialism yet?

http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/popup/index.php?cl=10335179

Leslie Stahl from 60 minutes asks a banker the question that has been plaguing me since I heard that the government was buying a big ownership stake in the nation’s banking system. What is socialism if it isn’t when the government owns major stakes in the commercial sector? Now in the U.S., after the bank bailout, that’s exactly what it is. And oddly, McCain and Palin accuse Obama of being a socialist. Last I checked McCain was heavily involved in the bailout package as was Obama…

But why is it that when the banking sector is in crisis and needs to be bailed out, or in this case socialized, it happens immediately and when say, the healthcare sector is in crisis, there’s no action whatsoever and suggesting that the system might be socialized ends up with politicians losing their jobs?

I don’t know. I’m just asking.

Mistaken ... Herbs?

So, let me tell you about a bit of a weird experience. A couple nights back, I was in my living room with the sliding glass door open and for the second time, I started to smell this … smell. To me, it seemed familiar and reminded me of the great era of arena rock. Concerts like Styx, Molly Hatchet, ELO, and Kansas. Problem is, I never really liked the smell of burning marijuana. And I never really liked that minor headache that I would get after a couple of hours exposed to it. And I never tried it. Working in a security cleared job, now is certainly not the time that I’m going to pick up that habit.

The last time I smelled it, I sort of chuckled and decided to ignore it, but this time, I don’t know if the wind was different, but it really was bothering me. I was trying to do some work and I was getting a headache and thought that I was starting to have a hard time concentrating… So I decided to go out on the porch and see if I could figure out where it was coming from.

That’s where it got weird. Not only was the smell coming from my next door neighbor, it was not the guy sitting out there, it was the eight and a half month pregnant woman who quite non-chalantly said, “Hi. How’s it going?” Well, it still looked (and smelled) to me that she was sitting there smoking a fatty and I was just shocked. So, seeming quite rude I suppose, I just said “Could you not do that on the porch? The smell comes right into my apartment.” She apologized and told me that she didn’t know that my door was open and that, get this, the smoke was a “Chinese acupuncture treatment” for discomfort during her pregnancy. I thought to myself, yeah right, and said “Well, I guess I’ll just close my door.” And I did.

I felt awkward, but sort of justified. C’mon, does she think I don’t know what marijuana smells like? And eight months pregnant??? Sheesh! I may have pissed her off, but who really cares if that’s the kind of decisions she is making for her child? But if I felt bad, she must have felt worse, because when I got home from work the next day, there was a note on my door apologizing for bothering me and explaining that she does the “treatment” outside because it bothers her husband too.

Well, now what?

Rather than let it fester and have her worry that I didn’t accept her apology, I decided to knock on her door and thank her for the note and apologize if I seemed abrupt. She seemed very sweet and friendly and a little embarrassed, so I guess I did the right thing in knocking on the door.

But I’m still not sure about that smoke. Chinese acupuncture? C’mon.

Pop Music and the F word

I know. I'm late to the Seether bandwagon, but the two songs I just got, Remedy and Fake It are just rocking songs. I love the lyrics of Fake It and the Seattle grunge feel to Remedy takes me back. Not sure why I resisted with Seether, maybe it's because I was annoyed that the band has the same name as just an awesome song from Veruca Salt from 1994. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AI95BVkiW0

Anyway, at the same time I got the two from Seether, I got Buckcherry's Crazy Bitch. I don't like Buckcherry much as a rule, but I love the song Crazy Bitch. I don't know if it's the riff, or the lyrics, or what, but I just love the song.

Now, Fake It has fscking in it, but Crazy Bitch, well, that song is chock full of fsck.

I ordinarily buy the explicit version of songs almost as much because it annoys me to hear the actual lyrics edited out as any thought that the artists ought to be able to be heard in their original voice. I don't curse much myself, but I don't begrudge an artist their impulse to use colorful language in their lyrics. That being said, there is a lot of fsck in that song Crazy Bitch. But I think it's okay, like I think its okay that there is a bunch of shut in Gwen Stefani's song Hollaback Girl. It's not the pop music that was out when I was a kid and one thing is for sure ...

I'm not letting my son use my iPod.

The right words

http://new.music.yahoo.com/videos/AnnaNalick/Breathe-2-AM--18656347

Occasionally (well perhaps rarely), a songwriter finds just the lyric that speaks not so much to your brain, or even your heart, but to your soul. Anna Nalick wrote a lyric like that for me in her song “Breathe (2AM).” She sings, “It’s 2AM and I’m still awake writing this song/If I get it all down on paper, it’s no longer inside me/Threatening the life it belongs to.”

That is definitely the way that I feel about the play that I’ve been writing. It’s dark and violent and when I let it loose to work on it (or let loose the emotions needed to drive it), it scares me. It really “threaten[s] the life it belongs to.” I’m jealous of twenty something singer/songwriter Anna Nalick, who can stay awake writing a song at 2AM because she doesn’t go to work to support a child every morning (or maybe she does, but I don‘t know that she does). And who writes songs, rather than plays. This play is inside of me and I have to wall it off pretty seriously so I can go about going to bed at a reasonable time, getting up and going to work, taking care of my son on the weekends, and generally living the life of an ordinary person, and not the life of a writer. Even when I have the rare occasion when I can write, I can’t always tear down that wall between the play and the rest of my psyche in order to really do good work on it.

It took me four years to finish my first full length play. This one won’t take that long, because in finishing the first one, I gained the confidence that I can actually do it. But it will take a long time and all of that time it spends inside me, it “threaten[s] the life it belongs to.”

Wait ... Did I Just LIKE That?

Once upon a time, I enjoyed watching a boxing match to some extent. For one, I used to spend a lot of time watching sports, any sport, on television. With my marriage, the birth of my son, and my eventual divorce, rearranged priorities meant that there was much less time to sit and watch sports on TV, and boxing was one of the first to go. But when I watched it, I enjoyed it. Part of it had to do with the fact that my grandfather boxed when he was young (and was Golden Gloves at Notre Dame). Part of it had to do with the fact that I enjoyed the “sweet science” aspect of the sport. Boxing is very much a technique driven sport (watch Million Dollar Baby again if you don’t agree) and I enjoyed watching fighters with good technique. For that reason, I preferred the lighter weight classes and amateur to pro boxing.

But anyway, as I said, I pretty much stopped watching it. I’m sure there is no causal relationship, but the sport seems to be pretty much dieing. If you need evidence, Evander Holyfield is fighting for the heavyweight championship. AT 47!!!

I had heard of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) fighting, but hadn’t been interested. It seemed too close to pro wrestling. Too close to being a blood sport. And the guys that were fans of the sport (including Jim Rome) didn’t seem like the kinds of guys that I wanted to have something in common with. So I never watched it.

Until Friday night. I was channel flipping a little because my son was with his mom for the weekend and noticed EliteXC fighting on CBS. I was intrigued because Kimbo Slice was scheduled at the top of the card, and I had heard him interviewed on ESPNRadio earlier. So I decided to check it out. Now I didn’t watch it start to finish--I kept channel flipping--but … wait for it … I sort of liked it. The production values were strong. The athletes were interesting. And the fights were … exciting. I was flabbergasted. Oh, and it helped that they spent a significant time with Gina Carano, the “Face of Women’s MMA” and that she has a really pretty face, a rock solid figure, and just the cutest personality. And she could totally kick my ass. mmmRowrrrr.

Anyway, not sure why I felt compelled to confess this here. AFAIK, no one reads this blog (except for my sweet ViePrivee. We will chat one day!!!), but I wanted to write about this weird experience just a little.

Last night, I heard there was some controversy as to whether EliteXC tried to orchestrate the fight with Kimbo Slice. I hope that’s not true. I don’t know how often I would really watch anyway, but I can tell you that if the fights are orchestrated the way professional wrestling “fights” are …

The answer is not at all.

Uncle Skippy recommends SW:TCW

http://www.cartoonnetwork.com/clonewars/

Got a chance to check out the first two episodes of Cartoon Network's Star Wars: The Clone Wars which premiered over the weekend. Uncle Skippy likes it and recommends it to you, faithful reader. It's total fun to see Yoda, especially jumping around and destroying droid after droid. The animation is cool and sharp and the art is engaging.

For those of you that saw it, it's in the same style as the feature film. I haven't had a chance to see the film because it looked too violent (even cartoon violence) for a six year old and when I go to the movies, I go with my son, so those are the movies I see now.

The only potentially annoying thing about the series is the frontline battle droids of the Seperatists. They are exceedingly dumb and their "personality" is truly grating. Hard to buy though that the Separatists would put up with such annoying droids making up the bulk of their battle forces. Why wouldn't you just program them to have a better and less insipid personality?

I guess there's an interesting story in their somewhere, if the Sith met the programmers to complain about the programming and the creators were just as annoying as the droids. They'd be like "What? What's wrong with their personality? They're just like us." LOL.

Or not.

Anyway, check in out Cartoon Network (Fridays at 9 ET) or the first episode is up on the web site (linked above, you're welcome).

Not the Only One

http://warner.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/02/waiting-for-schadenfreude/?em

A nice blog entry in the New York Times that shows that I'm not the only one wondering about my life choices while the financial crisis is going on. But I don't like the concept of schadenfreude. (except with respect to sports teams I don't like. hehehe. Dook, I'm looking at you.) Schadenfreude, or taking joy in other's misfortune, is bad bad karma, and just sort of mean. I know the folks that she is talking about made a lot of money and don't care how, but I still couldn't find joy in them being ruined....

Just me.

A Life Well Spent

Don't worry, I don't think this is a mid-life crisis, but with so much attention being paid to the financial crisis, and greed, and wealth (or lack of it), I've come back to a question that haunts me from time to time.

Hopefully without seeming too full of myself, let me tell you that I'm pretty sure I could have made a lot of money in my career. I graduated high in my class from a solid professional school and had some offers to make a lot of coin right after graduation. I didn't. I chose instead to go to work for the Federal Government and recently celebrated 15 years of public service. Needless to say, I haven't become rich working for the Government. I'm not starving, but I do drive a ten year old car with 150K miles on it (but it gets 36 mpg so who's complaining?).

So was that the right choice? Is a life of service (I almost said "was") worth the sacrifice of the extra money that I could have made doing other, more corporate things? I have always thought so, and almost believed so, but I've never been sure how I could put that belief into words. I was never quite sure how I would explain to my son (once he is old enough to understand even) why his father chose not to make all the money he could.

As with most other things, someone else has said it much more eloquently than I ever could. And not surprisingly, it is a quote from one of my heroes, John F Kennedy. On the occasion of the 1961 State of the Union address, he said: "Let every man and woman who works in any area of our national government, in any branch, at any level, be able to say with pride and with honor in future years, 'I served the United States Goverment in that hour of our nation's need.'"

And I am able to say that. And I say it with pride and with honor.