Zones

I can't dance. No I am not about to breakout into song about it or anything like that. I merely stating a fact. The funny part is I can spontaneously improve, and not simply through the consumption of alcohol either. My ex-girlfriend could dance. She had danced almost her entire life, and was, as you may have guessed, really good at it. She, on occassion, would work on teaching me. The lessons were never very consistent, but she noticed that I would just suddenly improve. There really was no reason for the sudden improvement. It just sort of happened. I'm like that with many things though, including basketball. I get into zones where I'm just on fire, but I have no idea how or why. Suddenly, it's all so simple and clear and easy.

My friends are going through some tough romantic times. One of my friends fell for a guy in another state - actually in another geographic reagion of the U.S. When you live in Florida, it's hard to date a guy that doesn't live in the same state, unless you are on the border or something. Florida is nothing if not large. When I was growing up, I used to think driving a couple of hours to Boston was a long drive. In Florida, many people will drive that just to get to work everyday, and the weekends? Forget about it. In any event, I'm not sure it's a good idea to fall for someone that doesn't live in the same state as you, unless you own a private jet, or she is Salma Hayek. It's terrible to watch. She just doesn't seem to have luck with guys. It's weird too because she's gorgeous, smart, funny, and all the rest, but she always seems to fall for these emotionally unavailable men. Terrible.

Another friend of mine just found out her husband has been having an affair. Good times. My ex-girlfriend has a cousin who is married. One night all four of us were out, and I got caught checking out the half naked waitress. I felt terrible about it. It was always a weird feeling for me to check out another girl while I was dating one. I always felt terribly guilty about it, mostly because I would worry if I didn't care about my girlfriend enough if I was checking out another one, and because she was super jealous and I didn't want to hurt her feelings. In any evemt, I got caught, and the cousin told me her husband would never do that as he thought she was the prettiest girl in the world. I started laughing so hard. It was hard not to, knowing that he had cheated on her a few times, at least.

I have friends that are engaged or are getting married and I know at least on of the partners has, unbeknownst to the other, cheated. It's a terrible situation. Then they offer me advice on my romantic life. Good times.

I feel like everyone has their comfort zones, and they get used to doing certain things and often find it too difficult to change. Some people date men who live far away. I have one friend who has been dating the same guy since undergrad. They've been together for about 10 years now, but they have rarely lived near each other. Her boyfriend currently lives in an entirely different country. Some people date - hopping from one romance to another. Some people don't date, or at least rarely do so. I think we hit comfort zones, and don't always know what to do outside of those zones, nor why we enjoy the zones so much, or what keeps them in these zones.

We are often complete contradictions, wanting family, money, career, and lots of time to do everything else. We want a dichotomy of things from our lives and others. Wanting "a lady in the street, but a freak in the bedroom" or a woman "with good looks, who cooks and cleans". Some people want the smoldering eyes, unattainable man or woman to suddenly change and convert for them, or as Stephanie would say, they want to convert funnel cake into celery.

I don't think enough people take the time to really think about the zones they are in, or to take any steps to figure out why they are there.

Accomplishments

For months I have had stupid things that I have wanted to accomlish. I have wanted to finally finish a book. It didn't matter which book really, but I definitely wanted to finish one of the 5 I had started. I also wanted to watch some of my DVDs. See I buy DVDs and then never watch them. Sometimes I don't watch them because I've already seen the movie and still remember it too well to want to watch it, but if a friend hasn't seen it I'll watch it with them. Othertimes, I buy them and simply never find the time to watch them.

Over the past week, I finished "Fast Food Nation" and I watched two of the DVDs I had recently bought, "Intolerable Cruelty", which I thought was dumb, and "Garden State", which I found amusing, in a melancholy sort of way, on certain levels. I also saw "Mr. and Mrs. Smith", which rocked.

"Fast Food Nation" has left me with a lot of thoughts. One being that if a terrorist group really ever wanted to mess up our country, they could just sneak some terrorists into all the migrant workers we have preparing our meats for us. Another is something I remember learning in my food law class, and that is that our country really doesn't care that much about us. It all gets confused by the time all the lobbiests and the other money holders have had their say. I learned that the whole story about fast food companies not being able to make better quality food or pay their workers more is all krap because In-N-Out (which I loved before reading this book) has been doing it for years, and their food is still cheap. Their managers make about $80,000.00 per year. I also learned that some of the biggest safety and health related reforms in the food industry, as of late, have occurred not due to government intervention, but because of protests and lawsuits, and McDonalds wanting to avoid these things and change its image.

I cooked this weekend. I created some really great dishes, and layered a ton of flavors. Cooking is really a lot easier than everyone thinks it is. The two hardest things about cooking are having the currect tools and all the preparation (cutting, chopping, marinating, etc.). I really love to cook. I think I could watch the Food Network and Comedy Central all day and never get bored. There's always something good to watch.

I went on a date last week. I tried the online thing, but I don't think online is for me. I'm not exactly certain how I'll meet my next girlfriend or my next date for that matter, but I really think there has to be a better way than the Internet or a bar or something like that, or maybe it's just time for me to be single and imporve upon myself without anyone else being around. My psychologist doesn't like the whole idea of online dating. She feels I should try and meet people with similar interests. Hence, my idea of joining clubs and such where I may meet people with similar interests has some validity. I still haven't done a very good job at finding those clubs. I've been thinking about getting a dog. I'm not really a cat person. I've only ever really liked my best friend's cat. I had dogs all through growing up until I was about 16, and I love them, but I'm allergic to them. So I think I may need to go see an allergist and get tested for everything and maybe we can find a solution.

Small accomplishments I suppose, but they are all mine.

Standards

I'm superficial. It's very sad, I'm sure, but I simply cannot get over certain things with women. I don't like fat women; a little heavy, I have no issue, or if they can compensate with a great face, no problem, but if all they've got is a lot of extra cheeseburgers, I just can't get into them. I'm sorry. I wish I could. Believe me, it would make my life a whole lot easier if I could, but I can't. I can't help sitting there thinking, gosh, is it so hard to get to a gym? Maybe if I was fat or didn't go to the gym consistently, I would over look this more, but I'm not and I do.

Dumb women, I can't stand them either. I don't think I'm exceptionally smart. I'm pretty sure there are a lot of people out there much smarter than I, but I hate communicating with a woman when all I can think of is how poorly they speak, write, or communicate. I'll be sitting there wanting to runaway and escape as quickly as possible. Praying that they are really smart on the inside, and that they are just nervous. A woman can be absolutely gorgeous, and then they open their mouth and you spend the rest of the night together wishing that they hadn't. Again, maybe if I were more dumb or something this would be easier to overlook.

Women that smoke. Ick. If I liked the taste of cigarettes, I'd smoke them myself. Who the hell wants a chick with a cigarette hanging out of their mouth? It smells like ass, and kills you. Great. As soon as I see an exceptionally hot chick light up, I say to myself, "see ya". I know that I probably didn't have a chance with her to begin with, but it makes me feel better about it, knowing that I wouldn't want to anyway.

I hate women that can't stand up for themselves. My best friend is engaged to a woman that is like that. You'll start getting into some sort of witty back and forth banter, and she'll look at him and say, "are you going to let him say that?". I mean, are you kidding? You can't joke? You don't have the intellect to come up with anything better than getting your boyfriend to tell me to stop?

I hate women that expect a relationship to just sort of happen without any effort or time commitment. The ones that are actually too busy for a relationship, but want one anyway. They sit there with their calendars booked, and constantly on the run with no time to date, but somehow feel that if they wish for it hard enough you will both date and get to know each other better. They don't want to sacrifice any of the other things they do to actually make time for this, they just sort of expect it to happen. Reality is foreign to them.

I think I may be too picky. I'm often reminded of the Seinfeld line, "70% of the population is undatable." I agree. I think it may be even worse than that. I have a friend, who now tells the women he dates up-front that he is simply waiting for them to go crazy. He tells them, "I know you're a woman, and so you're bound to go crazy, and so I'm just waiting for it to happen, but until it does, we can hang out and have fun." He's gotten his tired slashed twice within the last month by ex'es. Good times.

Then when I find a woman that may fit all of my qualifications, I get nervous. It's so rare that I see one, I think that I possibly panic. Sort of like if I saw a unicorn, or some other mythical creature. I have no idea what to say, and I never think they will like me. The girl I dated before my last girlfriend actually had to attack me halfway through the night because she got tired of waiting. She had the funniest line when I asked her about it: "Well there's only so much one can talk." Yes, she ended up being a little crazy, but she was very cool, and fun. She could never understand how I didn't think she would like me. She told me I was super smart, so of course she would like me.

I love women, and their ability to fall for a guy for all sorts of reasons, looks, money, brains, sense of humor, whatever. So many of them don't seem to be very picky. I wonder if they are forced to that - if there are just so few guys out there with the "whole package" that they are forced to accept what they can get.

As I read this post over, I notice that the things I have listed that I don't like in women are things that I wouldn't like in myself either. If I were fat and didn't work out, smoked like a chimney, and was dumb, maybe my standards would change. It seems I'm looking for a woman that has similar abilities, traits, and values as myself.

Tough Weekend

I am a blogging slacker. I simply do not blog as much as many other people. I'm lucky if I add an update 3 or 4 times per week, but I have friends that update 1 or 2 times per day. A total slacker am I. Very sad.

This weekend I got my car its routine checkup and maintenance, had breakfast with my ex, and saw Star Wars. Breakfast with the ex did not go as well as I had hoped. It was so weird - seeing her again for the first in weeks. I really didn't know what to say or how to act. I also didn't expect to still have feelings for her. It was so weird. We tried talking some more later that day, and that sort of seemed to go a little better, but Sunday was bad too.

I remember when I was in undergrad one of my friends broke up with his girlfriend. They were such a fun couple. I liked them both and I liked hanging out with them both, which made it suck all the more when they broke up because I didn't get to hang out with her anymore. Lines were drawn and such. The thing was that they still really cared about each other and tried hanging out and being friends right after. At the time, I was dating one of his friends (isn't it cool to have friends with hot friends that like you?), and she and I spoke about the situation and we both agreed that this was a terrible mistake on their part. We felt that they would probably be able to be friends again one day, but not right away, and they both needed space and time to get over each other and the hurt and all of that in order to ever really be able to be friends in the future. But how do you tell your friend that? You don't. You sit, wait, and hope that you are wrong. It didn't really work out terribly well for them as I recall. I really understand his dilemma though now that I am in it.

Despite my misgivings and my preconceived notions, I liked Star Wars. I heard a lot of bad things about it, but I really thought it did everything that it needed to do to bridge the gap. Sure, I thought there were aspects that could have been better, but this was a substantial improvement, in my opinion from Episodes I & II.

I heard on the news today that they used computers to shrink Lindsay Lohan's breasts for the new Herbie movie that is coming out because the size of them offended some parents. You have got to be kidding me. (I thought they looked a little small in the previews.) I still cannot believe that the studio did it. It makes me not want to see the movie now.

Car Insurance

Presently, this post does not relate to my personal life, but it could, and I think that's what bugs me most of all.

I'm going to start off by saying that I know next to nothing about car insurance. Car insurance and I have a love hate relationship, it loves my money and I hate paying for it. I hate paying for something that I hope I will never have to use. I feel like I should only have to pay for 10 or 20 years and if nothing has happened at that point, they should give it to me for free until something does. What I hate more is that if something does happen, the company I have paid for years to protect me now wants me to pay more because something actually happened. I understand the company's reasoning and logic, but I also think it sucks, especially if I was not at fault for whatever happened.

Insurance in general fascinates me with its various forms and packages. However, automotive insurance simply mystifies me. I barely know what I am covered for, but they tell me it's what I need to have and I blindly believe them. I believe there is coverage for if you hit someone, and then there is coverage if you hit an object, and not a person. Then there are a lot of additional types you can acquire. You could probably spend as much as the car is worth on insurance quite easily, especially where I live.

I do know that a car in Florida is considered a dangerous instrumentality so if you have a lot of money, you better carry a hefty insurance policy to cover your liability, and not own it jointly with anyone, especially your spouse. I wouldn't pick the insurance policy though, I'd call an insurance broker for that.

In Flroida, as in most other states probably, we have no fault car insurance. So that even if it is totally not your fault that you are in an accident, yeah it still is. I mean I know they call it "no fault" but really they just mean it's always your fault, or "everyone's fault". I think the worst thing is that no matter who is at fault, your insurance rates go up as a result. So someone cuts me off, slams on their brakes, and I rear end them, and I'm at fault. (I think even before no fault insurance you were presumed to be at fault in this type of a situation anyway.) I just think it sucks.

Old Friends

My mom and my best friend from high school came to town to visit me for a couple of hours last night. My best friend now lives in Germany, which I think he enjoys much more than the U.S. It was really good to hang out with him again. We caught up on old times and he met some of my new friends (friends from law school). It was cool.

One of my other friends found out recently that her husband is cheating on her. Good times. She works a lot, and she never really liked sex with him very much anyway so I guess it was to be expected, but it really does suck for her. I think you should probably leave a person rather than cheat on them. Cheating on them seems like just some sort of passive way to make the other person want to leave you because you are unhappy and don't have the nads to step up and say, I'm not happy. Either that or a total sign of disrespect.

I put a post up here yesterday for about an hour. It was regarding my hatred for car insurance. I think I still have it saved somewhere. But I took it down because I didn't want to offend anyone who might sell car insurance or really have a love for car insurance, or something like that. After all, I thought, I really don't know anything about car insurance. Maybe it really is the best thing since sliced bread and I'm just being overly hostile towards it. I'm still toying with the idea of reposting it, but I just can't decide.

I hope you all have fantastic weekends.

My Memorial Day in Review

I ended up in Orlando. Orlando the city of theme parks, and some of my closest friends. It was a lot of fun. We went to Universal. We had barbecue. We figured out how to make Starbuck's Passion Lemonade. It was cool.

I had never been to Universal so I got to ride The Hulk, and Spider Man and everything else for the first time, and I am now the proud holder of a season pass, so I'll definitely be returning. I also spoke to my ex-girlfriend on Saturday, which may have been one of the best parts of my trip even though it was a little weird. We actually seemed to have a really productive conversation and it was really cool to be able to talk again. There were definitely some communication problems between us towards the end of our relationship, and it was nice to kind of talk about what happened and what each other had been thinking and feeling, in reflection. We had a few "ah ha" moments, and I think we both understood at least a little better. I think we may be able to at least remain friends out of the whole twisted mess.

The rest of the weekend was spent mostly relaxing and hanging out. We kept wanting to do things like sing karaoke or go to the movies, but then would run out motivation, and would end up just talking, joking, and laughing instead. Overall, a very nice (and a little expensive) weekend.

Interesting News

I have seen more photos and videos of naked ex-girlfriends online from jilted men than I ever though imaginable. Today a woman filed suit against Yahoo for hosting naked pictures of her that her ex-boyfriend posted. Evidently, he created a profile for her, complete with the pictures and also impersonated her, communicating with men that contacted her. Random men would show up at he office expecting a sexual liaison. She, apparently, had asked Yahoo to remove the profile multiple times, but they had refused.

I still cannot believe women let men photograph them and video tape them in sexual positions and then lose track of the pictures or tape before a breakup. In the days before Internet, this probably wouldn't be such a big deal, but in the digital age, one has to be a little more cautious. Ex lovers can just be so sweet sometimes.

Speaking of sweet, recent studies have also concluded that Americans drink the bulk of their caloric intake. Yes, that's right, at one time it was from white bread, but now it's from soda. Drink up, kids. Did you know that there's a statistical probability that you will get a partially dissolved rat in your soda can? I learned this from a food law attorney. Apparently, settling the lawsuits over these occurrences is built into the soda manufacturers' operating budget for the year. Mmmmm, tasty.

I am currently in the section of the book Fast Food Nation where the author discusses slaughter house practices and such. He doesn't really focus on any potential animal cruelty or anything like that - or if he does I'm not there yet. His focus, presently, is more on how the meat processing plants try to get everything done as quickly and cheaply as possible, which causes much higher rates of contamination and injury to the workers. I guess most of the workers are uneducated immigrants - you know the type of people you would probably not trust to take care of your child, are helping to prepare his/her food. In any event, it takes a certain amount of time and skill to get the cleaning of the animal down so that the intestines and such don't get serrated and contaminate the meat or the carving instrument. Unfortunately, there is such a high turnover in the plants and the speed is so demanding that few carvers ever get it consistently right. Reading it makes it difficult for me to consume meat only because I now know the potential contamination rates, and that the industry polices itself and is known to lie. Good times. I can't give up meat, man. I love it too damn much.

I have no idea where I will be this weekend. Hopefully, it will not involve me sitting at home on my couch. I hope everyone else has a splendid weekend.

Business

Before this blog was a blog it was a weekly email to my friends. I did this for two reasons: one, my friends were important to me and I valued their opinions and thoughts, and two, I didn't want to have to contend with what some bloggers have to contend with everyday, mean people posting comments. Just look at the comments to this recent post and you'll see what I mean. After much convincing, I started a blog, but one of the main reasons I started it was because the emails became a sort of journal for me, and every time my hard drive crashed, I lost two or more years of my life. I am not sure a blog will be any more permanent, but it's worth a shot.

I did not start a blog to meet people. I did not start a blog to please people. If I am around people that I constantly have to please or worry about offending, then I won't be around them for very long. My happiness is not determined by how much I can please others. In my opinion, no one's should be. "Do unto others as you would have done unto you."? Bullshit. Try hanging out with a masochist and see how far that rule gets you. "Do unto others as they would like to have done unto them."? More krap. Hang out with the abusive bastard and see where that rule lands you. The only possible rule out there is live your life to be happy. Yes, there will be consequences to your actions, both positive and negative, but you cannot live your life in a vain attempt to please everyone because you can't please all the people all the time.

If you don't like my blog; if you don't like what I say or how I say it, then go read someone else's. There is no shortage of blogs. Hell, start your own. Clearly, based on some of your more recent comments, some of you would like to have your own blogs to discuss such things as cliches, and their profound import.

I was asked a, presumably, honest question by Anonymous in his comment to my last post, and I gave a very honest answer. I explained why I said what I said. If this does not meet your expectations of how you want me to act like or how you think I should behave, then too bad. I am not writing here to please you or anyone else. I don't even know you.

If you had clicked on the link that I supplied in my previous post, you would have seen that one of Kiki's most recent posts was about relationships and her having been in them for about as long as she can remember. This inspired me to write my last post. That is how it was inspired. Kiki's comment was a cliche, but it was supportive and it was after we had already talked about what happened much earlier. Finally, Kiki has a boyfriend, who she is extremely happy with. The mere fact that we get along should not bug anyone. Obviously, my "meanness" has not kept me from making a friend or two.

So there it is. I ain't changing to please you. My blog is what it is. It is mine, and only mine. You comments are mine to dispose of as I see fit. If you don't like it, look elsewhere, or start your own.

The Game

I remember once my friend compared this girl to a video game. Something about guys having to keep putting quarters in her to see how far they can get. Somehow this amused her tremendously. I repeated the comment to a girl and it went really badly. I told me friend what had happened and her cried, "You did what!? You can't just go around doing that to just any girl." That's when I realized, I was really in trouble.

Through most of college, I was single. However, given the dating pool, I felt I was better off for it anyway. When my friend and roommate finally moved away from Miami, Florida, he told me it was a shame we had not gone somewhere else for school because we had wasted some of our best years on some of the most materialistic and mean women ever. I thought he was probably right, but when I went to a different university for my advanced degree, I knew he was right. It was ok. I had so many friends to keep me occupied that it really never bothered me. When I did have a girlfriend she would get jealous of my female friends and think I was sleeping with them. Suddenly I lost my autonomy and my freedom. Besides, I was still figuring myself out. There was no real necessity to have a girlfriend.

After I finished school, I suddenly had about a tenth of the friends to hang out with. They were scattered throughout the country, and in some cases the world. The friends I did have worked terrible hours or had significant others and so I didn't see them as much. I decided that I now needed a girlfriend, and that I was ready to have one. I had finished my degrees, I had a solid career ahead of me, things were looking up and I was tired of just hanging out with myself at the end of the day. However, I wanted a cool girlfriend. I wanted one that was fun to hangout with, someone that I would hangout with even if I wasn't sleeping with her. I had this theory - beauty fades, but personality is forever. So I had to genuinely like the person that I was with for more than their body. Don't get me wrong, there had to be some sort of physical attractiveness, but it was not high on my list. She only had to be "cute".

The problem was that I don't like hanging out with that many people consistently, and the ones that I did like hanging out with were already my friends, and I was not going to try and convert a friend into a girlfriend. That was just not an option, which may or may not be wise. Well there was always that one girl that became my friend after I tried to date her for two years, I would have totally converted that one, but she was too busy sending me mixed messages. For example, one day after I listed my requirements for a girlfriend, she asked me, "so which one of those qualities don't I have?" What an unfair question. The other problem was that I didn't meet women my own age through work or something like that. I am about half the age of most people I work with so it's hard to have office romances or be introduced to young friends of co-workers when their young friends are 40.

As I reflect upon all of this, I wonder how it will all shake out in the end. I am not really sure, but I think I definitely need to find some extracurricular social activities to meet new friends and such. Unfortunately, I really have no idea where I will find the time, nor which ones I should join. A lot of the clubs I look into joining are also filled with old people. Where did all the young people go? I think they must all be chained to desks slaving away, and not joining clubs.

This post was partially inspired by Kiki.

My Minor Weekend

Wow. I didn't expect the amount of comments I received from my last post. I suppose one just never knows. Interestingly, other people posted sad break-up posts on their blogs this weekend, without receiving anywhere near the number of comments, and one of my friends broke up with her boyfriend. It was a big relationship weekend.

I went out of town for most of the weekend. However, due to the magic of technology, no one really knew that. On Sunday, I ended up on a very large sail boat. The owner has had it for a long time. He sailed it from California to Florida when he moved here, and has taken it to Cuba, Mexico, and New York. He's a very successful businessman, which is probably obvious given that he owns a huge sailboat. He told me he had to learn to relax. He said he realized over the course of his life that at the end of one's days, one does not think about the huge deals that they have closed, but instead remembers the fun times they had with friends and loved ones while they were relaxing, and enjoying their life. I know, easy for someone that already has a lot of money to say, but that doesn't make it wrong.

I saw some of my friends, and my best friend took it upon herself to set me up on a blind date, which I didn't find out about until I was on the way to the restaurant. Evidently, the woman is a real estate broker that models in her spare time, and is the sister of one of my other friends. It was very casual though with some other people there, thank God because I could not have handled a real date yet. She thought I was cute, and spent seven hours hanging out with us, when she had only planned to spend fifteen minutes.

One of my favorite parts of the weekend was on Saturday morning at around 8:00 AM when my best friend and I got into a debate about the tax consequences of a transaction she had recently encountered. Neither one of us had real legal support for our positions, but we were arguing based on tax policy. I was absolutely convinced she was wrong and explained to her what I thought should be the consequences. She had to call her grandmother, and so I did some research, and found the magic Internal Revenue Code section that vindicated me. I felt very triumphant. Yeah, I know, we're nerds.

I was invited out again for next weekend when the three day Memorial Day bash occurs. Basically, this guy throws this three day open bar, free food party on this 90 acre piece of property. I am not sure I'll attend it, but it is a whole lot of fun.

Not a very eventful weekend to report on really, but I figured I should post something new now that the dust has settled.

Breaking Up Is Hard To Do

I don't care how many times you hear it, it always seems easier until you do it. No matter how many you go through, they all suck. Suddenly, this person that you cared about and shared everything with is not a part of your life. All the whispers of love and forever and the like evaporate in the wink of an eye and you are left sitting there feeling as though you have just been kicked in the crotch saying "What the hell just happened?".

Is it really so terrible that I wanted to spend more time with her?

She says she loves me still and thinks about me often, but she just has too much going on in her life right now to work on our relationship. How does that happen? When did the relationship that is supposed to last the rest of your life become an after thought? The after dinner mint. Something to occupy yourself in-between working, sleeping, and eating.

I suppose it is all priorities, and some have different priorities than others, but I just don't see how the person that is supposed to be so important to you occupies such a low spot on your list. I also don't see how you love someone and care about them and miss seeing them, but don't put forth the effort of keeping them in your life. Maybe I am not supposed to understand it, but just accept it.

No matter how it all happens or the reasons for it, all you are really left with is the empty spot that is quickly filled with the rush of regrets. Eventually, from this you will take the memories and the experience.

Ramble On ...

I have been very bad at updating about my life on my blog. So many entries, as of late, have been just general pontificating. My roommate and friend during law school had a girlfriend named Sharon that I met once, and hung out with for a weekend. We became fast friends. She was a gifted actress and I was a talkative bastard. She was cool. As a thank you to me for taking her all over Miami while my roommate was at work she bought me a CD. She also called my endless ramblings, that I am prone to undertake, pontificating. That's such a nice word.

My weekend was interesting. I had a friend fly in from D.C. and I hung out with him and a bunch of other people that I haven't seen in about three years. I learned that one of them dropped out of medical school and is now a teacher, and that another one just received his Ph.D. (but he was in California still, not here). We started out by going bowling, an activity that I generally avoid. My only memories of bowling, prior to this weekend, involved going with my father after my parents separated. Those were always fun weekends. Hanging out with some guy that I never liked and who I barely knew so that we could have "quality time" and he could bitch about my mother, and check out women of ALL ages - including my 13 year old friend. I don't know why "quality time" with me became so important once they separated. I ended up having to get a restraining order on the guy. Fun times.

I also played poker this weekend, with chips, for the first time. I never had to know how to handle "blinds" or any of that stuff. Most of the people there were teachers though so it was an early night because we all wanted to get to sleep by midnight. Alas, the days of clubs 'til 4 in the morning may indeed be past me.

The rest of my weekend was extremely mundane - shopping, cleaning, eating, reading, and playing video games. I did beat Halo 2, which considering how long I have owned the game, it's really sad that it took me this long to beat it. I watched Unleashed, a decent flick, and I spoke with a lot of my friends to catch them up on recent events. They all had interesting thoughts ideas.

There ya have it, my moderately eventful weekend in review.

Oh, and I added my photo to my blog today. Not sure if I want to keep it up, but I figured I'd try it out.

Common Sense

I read an article recently that explained how many cities are converting their streets from one-way to two-way. There is a push by many business owners to have the streets converted to increase the flow of traffic by their businesses. The public also supports the conversion because they believe it is more convenient.

I lived in Tampa, Florida for a brief period. Many of the streets there are one way, which can be confusing at first, but which I found to be incredibly efficient at getting me home. One of the greatest benefits for my purposes was that the city could synchronize the traffic lights. Once I had gotten one green light, I often caught all the rest of the green lights on a given street. As such, there was much less stop and go traffic. From reading the article, I learned that one-way streets are also safer, and having them actually increases the flow of traffic by local area businesses.

It is ironic to me that people are pushing for reform out of a belief that the new system will be more efficient without realizing that they will actually be sacrificing efficiency and safety if they achieve the reform they desire. I think it is easy to gravitate to what we are used to, and to believe basic common sense is always right. Most cities have two-way streets. We are used to driving on them. It also seems to make good sense that if you have two-way streets you'll get twice the amount of business or cars flowing by, which evidently, is a false assumption.

I was reminded of "A Beautiful Mind", and the scene in the bar, where three women enter, and all the guys at the table want to ask out the most attractive one. John Nash, played by Russell Crowe, points out that the best approach for the men to take is to ask out the less attractive women first. This approach seems counter intuitive and backwards, but, he explains, will produce the most favorable outcome.

Things fascinate me that way. Oftentimes, common sense is just wrong. If I knew nothing about science, common sense would have me believe that the Sun revolves around the Earth. It is not terribly hard to see how one may think this. However, through science and experiment, this belief has been proven wrong.

(This post was tremendously shortened through either a copy and past mishap, or more likely, a Blogger accident.)

Life Happens

I was very indirectly reminded of something through a response to my previous post that life can get in the way of a relationship. Suddenly, someone gets a new job and is more busy, family members and friends get sick, injuries and illnesses occur, financial difficulties, job loss, other people, etc.

This always made me question the love of Romeo and Juliet, or movies of that vein because the infatuation or love depicted did not have to last. It did not have to survive the bachelor parties, the long hours, the financial hardships, the insecurities, the past baggage, and the day to day worries and concerns that is life - well perhaps not the life of Paris Hilton, and the like, but the life of most of the people that I know. Basically, Romeo and Juliet got off light. I know, it's romantic, and it's star-crossed, and it's love, and they were soul mates, and blah blah blah. However, would Juliet have stayed with Romeo for all of the bad times? How long would it have lasted? Could you imagine their Thanksgiving Dinner?

People are constantly in search of this perfect person. This person that "completes them", and the simple fact seems to be that a lot of people do not seem to be finding this person. All the Internet dating service sites, find love books, and other miscellaneous paraphernalia, clearly indicate that love is illusive for most. The "soul mates" are few and far between. People grow and change and life happens and suddenly the "soul mate" is long gone. People want such contradictions in others and expect such odd things to just magically happen at times.

I went out on dates with several women that simply believed wanting a relationship would make it happen. They were really busy and very goal oriented. They had next to no time to date and get to know a guy, but refused to accept this. These were the women that were simply too busy for relationships and could not understand it when they either couldn't find a guy or the guy they were with suddenly wasn't there anymore. Women can be contrary with their desires, wanting a man who is very goal oriented and successful, but who doesn't work "too much". I'd imagine men do the same thing. We are victims of fairy tales and lies that attempt to convince us of this utopian life that does not exist. When we fail to achieve it we feel stupid and weak. We feel as though we have failed, and become depressed.

We are often not shown that love involves work. We hear about it, but we rarely see it. I mean what is "work" to people in the on-demand age? The movies are all about the meeting and the falling in love. It is compartmentalized and all of the horrors of romance are resolved in a 2 hour period. It is shocking to some that find that reality moves slower than a movie, and that they cannot simply order their significant other with mushrooms and pepperoni, and have them delivered to their door? We are not taught that lots of perfectly decent people end up alone. We are not very well educated in reality because we want the fairy tale. I mean who wouldn't want the fairy tale and the happily ever after ending. It's simple. It's perfect. It's easy. However, life is rarely any of those things.

Reactions

"It's a second marriage," she whispered to me. As if I was supposed to understand that this made it less important or a silly little trifle. It was as though she was confessing a sin, and cleansing herself of the situation; as if to say, yeah I'm driving a Kia now, but my other car is a Mercedes.

Somehow relationships take on different elements as you get older. The ones you have in college are often not like the ones you had in high school and the ones you have after college are often not like your previous ones. There's even something to be said of the statistics relating to the marriages of people who marry for the first time after the age of 25, and the comparison of those to first marriages of younger partners and second marriages for the same age group. Perspectives seem to change ... maybe.

It seems men and women get jaded with relationships over time. They start out believing the fairy tales. The man on a white horse riding to their rescue. Rescuing the princess. Finding that perfect someone. That person that just instantly gets you and it's like magic. The glass slipper. Happily ever after, and the whole deal. Then they get some false starts. People cheat on them, or hurt them, or they see the relationship going in the wrong direction somehow, and poof. Suddenly, this relationship that was supposed to last forever is done, but forever hasn't come yet.

So now these injured lovers spend time looking over their shoulders, always wondering when the next hit is going to come and trying to bob and weave out of it. Fast on their feet. Ready to run at a moment's notice. "I won't get hit again," they think. They begin expecting less, or they demand more, or a little of both. They don't want to get stuck in another relationship like the last one. Never again. They are more cautious. They ask more questions. They analyze every person they meet, trying to see if this one is like the other one. Every misstep scares them, like a gunshot to a deer. Fast. Must get away. Don't want to be trapped. Don't want to be hurt. Don't want to be ... safe?

Safe?

Well the theory runs, it is possible for one that has been hurt before to be too scared of ever being in another relationship. That they will either sabotage them or run away from them because even though the relationship they are in is safe and exactly what the person is looking for, they cannot deal with it. It scares them, or they do not feel they deserve it or something. It's all rather individual.

It's like we are all chemicals in a big experiment and some of us interact well together, some do not, and some just should not be mixed with anything. Some chemicals need catalysts to react, some take forever, some only react well at certain temperatures, some remain suspended for excessive periods of time, and some reactions occur amazingly fast and are quickly done.

So what's the point you ask? The point? I need a point? Well ... ok. How about this one: We are luckier than chemicals because we all have the ability to figure out why we react the way we do and change it.

A Couple of Items

I know I haven't updated in awhile. Things have been intense, and not in a good way. So I haven't been feeling in a very post friendly mood. I've been commenting though. It's easier to comment on other people's thoughts, ideas, and posts than to come up with my own in these times of confusion, or at least to come up with my own that I wish to share in the public forum that is my blog.

It has been amusing to leave the same post up for so long. I received six comments on it. Count them, 6! If I had only left the post up for a few days, I'm not sure the commentators would have scrolled down to read it, let alone post a comment regarding it. So maybe it's a good thing to be stagnant sometimes. It's also been interesting to learn where people reading my Webpage are from and how they end up on my page; statistics intrigue me. I am even listed as a link on a random person's Website. Go me.

Growing up, and even currently, I have been friends with a lot of girls/women (their classification changes as I age). They taught me an awful lot about themselves. One thing that I often heard them complain about was men just audaciously walking up to them and trying to pick them up. They hated that and used to complain about it a lot. This has always been a tough thing for me to know because as a result, I never want to approach a group of women when they are out because I never want to be that guy that spoils their night by trying to pick them up, who they complain about the next day to their friends or on their blog. The other problem is I never know if I want the woman I am dating to be a chick I picked-up one night at a bar or a club. Then again, women also complain that the guy's they like don't ask them out or "make a move". So I was always stuck with a vicious conundrum when at a club or bar or anything where there were hot girls I wanted to get to know better but didn't want to offend or annoy. As a solution, I ignored the situation and decided to stop caring. This sometimes led to random women making a "Justin sandwich" to get my attention or some other random happening, but often ended up with me just being amused at the sites and sounds, and going home as alone as I was to start the evening, which is not always a bad thing. This also, at times, led women who liked me to think that I was not interested. Women - dammed if you do and dammed if you don't.

It strikes me that there really is no other way for men to proceed than to hit on lots of girls and let them be annoyed or frustrated. Women are afraid to appear "too interested" so they give "subtle hints" that men don't pick up on. Sometimes when a guy asks her out she thinks it's because of the "hints", but it often is because he's hitting on lots of women. Unless the woman has been particularly obvious in her "hints", which I have seen occur. Amusing. There really should be a rule book.

Turning to another national issue of great importance, the new Real ID Act passed. A lot of people were upset about this item and wanted people to write their senators and such to stop it from passing, but it passed anyway, and will be signed into effect by the President later this month. What does that mean to you? Basically that it's going to be ridiculously hard to get a damn driver's license from now on, and lines are just going to suck. Not to mention a ton of your personal data is supposed to be kept on these electronically readable cards, but there's no real clear way to keep the information secure. So the guy that swipes the card at 7-11 could be selling your info to someone else, or using it for his own twisted ends. I am not sure that enough thought was put into this system. In fact, a lot of states say they don't have the resources (funds) to carry out the requirements of this measure - under which all of their licensing systems have to link with the Fed's systems.

So there are a couple interesting items on which you may comment. Because, as you know, I am a comment whore.

We're all mad here

... or so the grinning Cheshire Cat said. My friend Chad said, "All women are crazy, it's just a degree of how much." Over time I have gotten mixed reactions from women regarding this statement. I have yet to find a man to disagree with this topic, unless or until, a woman that he wants to hookup with is present. Then suddenly, women are the second coming and you are a dick for ever having said such a heartless thing. How dare you? I know, I'm terrible.

I believe women think men are just as crazy though. They totally do not understand us. Even the ones that think they do, don't. However, they have their girlfriends, cats, and dogs to complain to about us. That is, after all, a wonderful past time, with a long a glorious tradition. Some women even read magazines and books to figure us out, and what we like. Not only that, but they also read men's magazines (Maxim and Stuff and the like) to "really understand us". I have yet to find the man to resort to women's magazine's to "really understand them". We understand that we don't get them and, as such, they are crazy.

Some women will confess to me that they are crazy. Generally, those women are very open, and just don't care. Very fun. I listened to this one woman on the radio yesterday who wanted to get this guy but she didn't really care about him and she felt she was too hot to go after a guy but she wanted to know how she could go after him but still have him come after her instead but he had said he didn't want to go out with her but he must like her but he has a girlfriend. Huh? No really, it made sense to her. Good times. Then there are the women that stay with the guy that hasn't changed in 10 years, but she really thinks if she just stays with him a little while longer....

Women I think are so much smarter than men and that may be the problem. Women listen to their inner emotions. They are very emotion driven, in my opinion. They analyze everything, and anything can have some hidden extra meaning. Why did she say this or why did he do this or that? Everything is very significant. We don't really seem to think like that at all. I've heard women talk about a first date with a guy for hours. Hours! Amazing.

I think my favorite argument for women being way more complicated than men, and hence, "crazy" is that a woman can go to another guy with her "guy issue" and give him the facts and circumstances and the other guy can figure out what her guy is thinking. If a guy goes to another woman with his "girl issue" the other girl will often say, well it's hard to know because it could be this this this or this. Men are so simplistic that it must confuse women sometimes. They're like is this really all they do? And they spend so much time trying to find the other buttons or knobs and such, but ... nothing. Imagine a fully loaded, high test (performs better after warming up) engine, luxury car. That would be a woman. The old clunker in the junk yard, with no options and various fluids leaking out and some pieces coming off - that's the guy. The woman looks for our power windows (or whatever) and just cannot believe that there are none to be had and so continues to look for them for as long as possible.

I think the one problem with being emotionally driven is that emotions are inherently irrational. For example, a human being (man or woman) will stay in an abusive relationship, oftentimes, because they are used to it or they are afraid to leave it or some other emotion. Their emotions will even impact their rationalization of the situation. The rational answer, of course, is to get the fuck out. Get out now and run, run fast, and "tell someone you can trust". Not only that but emotions can be inherently contrary. Another person can both repulse and strangely attract you at the same time. Rationally, you may want someone completely different, but emotionally, you are drawn to this other person for completely illogical and irrational reasons (or so they seem). Hence, anyone driven by emotions can often behave in a completely illogical manner or "crazy".

Men act crazy too. We beat each other up, often over women. It's usually irrational. I doubt you are going to "knock sense" into anyone, but we do it. How about guys at football games in the freezing cold with their shirts off and oversized bellies painted. Totally irrational - "crazy" even. That's often how it turns out - acting on emotions or acting in a way that the people outside looking in cannot understand will often be seen as "crazy". Is it?

Minor Observations

When I read Brave New World and 1984 in high school they freaked me out. I suppose that was the point of them of course. The authors wanted to show their respective audiences where we could be heading. I don't remember anyone in high school not being freaked out by these stories. Yet now it appears there's a sizable segment of our population that really sees no problem with a lot of the items in those books becoming reality. I remember after 9/11 there was a lot of talk about "what do we do now?", which included the idea of placing cameras on street corners and the like, and I remember listening to people endorsing this as a necessary measure. Where were these people in high school? They clearly were not raising their hands saying well this seems like a good direction for our society. It really fascinates me how people's view points and opinions change over the years. I think one of the most dramatic for me was college.

At my college, there was a lot of discussion and debate and thought on all sorts of issues. We were by far not a very politically active campus, but in our dorms and during various impromptu events, we discussed everything. We were all rather open to listening to different viewpoints and ideas. Now when I speak to a lot of people from college they seem to have mastered the meaning of life and the answers to everything, and they no longer have room for a difference of opinion. It astounds me. Perhaps it has to do with less interaction after college. In college I was bombarded with different views and ideas and people. After college, I had a much smaller pool of people with which to socialize. Maybe if you stop encountering several different viewpoints on a daily basis, your own become more entrenched. Maybe life experience makes us think that our views are the correct views. I have no idea why it happens, but I am definitely encountering more of it.

I received 922 junk emails yesterday, and, so far, another 143 today. Wow. Do those things really work? Do people ever really respond to junk emails?? That was always my question with junk mail too. Who responded to that stuff? I imagine a decent amount of money is spent sending all of it out, and I guess it must generate a profit at the end of the day or the companies wouldn't do it. But who the hell is responding to these damn things? Ridiculous.

Birthdays

It's my Birthday and I'll ... well I'm not going to cry over it. :-)

Thanks to everyone that remembered my birthday. I am truly impressed, given that I really don't remember anyone's birthday.

Getting older can be annoying - more things to deal with, health issues, physical stuff, and all of that, but really, I'm pretty happy about the whole thing. I feel like I'm ready to get older, not at heart, but in status. I have had lots of life experiences. I've worked really hard, and maybe with all of that comes a certain acceptance to get older.

Overall, of course, aging is really not the hardest thing in the world. Billions and billions of people do it every day, and are doing it even longer than days of old. However, I'm still impressed that I have made it as far as I have, and I feel like my age is a little bit of a testament to how much I have done. That is not always the case. There are many people that grow to 40 and still haven't done so many things, and there are people that are 14 that have likely experienced things I never will. However, I feel that I've done enough and am ready to get this aging show on the road. :-)

Thanks again, everyone. I'll do my best to stay young at heart.

A girl in NY City called the "Human Trampoline"

I realized something recently. The thing that intrigues me about a lot of writing that I see is the author's use of "showing words". In my high school English class, my teacher tried to drive through the concept of using such words to make our writing more interesting and entertaining. This task was often about as successful as driving a toothpick through concrete. The idea is to express things with more imagery. For example, instead of saying her lips were "red", one might say "her lips were like luscious strawberries that I longed to devour." Instead of calling someone is "old" or "wrinkly", one might say that "his body's skin stretched with his every move, occasionally giving indication that it may in fact crack from its years of wear."

I happened to naturally use showing words and was very good at being descriptive and fun. Somewhere in the middle of law school, I think this must have ended. It also may have resulted from all of the history papers (over 50) I wrote through undergrad. I now look at my writing and am disheartened. Where did all my flash and pizazz go? I'm so much more succinct, and to the point now ... well I'm not sure anyone has ever really accused me of getting to any point too quickly.

My weekend was again full of exciting adventure - and plenty of sun. We went to a little even called Sun Fest here. I had really wanted to go Sunday because 3 Doors Down was going to be playing, but people's Sunday plans being what they are, we had to go Saturday. It was probably the better choice though because the sun was out and the breeze was blowing and it was really just a beautiful day. Sunday was much darker.

Sunday I made a dinner inspired by Stacey. She had recommended that I use this whole wheat penne pasta I still had kicking around my apartment in a stir fry. I had been unable to obtain baby sea scallops yesterday so instead I was left with only chicken breast. However, I persevered with a wonderful marinade selected by my girlfriend, some added spicy sauce she acquired in South America to kick it up a notch, and some lime juice. Then stir fry it with the pasta in a garlic olive oil sauce. Top it all off with roasted vegetables. Good times. It did involve having three items cooking at once and a little bit of timing on all of it, but I really think the prep work on it was harder than cooking it. Cooking it is just high paced, but the prep work is ... annoying.

We attempted to find a new brunch place closer to where we live. This first attempt was, decidedly, an utter failure. I didn't even eat the food I paid for. Tragic. I did get to see The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which only reaffirmed my belief that Disney should never be allowed to do sci fi. New Lucas (Episodes I and II) is bad enough, but Disney is just tragic. Overall, it wasn't a bad flick, but I think it's a little hard to translate Douglas Adams' English written humor to the big screen, and given this, the task certainly should not have been left to Disney. Give it to those Monty Python boys, but Disney??

I did hear one interesting item to report. A new study performed by some American university has shown that email and such is not only addictive, but that it makes you twice as dumb as smoking marijuana. Apparently, it is so distracting that it actually reduces the ability of your brain to function more than dope. Party on.

I hope everyone had a good weekend.

Technology

I have more than a passing fascination with technology. As a child, I was given programs as gifts. Not the type of programs you can buy in a store, but programs actually written for me by some of the foremost guys in the game at the time. My parents built the first microchip computer, which ended up being a terribly unpopular product that everyone said would not catch on (much as Stan Lee was told Spider-Man would never work as a comic book concept). At one point I was even current on hardware and networking trends. I knew all the current BUS speeds, chip sets, how different processors handled data, and differences between Cisco and other companies' network schemes. It was good. A little useless given that I didn't work in computers, but cool. There was still plenty of information I had no real skillz with, like programming. I never have really been able to code in anything other than Basic. C++? Please. Only in my wildest dreams. I did take the time to learn a lot of the UNIX OS environment. However, as with most things, if you don't use it, you'll lose it.

Then something happened. I don't know if I ran out of time or just stopped paying attention, but suddenly I looked around and I was so far out of the loop. Technology had grown so quickly and I no longer knew what was good or current or better or worse. The technology world swirled above my head. I still knew a lot of the software development and where it was at and how it functioned and such, but that is sort of the easy part in the grand scheme of technology, in my estimation. The only technologies I really seem capable of staying marginally current on at this point is software, cell phones, and mp3 players - and even these are questionable.

As of late, I have been entirely fascinated by satellite music. I have no idea what to make of it. My gut reaction is why the hell would I pay $15 per month to listen to music? That seems ridiculous. However, at the same time, I feel seduced and drawn towards these new shiny devices with bright lights and sleek designs. I'm evidently also a technology slut. Well actually, I more lust after most technologies rather than buy them. So I guess I more dream of being a technology slut. For example, I have been eying the iPod for maybe 2 years now. I have watched at least one generation of the amazing device come and go and have witnessed the creation of its progeny - the Mini and the Shuffle. I have read the reviews and specs, considered my options, and been lured into almost buying one maybe a half dozen times. However, every time, I make a strategic retreat. I am always worried that as soon as I buy it, a better version will come out, or I will want more space, or it will break. I have trouble making such a large investment on something that does not have a replaceable battery. I did buy a flash player. It was a fraction of the cost and was perfect for my gym outings. However, it only renewed my desire for the iPod with its magnificent scroll wheel and easy to see display.

I was even more intrigued when I learned that the iPod may also offer satellite radio in the future, but this is merely a rumor and there a ton of reasons that it may never happen. However, the possibility danced merrily in my head. I could have a device that would seamlessly integrate two technologies that completely intrigue me.

I can't believe they are coming out with a new DVD format. I don't even know whether to buy any more DVDs until the new format emerges. Of course, one will need to have a new DVD player to play the new DVDs and there may be two different formats to make matters even more costly and confusing. The main advantage of these new formats, I hear, is that they will allow for far more data to be stored on each DVD and allow for HD technology. One would need an HD TV to enjoy the technology, but at least the option would be there I suppose.

Microsoft is still working on its new OS (Longhorn), which by all accounts will be amazing and fantastic and will allow for so much improvement. Why don't they just work on getting the current product right before moving on to a new one? In any event, many of Longhorn's features will not work on older systems. So once again, to enjoy the new technology of one item, you will need to have several related new technologies. It's a recurring theme. Technologies are now advancing not only too fast for me to keep up with, but also too fast for other technologies to keep up with. (Much like a motherboard with new chip-sets, or when processors moved faster than the programs that were written for the machines in which they were running.)

Ah, progress. I don't know what I would do without my cell phone or my Internet connection. As soon as I don't have an Internet connection I am out of touch with the world. Internet has got to be one of the coolest things ever. Without ever lifting up a phone, I can determine where something is, get directions to it, find out if there are more convenient locations, and determine how much money I still have in my bank account to go to these places. I can even renew my driver's license and vehicle registration and insurance so that I can drive to my many destinations. I honestly have no idea what I would do without my technology.

Incidentally, I added a counter type thing to my blog. It's absolutely awesome and helps me keep track of how many people visit my blog, where they come from, and even what browser they are using, and it's totally free. Good times. If anyone wants one for their blog or Website, you can get one here.

My Weekend Montage of News and Thoughts

Thomas Jefferson had an adulterous affair with at least one slave. Benjamin Franklin (I know he wasn't a U.S. President), it is suspected, was a homosexual. John F. Kennedy had at least a couple of extramarital affairs. Yet somehow I am supposed to believe that Clinton having sex with someone other than his spouse tarnished the entire image of the Presidential Office. Somehow I feel that it had more to do with the media and the political parties flashing the colorful images to the public at large everyday for months. With the three people I initially named, everything was kept very quiet. No one really seemed to make much of it. If there really has been a loss of respect for the Office, perhaps it was the conservatives' very lack of respect for the Office that led to the public having less respect for it. No real telling, but this has always bugged me.

Google is going to change the way it displays ads. No longer will they be nice little text ads related to what you are looking for. No Sir-ee-Bob. It is funny because I had just finished saying how much I liked Google ads for the very reason that they were not so audacious and were relevant to what you were looking for when I came across the news stories reporting the change.

I had a great comment weekend. My comment-whoring needs are feeling more satiated. I think I actually get more comments from my friends now that I post these things to a blog then when I simply emailed. Plus I get reactions form random strangers that I have never met. It's great because I get to hear what people are thinking even if I don't necessarily agree with it, and they get to see what others are thinking at the same time. Very efficient.

My weekend was good. The Jewish food cooking experience went off without a hitch. My girlfriend's mother loved the food. Her father couldn't really taste anything because he's sick so I'm not sure he enjoyed it as much. I made noodle pudding and potato pancakes. The rest of the weekend was spent doing pointless shopping and a reunion brunch. Nice.

There are new reports out now that say watching TV is good for you because it's very "high brow" with so many plot lines and requires more intelligence than in days of old. This is good for all of you that simply cannot bring yourselves to parting the covers of a book.

More reports are showing problems with the higher education system. It turns out that students are not all working hard to get great grades, and that half of the people that start college, do not finish. Somehow I thought this was old news. Now there's a push for reform to make students work harder because ... dammit college is supposed to teach and is not supposed to be fun. Teaching and fun do not go together. Sooner or later people have to realize that if people want to learn they will and if they don't, they won't. One point the article made is that a lot of college professors hate teaching. Many universities hire top academic scholars who prefer to research than teach. I think perhaps they should rethink this vision.

I found a Webservice called audible.com that allows you to get some of your favorite news programs and books in an mp3 or mp3-like format so you can listen to it wherever you go. I am so excited about this because I love certain radio programs but am often not home to hear them. I try recording them on tape, but my car only plays cd's and I only have a discman and an mp3 player for the gym ... so it is hard to catchup.

Oh, and I heard something on the news this weekend that I had heard on a blog about a month earlier. Drinking beverages out of those hard plastic contaners is hazardous to your health. (I am not sure about regular plastic containers - like Dasani water bottles - because the story only specified the hard plastic bottles.) Apparently, the plastic contains a chemical that acts like a synthetic estrogen, and it leeches out easily into the liquid that the container holds. The scientists that did this study were not surprised too much by all of this I guess. They were surprised at how much is leaches out, and the build-up of the chemical in the average person.

Oh, and by clicking on the "Next Blog" link a few times today I learned that there is a blog ... run(?) by NFL cheerleaders.

Good times.

Holidays

Holidays are confusing times. What makes them even more confusing is everyone has their own days, and when you take them all together, just about every day is a holiday. To make it even more confusing, half the holidays are not even on the actual days the events we are supposed to be celebrating actually happened. For example, the Fourth of July - the celebration of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration of Independence was adopted by the Continental Congress on July 2nd, and by August 2nd it had been signed by almost everyone in the Congress. So why the 4th? Well we needed a day ... and the officers of the Congress signed that day so that's good enough.

Christmas - the celebration of the birth of Christ. This one is very big with the Christians, and with any kid that likes presents. However, most historians believe that Jesus was not born on December 25. In fact the date to celebrate this holiday has been debated for a very long time. (In fact I have read that in the 17th century some States banned its celebration entirely - the retailing industry eventually persuaded people that it should be celebrated.) No one really thought there would be shepherds tending their flocks in a field in the middle of winter. Why then is this holiday celebrated on that day? Well, the most accepted theory is that church really didn't like the Pagans and in order to compete with their celebration of the winter solstice, it was moved to that day. The date also coincided with a big Roman celebration date as well I believe. Santa Clause, or the image of the fat, red clad, jolly, white bearded old man was popularized by Haddon Sundblom, an illustrator for Coca-Cola.

Thanksgiving is just a whacked holiday to begin with. We're celebrating the fact that the Indians (feathers not dots) helped to keep the European colonists alive long enough so that they could later take their land and kill them. Huh? What a way to repay people that save your lives. And every year we celebrate it. I wonder if Indians celebrate Thanksgiving.

The interesting thing is that even people in the U.S. that do not celebrate these holidays generally know their mythical history.

It was always confusing for me though when I began to learn that other cultures celebrated entirely different holidays on different days. All growing up, our systems - schools, work, whatever, are geared to the traditional Christian/European holidays - Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, and the like. Everyone gets these days off. Banks and stores close and everyone goes home. However, I learned that there were people of other faiths that didn't even believe in these days as holidays but still got to go home *and* they got to stay home on other days to celebrate their holidays. (This is not always the case because many people in our society are not allowed time off to celebrate their own particular holidays, but in college it was not uncommon for a class to be cancelled or attendance to be very low on a non-Christian holiday.) Man, I totally wanted to find a way to get in on that action. (I have a friend that's a Jehovah's Witness and they don't celebrate any holidays. She really likes getting the time off though.)

However, it still seems unfair to an extent. I mean many other cultures in the U.S. don't get a day to celebrate their holidays. Then again, you can't celebrate everyone's holidays I suppose because then we would have to take half the year off ... wait ... why can't we celebrate everyone's holidays again? Part of me thinks that seeing that so many of our holidays do not even seem to be celebrated on the day the event we are purportedly celebrating actually occurred, we should move them. Consolidate each faith's holidays to the same days or days closer to each other. We should totally get more time off in the summer months. This Thanksgiving and Christmas thing being in the middle of winter?? C'mon man. Move it to a time where everyone can go outdoors and traveling is easier.

This weekend is Passover. I'm going to try and make some traditional Jewish dishes for my girlfriend to take to her parents. I've never cooked Jewish food ... so this ought to be really interesting. I hope you all have great weekends.

Disappointment

I'm a little disappointed in people. I'm a little disappointed in how easily people are misled and deceived. I'm a little disappointed at the utter lack of questioning on the part of people. Finally, I am disappointed at authors on all sides of the political spectrum who distort facts and numbers. I believe that if fewer people did this it would be easier to understand the situations that face us and would lead to less confusion, not to mention make the statistics easier to believe.

I learned this week, through a book published by two Yale academics that there is a very real possibility of the estate tax being repealed. I wasn't incredibly shocked by this. I think it's stupid, but I wasn't shocked. What I was shocked by was the fact that the majority of people leading the charge for this repeal were not the people burdened by this tax (their work was behind the scenes - paying for well placed ads and the like) but middle class Americans - people that will have to see an increase in their taxes to make up for this loss of government revenue. In effect they are pleading for the government to tax them more and spare the rich.

Let me explain for those of you that have no idea what I am talking about.

The estate tax (or "death tax") is imposed on rich people when they die. I think it's been in place since about 1916. Many rich people (including Rockefeller and Carnegie) at the time of its enactment supported this law's passage because they felt that inherited wealth stunted working drive of subsequent generations. They also didn't believe in a generational aristocracy being created in a country that was supposed to provide equal opportunity for all. Then in 2001, an estate tax repeal was adopted which would slowly phase out this tax, with a complete repeal in 2010. The way the law was passed, in 2011, the estate tax comes back unless Congress acts prior to then. Recent;y, the House passed a bill to permanently repeal the estate tax. This was nothing new. They've done it before. What is new is that the Senate may actually go along with it as most Americans are pushing for it.

The basic law, as of 2002 was that the first $1 million (now $1.5 million) a person owned at death was exempt from estate tax. Anything above this amount was subjected to the tax. Assuming people conducted a minimal amount of estate planning, a married couple could pass $2 million tax free at their death to others. (One significant benefit to this tax being in place is that it allows for a full step-up in basis as of the decedent's death - meaning that a person inherits property with a basis equal to its fair market value as of the decedent's date of death. With an estate tax repeal, this will no longer be the case and will subject people to extra capital gains taxes. Basis - in a simplistic analysis - is the amount you are deemed to have paid for something. So if you buy a car for $100, you have a $100 basis in that car. Hopefully, you followed all of that.)

The amazing thing to me is that most Americans believe the estate tax affects them - that they will have estate tax exposure at the time of their death. This is entirely false. In 1999, when the exemption was just $650,000 (not even $1 million), only 2.3% of all estates were subjected to the estate tax. Generally, that meant only estates worth more than $2.5 million were subjected to the estate tax. More than half of the revenue collected that year came from the people with over $5 million estates (or the richest 0.1% of our society). The amount raised was enough to fund almost one-half of our entire Education or Department of Homeland Security budget.

What does this all mean? It means the American public, as usual, has been hoodwinked into believing that supporting this tax repeal will benefit them. This is just like when they were coaxed into believing that George W. Bush's last tax relief package would benefit them. The way the numbers broke down - and this is according the U.S. Government, which does a study on how every tax measure will affect the population - the people that really benefited were the top 5% of the American population (and in fact really only the top 1% got the big benefit).

The problem is that this type of tax break does not stimulate a consumer lead economy. The people getting the tax breaks are not going out to buy Big Macs and beer. They are keeping it. Saving it. Investing it and the like, and somehow it has reentered the general public's mind that this benefit will trickle down to them. Trickle down economics was tried throughout the entire Reagan administration and it didn't work. It was concluded that this theory really only works on paper.

The other problem is that the average American, about 75% of them, supports a tax repeal that will not benefit them, but will instead force a tax increase on the average middle class American. And I have to suffer for their ignorance.

Career moves

I am so fascinated by jobs that people have. I hear about so many people that have taken such interesting career paths. I think my favortie was the box tester. Yup ... he is an engineer that tests the strength of boxes for certification purposes - did you ever notice that boxes you buy have such things? There are people out there that make their careers maintaining blogs or surfing the Internet or some other random sort of job. My friend has a boyfriend that's a poet! A poet. I never even considered that I would remotely know a poet - at least one that writes professionally, for a living.

I wonder how people end up in these jobs. I cannot think of many people I knew growing up who dreamed of testing boxes or creating the flavoring chemical that would be used to make hamburgers taste like ... well ... hamburgers. (I've been reading Fast Food Nation" now for two years. Why two years you ask. Well because I read a bunch of other things before I picked it back up again.)

I have tried a lot of jobs. However, there are certain ones that never appealed to me. For example, I never had any desire to be a waiter. This could have been a mistake on my part given that I have learned that restaurants are breeding grounds and everyone working there is sleeping with everyone else working there and the patrons and who knows who else. Ahh, the days of my youth squandered in meaningless jobs like IT help desks where no one was sleeping with anyone.

The entire working culture is interesting to me. A lot of people work extra to get ahead and many families ended up needing both parties to work in order to make ends meet or to get ahead. Some people work for less (illegal immigrants, women, or other minority groups) for a multitude of reasons. The funny part is that the people that work extra to get ahead and such will not actually get ahead in the grand economic theory. I forget the name of this theory but it runs as follows: a person or company that does something to get ahead will only get ahead if no other company or person does the same thing. However, everyone is trying to get ahead so the person trying to get ahead never actually gets ahead - relatively.

As an illustration, it used to be you "got ahead" by getting an advanced degree. This was when it was more uncommon for people to obtain advanced degrees. Now many more people get degrees so such people are not such a valuable commodity. Moreover, some price themselves out of the market with the advanced degree as the employer can hire one of the other people willing to work for less because they are less qualified.

Economies and market efficiencies are not as efficient as we are sometimes led to believe. In theory, outsourcing will not stop, without government intervention, until it costs companies more to outsource than to keep them here. Presumably, this will not occur until all global economies are on an equal playing field and everyone demands the same amount of salary and working conditions and such. This may or may not be a bad thing. There is economic theory that this is good for the economy, but the real numbers seem to indicate otherwise.

However, before I get into some larger pontification on market and economic theory - let me ask the question I was considering when I began this - how many of you are doing what you expected to be doing when you were growing up? For those of you that haven't reached that "grown up" stage of your life - do you know what you will be when you grow up? I was positively convinced that I knew what I was going to be when I started college. Yet, I ended up becoming something entirely different (as is very common).

New shoes

I bought new shoes this weekend. They even came with a new leather wallet (it was a special sale) and my girlfriend got her shoes for 75% off (partially as a result of me buying my new shoes. So she was also very happy about my purchase). :-) I needed new clothes and shoes for work and so I had a bit of a shopping afternoon, and received some very impressive deals.

I also met my girlfriend's closest friend, or at least one of them. Her friend is the sister-in-law of my girlfriend's ex-boyfriend. Interesting. We didn't "hit it off". She is a teacher, which I think is great. I really enjoy teaching, and always wanted to be a teacher on some level. I think teaching is a noble profession, and a very thankless job where one has to play politics with the administration and the parents and everyone else and doesn't receive a salary comensurate with the amount of effort they put in. I also feel that there are many teachers that are not qualified to teach and those that because of the terrible working conditions and pay, no longer really care about teaching, but merely hope to collect their paycheck and go home. Afterall, they are tenured. This attitude is not limited to teachers of course - see Office Space.

In any event, the friend brought up lack of funding. This is a problem of course. Schools often do not receive an appropriate amount of funding. Oftentimes, classrooms are held in these structures called "portables", which was a foreign word to me until I came to South Florida. Who ever heard of putting kids in little trailers and teaching them there? Talk about lack of security and terrible resources. Pitiful. The class of people our society purportedly cares about most relegated to trailer park school yards. Go team. So of course the friend's solution to this was an increase in taxes. However, no one wants to increase the taxes. Is there any wonder why?

There are so many problems with a tax increase. One, there's no guaranty that the money will actually go to schools or if it will simply be misappropriated. If it does go to the schools, what will the schoolboard actually do with it? Will they squander it? Will they hire more unqualified teachers? Will they use it to make their new boat payment? Where will the money go? How much of it will end up in classrooms? And why the heck do we need a tax increase? Florida does not have an income tax. The cities, counties and State generate much of their monies from property taxes (including something called stamp tax) and sales tax. I don't know if any of you have been keeping up with the financial market, but real estate is where it's at - property values are going through the roof. Well as these property vales have increased by about 26% in the span of one year, the government has been collecting more money, as the tax is based upon the value of the property. Seems odd that our state somehow does not have a surplus of money as a result. An increase in sales tax seems like a terrible idea as well, as it will impact an already struggling lower and middle class - as they are the classes most strongly hit by sales tax - or any consumer level tax as a higher portion of their income is subject to the tax (they are most likely to use their entire income stream to purchase consumer products).

Finally, there is no evidence that the school systems in our country really work. We seem to be having a terrible time educating our youth. World scores indicate that our students are not exceptionally successful with math, science, or reading. Perhaps this is due to teachers with lousy salaries not wanting to teach. Maybe this is due to unqualified teachers being hired and retained because they are cheaper. Perhaps it's due to the fact that schools get paid more for having special-needs students - monetarily incentivising having learning disabled students. Wow. Maybe it's a lack of parental involvement, supervision, discipline, or caring. Did this occur as a result of the failing schools or did the failing of the family unit fuel the failing of the schools? Was it a two way street, with each impacting the other? We assess our students in Florida with standardized testing. I believe this is the national movement though. No Child Left Behind and all. Statistically, you have a better chance of determining who will be successful by flipping a coin. These tests show nothing but who can take a test. However, administratively, how else can we show who will be successful? We need immediate concrete results in the age of microwaves, fast food, and instant gratification.

The friend did not like my opinion ... as my girlfriend pointed out - no one likes to be accused of being in a failed system with a bunch of corrupt and inefficient people. Police, priests, government workers, attorneys, doctors, big corporate (tobacco, Enron, Worldcom), etc. Many professions have corrupt people in them and no one likes to be associated with being corrupt or inefficient. Unfortunately, it only takes a few bad people in a large beauracracy to destroy the whole system and its credibility. For example, most people on the lower levels of Enron had no idea that there were any accounting irregularities. Hell, Wall Street didn't even know, why would the worker. However, a few greedy people found a way to make the numbers say what people wanted to hear and there we had it, a recipe for disaster. However, the people that aren't responsible for the disaster necessarily still carry the mark and the stigma for what others have done. However, in this situation, I was not saying the friend was corrupt or inefficient only that she worked in an overall system that seems to be failing (on a whole). I agree that the system needs work, but I do not think we can trivialize how terrible it is with the simple quip of "increase taxes". She didn't see it that way and did not greatly appreciate my opinion. Who the hell was I to be saying such terrible things. Like I said, we didn't "hit it off".

Schoolteachers, however, were not the only people that did not like me this weekend. There was my girlfriend's other close friend who did not like me saying that people are awkward around each other when they first start dating. My point was that they do not, necessarily, act the same way around each other in the begining as they do over time. For example, most people will get dressed up for their first date. They will not burp in front of one another. The make-up will be in place. Legs will be shaved (just in-case). The apartment will be cleaned. ... This did not appeal to her. However, in the end she relented and felt that I was right but I had definitely used the wrong word - "awkward" - even though she could not think of the correct word. The whole thing had me feeling pretty awkward. As I hadn't meant to start a disagreement.

I suppose there really are no safe topics out there. Some are just safer than others and every now and again, you still get kicked in the crotch.

You're right ... no I'm right ... eh

So there I am cruising the Web and passing by some of my favorite virtual haunts, and there I find a story about a guy that is living in a Starbucks. This totally reminds me of something my friend Doug would do. In any event, this landed me on another person's blog. Ok, I know what you are all thinking: 1) my mad skillz at linking just rocks and makes my entries all that more interesting to read ... seriously, I know you are thinking this, and 2) what the hell do we care? Well ... you probably don't, but I'm getting to a point here, and it's always wildly exciting when I get to my point. Yeah, I know you aren't very excited by it but I know you are at least glad for the pain of my journey to be finally over. :-)

So I was intrigued by this story and I thought I would read more. Find answers to some of my burning questions like who are these people that conducted this interview? And how the heck did they stumble upon some random kid living in a Starbucks? In any event, the more I read of this Stephanie Klein's blog the more my brain started to get blurry. It was either in direct relation to the reading or whatever I had eaten for lunch. (I think it was a combination.) I felt that she sounded familiar ... her tone. She sounded educated. How educated? I wasn't sure, but smarter than a lot of the other bloggers I have read out there. However, she also sounded like some friends that I have that are mildly off and like a Sex and The City episode with her periodic outbursts of open female sexuality. I also learned that she had a book deal - for two books! What to make of it all.

I was struck by the fact that a lot of her blog reminded me quite a bit of another blog I had read once. That one was by Jessica Cutler, a D.C. intern that allegedly had several torrid encounters with some high ranking government officials (ooo la la) and spoke rather openly about it. (There I go with my snazzy links again.) She also had her smatterings of fame, in a Playboy pictorial, which I think you may be able to locate at Uselessjunk.com. This got me to thinking, what do these people have in common? I dove deeper and found out that this Stephanie woman had been pregnant when she discovered her husband had been cheating on her. (Personally though, she didn't seem to trust him before their marriage (assuming I'm following her posts correctly) so I think she probably should have seen it coming.) Both bloggers seemed to be somewhat intelligent, and just talking openly and blatantly about sex. Huh. Sex and The City did that too. Jessica's was, generally, more centered around sex, and Stephanie's seemed to have more to it. However, it seemed, overall, that what I noticed most about her writing was that it was an intelligent woman being edgy and raw about topics that women are conventionally less than open about ... usually.

I'm still left pondering the why of it all. Whether she is merely seeking attention or approval still and that's what fuels her topics and her blogging. Whether she is just a part of some quiet underlying sexual revolution of women. I have read articles, as of late, that talk about studies showing that more intelligent women are having a harder time finding mates. Perhaps they are unsatisfied with more men, wanting a man more successful or intelligent or driven than them may limit their dating pool overall. Perhaps they simply lack the time to date given their careers. Perhaps there are all kinds of other issues up there. Maybe the very things that motivate a woman to be that successful make her less attractive to a segment of the male population. Who knows. My personal assessment of Stephanie had to end at this question as I have never met her. I mean it would be fine of me to say that she is attention starved and still desperately seeks male approval or some such stupid psycho-analysis bullshit, but it is unclear. I have no idea and at the end of the day it really didn't matter. Besides, irrespective of why she does it, I appreciate that she does it as I respect open and honest people.

So then I got back to the meat of the matter. What makes these women so popular? What made the show that popular? Are there just a ton of women wanting permission to be that edgy? Are they just saying what other women are thinking? I have posed this question to some of my friends, and I got minimal response. Lisa doesn't like Stephanie's blog and so refuses to read it. She got to the front page saw "Greek Tragedy" and "More Pictures of Me", thought "ick" and ran away. She didn't want to be trapped on some whoa-is-me blog listening to some chick bitch and moan about how terrible her life is. An understandable reaction. I think she was also somewhat put out at the openness of the writing style. However, she was able to confirm to me that her original interest with Sex and The City and such, was strongly related to intelligent women discussing topics that they were formerly forbidden by society to discuss in the open, and not doing it in a way that made them sluts.

So I leave it to you, my faithful ... and not so faithful readers, to figure out for yourselves what's happening here.

I got a new random person to comment on my blog. WOOO HOOO!! I am such a comment whore.

5 more minutes ...

Did you know we were supposed to turn our clocks ahead this weekend? Well I guess people in Indiana, and perhaps some other States did not have to participate in this hair raising adventure invented for farmers, but I did. What I want to know is why must I suffer because the farmers need more daylight. Can't they just adjust their own damn sleeping patterns?

I woke up at 8 on Sunday only to find out it was 9 and I was late. I had known that the clocks were to be turned ahead this weekend, but somehow on Saturday night, it never occurred to me to actually turn the darn thing forward. Oh sleep, oh illusive illusive sleep. Growing up, I never thought I would miss sleep as much as I do now. I still feel that in college I missed soooo much sleep that my body is still trying to catch-up from there and just never quite does.

The weekend was pretty cool, aside from my clock trauma. I made it to the gym on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday - go, me. On Saturday we got our daily allowance of shopping in, and went to dinner with my girlfriend's cousin. Her husband was out of town and so she was lonely. Her bearded dragon took great interest in my feet without my knowledge until I suddenly felt this odd thing crawl onto them. (For those of you who do not know this, I was wearing sandals, which I am wont to do because I live in South Florida.) I got to watch an hour of the NCAA tournament while waiting for our table. Good times. Then on Sunday, after much tossing and turning and finally convincing myself that it really was an hour later, I woke up and made it to the gym. Then a few of us went to a big arts and crafts festival. I got some really cool things. Then we all went to see Sin City. I liked it. I like comic books though, and I love Frank Miller. So I figured I was bound to like the movie. Tarantino does some guest directing in it. Overall, a very cool flick. It was a very low budget flick too, but you would never know it.

My fish (Mitchell) died last week. I knew it had to be coming soon. I mean ... a fish has to eat to live and his hunger strike had been carrying on for quite sometime. It has been suggested that perhaps I should get a new fish, but I really don't think I'm cut out for the fish lifestyle. It seems rather ... fishy. So while I have allowed the thought to swim through my head a bit, and have scaled it, ... I feel I should limit my fish tales (tails). I know all these puns may get some of you feeling green around the gills ... and give you a ... bone to pick with me....

I'm still exhausted. This whole clock change still has my body rather confused. It didn't really want to go to sleep last night, but then it didn't want to wake up this morning. So I'm struggling through sleepiness in an attempt to update my blog with something new and exciting. Not going too well is it? Terrible.

Last week I got into a little blog battle. I had found this woman's blog last week. When I had first browsed to it, she had a post about car shopping and it seemed kind of like a cool site. Then it took a dramatic turn. As it turns out, she's rather ... adament on her views regarding "right to life" issues when it comes to Terri Schiavo. Actually, she takes the more "right" position on issues, in general. I would say "conservative", but so much government involvement in States' rights and people's private lives does not seem in keeping with traditional conservative views. In any event, it was an interesting debate. As with most debates of this type though - they ignore half the facts and half of the arguments so that they can try and make their points sound better. The only position I advocated throughout was that it should be a private matter. However, because I wasn't saying what they wanted .... In any event, I stopped posting on it sometime last week, and never really intend to return.

I got plenty of other blogs upon which to shed my dim light. :-)