Politics
The party is over
Sep/25/08 00:04
I just read a fantastic essay by Patrick J. Buchanan
titled “The Party is Over”. You can read it here.
As the credit party winds down, the drunk frat boys call cabs, and the haze starts to clear, one thing is clear: the house that our parents (and more importantly, our grandparents) left to us is covered with all the relics of a drunken party. Vomit, half-empties and broken consumer electronics are lying everywhere and there’s only one thing to do: get cleaning. Yeah, it kills your buzz. Sorry.
My dad went through a bankruptcy, and he said, “Jeremy, bankruptcy is the biggest blessing in disguise you can imagine, because it forces you to live within your means.” I now understand. EVeryone keeps asking, “What are we going to do, now that credit is drying up?!” It’s called, walk away from your upside-down mortgage and buy a house that was built 40 years ago, before everything got so goddamn big. The average house in 1945 was 800 sq. ft. The average house is now 2349 square feet. Food portions, vehicles and credit card balances have become huge, engorged pulsing boils that are just starting to burst, one by one, spreading pus and disease everywhere. Not pretty.
Two years ago I interviewed a former governor of Utah, Norm Bangerter. He was in the home-building business for 30 years before getting into politics. I asked him about what he thought of the housing boom that was going on at the time. He said, “I think it’s terrible. It’s terrible because 25-year-old kids are buying houses that their parents can’t afford. They’re building houses that are filled with luxury items, like granite countertops and marble bathrooms, and everyone thinks it’s normal. We have too many people spending way too much on their mortgage payments every month because they can’t imagine moving into a small, older home. They all want a brand-new house, a brand-new car and 5 TV’s. It’s not going to last, and I think we’re not teaching young people the right ideas about finances and expectations.”
The interview was for a homebuilder’s promotional DVD, so that part ended up on the cutting floor.
Look, kids. 75% of people kept their jobs during the Great Depression. 80% of people kept paying their mortgages. Yeah, things were tight. No more XBOX Live, no more NetFlix, cut back on the nail salon and on the gym membership (buy a weight set! or a kettlebell!) and maybe eat at home more often. Turn off cable or satellite. Trust me, you won’t die, and your kids will remember a childhood filled with laughter and books instead of it all being lost in a blur of American Idol and Hannah Montana. Why did your grandparents only need 800 sq. ft. for their family with five kids? Two reasons: they spent most of their time outside and kids shared rooms/beds. My grandpa told me that the five boys slept in one bed on the back porch until the oldest two were in their teens. Then they moved out to the barn.
My great grandpa bought one new pair of Levi’s per year, whether he needed them or not. Remember when there were shoe repair shops? Soles worn out? Take them to the shop. My grandpa said that when he got a new shirt, he wore it until he started getting holes in it. Then his mom would sew up those holes, and she had a whole jar full of buttons that she would use to replace lost buttons. Well, it got to where there was more patch than shirt, so he would put it in the rag bag. Once the rag bag filled up, his mom would make a quilt. He said those were handy, because when he woke up in the morning in January, there was a thin layer of frost across the top of his blanket, so he wanted as many of those quilts stacked up as he could find. There was one fireplace, in the kitchen, but it didn’t warm the rest of the house very well. Anyway, he’d use that blanket until it got holes and lost some of its filling. Then it would go out to the barn to be used as a saddle blanket. And eventually it would kind of just disappear, like a little bar of soap that you have to glue to another bar of soap to get a lather.
My grandpa told me that they didn’t have toilet paper: that’s what Montgomery Ward catalogs were for. The pages were printed on thin tissue paper, so you kept the catalog in the outhouse, read it while you were doing your thing, then tore off a page, crinkle, wipe, and get back to playing or working or whatever. My grandpa also told me that they only got pop (or soda or Coke or whatever they call it in your suburban cesspit) once a year, at the 4th of July picnic. He said they brought in big washtubs full of orange, strawberry, root beer, grape and raspberry pop. Nickel got you a pop, and a quarter got you a cheeseburger and a pop. They pulled ice out of the icehouses (ice that had been cut out in heavy blocks and carried to the icehouse in the winter from the river that ran through town) to keep the pop cold. He said he loved strawberry, and that he looked forward all year to that pop.
I know, I know. Nostalgia and all that bullshit, but here’s my point: we can do this. Our grandparents did it. My grandmother still saves money even though her monthly income is only $400 per month. And she doesn’t save it in a bank, btw. Not most of it. She said only a fool keeps all his money in one place. Bruce Lee said that most self-improvement programs don’t work because they require you to add things to your life, and people get overwhelmed. He said that if you really want to change your life, you should try removing things. The sudden disappearance of credit will now force us into that mindset, but I’m here to tell you that things might just get better, not worse. Turn off the t.v., tickle your kids and have a strawberry pop.
As the credit party winds down, the drunk frat boys call cabs, and the haze starts to clear, one thing is clear: the house that our parents (and more importantly, our grandparents) left to us is covered with all the relics of a drunken party. Vomit, half-empties and broken consumer electronics are lying everywhere and there’s only one thing to do: get cleaning. Yeah, it kills your buzz. Sorry.
My dad went through a bankruptcy, and he said, “Jeremy, bankruptcy is the biggest blessing in disguise you can imagine, because it forces you to live within your means.” I now understand. EVeryone keeps asking, “What are we going to do, now that credit is drying up?!” It’s called, walk away from your upside-down mortgage and buy a house that was built 40 years ago, before everything got so goddamn big. The average house in 1945 was 800 sq. ft. The average house is now 2349 square feet. Food portions, vehicles and credit card balances have become huge, engorged pulsing boils that are just starting to burst, one by one, spreading pus and disease everywhere. Not pretty.
Two years ago I interviewed a former governor of Utah, Norm Bangerter. He was in the home-building business for 30 years before getting into politics. I asked him about what he thought of the housing boom that was going on at the time. He said, “I think it’s terrible. It’s terrible because 25-year-old kids are buying houses that their parents can’t afford. They’re building houses that are filled with luxury items, like granite countertops and marble bathrooms, and everyone thinks it’s normal. We have too many people spending way too much on their mortgage payments every month because they can’t imagine moving into a small, older home. They all want a brand-new house, a brand-new car and 5 TV’s. It’s not going to last, and I think we’re not teaching young people the right ideas about finances and expectations.”
The interview was for a homebuilder’s promotional DVD, so that part ended up on the cutting floor.
Look, kids. 75% of people kept their jobs during the Great Depression. 80% of people kept paying their mortgages. Yeah, things were tight. No more XBOX Live, no more NetFlix, cut back on the nail salon and on the gym membership (buy a weight set! or a kettlebell!) and maybe eat at home more often. Turn off cable or satellite. Trust me, you won’t die, and your kids will remember a childhood filled with laughter and books instead of it all being lost in a blur of American Idol and Hannah Montana. Why did your grandparents only need 800 sq. ft. for their family with five kids? Two reasons: they spent most of their time outside and kids shared rooms/beds. My grandpa told me that the five boys slept in one bed on the back porch until the oldest two were in their teens. Then they moved out to the barn.
My great grandpa bought one new pair of Levi’s per year, whether he needed them or not. Remember when there were shoe repair shops? Soles worn out? Take them to the shop. My grandpa said that when he got a new shirt, he wore it until he started getting holes in it. Then his mom would sew up those holes, and she had a whole jar full of buttons that she would use to replace lost buttons. Well, it got to where there was more patch than shirt, so he would put it in the rag bag. Once the rag bag filled up, his mom would make a quilt. He said those were handy, because when he woke up in the morning in January, there was a thin layer of frost across the top of his blanket, so he wanted as many of those quilts stacked up as he could find. There was one fireplace, in the kitchen, but it didn’t warm the rest of the house very well. Anyway, he’d use that blanket until it got holes and lost some of its filling. Then it would go out to the barn to be used as a saddle blanket. And eventually it would kind of just disappear, like a little bar of soap that you have to glue to another bar of soap to get a lather.
My grandpa told me that they didn’t have toilet paper: that’s what Montgomery Ward catalogs were for. The pages were printed on thin tissue paper, so you kept the catalog in the outhouse, read it while you were doing your thing, then tore off a page, crinkle, wipe, and get back to playing or working or whatever. My grandpa also told me that they only got pop (or soda or Coke or whatever they call it in your suburban cesspit) once a year, at the 4th of July picnic. He said they brought in big washtubs full of orange, strawberry, root beer, grape and raspberry pop. Nickel got you a pop, and a quarter got you a cheeseburger and a pop. They pulled ice out of the icehouses (ice that had been cut out in heavy blocks and carried to the icehouse in the winter from the river that ran through town) to keep the pop cold. He said he loved strawberry, and that he looked forward all year to that pop.
I know, I know. Nostalgia and all that bullshit, but here’s my point: we can do this. Our grandparents did it. My grandmother still saves money even though her monthly income is only $400 per month. And she doesn’t save it in a bank, btw. Not most of it. She said only a fool keeps all his money in one place. Bruce Lee said that most self-improvement programs don’t work because they require you to add things to your life, and people get overwhelmed. He said that if you really want to change your life, you should try removing things. The sudden disappearance of credit will now force us into that mindset, but I’m here to tell you that things might just get better, not worse. Turn off the t.v., tickle your kids and have a strawberry pop.
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Little Acts of Civil Disobedience
Jun/22/08 19:50
On the same day as my quest for chalk, I committed
two small acts of civil disobedience.
First act: I had just purchased about $50 worth of stuff from Fry's (which is a huge signal of self-restraint on my part) and there's the guy waiting by the door with highlighter in hand. Three people are queued waiting to show their Day Pass at the door so that they can get back into the Free World. I refuse to be a part of this rampant act of unnecessary (and completely unwarranted) act of detention. Did I steal anything? No. And even if I did, I haven't actually stolen it until I leave the store with it, and even then you have no right to detain me (if you're a security guard) unless you witness me performing a felony, which shoplifting is not. So, you want to see my receipt? Take down my license plate number, call the cops and report that you were witness to a crime (which you weren't because I didn't steal anything) and file a case with them. They'll say, what's the crime? And you'll say, not showing a receipt and the cops will laugh at you. They'll laugh at you just like I do as I walk out the store to my car.
Second act: I'm going to get an oil change. She asks for my name, then my address, and I say, "Look, this is just an oil change. I'm not giving you all my personal information." And she points at the computer screen (like the computer is the fucking boss) and says, "My system won't let me finish this transaction until I enter your information." I say, "OK. 123 Wonder Ave., Las Vegas, NV, 89114." Just then, a manager comes walking by and he says, "Sir, our computers require a real address." Now I know that's a bluff. You think their computer system is going to check that address against a database? No. So I say, "OK, tell me your address so I can have a real address." He says, "I'm not going to give you my address." I just smiled and shook my head. He turned to the cashier and said, "Just put in something." Score one for anonymous oil changes.
And I hear you saying, "Why do you even bother? It's not worth the trouble!" Yeah, that's the problem. Everyone just goes along and accepts "the way things are" or "the computer won't unless I..." and that makes the problem worse. More and more of our freedoms disappear slowly until we wake up and we can't go from state to state without showing a national ID card. Or without applying for travel papers that document your reasons for traveling and how long you'll be staying in the next state over when you go to visit your mom for the weekend. And they'll get so bogged down trying to analyze all that information for terrorist patterns, that it will take 4-6 weeks for them to issue the papers you need to go to Thanksgiving dinner at mom's house.
When I was in elementary school, the Iron Curtain was in place, the Berlin Wall was guarded by lots of gun-wielding guards and Soviets had to apply for traveling papers to go from city to city. And we thought that was horrible and sad and a symbol of everything wrong with Communism. Now, our government has tools the KGB and the Communist Party would have killed for, and all we can say is, "Well, everything's different after 9/11. This is a different world now." Yes, it's different. It's worse because the people who are really causing harm are doing it with good intentions and with your permission. But here's the rub: relying on the government to protect you makes you more vulnerable to attack.
I'll emphasis my point by starting another paragraph. Relying on the government to protect you makes you more vulnerable to attack.
If you rely on some entity outside yourself to protect you, you let your guard down. You relax. You don't pay attention. You don't take care of your body or take any self-defense class, because we can rely on the government, right? Did you happen to forget that this is the same government that "helped out" after Katrina? They thought the Iraq war was a good idea? That can't even make a decent road anymore? Can't educate your kids beyond what used to be a fourth-grade education (but is now called a high school graduate)? These people are incompetent. The tools they have for detecting terrorism are blunt and ham-shaped. The amount of data they have to mine is mind-boggling, which makes finding true threats exponentially more difficult, and you're telling me that if they gather more data, watch more people and have more power that somehow they'll be better at it?
Wake.
Up.
And next time you're walking out of that box store filled with Chinese widgets and sub-grade food, breeze right out the door guilt-free and excited to be leaving with your newly-purchased goods while the rest of the unquestioning, obedient, fearful citizens stand in line and act as another symbol of a dying free America.
First act: I had just purchased about $50 worth of stuff from Fry's (which is a huge signal of self-restraint on my part) and there's the guy waiting by the door with highlighter in hand. Three people are queued waiting to show their Day Pass at the door so that they can get back into the Free World. I refuse to be a part of this rampant act of unnecessary (and completely unwarranted) act of detention. Did I steal anything? No. And even if I did, I haven't actually stolen it until I leave the store with it, and even then you have no right to detain me (if you're a security guard) unless you witness me performing a felony, which shoplifting is not. So, you want to see my receipt? Take down my license plate number, call the cops and report that you were witness to a crime (which you weren't because I didn't steal anything) and file a case with them. They'll say, what's the crime? And you'll say, not showing a receipt and the cops will laugh at you. They'll laugh at you just like I do as I walk out the store to my car.
Second act: I'm going to get an oil change. She asks for my name, then my address, and I say, "Look, this is just an oil change. I'm not giving you all my personal information." And she points at the computer screen (like the computer is the fucking boss) and says, "My system won't let me finish this transaction until I enter your information." I say, "OK. 123 Wonder Ave., Las Vegas, NV, 89114." Just then, a manager comes walking by and he says, "Sir, our computers require a real address." Now I know that's a bluff. You think their computer system is going to check that address against a database? No. So I say, "OK, tell me your address so I can have a real address." He says, "I'm not going to give you my address." I just smiled and shook my head. He turned to the cashier and said, "Just put in something." Score one for anonymous oil changes.
And I hear you saying, "Why do you even bother? It's not worth the trouble!" Yeah, that's the problem. Everyone just goes along and accepts "the way things are" or "the computer won't unless I..." and that makes the problem worse. More and more of our freedoms disappear slowly until we wake up and we can't go from state to state without showing a national ID card. Or without applying for travel papers that document your reasons for traveling and how long you'll be staying in the next state over when you go to visit your mom for the weekend. And they'll get so bogged down trying to analyze all that information for terrorist patterns, that it will take 4-6 weeks for them to issue the papers you need to go to Thanksgiving dinner at mom's house.
When I was in elementary school, the Iron Curtain was in place, the Berlin Wall was guarded by lots of gun-wielding guards and Soviets had to apply for traveling papers to go from city to city. And we thought that was horrible and sad and a symbol of everything wrong with Communism. Now, our government has tools the KGB and the Communist Party would have killed for, and all we can say is, "Well, everything's different after 9/11. This is a different world now." Yes, it's different. It's worse because the people who are really causing harm are doing it with good intentions and with your permission. But here's the rub: relying on the government to protect you makes you more vulnerable to attack.
I'll emphasis my point by starting another paragraph. Relying on the government to protect you makes you more vulnerable to attack.
If you rely on some entity outside yourself to protect you, you let your guard down. You relax. You don't pay attention. You don't take care of your body or take any self-defense class, because we can rely on the government, right? Did you happen to forget that this is the same government that "helped out" after Katrina? They thought the Iraq war was a good idea? That can't even make a decent road anymore? Can't educate your kids beyond what used to be a fourth-grade education (but is now called a high school graduate)? These people are incompetent. The tools they have for detecting terrorism are blunt and ham-shaped. The amount of data they have to mine is mind-boggling, which makes finding true threats exponentially more difficult, and you're telling me that if they gather more data, watch more people and have more power that somehow they'll be better at it?
Wake.
Up.
And next time you're walking out of that box store filled with Chinese widgets and sub-grade food, breeze right out the door guilt-free and excited to be leaving with your newly-purchased goods while the rest of the unquestioning, obedient, fearful citizens stand in line and act as another symbol of a dying free America.
Links of the Week (Month, actually) - Part 2
Jan/14/08 22:59
Eclectic links for your reading pleasure below. And
with this post, I'm all caught up on the backlog!
Onward and upward from here on out!
Wheelchair-Bound Woman Dies After Being Shocked With Taser Ten Times - Yes, that's right. A 56-year-old woman. With a knife. In a wheelchair. What choice did the cops have but to Taser her ten times!
Federal Government: "We're winning the War on Drugs. Cocaine prices are higher!" Drug dealers: "It's because everyone's buying Meth now."
News Flash: War on Drugs futile.
Reactionary thinking is not the way to outsmart terrorists - From the article: "To understand what makes these measures so absurd, we first need to revisit the morning of September 11th, and grasp exactly what it was the 19 hijackers so easily took advantage of. Conventional wisdom says the terrorists exploited a weakness in airport security by smuggling aboard box-cutters. What they actually exploited was a weakness in our mindset — a set of presumptions based on the decades-long track record of hijackings.
In years past, a takeover meant hostage negotiations and standoffs; crews were trained in the concept of “passive resistance.” All of that changed forever the instant American Airlines Flight 11 collided with the north tower. What weapons the 19 men possessed mattered little; the success of their plan relied fundamentally on the element of surprise. And in this respect, their scheme was all but guaranteed not to fail."
George Orwell's original preface to Animal Farm
The world's single most comprehensive, detailed, updated, accurate, and complete source of amusement ride accident reports and related news.
Tug of War: World Champion Sumo Wrestler vs. Orangutan
Sample pages from new Intelligent Design textbook
You think using an unnecessary apostrophe is bad? You'll love these signs!
I don't know anything about the culture of cosplay (short for "costume play"), but these pics are hilarious!
Wheelchair-Bound Woman Dies After Being Shocked With Taser Ten Times - Yes, that's right. A 56-year-old woman. With a knife. In a wheelchair. What choice did the cops have but to Taser her ten times!
Federal Government: "We're winning the War on Drugs. Cocaine prices are higher!" Drug dealers: "It's because everyone's buying Meth now."
News Flash: War on Drugs futile.
Reactionary thinking is not the way to outsmart terrorists - From the article: "To understand what makes these measures so absurd, we first need to revisit the morning of September 11th, and grasp exactly what it was the 19 hijackers so easily took advantage of. Conventional wisdom says the terrorists exploited a weakness in airport security by smuggling aboard box-cutters. What they actually exploited was a weakness in our mindset — a set of presumptions based on the decades-long track record of hijackings.
In years past, a takeover meant hostage negotiations and standoffs; crews were trained in the concept of “passive resistance.” All of that changed forever the instant American Airlines Flight 11 collided with the north tower. What weapons the 19 men possessed mattered little; the success of their plan relied fundamentally on the element of surprise. And in this respect, their scheme was all but guaranteed not to fail."
George Orwell's original preface to Animal Farm
The world's single most comprehensive, detailed, updated, accurate, and complete source of amusement ride accident reports and related news.
Tug of War: World Champion Sumo Wrestler vs. Orangutan
Sample pages from new Intelligent Design textbook
You think using an unnecessary apostrophe is bad? You'll love these signs!
I don't know anything about the culture of cosplay (short for "costume play"), but these pics are hilarious!
Links of the Week - Part 1
Jan/14/08 16:08
I haven't put up Links of the Week for awhile (almost
a month! Crap!). I have to wade through the backlog
and get them all formatted for you. I have also
started adding more commentary to each link, and
that's why they're taking longer now. You'll find the
first batch below:
Since it's Primary/Caucus season, I have a lot of political links:
Former soldier undergoes waterboarding procedure so that you can see just how dastardly this method of extracting information is
Don't Reform the CIA, Abolish It"
Ohio Elections Official Calls Machines Flawed
Huckabee Squashed Charges Against His Son for Stoning, Hanging Dog
6 states defy law requiring ID cards. Now if the other 44 would follow suit....
Hoover Planned Mass Jailing in 1950. I read this article, and the declassified paper it refers to, and the similarities to today's political climate are disturbingly similar. Suspending habeus corpus, imprisoning 12,000 American citizens, military tribunals that "will not by bound by the rules of evidence." President Truman saw the obvious unconstitutionality of this proposal and vetoed the McCarren Act, which was a codification of Hoover's proposal. Coungress overrode the veto and the McCarren Act became law. So Bush's power grab is not new. Unfortunately, he didn't have the same commitment to the Constitution that Truman had, however.
Five myths about torture and interrogation" - From the article "Torture's defenders insist that the rough stuff gets results, but evidence suggests it's hard to get anything under torture, true or false."
FBI to put criminals, security issues up in digital billboard lights - Here's an idea that sounds good on the surface. Everyone wants to help catch the criminals, right? But I have two problems with this: what happened to being presumed innocent until proven guilty? Having your picture on these billboards automatically brands you as a criminal in people's minds, which brings me to the second problem I have with this. What happens when the wrong picture gets associated with a criminal's name? Or what if someone accidentally puts up the wrong picture/information? And what if you were wrongly accused? "We'd like to hire you, Mr. Firth, but your picture was on that criminal billboard for grand theft auto." "They got me mixed up with the guy from the video game!" "Well, I'm sorry, but we can't be hiring guys whose pictures have been on that billboard." And that leads me to the bonus problem I have with this: this turns everyone into a spy/operative for the police force. Everyone looks at everyone else suspiciously and is afraid to say anything to each other. The ultimate FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) tool for the government!
Since it's Primary/Caucus season, I have a lot of political links:
Former soldier undergoes waterboarding procedure so that you can see just how dastardly this method of extracting information is
Don't Reform the CIA, Abolish It"
Ohio Elections Official Calls Machines Flawed
Huckabee Squashed Charges Against His Son for Stoning, Hanging Dog
6 states defy law requiring ID cards. Now if the other 44 would follow suit....
Hoover Planned Mass Jailing in 1950. I read this article, and the declassified paper it refers to, and the similarities to today's political climate are disturbingly similar. Suspending habeus corpus, imprisoning 12,000 American citizens, military tribunals that "will not by bound by the rules of evidence." President Truman saw the obvious unconstitutionality of this proposal and vetoed the McCarren Act, which was a codification of Hoover's proposal. Coungress overrode the veto and the McCarren Act became law. So Bush's power grab is not new. Unfortunately, he didn't have the same commitment to the Constitution that Truman had, however.
Five myths about torture and interrogation" - From the article "Torture's defenders insist that the rough stuff gets results, but evidence suggests it's hard to get anything under torture, true or false."
FBI to put criminals, security issues up in digital billboard lights - Here's an idea that sounds good on the surface. Everyone wants to help catch the criminals, right? But I have two problems with this: what happened to being presumed innocent until proven guilty? Having your picture on these billboards automatically brands you as a criminal in people's minds, which brings me to the second problem I have with this. What happens when the wrong picture gets associated with a criminal's name? Or what if someone accidentally puts up the wrong picture/information? And what if you were wrongly accused? "We'd like to hire you, Mr. Firth, but your picture was on that criminal billboard for grand theft auto." "They got me mixed up with the guy from the video game!" "Well, I'm sorry, but we can't be hiring guys whose pictures have been on that billboard." And that leads me to the bonus problem I have with this: this turns everyone into a spy/operative for the police force. Everyone looks at everyone else suspiciously and is afraid to say anything to each other. The ultimate FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) tool for the government!
Ron Paul for President
Jan/07/08 15:56
