My Third Life Crisis

(Side note before I start the main essay. I am very proud of the fact that the Flyers crowd booed Sarah Palin as she came out to drop the ceremonial first puck last night. First, it shows that I am living in an area with the same political views that I have. Second, after seven years in the wilderness I finally get hockey coverage again.)

Because my life has been in such a state of upheaval over the past two months due to moving across the country and starting a new job what should have been one of the most influential moments of my life has become a footnote. I’m not even sure if I’ve written about it or at least not in the level that I should have. Anything that weighs on my mind to that degree really needs to be examined in more detail.

I’m talking about turning 35. Now I can’t say that my birthday wasn’t memorable. I flew from Philly to KC the night before and spent my birthday packing up the last bits of my apartment, spending time with friends and hosting a trivia game. But given all the stress of the move and knowing that it would be the last time I would be seeing a number of people I couldn’t call it a relaxing birthday. Hell, I didn’t even have cake. How can you have a birthday without cake?

But it is not the day itself that concerns me. It is the realization that I am 35 and have moved to a new city where I know no one and have to come to terms with the fact that this is my life. On some levels that is not an issue at all. I have a very good job at a time where having any job at all has to be considered a positive move. My apartment is amazing and I have everything that I could possibly need at my fingertips. So on the surface my life is rather perfect.

Except that it is not and I would be kidding myself to say that it was. Basically I am alone again as I discovered when I was out last night at a bar sitting by myself. That isn’t too unusual and I had the benefit of getting to watch several good games but it is not the life I want to have. It certainly isn’t the life that I expected for myself. I fully intended to be married by the time I was 35. I could easily see myself being a dad right now with a house in the suburbs. I’m more amazed by the fact that I do not have one than anything else that has happened to me in my life.

I know there are a lot of reasons behind it. I’m painfully shy when it comes to meeting people. I’m happy to sit at the bar by myself. Even if I see someone I would like to talk to moving from my barstool is a challenge and a half. Between my sarcasm and my occasional arrogance I can be a little tough to get to know. And for someone who is so desperate to meet someone I have rather high standards. But at the end of the day I really do consider myself to be a nice, smart, caring guy who isn’t that bad looking. You would think that someone would have fallen for me by now.

I’m not as tortured by this as I was a few months back. Maybe it is the fresh start and the fact that I have a reason to put on pants every morning. But there is only one thing in my life that I am lacking and all of the pressure is on me to find the missing piece. Any ideas on how to accomplish this would be greatly appreciated.

Best of 120 Minutes: Ned’s Atomic Dustbin had two bass players. That is the only fact that anyone can remember about this band. They were occasionally played on MTV and they always mentioned the dual bass players. The fact that I still can recall this concerns me.



The five random CDs for the week:
1) Dave Matthews Band “Recently”
2) Sister Seven “Wrestling Over Tiny Matters”
3) Jeff Buckley and Gary Lucas “Songs to No One”
4) The Brunettes “Mars Loves Venus”
5) Jay Bennett “Bigger than Blue”

Lightening the mood

Since things have been rather serious and dour as of late I feel that it is very important for me to bring the nation’s focus back where it belongs. Such as sitting in stunned disbelief after finding out that Jamie Lynne Spears is preggers again only four months after giving birth. Yes, Brittney’s little sister is playing catch up by having Irish twins before the age of eighteen. I somehow feel that a return to Nickelodeon isn’t in the cards at the moment. Unless we could use her as a star of “Clarissa Explains How She Made Some Really Bad Choices In Life” or “You Can’t Do That If You Were Using Birth Control.”

(The story is she didn’t think she could get pregnant because she was nursing at the time. I assume that her first pregnancy was due to the belief that you can’t get pregnant if you do it standing up or you can’t get pregnant if the day ends in a Y.)

Also, we are now down to the final contestants on Project Runway. Kenley the bitch makes it to the finale and as much as I hate her, based on the wedding and bridesmaid dresses she made she deserves to go. She was easily better than Kotto and Jerrel even if this is like the twelfth time she has acted stunned when someone said that her dress reminds them of another designers. Leanne, who is my favorite, put together two absolutely amazing pieces. The wedding dress was super cool and looked like something that both the bride and the mother of the bride could like but for totally different reasons. Her bridesmaid dress was actually pretty and when was the last time you said that about one of those.

(Yes, I like Leanne partly because she looks like Cat Power and is from Portland. Sue me, I just dig that style. Was bummed when her boyfriend got screen time tonight.)

In other media news I am rather disturbed by seeing Ashton Kutcher in commercials for Canon. Less because of my feelings towards Canon (fine camera products one and all) and more for the reason that I have no desire to see him on my television set at any time. I can’t even bring myself to watch reruns of That 70’s Show, though to be honest any episode in which Donna isn’t a redhead isn’t worth watching on general principle. I don’t want to see Ashton acting all goofy at a wedding. I don’t want to see him snapping pictures. I want to see him getting hit in the head repeatedly with a two by four. Now that would make a great commercial for Home Depot.

I’ll end with another quick discussion of the economy. Now when I say that I have watched the market for 25 years I am not kidding. My dad showed me how to read the financial pages when I was ten. I learned how understand stock symbols and make sense of the mass of numbers that filled the boring section of the newspaper. This was back in the day when stocks traded in eighths. We couldn’t even afford decimal points.

So I was paying attention when the 1987 crash went down. Now in some ways that was more destructive than what we are going through now. It was certainly quicker and more disturbing. Both took place in October as all crashes take place in October. It’s kind of a financial law. What is more interesting to look at is how the average person is impacted psychologically as opposed to financially.

Remember that we live in a much different world than we did 21 years ago. The average person had to wait until they read the stock pages the next day to find out where there stocks were and even then they could only make a rough estimate as to where there portfolio was. Everything took place in the mysterious world of Wall Street and it was an almost mystical place. Honestly, adults looked at me like a freak because I could figure out what a stock was trading at mainly because they had no idea how to read those pages.

Today everyone is an expert and can find out instantaneously. We all can jump on Yahoo and find the value of all of our stocks. If we want to be fancy we could build spreadsheets to automatically calculate our position. If not we can jump on a website and see the value of our 401K to the penny. As a result, peoples’ focus is constantly on the market. That makes life hell because if there is one thing you don’t want to do is look at those numbers on a minute by minute basis. Right now all you get is depressed. Long term all it does is force you to make bad decisions because those little fluctuations do not matter. The reason people are on edge now more than in 1987 is partly due to the fact that more of us are in the market than before. But mainly it is because the moment by moment changes to the market are broadcast to us instantaneously. Sometimes ignorance is bliss.

I'm Tom Brokaw and you can all go to hell...

For those who are curious about the economy or more accurately my effect on a company here are some rather frightening statistics. Since I started working on September 2nd my company’s stock price has fallen by 32.5%. On the other hand, since I left Sprint its stock price has fallen by 32.7%. I haven’t decided if this indicates that the economy is in dire straits or if I am simply the kiss of death for companies in that even when I leave just the trace of my presence results in utter turmoil. I’ll keep everyone abreast of any further career moves so that they can alter their portfolios as necessary.

(Huh huh Beavis, abreast)

While I did not liveblog the debate (I will for the final one) I did watch the entire event and have more than a few comments to make on the whole show. Here they are, numbered for your reading pleasure.

1) Wow, I never thought that Tom Brokaw could be such a whiny bitch. “But we have time limits! And agreed upon rules!” Brokaw actually goofed up the flow of the debate by those little interjections. Neither candidate seemed to be upset about the other talking longer than required but the only time things got testy was when Brokaw decided to cut people off.

2) I only caught one guy in the crowd falling asleep during the debate. It would have been hysterical to see the camera pan during one of the speeches only to catch someone just dead out of it in the audience.

3) I’m not a big fan of the town hall style debates. First off, I’m not quite sure if the average American should be allowed to vote much less ask questions of the candidates. Then we have all of this walking around and faux sincerity where the fact that someone can remember the name of the person who was just introduced is considered to be a significant advantage. I’d much rather have an experienced journalist asking tough questions and forceful follow-ups.

4) Hey, remember eight years ago when the debates focused on lock boxes and whether or not we were all going to be rich or super-rich? Sigh. I miss those days. Think about this fact. We have gone through three debates and we have not had a single question on abortion. In fact, it is not even a campaign issue. I didn’t think I would ever see a presidential campaign where that issue never appears.

5) Back to the debate format. McCain, especially at the beginning, did an excellent job of connecting with the live audience. I can see how he thrives in that town hall format as he is better in that one on one interaction than one would ever expect. But he really suffers from the nature of television and his history of injuries. Because of his war wounds he moves rather jerkily and every step seems to emphasize his age. It hurts him even though it has nothing to do with his ability. Obama, on the other hand, fulfilled his main goal of looking presidential. The way he composed himself sitting down, walking the stage, referencing McCain, it was all done in a manner that showed poise and confidence. When people talk about wondering if someone is ready to lead they really aren’t referring to s set of experiences and well-earned skills. They more want to see someone who they will be comfortable listening to in a presidential address. Obama showed that last night.

6) Similar to that, I want to point out that Obama’s political ads might go down as some of the best in history. As I am within spitting distance of Pennsylvania I see a lot of ads (the three electoral votes that I control as the sole voter in Delaware are of less importance) and I am extremely impressed by his economic ones. They consist of Obama at a desk, mirroring the scene in the Oval Office, discussing his economic plan in detail and contrasting it to McCain’s. At the end he gives the “I approve this message” tag and then states exactly why he approves of it. The power of these ads are immense and I have not seen much commentary on them. First, he once again is positioning himself in a way that makes voters comfortable in accepting him as a political leader. He also states facts (or at least what are purported to be facts) and those details take slight precedence over hyperbole. But what it is more than anything is personal. This isn’t just an ad made by some Madison avenue team with a soundbite tossed in at the end. By the sole fact that he is on screen, giving this minute speech, not providing the same canned, required by law ending, you gain this strong personal connection to the candidate. I really feel that those might be the most important ads of the election.

7) Two fun TV moments. At one point while Obama was speaking you could see McCain walk behind him to talk to Brokaw and you had a momentary hope that he would punch him out. Then you had Brokaw whining at the end that the candidates were blocking his teleprompter.

8) Here is the final, telling moment of the debate and the election. Now I felt that the debate was a tie. McCain was better at the start, Obama better at the end, and no one made any real moves. Most of the polls showed it going to Obama by a wider margin than I would have thought. But the most important moment took place after the debate ended.

Apparently they handed out cameras to the audience members to take pictures of the candidates and the event after it was over. So while the candidates were shaking hands and relaxing you could see the audience taking pictures. Every camera was focused on Obama. People were standing up in order to get their picture taken with him. This is in a room of theoretically undecided voters and you could just sense that all eyes were on Obama. That is the biggest sign that the election is his to lose.

Now I’ll reiterate that I am a Chicago democrat and in no way can be considered unbiased. I’ll also state that I have immense respect for John McCain and have said in the past that he is the one republican who I felt that I could support. But this election seems to be turning into one for the democrats to lose rather than the republicans to win and that is a much different ballgame.

Wednesday Night Music Club: As I’ve mentioned recently, I’ve started working out again. What that means is that I find myself spending 45 minutes a night on a treadmill wondering exactly why I am doing this. The only thing that makes the time worthwhile is I get to listen to New Pornographers songs the entire time. Pretty much makes any endeavor worthwhile.

Your zombie economic forecast

Given that we just suffered through another 500 point drop in the Dow I thought that I should provide my view on the current state of the economy. As I do have an MBA in Finance I do possess at least a little background on the subject at hand. However, it should be noted that I am also a person who willingly paid money to see Weird Al Yankovic in concert and therefore my judgment cannot be trusted in even the best of circumstances. Here it goes, in handy question and answer format.

Q: So how bad is it?
A: Bad. Really bad. Guy coming after you wearing a hockey mask and a chainsaw bad.
Q: Eep! So what the hell is going on?
A: Let’s try to keep it simple. When you put money in the bank the bank doesn’t actually hold on to it. They lend it to people who then use it and promise to pay it back. As long as they do there is no problem. Except that now we lent to a lot of people who didn’t pay the banks back. And the banks invested in all of these strange financial instruments that were meant to reduce risk but in fact just made the risk larger. Now several banks are failing because they can’t cover what they owe while the others aren’t lending out money to anyone.
Q: So, what’s wrong with banks not lending?
A: Well, see, companies don’t actually carry cash. Whenever they need to do something (up to and including make payroll) they typically do it through a loan. Now they can’t do that so everything is seizing up. Hence, a huge downturn in the market until the credit market opens up again.
Q: What is your next to worst case scenario?
A: Dow drops to 7777 over the next several months and you have double digit unemployment (I’ll guess 12%).
Q: Why 7777? That is a rather precise figure.
A: 7777 is the next major psychological barrier for the Dow now that we have broken 10,000. Despite the fact that the number is rather meaningless people really do react to it. That’s why on Monday the market rebounded back to 10,000. They felt safe around that number. With that level gone the next safe zone is 7777, which exists because people really like the number seven. I’m not making that up. There is actually research that agrees with me.
Q: Ok, so what is your worst case scenario?
A: Complete collapse of the global economic system resulting in worldwide anarchy. However, for those of you who have heeded my advice and have prepared for the inevitable war against the zombies you will find that the plans that you have developed for that conflict will serve you well in such a situation. And no, I will not tell you where my secret hideout is. When the zombies rise we are all on our own.
Q: Wait a minute, as your ex-girlfriend won’t you come and rescue me when I call upon you for help while surrounded by zombies?
A: Ha ha. No. As anyone well versed in zombie defense tactics knows one of the first actions to be taken by any female with a known former male suitor who also happens to be a hopeless romantic is to call on said suitor for rescue. In the best case scenario, he will draw the zombies away from your position and provide a useful diversion as you escape. In the worst case scenario, he actually will rescue you and then you will have to patiently accept his company until such a time arises in which he can properly be utilized as zombie bait. Unless you are by my side when a Class 3 outbreak occurs you are out of luck.
Q: You really have put a lot of thought into this whole zombie scenario, haven’t you?
A: I keep a machete at the ready at all times. Blades don’t need reloading.
Q: Anyway, back to the market. Any suggestions?
A: If you’re my age keep plugging away at your 401K. Yes, you’ve lost a ton of money but that is money meant for thirty years from now. If the market doesn’t recover by then we will seriously be at the point where foraging for food will take precedence over retirement plans. I’d stay away from any company where they will need a lot of capital in order to start making money (sorry tech startups) until the debt markets open up. Always side on companies that make products that people have to use. People will need to buy diapers and razor blades. Otherwise, try to keep a good store of cash at the ready, have your resume up to date and start networking just in case.
Q: Ever seen the market this bad?
A: Nope. I’ve been following the market for 25 years (really, I have had my eye on it since I was 10) and I’ve never seen a configuration of events like this. The Dow is down over 30% in the past year. But, there are actually some positive signs. The whole world economy is hitting a recession and that means everyone is in the same boat and that provides opportunities for the first people to figure out a fix, which will most likely be the U.S. Plus, when people around the world get scared the money goes into the U.S. market because even in horrible times we are still the safest bet. The dollar is strengthening and the very weak dollar that we’ve had worried me more than anything. Oil prices are down and that should help provide at least a modicum of stability to the whole state of affairs. We haven’t bottomed out yet but at least I can see some positive signs out there.
Q: Still happy that you got a job when you did?
A: Yep. Might turn out to be the luckiest moment of my life. I’ll take employed in Delaware over unemployed in Kansas City any day of the week.

Off to watch the debate. Be vigilant! If anyone lurches towards you always ask yourself “Is that a zombie?” If in doubt, aim for the head. Better safe than undead I always say.

Yes, I have a question...

Given that Tuesday’s debate is going to be a Town Hall format in which the audience members will be allowed to pose questions to the candidates I feel that it is my civic duty to provide the people of Nashville with a base set of questions to have at the ready tomorrow evening. Please feel free to use any of these (though please reference Battling the Current and kcgatsby in the process)

· Given the current economic crisis at what point do you believe that we should begin to resort to cannibalism and if so, which senator do you feel should be the first to go in the pot?
· Based on what we have learned from the robots sent back in time to kill John Connor do you still support funding Skynet?
· For the greater good, would you use your power as president to force MTV to start playing music videos again?
· If hypothetically you were named Emperor as a result of the ongoing conflict with the Trade Federation would you use this as an opportunity to enact Order 66?
· Follow up question: When can we expect Wookie Life Day to be named a federal holiday?
· With all of our focus on terrorism centered around Al Qaeda aren’t we missing the more obvious home-grown terror threat posed by Cobra especially given their recent recruitment of Dr. Mindbender?
· How in God’s name does Vanderbilt have a better football team than Tennessee? I mean, what the hell?
· What would you do for a Klondike bar?
· Senator McCain, did you know who Governor Palin was when you chose her as your running mate or were you simply picking names out of a hat at that point?
· Do you believe that we could solve all of our existing foreign policy issues simply by naming Chuck Norris Secretary of Defense?
· Based on the current state of the country, would you agree with issuing a proclamation stating that everyone gets one week off in order to get their shit together?
· In an all out battle to the death who would in a conflict between the Smurfs and the Snorks?
· What was your favorite cartoon as a child? (I think I would actually want to know this.)
· If as president you were allowed to bring back one television show which one would it be?
· If I promised to vote for you only if the national anthem was changed to “Baby Got Back” would you do it?
· Given the high price of gasoline, will you finally remove the roadblocks keeping Mattel from releasing the hoverboards promised to us in Back to the Future Part Two?
· Do either of you truly believe that this debate is worth pre-empting The Biggest Loser?
· Can I get extra credit for watching the debate as well?

From somebody to an individual

Just a whole bunch of random thoughts that came to me over the weekend:

1) Is anyone else really freaked out by the DirectTV ad that is showing during the playoffs featuring the cast of Poltergeist? Now, it is nice to see Craig T. Nelson get some work but the little girl from that movie died when she was still a kid (right as they were about to film Poltergeist 3 if I remember correctly). It is just real creepy to see Craig T. Nelson act in a scene with a child who has been dead for more than fifteen years. When I watch the commercial I am not thinking about switching from cable; I’m wondering what her parents think every time that commercial comes on the air.

2) Every day on the way to work I pass a sign that reads “Wilmington: A Place to be Somebody”. That is quite possibly the weakest city slogan ever developed. Let’s examine it in detail. First, we define Wilmington as a place. Not a spectacular place, or a unique place or even a slightly above average place. It is just your typical, undescript place defined as such to avoid confusion from people who might believe that it is some sort of mineral. Then we have “to be” an extremely weak, meaningless term that most English teachers hate when they see it. Finally, we find out that here you can be somebody. Not anybody, mind you. We don’t grant you that much freedom. No, you can be somebody. You can be another nameless, faceless cog in the machine here. Every day I see that sign and you know what, I’m not very inspired by it.

3) I’ve been very proud of myself for keeping with my exercise routine for the past week but there is one slight issue. It is quite odd to finish a workout and then take an elevator back to my apartment because I am too lazy to take the stairs. It’s like “I just spent forty minutes walking in place. I have earned the right to have a motorized piece of equipment take me someplace that I could easily reach on my own.” It just seems wrong.

4) For those who wonder, yes I do my own laundry. However, as my new apartment has a front loading washer (something I have never encountered before) I have spent the past month just trying to figure out where you put the damn detergent. Only took me about eight loads (and a helpful television commercial) to realize that I had been doing it wrong. Yes, I have multiple advanced degrees but yet am flummoxed by a standard appliance.

5) Oh, I finally got around to watching all the shows that I taped last week. Big Bang Theory was great if just for Leonard losing a girl over an argument over the differences between string theory and quantum loop theory. I’ve been there. (No, really, I have. I also had a girl break up with me because, and I quote, “Her cat didn’t like me.”) How I Met Your Mother was weak again (though Marshall trying to psyche himself up for interviews was good) and I am really sensing that this will be the last season for the show unless the quality ramps up quickly.

6) Finally, I finally got around to my guilty pleasure of watching The Biggest Loser. There is something really satisfying about sitting on the couch, scarfing down a pizza, while watching fat people exercise. I’m still at mixed emotions about the show. It is great that it does inspire people to work out and lose weight and yes, I have taken advice from the show. But, it is completely unrealistic as it shows the contestants losing ten pounds in a week because they get to spend all week working out. As silly as it sounds, Celebrity Fit Club is more realistic in terms of how people really lose weight. They even had a contestant gain weight while on the show. It is just a better window in how people have to get fit while still living in the real world.

Best of 120 Minutes: Thought that I would go to one of the classic acts that you would always see on a Sunday night: Depeche Mode. No one knows where they came from, no one knows where they disappeared to. But every week at around 11:35 there would always be a Depeche Mode video.



The five random CDs for the week:
1) Richard Thompson “Live from Austin, TX”
2) Dave Matthews Band “Remember Two Things”
3) The Frames “The Cost”
4) The Ditty Bops “Pack Rat”
5) Allen Toussaint “Connected”

80's Weekend Rewind #7

Tonight on your 80's weekend rewind I bring you back to a nine year old boy's favorite video: The Tubes "She's a Beauty". For a nine year old this is like Nirvana. It is a strip club and a roller coaster all in one!

(Seriously, I always thought that this is what strip clubs would be like when I was a kid. Oh how disappointed I was when I found out that there was neither mermaids nor girls on trapeezes.)

For the life of me I can't explain exactly what this video is about. So we have a kid who is going on a carnival ride. But the safety system is a dominatrix, which would make Disneyland a much more interesting place. The band is playing and all acting like idiots when the camera is nearby. Then there are the strippers slash acrobats.

We then segue into a little girl performing in a ballet outfit, which seems wrong on so many levels given everything else that is going on in the video. Especially given that after seeing her they run into a tower of amps (though given the musical quality of The Tubes that might be agood thing) where we are joined by the women in cages followed by the mermaid (regular, not inverse for those wondering). By the time we reach the end the kid is now an old man.

Sometimes I wonder why I'm as screwed up as I am. Then I remember that I watched stuff like this every day for my entire childhood.

Veep Veep

9:17 P.M.: And we are coming to you live from the new and improved Battling the Current world headquarters surrounded by a cast of…yep it is still just me. Actually, there are even less people around me now (in terms of a social circle sense) than there was before. Better environment, less comfort. Sigh.

9:19 P.M.: For those of you who haven’t experienced one of these before I am going to be watching the vice presidential debate and providing my comments in real time. No tricks or gimmicks, I comment on what I see. So sit back, relax, and join me in waving a little pennant that reads “politics”.

9:20 P.M.: Yes, I know based on the timestamp on these entries this can’t be exactly called a live review. I worked out this evening and didn’t get back until the debate was about to start. As a result, I had to choose between writing while very sweaty or reviewing things in tape delay. Please don’t call me and ruin the ending. Ok, let’s start.

9:24 P.M.: As required by law, the debate is coming to us from St. Louis. All debates are held in St. Louis mainly because there are apparently a large number of cheap hotel rooms in the area. Washington University is still a confusion of names as it is neither in Washington nor a University (or at least not a real one).

9:25 P.M.: The rules of the debate. One fall with a 30 minute time limit. Managers are banned from ringside. (You know what I miss from pro wrestling? Time limits. They never announce those anymore. Sure, they aren’t really necessary but they added to the whole drama of the event).

9:27 P.M.: Sarah Palin speaks in a complete sentence, thus outperforming expectations. Of course, that sentence involves the mention of a child’s soccer game, which is not the main source of governmental policy that I am aware of.

9:30 P.M.: Joe Biden is actually sounding good and on topic. Not a bad start for him at all.

9:32 P.M.: Is it me or does Sarah Palin have a deer in the headlights look about her? She just looks stiff and scared. Also, I don’t want a vice president who uses the words “Darn it” in a debate. And did she lecture me about the way out of this economic crisis is by not running up my credit card bills? Seriously? We’re a good ten minutes in and Palin has yet to say a single policy standpoint.

9:36 P.M.: Biden looks good wearing a democratic blue tie. Palin is now talking about her experience as mayor in a 2,000 person town. I never expected to see a character from Northern Exposure taking the national political stage.

9:41 P.M.: Here is the natural problem with the Republican point of view at the moment. They are proposing a ….woo hoo, Wilmington just got a shout out from Biden! Represent! Anyway, the Republicans are arguing that the government is screwed up and only they can fix it. However since the Republicans have been the government it is essentially an argument that goes by “Just because we screwed everything up royally doesn’t mean that we can’t fix it.”

9:43 P.M.: Biden is more than a bit of a policy wonk apparently. I’m a detail guy and even I am getting lost. He trips over his words a little too much as else. We also got a Bridge to Nowhere joke, which provides us a bit of levity.

9:46 P.M.: You know why Palin could take on the oil companies? Because where else are they going to drill? Oh, and she just admitted that she has only been doing this five weeks and hasn’t promised anything to anyone.

9:47 P.M.: Earlier tonight I watched CBS news and they had done something interesting. They asked Biden and Palin the exact same question and put the answers side by side. When asked “What was the worst thing the Dick Cheney did while vice president” Biden answered “Destroying the constitution and supporting torture and executive privilege.” Palin’s answer? “Shooting a guy.” Not only does that show the difference in the candidates it gives a wonderful picture of where Cheney will go down in history.

9:52 P.M.: I’m always up to hearing about energy policy. It’s always nice to know that your job is part of the national debate.

9:53 P.M.: Well, at least Palin vaguely addressed that climate change might be result of human activities. That is an improvement over some of her earlier statement. I still haven’t heard a single policy statement from Palin or anything more than a generality. Yes, she looks perky talking about it but she is not saying anything.

9:55 P.M.: Here is a fun thing from work. Being on a trade floor I am surrounded by TV monitors showing the news all day. Today I saw on the closed captioning someone asking “Who are the democrats using to fill in for Palin in the practice debates?” I wanted to see that the answer was “We got that girl from Little Miss Sunshine. She might not know policy but she sure is cute.”

10:00 P.M.: I love how we have both candidates trying to say that “We don’t support gay marriage but that doesn’t mean I have any problem with them” and boy did Palin have to squirm around that issue.

10:07 P.M.: Down to the Middle East and the foreign threats portion of the debate. I did like the reference to “The Castro Brothers”. Makes them sound like a mafia organization. Like, “The west side docks were run by the Castro Brothers.” And when did Kissinger become the go to person for foreign policy? Aren’t people still trying to put him on trial for war crimes?

10:12 P.M.: I’ll give Palin credit. She actually has sounded rather good in the foreign policy section. She hasn’t said anything substantial yet but she has sounded more comfortable than she has throughout the entire debate.

10:13 P.M.: Hey, I wouldn’t sit down with the government of Spain either. Bunch of jerks, all of them.

10:16 P.M.: We all agree that Israel is important. Palin is happy to hear that even though it has been a backbone of foreign policy since, well, the country existed.

10:18 P.M.: If we were scoring on points, Biden would be walking away with this debate. Palin hasn’t made any glaring errors but I haven’t seen her launch any meaningful attacks. She just doesn’t sound believable (or at least strong) when talking about any policy. Just compare her to Biden. Who would you want in the room providing you guidance? On the plus side, her voice has been much less annoying than one would anticipate.

10:23 P.M.: Bosniacs? Biden just made up a word. Whenever people talk about Bosnia and Kosovo I always go back to something I read from P. J. O’Rourke. “Kosovo shows the classic American view of foreign struggle. We show up years late and bomb the country next door.”

10:29 P.M.: John McCain knows how to win a war. Ok, outside of Gulf War 1 which one did we win? Grenada and Panama. I’ll grant us a tie in Vietnam. I have about as much history of winning a war through my expertise at Risk than either of the candidates.

10:32 P.M.: Hey, I walk down Union Street in Wilmington! See, this is the difference between the Midwest and the East Coast. Here I get to see a vice president candidate when I go to dinner. Also, the Republicans can’t say that the Bush administration doesn’t count. I’m sorry but there is guilt by association.

10:35 P.M.: Did a third grade class just get a shout out? Is this a debate or a bad awards speech?

10:38 P.M.: Note to Palin: Agreeing with Dick Cheney is not precisely a good thing. That is essentially agreeing that the Constitution is optional. I am very glad that Biden called her out on that. That was a huge gaffe showing her mistake.

10:40 P.M.: See, here is the huge issue with Palin. She is asked about the big question around her experience and she replies by talking about her family and her world view. That is essentially saying that I deserve the job because I’m a good person not that I have any of the skills. For a starting job that is fine. I’ve been hired under that same logic. But no one made me COO as a result.

10:43 P.M.: Wow, Biden got choked up talking about his family. That was possibly the first moment of real emotion that I have ever seen in a debate. It was only for five seconds but it was noticeable.

10:45 P.M.: I love Palin saying that the Republicans have done poorly. She is essentially trying to sell Royals season tickets. Sure, we suck but why should we change?

10:48 P.M.: If you say that you have not compromised your positions you are not a politician. Never trust a politician who states anything differently. They are either lying or naïve.

10:50 P.M.: Sarah Palin is about to set a record. Ninety minute debate and not one meaningful statement. Well, she has done a better job than Perot’s running mate in 1992 but that is about it.

10:54 P.M.: That is it. Biden wins solidly on points but no real knockdown blow. Off to the spin room.

Fast Food Nation-State

Editor’s note: As some of the more observant of you may have noticed there is a new box under my profile in which you can join my blog network. This is for the members of Facebook nation (though click on it even if you aren’t because I’m not sure what happens) as you can become part of the Battling the Current network and receive a blog feed through Facebook. There is also theoretically a way that if you have a Blogger account that you can become my Follower. In either case all I can say is “Follow me! Follow me to freedom!” Or just consider this your official membership in my personality cult.

So I have spent the past several days analyzing the fast food options on my 35 minute commute to the office. The findings are rather astounding. Here they are, organized by chain.

McDonald’s: None. Ok, that is not technically true. On the way home I noticed that if I drove the wrong way down a one way street for several blocks I would reach one. And while the draw of a Filet-o-Fish is very strong that is probably too much of a challenge to reach on a regular basis. However, I would like to give ample warning to the people on the sidewalk that during Shamrock Shake season they better watch out.

Burger King: A half a King. There is one but it is connected to a gas station. For some reason I always feel very wary about any fast food joint that is directly tied to a gas station. I always assume that these sites have much lower quality than the standard restaurant. That seems completely ludicrous given the fact that the place is going to clog my arteries either way.

Wendy’s: One. An actual, honest to goodness, stand alone restaurant. However, since I have never been a big Wendy’s fan this isn’t actually that big of a benefit. Sure, the spicy chicken sandwich is an obvious winner but the fries are subpar and who in their right mind would order a baked potato?

Subway: One but it is hidden. They have a sign out (next to an abandoned gas station and in front of a Wal-Mart) but the store itself is way in the back of this strip mall. However, I am more than happy to have one within a close drive of my office. There is nothing better than a five dollar foot long when facing a late night in the office.

KenTacoHut: None, in either the original format or the combined Voltronesque conglomerate. I’m a little saddened that there isn’t one nearby. There is something immensely satisfying in realizing that one can make chicken, pizza or tacos from the same kitchen using the same ingredients and equipment. It’s the fast food equivalent of the Apollo program.

Boston Market: One. Maybe not officially fast food but it is not as though I would sit down there to eat. Amazing that this is there but not any of the other alternatives.

Nathan’s Famous: One. This intrigues me and at some point I will have to stop in. It is a hot dog stand and as a hot dog aficionado I feel that it is my duty to check the place out. But it is a place for New York style hot dogs so I am immediately apprehensive. It’s New York; how would they know how to make a hot dog? My only other hot dog option is this place called Johnnie’s Dog House which, based on the one at the airport, offers all the different regional styles. That is even worse. That just means they do all of them poorly.

Dunkin Donuts: Two. There is hope for this place yet.

Tomorrow night: Vice Presidential debate live blog! Podiums! Moderators! A candidate who uses the word Aboot! Should be interesting to say the least.

Wednesday Night Music Club: If it is fall that can only mean one thing. Hockey season! Here is one of my personal faves, Kathleen Edwards, with the best hockey video ever made.

What makes a candidate (part two)

It is amazing what thoughts come to you at three in the morning. I awoke from a very strange dream and posed the following hypothetical question to myself. Let’s say that someone invented a machine that would record your dreams so that you could watch them over again on the internet. No more struggling over just what you saw; every instance would be recorded in a convenient digital format. However, not only would your dreams be recorded but they would be stored in what could only be described as DreamTube. The entire world could also see exactly what you saw as you slept. If this was the case would you sign up for the machine?

I think for the most part the answer would be no. Now it is true that I would give pretty much anything to reexamine my dreams (partly due to the fact that I get inspired by them and partly for the insight into my subconscious) but I don’t think I would want to open that up to outsiders. This is coming from someone who posts almost every detail about his life to a website every night. Plus, would you want to share every dream you have in which you are naked in a classroom? Would anyone have the courage to say “Here is what my dreams are like world. What do you think?” It’s an interesting thought experiment to say the least.

Anyway, I want to spend a little more time delving into the nature of political candidates. (Yes, I read the comment on last night’s post. It says something about America that I can no longer tell if that was an entirely sincere comment or if it was written in a post-ironic sense.) What I want to discuss are some of the things that a presidential candidate can not be.

The first rule is that they cannot be fat. Yes, Bill Clinton was overweight but I’m talking fat in the William Howard Taft sense of the term. The “could possibly get stuck in his own bathtub” criteria is one that voters could not overlook. It is strange given the obesity levels in the country but could you imagine a 300 pound presidential nominee. Just wouldn’t happen. Try to name a politician who meets that criteria and you would have to struggle. Given that politics is now a visual medium you have to present an image that works in that medium.

Another interesting area is the candidate’s religion. Now as opposed to even the recent past I don’t believe the actual religion of the candidate himself plays a great role. There was minimal issues about John Kerry being catholic (with most of it surrounding his pro-choice stance) and a little more about Joe Lieberman being Jewish but neither of those were major factors. Really, the only religious stance that I feel would be unelectable would be avowed atheists. It is interesting that in a country founded on religious freedom that this would be a major hangup. I just do not see the American population getting behind such a candidate, even though they would have no problem supporting a candidate who only pays lip service to religion. It isn’t a question of morals or ethics as those are not tied to religion. It is just that since so much of the country’s nature is tied to references to god that to actively not believe would prove to be a major hurdle.

I’ll end with a few of the other basic rules of presidential campaigns. It is always a benefit to be tall as historically the taller candidate wins the election. Height just plays better in terms of gaining respect and it shows when you watch the debates. Pay attention to things like posture and camera angles and how Obama’s height advantage creates a positive image of him for no reason other than the fact that he is tall. Also, have a short and recognizable name. Recent elections have gone to the candidate with the simpler last name. No one is sure why but it is actually true. Finally, always release your bad news on a Friday afternoon. No one watches the news on Friday night so you can get away with things.

What makes a candidate (part one)

I think I should state for the public record how incredibly grateful I am that I received a job offer when I did. Given that I sit on a trade floor and could literally watch the markets move on a second by second basis this afternoon the fact that I was sitting at a desk and not on my couch was a very comforting thought. True, the couch would be more comfortable but I have a feeling that I would be there a long time given where this market is headed.

Incredibly though, I actually received an email today asking if I had time for a job interview. What amazes me most is not that someone is hiring in this climate but that I was emailed given that I haven’t been actively searching for a job since I received this offer two and a half months ago. I understood the rejection email I received today but the very serious interview one was a bit of a pleasant shock. At least I am still a bit of a desired quantity.

Completely random note of the night: I have roughly a 35 minute commute to work. It dawned on me today that to my knowledge I do not pass a single stand alone McDonald’s on the entire trip. There might be one in the Wal-Mart I drive by but that would be it. That astounds me. During my 30 minute commute in KC I would pass at least three on the way. I can’t decide if this is a sign of a higher level of culture, a void of one of the true symbols of Americana or a massive business opportunity. I honestly can’t believe that there is any place in America where you could drive on major roads for half an hour and not pass a McDonald’s.

Switching gears to politics I need to write a bit about Sarah Palin in a way that I think the media has completely ignored. Now I’m not going to get into whether or not she is qualified to be vice president. She is so woefully unqualified that I am frightened at the very thought of her being on a ballot. I’m also not going to address the fact that she got schooled in an interview by Katie Couric, someone who spent decades talking mainly to Willard Scott. I’m not even going to try to explain how she could have come in second in the Miss Alaska competition given that there are like five women in the entire state. No, what I think her Achilles heel as a candidate really is is her accent.

As much as we all like to talk about how the US is a meritocracy the fact is that everyone has built in stereotypes and accent is one of the biggest. To use a British example, it’s how we consider someone like Christopher Hitchens with his Oxford accent to be a genius while the guys from Oasis with their Manchester drawl to be uneducated wankers. We connect accents with education. In the US, our political leaders typically have northeast accents, which imply Ivy League educations, or the plain, Midwestern accents of most television broadcasters.

No one questioned George H.W. Bush’s intelligence given his Connecticut accent while George W. Bush’s southern drawl helps to peg him as a moron (along with well, his policy decisions and a whole host of other factors). Bill Clinton had a bit of a southern drawl but only brought it out when he wanted to give an impression of “Aw shucks” and put the country at ease and get a laugh. When he needed to be serious it disappeared. Reagan with his Midwestern pipes and theatrical training was able to gain respect just based on his voice alone. Even both presidential candidates have solid voices. Obama has a combination Hawaiian / Ivy League tone that provides substance as well as an unusual quality while McCain has a well polished military demeanor.

Sarah Palin, on the other hand, sounds like one of the characters from Fargo or someone who stepped out of Strange Brew. She has that Canadian twang with a high pitch and a lot of “hey theres” and “you knows” as part of her vocal tics. To anyone outside of Upper Wisconsin and Minnesota the sound of her voice not only does not provide confidence but it is also rather annoying. It’s too high pitched and unsubstantial. This isn’t a shot at her because she is a woman. Hillary with her Chicago roots sounds like a politician. Palin sounds like someone’s mom and you aren’t looking for that in an executive.

Crafting a schedule

(I don’t have any real reason for posting the above picture other than I took it a few weeks ago and I thought that it turned out really cool. Plus, Notre Dame actually won a game this weekend so I felt like I had earned the right to promote the school a little bit.)

This was one of those weekends where I think I accomplished a lot and nothing at all at the same time. Mainly I did a lot of little things that don’t seem to carry much importance but are huge in terms of making this my home as opposed to the place that I seem to find myself.

For example, I got a haircut on Saturday. Again, not a mind blowing experience (unless the hair dryer is really, really powerful) but that is just one of those things that you need to figure out whenever you move to a new town. Given that my hair is not very manageable and I usually try to keep stylists for years going into a random salon and having a stranger cut my hair is a rather frightening experience. I take off my glasses, become essentially blind and hope that the person with the sharp objects know what they are doing. It turned out well and I just feel professional again. I like keeping my hair short; makes me feel like I mean business.

I also finally used my apartment complex’s workout room today. Now I could have used it before but during my first week I didn’t have gym shoes much less workout clothes and the past two weeks have been spent unpacking, which was kind of like working out. But today I finally got on the treadmill and did my three and a half miles. The good news is that these treadmills are better than the ones at my old place. More comfortable on the legs, more places to store stuff and even a television installed in them. On the other hand, the handrails are placed in such a position that I seemed to constantly smack my arms into them to the point that I am watching bruises form as we speak. Not quite the pain I anticipated. Still, this is what I wanted to do. Start working out and get back into that routine.

Really, that was what this weekend was about: routine. I had a very set routine in KC. I played trivia on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday nights. Saturday nights were spent at Harry’s if I did not have anything else to do. Grocery shopping was done every alternate Saturday and I would walk to get my haircut every four weeks (typically timed to not coincide with the grocery shopping). Laundry was also alternate weekend. Sure things could change and I would drop everything to be more social but I had a schedule.

Right now I don’t have anything like that. I come home at night and kind of go “Now what?” I am building a routine for work in terms of when I get up, where I go for lunch, when I leave and when I expect to get home. It’s just that all of my time has been spent trying to get my apartment to a point where I would consider it livable or at least not require constant vigilance on my end. This month has really been a transition month. All I wanted to accomplish was go from being unemployed and living in KC to employed and living in Delaware. I’m finishing off the transition and now need to start building a life.

And boy, is that going to be an interesting challenge.

Best of 120 Minutes: I might be cheating a little bit here. I’m not sure if The Tragically Hip ever appeared on the show. If not, they really should have and it’s my blog so I’ll do what I want. They were alternative rock and Canadian. That should be good enough for anyone.



The five random CDs for the week:
1) The Flaming Lips “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots”
2) Cowboy Junkies “Lay It Down”
3) The Frames “Dance the Devil”
4) My Morning Jacket “Evil Urges”
5) Jesus Jones “Perverse”

Better read than other alternatives

One of the strange things that always happens when I move is that I become incredibly focused on cataloguing and organization. Some of this is sensible. I want my kitchen to be a certain way in order to optimize the experience. Have the pots and pans here, the dishes there, that sort of thing. Other times it makes a little less sense such as earlier tonight when I took everything out of one perfectly good box and placed all of the papers into a perfectly good bin. I did this because I preferred having bins over boxes. The fact that I just repacked notebooks from a job that I left and that I have no intention to ever look at again somehow doesn’t factor into the equation whatsoever.

But that is completely sensible compared to the following.

Now I often mention my spreadsheet containing all of the CDs that I own. It is the driver behind the random CD project and while it is uber geeky there is at least some sense behind it. I first put it together when I went to grad school and not all of my CDs traveled with me. Basically it was a quick reference guide as to what CDs were in which state as I bounced around the country. I kept it up because it was simple to do. Bought a new disc, add it to the spreadsheet.

Well, for the past two nights I have been doing a similar thing with my book collection. I had tried this a few years back but gave up after screaming at the madness of trying to catalog every single book I own. It’s not like I am going to randomly choose books to reread. There is some peace of mind knowing that I have a list of everything that I own but even that isn’t the main reason for this task. See, I am doing this entirely to impress people on Facebook.

I have the Visual Bookshelf app and am now in the process of trying to make it match up with my actual bookshelf. Now when I first joined Facebook I entered almost 300 books that I had read. How does one identify 300 books that they have read? Very simply if you are me and have kept a list of every book that you have read since 1998. Now I’m adding in the books that I own that I read pre-1998.

So that is the how but the bigger question is the why. Part of it is being a completist. If I have a list of books I read I want it to contain every possible data point. But mainly it is because I am an arrogant prick. See, if you click on the profile link it shows where you rank compared to everyone else on Facebook in terms of number of books read. So I have this unbelievable desire to be ranked as highly as possible and to show to the world just how incredibly well read I am. I want people to see me and go “Wow, that guy has read a lot of books.”

Except of course no one would ever actually do that. Who cares if I rank 2,000 on a Facebook app? Am I really impressing anyone when they check to see what I have read and find a surprisingly large number of books discussing pro wrestling? Maybe it is just this little ego boost for myself. It is a way to help convince myself that I actually am smart even if reading a lot of books does not necessarily equate into intelligence. Or maybe I just find it cool. Sometimes that is enough.

The Road Not Taken...

I can’t believe that the president decided that the best time to speak to the nation was during a new episode of Project Runway. Doesn’t he know anything? We as a nation have priorities and at the top of the list is a reality show featuring designers fighting for an opportunity to showcase at a fashion event that matters to no one other than people in the fashion industry. Seriously, it’s not like the U.S. economy is collapsing or anything. Oh yeah, my bad.

(They better be keeping Kenley around because she makes for a great villain. I’d have a huge crush on her (because I totally dig the retro Betty Page look) if it wasn’t for the fact that she is just a total bitch. Instead I’ll continue to long for Leanne who actually looks like someone I could potentially date.)

Driving around town the past few days I have found myself in a very interesting quandary. I will often drive past both Garden of Eden Lane and Snuff Mill Road and I cannot decide which road scares me more by name alone. I can’t bring myself to drive down either of them because of what might be at the end of the road.

Now for Sunff Mill Road that makes perfect sense. You drive down that road and you know that you have stepped foot into a horror movie. At some point you are going to drive by some old, run down building and have your car break down just as you hear the screams of the damned coming from the distance. There will be continual references to the location of a ballroom and a prom that went tragically wrong. If I drove past the old Snuff Mill I would be greatly disappointed if I got out of the car and did not see a hook hanging from the passenger door.

Garden of Eden Lane seems much more inviting. Maybe paradise is waiting for you at the end of the road. There are a few problems with this though. First off, the road is in Delaware. I haven’t consulted with my theologian-on-call about this but I’m pretty sure that the Garden of Eden mentioned in the Bible is not located in Delaware. In addition, I’m not sure what paradise in Delaware would consist of. I could only hope that it contains roads with more than one lane and adequate parking. But my biggest concern is what if you drive down the road to paradise and find out that you don’t particularly like it? Imagine being told “Here is perfection in all its glory” and have your first thought be “Is that all? I expected it to be a lot bigger. And at least have a Baskin-Robbins.”

For some reason I think I’ll tempt the guy with a chainsaw over finding out that paradise isn’t what I had anticipated. At least he looks like he’s a hockey fan.

Wednesday Night Music Club: In a bit of a Damien Rice mood tonight so here is he and the band (including the ever lovely Lisa Hannigan) performing Volcano at Abbey Road studios.

Television worth watching, or at least recording

This will be a relatively quick post as I just got back from the Phillies game. Yes, after only a few weeks I am already going “Yay team from vaguely my geographic location!” I mean, I can understand cheering for Philadelphia without actually living in the city. I’ve cheered for Chicago teams all my life even though I did not technically grow up in the city proper. However, I’m not even living in the proper state to cheer this team. I should be cheering the local Delaware team which is the….I’ll get back to you on that.

There is something odd about living in one of those states which when shown on a map simply have a line pointing to it because the name of the state is bigger than the state itself. I’m not even talking in terms of scale on a map. I believe that if you just wrote the word “Delaware” in the middle of the street you would technically cross state lines. And get hit by an idiot on his cell phone so I wouldn’t recommend it as an experiment.

I’ll just spend the rest of this post reviewing my favorite shows on television: How I Met Your Mother and The Big Bang Theory. I’ll start with The Big Bang Theory, which still amazes me that it got renewed because there can’t be that many people out there who appreciate physics humor. First off, props for showing Sheldon using the t-shirt folding device that was discussed on this blog a few years ago. It is the easiest and most effective way to have perfectly folded t-shirts. That was the highlight of the episode.

Sadly, that was pretty much the only highlight of the episode (well, that and the whole Indian cinema section). It just seemed to me that the chemistry between Leonard and Penny was completely off. We spent all last season building up to where they kiss and they did and there seemed to be something going there. But in last night’s episode I couldn’t even imagine them being a couple. Heck, even understanding why they were friends seemed to be a stretch. The entire story is built on Penny liking Leonard, maybe not as the man of her dreams but a definite connection being there, while Leonard is totally smitten and completely lost. Last night they just seemed like neighbors who were trying to avoid one another. I hope that is fixed in the future.

(Oh, and the discussion as to what would be required to become Green Lantern was also quite good.)

As someone who has stated that How I Met Your Mother has gone beyond stealing several of the ideas behind my novel but has moved into taking sections of my life and placing them on screen I was rather disappointed with last season on a whole. Ted became a bit of a jerk and a pretty big man slut. (I’m not sure what the technical term is for a guy who sleeps around more than he probably should. A More?) Robin just kind of existed in her own little world and Barney was the only one on the show worth watching.

Well, the show moved in the right direction though I still have some issues. We have luckily quickly forgotten the whole “Barney got hit by a bus” subplot as well as the “We all hate Barney” issue. Ted is engaged to a character who, other than the three minute date, the audience has no vested interest in other than it is really nice to have Sarah Chalke on television. When they brought up how Ted knows nothing about her it was a nice way of saying neither does the audience. I’m not sure where that story is going and since he is our hero (and my surrogate) I’d sure like to know what is going to happen next.

Easily the best part was Barney’s falling in love with Robin. First, yes my new apartment resembles Barney’s in great detail up to and including the life size stormtrooper statue. This is the storyline that will probably carry the show for the rest of the season. We want to see Barney and Robin together because they would make a great couple. Plus, Barney would become human and have to change his ways. Most of all, this is awesome because we have a situation in which Barney doesn’t have a clue how to act. It is always fun to watch someone so put together be absolutely clueless. And the fact is, when she left him at the end of the episode you felt sympathy (and in my case, empathy) for the guy. Not bad for a sitcom.

A road story...

Here is a story from my move that pretty much sums up the entire experience in a nutshell.

So I left Kansas City on the sixth and it wasn’t as tearful a goodbye as one might have expected I was still decently choked up. I had a few sad goodbyes over the previous days and I am still missing many of my friends. But I knew that I had to move on to my next adventure so I went from Kansas City to Chicago on Saturday, Chicago to South Bend on Sunday and then the long haul from South Bend to Wilmington on Monday.

By long haul I mean that was roughly twelve hours in the car from when I left South Bend to when I made it to Wilmington. While Pennsylvania was pretty to drive through and had rolling hills and tunnels Ohio was quite possibly the least interesting state that I have ever driven through. Technically Iowa was worse but you would expect to come across something in Ohio. People actually live there.

On the way I listened to Bill Bryson’s “A Walk in the Woods” on CD. I thought it would be a rather fitting listen: hearing someone talk about walking the Appalachian Trail while making my way to the East Coast. It was a very wise choice (much thanks is owed to my good friend who picked it out for me while we were at the bookstore) and it was funny and interesting and made the hours go by much quicker. However, I found out that there is one interesting side effect from listening to an entire book on tape in one sitting.

I basically spent six hours with this tape as my sole companion. So all I heard was Bill Bryson narrating his experience on the Trail. After six hours of this you discover that your internal monologue, which typically sounds like you or at least the way you wish your voice would sound, has suddenly taken on the voice of the narrator. It was as if Bill Bryson had suddenly stepped inside my head and decided to narrate my thoughts. Even more incredible, my thoughts began to take the form of his writing style so my internal monologue became this detached, almost third person, view of myself in someone else’s voice. Quite disturbing.

I finally make it to Wilmington and spend an hour unpacking my car. It wasn’t that my car was packed to the roof or anything. I intentionally kept what I brought to a minimum and let the movers take care of the rest. However, since I park in a high rise garage and live in a high rise building and the two aren’t directly connected it meant that I had to take two elevator trips, a walk outside and a walk to my apartment, which happened to be as far away from the elevator as possible, just to complete one trip. Luckily I learned from when I moved to KC and brought a folding chair with me so I had a place to sit down.

After twelve hours on the road and another hour lugging gear into my apartment all I wanted to do was take a shower. I had prepared for this eventuality as well. Not only did I bring towels but I brought my shower curtain from my spare bathroom. My old place (much like my new place) has two bathrooms. I don’t need two bathrooms. I have a two bedroom because I use the spare room partially as an office and partially as a place to store all the stuff I should really throw out. At least in KC my spare bathroom was next to the guest bedroom and living room. Here both bathrooms are next to each other making the design seem rather meaningless. Anyway, this is a long way for me to say that I had a shower curtain that had almost never been used in the past five years.

I thought it would be good for me to change things up and use what was my spare shower curtain in the master bathroom. After five years a change of color was needed. So I put up the curtain and finally get ready to take my shower. Turn on the water and discover that there is no hot water. In fact, if I turn it all the way to hot there is no water at all. After swearing a great deal I decided to suck it up and take a cold shower as painful as it may be.

Once I finished I tried the sink in the same bathroom. It had hot water. As did the kitchen. As well as the sink and the tub in the entire bathroom. In fact, the only thing in my apartment that did not have hot water was the shower that I was standing in. After all of that time on the road I came down to having a fifty-fifty chance at having a warm shower and I chose poorly. That is moving in a nutshell.

So the next day I moved the shower curtain to the spare bathroom. They’ve since fixed the hot water and everything is organized. But seriously, there is nothing quite as amazing as realizing that you flipped a coin and picked the wrong side.

Relaunch Party!

As many of you know (and as the above picture helps to illustrate) a week ago today I officially completed my move from Kansas City to Wilmington. Or at least that is when my moving truck arrived carrying all of my belongings, which were delivered to me in roughly the same condition as they were when they were placed on the truck. Sadly, they were not magically dusted on the trip causing me to perform more cleaning than I would have preferred though my aversion to cleaning is what caused the whole issue in the first place.

But the point is that as of now I am essentially settled into my new place. Unpacking the CD collection, placing all of them on the ground in alphabetical piles, and then placing the entire collection into the stands in alphabetical order by artist and then chronologically within the artist made me finally feel as though this was a permanent event. It also made me realize that the degree to which my life is ordered has probably gone a few steps beyond being an interesting personality quirk and has reached a point where medication may be required. But I’ll deal with that at a later date.

(Though I have to say, looking at 700 discs scattered around the floor looked really, really cool.)

I was supposed to have the internet in my apartment running last Monday and I momentarily did. Then, thanks to an error that I still have not understood completely my account uninstalled itself and it took me until Thursday to realize to that if I just followed the same procedure the technician did that I could reinstall it myself. Hence, what few blog postings I made over the past two weeks were primarily written at work where I had about five minutes every few days to post just so that everyone would know that I did not fall off the face of the earth or had found myself in yet another medical misadventure.

But with all of that done I can now officially get back to blogging and I would like to take this as a moment to officially relaunch the blog. Nothing is going to change, at least technically. It is still Battling the Current and I’m keeping kcgatsby because I think it is an awesome reference (though props to a friend of mine who suggested DelawareChesterton as my new name). This site has been going for four years and over 1,000 posts and I have no desire to stop now.

What is going to change is the obvious. I’ll keep on writing about my life but my life is now very different than it was a few months ago. Kansas jokes will be replaced with Delaware references that no one will understand. I’ll be writing about what it is like to move to a town where you know no one and starting work at a company that you are familiar with and are a stranger at all at the same time. There will be a little stronger focus on politics mainly due to the time of year. I’ll still write about pop culture but just be aware that I no longer have a job where surfing the Internet is a requirement so I might be a half step behind where I was, which was still six steps ahead of most of the population. Really, I am just going to focus on having the blog meet my initial objective: being something people can read in the morning at work for a five minute reprieve from another day at the office.

For my new readers (or people who are rejoining after a long absence) there are a few standard features should be aware of. Sunday night features The Best of 120 Minutes (a video from music’s golden age) and the Random CDs for the week (what I’m listening to in my car that week). Wednesday night has the Wednesday Night Music Club: a video from an artist you don’t know but should. And Friday night will be your 80s Weekend Rewind: a video from the early days of MTV that is much funnier in retrospect than one would imagine. As always, feel free to comment on anything I write. Annonymous comments are fine, I just require that you prove that you are not a robot intent on overthrowing society before you post. It’s tough to offend me so it is an open forum and there is still nothing better than checking my email and seeing that I have comments. Makes this all worthwhile.

I’m still Battling the Current. I still think that I am swimming upstream in a society that does not match what I envision it to be. My present life is not all that I want it to be. This is a story about one man’s journey to find his own destiny. Join me. It could prove to be quite interesting.

Best of 120 Minutes: Back to someone who I have had a crush on for the past fifteen years or so: Liz Phair. The fact that she is only a few years older than me and is a fellow Chicagoan makes me always think that in some parallel world the two of us met up and fell in love. Why I never tried to make this happen in this world is beyond me. Here is “Supernova” with a video that appears to be from a Scooby Doo episode gone horribly wrong.



Five Random CDs for the Week:
1) The Last Town Chorus “Wire Waltz”
2) Aimee Mann “@#%*! Smilers”
3) Aaron Neville “The Grand Tour”
4) Anders Parker “Tell It To the Dust”
5) Jump, Little Children “Magazine”

Westward the Course of the Empire Makes Its Way

(Author’s note: I finally have figured out how to reinstall the internet and can now return to my normal blogging schedule. The official relaunch of Battling the Current will be on Sunday so expect many bells and whistles and one of those bouncy castles then. What follows is something that I have been meaning to write since I read the news on Sunday morning.)

For the most part I don’t idolize anyone. It’s even tough for me to say I admire someone. My criteria for admiration is that they have to perform at a level that I know that even on my best day I could not match and, arrogant bastard that I am, there are very few people who can ever pass that bar. To be slightly less obnoxious, I don’t think that I am better than anyone else and there are only a few people who I consider to be better than me.

One of those people is the author that I have admired the most over the past decade: David Foster Wallace. I have told people that he is the writer that I wish that I could be. He is even the mathematician that I wish that I could be. That was the first thing that impressed me about him; I could accept the fact that he was a better writer that I was but the fact that he was also better at math than me was shocking. The fact that there existed a writer who was technically brilliant from both a literary and, well, technical, perspective astounded me.

The first book of his that I read was his masterpiece: Infinite Jest. As I said at the time, if you ever pick up a book that is a thousand pages long, contains over 100 pages of footnotes and has a subtitle “A comedy” you know that in the end the joke is on you. And I did read the entire book in a month and found it to be an amazing discussion of pop culture and tennis and the crumbling of families. I was then even more impressed with his short story collection “Girl with Curious Hair”.

The more I read about David the more I found out how similar we were. We both grew up in Illinois and he went to high school just outside of Urbana. We both had a love for numbers along with a love for words and he pursued degrees in both while I lacked the courage to pursue my dream of writing for a living. While I was at Illinois he was a professor at Illinois State and while there was no way I would have known that someone so brilliant was teaching there just that fact alone made me wonder about my choice of schools. When he won the Genius grant I cheered because he was one of the first people that I admired to win the award. Even though I knew that my talent could not match his and that I could not work in the meta-fiction realm as well as he could whenever I dreamt of being a writer I dreamt of being David Foster Wallace.

I truly believe that he is the greatest writer of my generation. When you read Infinite Jest you have to take a step back because it is written in a way that you never thought a novel could be written. It breaks all of the rules of narrative structure yet in the end it all makes perfect sense. Even his non-fiction with its detached intellectual analysis of events ranging from the Illinois State Fair to the Adult Video Awards leaves you stunned by its brilliance. I have found no one that has matched his brilliance as a writer and I don’t know if I ever will.

While waiting for my movers to arrive on Sunday I was checking the news headlines and saw that David Foster Wallace had committed suicide over the weekend. It was a shock to me in a year that has seen way too many shocks. I’m saddened for his family and for his friends and for all of us who will be deprived of all of the words that were yet to be written. But while unpacking this week I pulled out all of my copies of his work, my collection of everything that he has ever published, and placed it on the top shelf of my bookcase next to my copies of Joyce and Shakespeare. Because that is where David Foster Wallace belongs and at least in my home that is where he shall stay.

Still stuck in the stone age...

Still no internet as of this morning (I'm writing this on my lunch break right now). Come hell or high water I am going to figure out a way to get the blog published starting next week even if I don't have a working connection in my apartment. The relaunch will occur. I just have way too much to write about at the moment.

I do want to pat my own back however for successfully reinstalling my home entertainment system last night. For thouse who have seen it you'll realize that this is quite the impressive feat. Especially given that I paid someone to install it the first time and I did not quite understand where all of the cables were meant to go. After three hours I had everything installed and working with only one cable left over. A cable that for the life of me I can't figure out where it is supposed to go or what it is supposed to do. That is rather disconcerting.

(Oh, and I haven't installed the PS2 yet because I haven't had a desire to play it. I might just wait to see if I finally upgrade my system or give up on gaming altogether. It is probably going to be one or the other.)

Comcast willing, updates will be more frequent but until then just know that everything is going fine on my end of the world. Things should return to normal next week when my life is no longer one long maze of boxes.

Another quick update...

Ok, so I was all set to blog last night. Had my cable modem installed in the morning and it worked when I went to work. However, last night when I restarted my computer my internet connection was completely hosed and now I am in some strange ticket state to try to get it fixed. I can connect to the internet, it just wants me to register an account that I already have.

But for those who are worrying about me I am fine. All of my stuff was delivered on Sunday and from all that I can tell it all came in the same format as it was packed. My apartment is feeling more like home; albeit a box intensive home at the moment. Work is fun and that makes the days go by much better.

Once I get the internet connection fixed I'll get back to the regular schedule. I think I will consider it a relaunch of the blog. I'll break out all the bells and whistles when I do. Until then, please have patience. I've been forced to...

A quick update and explanation...

I've been quiet for the past few days. Here is the news in brief.

1) Everything that I own is in a moving van that is somewhere in the middle of the country. I hold out hope that I will one day see it again.

2) I left KC without a great deal of tears though it was a bittersweet moment.

3) I drove from KC to Chicago to South Bend to Wilmington over three days. Iowa has really nice rest stops. I ate at a Roy Rogers in Ohio. I drove through a tunnel in Pennsylvania. That is the 22 hours in a nutshell.

4) I am currently living in an apartment where the furniture consists of a folding chair and an air mattres that has somehow found a way to be less comfortable than the floor.

5) The common area of my apartment building has wireless. However, it won't let me log into Blogger so I can't post until I get cable next week.

So I'll be quiet for a while. But I am here safe and sound and working away. I'll have lots of stories to tell once I have a proper internet connection.

On the Road

So I am midway through my drive across the country to get to my new home. I thought that I would discuss some of what I have seen on my journey so far.

1) There is absolutely nothing to see while driving through Iowa. In fact, I know of only two historical sites in the entire state. One is the birthplace of John Wayne and the other is a pro wrestling museum. I would have stopped at the wrestling museum but I would prefer to not spend any more time in Iowa than I am required to.

2) However I must give Iowa a great deal of props for their rest areas. Clean, well designed, good vending machines and actually nicely scenic. Nothing beats the Rural Singles Guides that are sold through the vending machines at these places. They always put a smile on your face and provide you with some rather amazing reading material for the road.

3) Best thing seen while on the road. Somewhere in Iowa I was coming up on an overpass and I saw two figures looking over the railing. One had something in his hands so I changed lanes just in case it was a rock or something. When I got close and looked up I saw that it was a kid who was sitting on the railing, looking at the traffic and reading a book. Just like what you would see in a movie about a small town kid who wants more than life and his only excitement is reading and watching cars going someplace other than there.

4) I’m spending the night in South Bend and I think it says something that no matter how many times I make the trip out here the only way I know that the Toll Road is coming up is by looking out for billboards advertising strip clubs and adult bookstores. I think that Yahoo maps provides those directions as well.

5) If you do have a six hour plus drive ahead of you I really recommend picking up the audio book copy of World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War. It made the trip fly by and I am now well prepared for the inevitable zombie uprising.

Wave goodbye...

I’d really like to write something incredibly special and meaningful right now. Today is a rather momentous day in my mind. I turned 35 today as well as prepared for having movers arrive in the morning to pack me up and move me out from Kansas City. Sadly though, I am insanely tired at the moment so I am not sure what I will be able to write. But I’ll give it a go.

As of today I am no longer important to American culture. I am no longer a male aged 18 to 34. I am not a part of the target market. That is what I mean when I say that this birthday is rather meaningful to me. This marks from a marketing standpoint that I simply no longer matter. It also means that I am in my mid-30’s. No ifs, ands or buts about it. That will take me a little while to get used to because I have failed on my biggest goal: to be married by the time I turned 35. On the plus side I did not settle for someone who I really didn’t want. On the minus side I am alone when I didn’t really plan to be at this point in my life. I will write a lot more about this in the upcoming weeks.

As for leaving Kansas City it is a real bittersweet moment for me. As anyone who has read this blog knows I am not exactly fond of this town. I intentionally did not set down roots when I moved here. I knew that this was only going to be a rest stop in my life. I never anticipated living here for the rest of my life. But there are certainly things that I have enjoyed about the town.

KC is a really convenient place; something you get spoiled by. I was able to go to hundreds of concerts with no real commute to any of them. Shopping surrounded me wherever I turned. There were bars within blocks of my apartment. True, you typically have to drive wherever you want to go but it is never a long drive. I’ll miss that.

I won’t miss the conservative nature of this town and the closed mindedness that confronted me at seemingly every turn. I won’t miss the cliquishness and the pettiness and all of the small town nonsense that I came across. Those are the things that drove me crazy and it took me years to find some like minded people I could connect with. Maybe I can blame all of this for my lack of a social life at time. It took a long time for me to meet people that I would want to be friends with.

But I did end up with a great group of friends and they are going to be incredibly tough to say goodbye to. I moved here knowing no one and I will leave with some wonderful friends, a few of whom made the decision to leave one of the toughest decisions I have ever had to make. To everyone who has crossed my path in these past five years and has touched my heart I thank you in every sense of the term. You made these past few years worthwhile.

Where am I off to? Delaware in terms of geography. The next challenge of my life in more abstract terms. It should be one hell of a ride.

I’ll end with what might be the most appropriate song possible. I sure made a mess of this town…

Punching the time card

So I started my new job yesterday. I probably could have posted about my first day on the job but I thought that I would give it a little more time to settle in. Also, my travel schedule has been a bit of a mess as in this is what I am doing this week. I flew to Philly on Monday, picked up the keys to my new apartment, checked into a hotel, worked Tuesday and Wednesday, flew back to KC tonight, will finish packing my apartment tomorrow, put everything on a moving van on Friday, drive off on Saturday and at some indeterminate point receive my stuff in Delaware. So I’ve been a bit busy. Still, here are some of my first thoughts.

1) One of the first things I had to do was get my ID badge. Since I am a rehire not only did they have my old ID number but they actually decided to reuse my old ID picture. One that was taken, and I kid you not, in 1995. Yes, my ID has a picture of dorky, 21 year old EC. What is more amazing is that seven years after I left they still had my picture on file. But then again, it is me we are talking about here. No one could ever dare toss out a picture of moi.
2) Like everyone starting a new job I am in a bit of a mess in terms of forms and documents and computer access. I was just happy that my computer worked and I was able to use my phone. That is usually your only goal for the first week at a place. It’s not like you are going to be useful.
3) I do find it incredibly funny that I start a new job, work two days, and then immediately take several off. But that is the only way to deal with all of the relocation issues that I am faced with. Plus, my teleporter just isn’t working as well as it used to.
4) The five month layoff is going to be a little tough to overcome. For one, I am really not used to working eight hours a day. Even on my biggest job search days I only put in four. By late afternoon all I want to do is take a nap. It doesn’t help that I will need to be in the office by eight if not earlier. I’m certain that I will be able to adjust my body clock to the new schedule but it is going to be a rough couple of weeks.
5) The biggest thing is that I am excited to be doing the job. Today I recalled a lot of information that I had not thought about for seven years. That is huge for me. For one, I know that all of that knowledge is sitting in my brain and that all I need to do is bring it to the forefront. But more importantly, I was amped to be in the environment and having questions about transmission limits posed to me. It has been a long time since I was that excited to be in an office.

That is it for tonight as I really need to go to sleep. Way too much work to do tomorrow. In my next entry: birthday musings and a farewell note to Kansas City. You won’t want to miss it.

Stress levels declining

This will most likely be a quick post tonight but it just seems kind of fitting.

I think most people understand that I have been incredibly stressed recently. From finding a new job to moving to just facing the fact that I turn 35 on Thursday it seems that I am hitting all of those highly stressful moments in one's life all at the same time. It has been one hell of a challenge just to keep myself moving at all, much less in the direction I need to go. As a result, sometimes the version of myself that I have presented these past few weeks hasn't been the one I like and I only hope that people realize why that is the case.

What is interesting is that yesterday I had a few hours of downtime and just sat down and listened to my MP3 player on shuffle. No real focus on what I was supposed to be doing. I just sat down, read and listened to whatever music popped up. An hour into it I found myself smiling and laughing and singing along with the music, something that I have not done since this whole mess of anxieties rose up.

I really think it was the music that helped me. My MP3 player has all of my favorite tunes on it and just having random songs appear made my day. As if they were chosen for exactly this moment in my life. A Gomez song here, a Jay Farrar song there, all of them seemed to lighten my mood and get me back on track. It was a rather amazing sight. When I finally got up I felt like a completely different person than I did when I sat down.

Everytime I talk about my stress with someone I always say that everything is going to be fine and that I will make it through it. I truly believe that mainly because I have made it through tough times before and this is nothing compared to some of the stuff I had to work through before. But it takes me a while to go from saying that to really understanding and beleiving it. I think it finally hit me yesterday that everything is going to be fine. As long as I stay true to myself and understand what I am capable of there is no challenge that is too daunting for me. Sometimes it takes stepping back and listening to a few songs to prove that point to me.

Veepstakes

So I kind of feel like going off on a little political rant right now. If you disagree with my political views that is perfectly fine. Everyone is welcome to their own opinion. Except for the people who vote for Ralph Nader. I feel that we should drop all of them off on the nearest melting iceberg and be done with them. But this is just what is on my mind right now.

The McCain running mate selection has had me stunned for several days now. Now this is not for the reason that many of you would expect. Yes, even though I have been quoted as saying that this country has gone downhill ever since women were given the right to vote doesn't mean that I have a problem with a female candidate. I've voted for them and when they are the best candidate I support them fully. The problem is Sarah Palin is not the best candidate. To be honest, she may be the worst candidate I have ever seen on paper.

Let's start with her background pre-politics. Some may say that is not relevant but we put a lot of weight on McCain's military career so we should also focus on Palin's career as a...beauty contest contestant? We have a VP candidate who was almost Miss Alaska? Add to that the fact that she also worked as a sports broadcaster on the evening news where one of her major tasks was to discuss dog sledding and you begin to wonder just how those skills play into being a vice president.

But, as people have been saying, she has more executive experience than either Obama or Biden (or McCain based on this definition). That is true only in the sense that she has held an executive position in title while the others have been senators and led committees. And what executive experience she has had. The mayor of a town of less than 10,000 people. Two years as governor of one of the smallest states in terms of population. If they consider this executive experience I would have much rather seen Carly Fiorina be named the candidate. Running HP is a lot more challenging than running Alaska.

Then there is her great quote from a few months ago in which she states that she is not entirely sure what the vice president does. First off, anyone who took an eighth grade constitution class should know what the vice president does. You preside over the senate and are prepared to take over the presidency. You work as an advisor and go to funerals when required. If you state that in a television interview, knowing that such a statement will make you look foolish, you really can't be considered prepared for the job.

Now I'll be honest in that I am a lifelong democrat and a supporter of Obama throughout the election cycle. He is the first politician that has made me excited about the political process and the fact that we can have a better system than we have now. But I do admire John McCain for what he has done for the country. I disagree with his policies, some of which I outright hate, but the man has my utmost respect. But this decision would eliminate all doubts from my mind as to whether I could vote for him. It is just a completely wrong decision. It is clear pandering to female voters on the logic that they will vote solely based upon a candidate's genitals. This decision is so poor you wonder if it was made intentionally.