White. Doughy. Happy.

I'll defer to Matt's blog when it comes to explaining the title of this post. (you may want to watch the clip before proceeding). I'm sure you'll agree on the two main points:

1) Republicans ≠ The Change You Deserve
2) Republicans = White, Doughy, Happy

You may wonder why I have a McCain link on my page, when I have been quite outspoken regarding our current dictator (though generally not in this spot, but if we've ever talked politics face to face you'll know what I mean). There are a number of reasons for this, and unfortunately I'm not as well versed in the language of politics as my comrades, so its explanation may be a bit of an awkward read. I apologize in advance for this.

In early 2000, I stood outside WMUR studios in Manchester, NH, chanting with a few hundred other idiots for my preference in primary candidates, in my case John McCain. This, in retrospect, was in interesting choice for me. I spent my formative years in the Democratic sector of an otherwise traditionally Republican state, growing up in a family that was otherwise Democratic leaning, though politics was never really discussed. I voted for Bill Clinton in my first mock-election (Clinton defeated Bush I according to the 6th grade class at St. Joseph's School, but only by a couple votes. Even then I'm pretty sure a few of those kids were listening to the Church telling them who to vote for...).
As the 2000 election was going to be my first "real" election though, I decided it would be best to be open to ideas, and, well, basically let the best speaker that came to St. A's sway my decision on who to root for. It just so happened that John McCain spoke to my sensibilities a little more than everyone else did - his message was more moderate, less aggressive, and had the general feel that it came from someone who would do a descent job.
These days I'm not so sure. I don't feel that the intervening 8 years has done a lot for McCain's message, and it certainly hasn't done much for his weary body. But one thing remains certain: he's still more moderate than Bush II, more moderate than Bush I, less creepy than Huckabee and most likely more qualified than any of the other Republican also-rans. (Side tangent: what ever happened to the term "also-ran"? Is it sort of like high-fashion, where its so "2000"? You never hear it before, especially when it seemed like everyone was an also-ran... Bill Bradley, the 1999-2003 Red Sox, abstinence, ect).
So what then, when I don't have strong feelings for the Republican party, its candidate, or its message, and agree that its best described as "White, Doughy, Happy", and have a promise from the Democrat, which I was "raised", of real change, makes me support McCain at all?

Well, I'm fairly certain its that little promise of change. Let's face the facts in front of us:
1) Gas is expensive. Ask my wallet.
2) Food is expensive. Ask my bank account, now that my wallet is empty due to the gas.
3) The housing market is in the toilet. Consult zillow, or your Sunday classifieds.
4) We're slowly killing the planet. Look up at the O-Zone layer (don't burn your retinas, the authors of Ten Good Minutes will be held harmless for any damage you do if you stare at the sun).
5) The very moral fiber of our society is fraying before us. (Ask your friendly local California clergyman).

Things aren't too good right now. But I'm willing to throw my weight behind McCain instead of the presumptive Democratic front runner Obama for 3 reasons. The first reason is really broken into two essential parts, a) how much of this is and will continue to be solely the fault of our furless dictator Bush II, and b) how much worse can it possibly get?
I suppose you can make the argument that it can get much, much worse. This I suppose is true. But on a scale of 1 to completely screwed, we're already "pretty screwed" and moving closer and closer to "completely screwed", and really, once we get beyond "completely screwed", are you going to be trying to measure things things in degrees? Let's put it another way, if my scale isn't working for you. If you're in an earthquake, and it measures 4.5 on the Richter scale, you're pretty happy that it wasn't a 7.9, even though it make have startled you a bit and knocked the picture of Aunt Petunia off the credenza. But the last thing you're thinking if you're in an 8.9 earthquake is "thank God it wasn't a 9.1!", ie you're completely screwed, and it doesn't matter whether you were kind of completely screwed, or really completely screwed. I hope this makes sense because I'm running out of analogies. Anyway, right now we're hovering around a strong 5.5-6.0 on the Richter-screwed scale, and once we go beyond that, we might as well just start rioting and pillaging, because we're really screwed.
I don't think we'll get to that point. And I don't think it will be because of our President.
That brings me to point #2 - I'm not so sure that "change", a 180° switch in the way we're doing things, is going to make everything better. I am, as stated, rather moderate, and even somewhat conservative leaning. I've got a lot of friends on either side, and not just to the left and right, but somewhat extremely so. The thing is, I don't agree that much with any of them. This becomes problematic because if I'm having a discussion with two of them, one representing each side, I oftentimes will end up making one of them thinking I'm defending their side and arguing with them, when in actuality I think they're a complete dolt when it comes to their politics and feel a bit queasy about agreeing with their argument.
At any rate, that's how I feel about Barack. A bit queasy. I'm all for the "good ol' days" of having a Democrat romping around the oval office again, but Obama takes it too far. I want someone to pull us back towards the middle, not all the way across to the other side. And as I'm not a viable or eligible candidate to do so, I've found a doughy old white guy to serve as my proxy. I'm not thrilled about this folks, but its the only choice I feel I have.
And then there's this, my third point - I feel there's a 3-4% chance that Barack Obama is actually the anti-christ. I'm not saying this to be either theo-philosophical or inflammatory. I hope I've entreated you in a discourse that is open and honest and isn't driven by strong feelings for candidates or parties, but rather sound personal opinions, and when I say that Obama may be the anti-christ, I mean this solely from the perspective of a reasonably intelligent person who'd prefer to see the end-of-times held at bay a bit longer.
You have to admit though, once you've calmed down about my otherwise outrageous claim, that he does seem to fit the bill of the anti-christ has always been portrayed: a young, handsome, charismatic man that is extremely articulate and intelligent, who has been delivered to us at a time when things look that they won't become any more bleak, with a promise of change, radical change for the better good.
Yeah, I'm officially creeped out by him. I'm not saying he is the anti-christ, but don't complain to me if you vote for him and then don't get taken in the rapture. I'll go to battle with the doughy white boys that'll hopefully only screw things up marginally.

The Dude

I love the internet. Without it, we wouldn't be able to create our own clips... and here I thought youtube was great...




Even if it does mean selling out to the man... it was still the best 4 minutes I made you spend today.

Checking In

As I don't have a great number of long, coherent thoughts to string together, I'll hit you with a few things that have been on my mind recently:

- If you watch enough basketball on TNT, you'll eventually convince yourself that the TBS original programming that's advertised every ad break might actually be worth watching. I won't go so far as to say that it actually is worth watching, and I'm fairly certain I never will watch it, but "The Bill Engvall Show" et al seem... quirky. And I'm always convinced when I see the My Boys ads that it will be billed as "The White Tyler Perry's My Boys".

- I think HBO should seriously consider a channel dedicated entirely to their own promos. Here's one reason why:



Their previews and promos get me so pumped to watch TV, its scary. I'm pretty sure I could watch an hour of that and not get bored - I'm not going to lie, when I got home tonight a movie had just ended, so I kept it on the looping promos so i could hear it in the kitchen while I made myself dinner... and then continued to watch once I sat back down. Someone needs to bring this up to the folks at HBO.

- I never thought I'd watch this much basketball. Amazing what a good team can do for a fanbase.

- I don't really know why, but I'm addicted to this ad. I'm pretty sure I hate the song, and I'm also fairly certain that the actual video is pretty stupid. And I love every second of it when its put together.



- I don't agree with fouls in basketball. I hockey, if you commit a penalty, your team loses a player. In football, if you commit a penalty, your team loses yards. In both cases, instant replay generally shows a flagrant violation of the rules. Basketball? Eh. If you bump someone, you send them to the "foul line". Both sides of that equation are lame. I may be enjoying basketball more this year, but I'm still fairly sure it'd be better if it was played on ice with sticks and a puck...

- We've got a long weekend down the Cape coming up over the Memorial Day holiday. You can most likely expect my usual long rambling posts filled with assorted and sundry mirth and entertainment then... I apologize for the sparse posting since and in the interim...

Binary Minds

I'm not as stupid as I look. I'd like to think that my brain is more complex than a computer CPU, and certainly has a little more mystery.

The folks at Nabisco, or Hershey's, or General Mills, I'm not sure exactly where, are, however, not of the same mind.

Apparently my brain, much like that of a computers, understands a basic language of Ones and Zeros, and builds on everything else from there.

Why do I mention this? Because apparently EVERYTHING from here on out must be broken down into 1-0-0 calorie packs. Can my brain get around 150 calorie packs? 90 calorie packs? Could I resist a 123 calorie pack? NO! Of course not! I have a binary brain, obviously! And OBVIOUSLY if it says ONE ZERO ZERO Calories, it MUST be good for me.
I'm sure by now you've figured out that I'm not really serious about the binary thing. My problem is this: where does the hundred calorie pack madness end? It was a great idea - at first - a few crackers or chips seemed like a good idea for those that wanted the snack without the excessive snacking. But it has gotten quite of out hand.
I swung into CVS this afternoon - I was having a terrible day, and I needed a beverage (no, not that type of beverage, though it would have been useful), and, should I find one, a snack.
What do I find? A box of 100 calorie pack REESES PIECES SNACK MIX.
Naturally, I couldn't resist. There was a box with 7 supposedly delectable snack packs (a nice, even number, so i figured it could get me through the rest of the week). I love peanut butter more than just about anything (save for life, liberty, wife and football, in some order... strike that), and I love fake-reprocessed-delectable-quasi-gelatinous-hard-candy-coated-peanut-butter nearly as much. Not only did the packs promise reeses pieces though, but also some form of crunchy peanut-buttery cereal, some wierd, round, crunchy, peanut buttery... uhm, other cereal... and I'm pretty sure the point is that its basically cap'n crunch & reeses pieces.
So by now, you are asking two questions:
How much do you get for 100 calories?
and
Where can I get mine???
The answer to the first? about 1.2 ozs. Yup, 100 calories doesn't get you what it used to. Which gets me to my final (have I made one yet?) point: where does the madness end? When do we stop bagging everything into what seems like healthy portions, even when it was never healthy to begin with?? I'm looking forward to a 100 calorie bacon package... the 100 calorie big-mac portion, well you get the idea.
And of course, now that the un-healthy experts have started finding that healthy marketing means people will buy your product, we can only expect more. The best part of the whole equation? Because you think you are eating better, you're more inclined to eat more - if one is good, isn't two just as good? You get to pay more money for more packaging and less food, only to want to buy more.
Strangely, I think this whole argument has come around to a subject that is near and dear to someone that is near and dear to me - eating better via more organic food, and saving the world by reducing the extra packaging. In my opinion, and yes, this is my opinion, let's stop the madness, and start packaging our own food - I can handle it if its actually 114 calories - and stop needlessly throwing money away towards crap like this.

Oh, and as to where you can get yours? YOU CAN'T! Keep your grubby hands off my peanut butter!!!

Juice

Meghan: Why don't we have juice?
Me: You don't let us have juice.
Meghan: There's lots of sugar in juice.
Me: There's lots of sugar in lots of things.
Meghan: But why have juice when you don't need it?
Me: But sometimes you just want juice.
Meghan: Why don't we have any juice?

You can't make this stuff up people.

My Random Act

Call it kindness if you will. Maybe it was. But I always feel like kindly punching people in the face when they talk about random acts of kindness. So we'll just call it random, what I did. And it probably won't happen again for quite some time.

If your not familiar (and I'm not sure why you would be), the elevators in the Hancock Tower are double-deckers. Going up, you can only request even or odd floors, depending on whether you get on in the lobby or the mezzanine. Going down, its always a crap shoot, whether you'll get a "lobby" or a "mezzanine" car, ie, whether you're on the top or the bottom (though no one thinks of it that way).
The nice thing about being (near) the top of my elevator shaft (the southern-most shaft services L-16, and I'm on 14), is that you can push the button for both up and down, and generally you'll get two cars at the same time (there are six bays, or a total of 12 cars, if you do the math), and generally the "up" elevator will be a lobby, and the "down" elevator will be a mezzanine. So by pressing both up and down, you have a good chance of getting a lobby.
Of course, I haven't mention why this is so important. It is important because no one, for some strange reason, likes to have to walk the 15 feet from the elevator door on M to the escalator down to L. I'm not kidding. Its really 15 feet. And the escalator does the walking down for you.
Anyway, just about everyone on 14 (though not every last person, as you still get an occasional odd look when its 6 pm and you press the "up" button) presses both buttons to go down at night after work, so that they can avoid the dreaded M.
This wasn't my strategy tonight however, as I had the one circumstance that required an actual "M" elevator - I needed the UPS drop box, of which there isn't one on "L". Still, I pressed both buttons, as you never know when you might press "down" and still get an "L".
Coincidentally, a girl who I don't know that well, who works on the other side of the floor, walked into the elevator lobby on 14. She too had a UPS package.
As the two cars arrived nearly simultaneously, one on each side of the hall, the strangest thought occurred to me: I could do something quasi-sort-of nice for someone; hoping that she new the up-elevator "L" trick, I offered to take her UPS package to "M" on the "bad" elevator, while she got the good one to the Lobby.
Momentarily I thought my so-called-kindness had been mis-understood - she gave me a bit of an odd look - before she said "really? you would do that?" Yup, that's how much people hate going to the mezzanine (did I mention that the UPS drop box is right next to the escalator, which is right next to our elevator?). Yes, I said. No reason for both of us to have to suffer.
So next time you see me walking around the Hancock Tower, or any other public place for that matter, don't expect me to be nice. In fact, I may try to trip you.
You know, to but the Universe back in balance.

Sam Adams, John Adams

Sam Summer is back. You may have heard. I may have had one. Or five. In the past hour.

And I'm back to. For now. A few quick thoughts:

Selling "division champs" hats with a Celtics logo is LAME. The only thing worse: buying one.
John Adams has to be one of the most enjoyable tv events in some time.
A movie is good when Meghan gives it this review: "That was one of the five worst movies ever. I can't think of the other four right now, but its definitely up there. It may be the worst." Needless to say, you should see Michael Clayton, if you haven't already. I'm sorry I waited so long.
Pirates of the Caribbean III, better than II. Still, there's always something to be said of the novelty of the first of anything's kind that makes it better than the rest.
And Johnny Depp really really needs to lay off the peyote.
I'd like to say that the B's have a chance against the Habs. I'd also like to say that Al Gore ended up winning his rightful place in 2000. Neither is true.

But I'll still watch both sinking ships with earnest interest.

Sublog: The Most Hated Man on the Train: Part III - In The Unlikely Event of a Water Landing...

I had an interesting story about how I managed to make about 50 people hate me this morning as I managed to wedge my way through a gaggle of standing passengers, exit the train, and reenter it at a more advantageous spot, all to beat them off the train and to Dunkin Donuts, but that was before my commute home. Maybe I got what I deserved. But if I deserved what I got on the ride home, and got out of it as fortunately as I did, there must have been a LOT of people that angered the commuter gods today, because there was a LOT of blood.
I've been taking a lot of random late trains recently, as work has required, but Tuesday afternoons are the exception; due to class at Brandeis, I take the 4:45 train back to Canton.

As I may have mentioned (once or twice) in this space before, the MBCR is not known for its swiftness or timeliness. This should be surprising to no one. So I was contently discontent with our trip home; we made nice time out of Ruggles and people deboarded relatively quickly at Hyde Park (at Route 128, though why we have to stop there when another outbound train make stops there 5 minutes earlier is for another, long, ranting discussion.) There's a big bend probably a mile out of 128 station; we usually slow for this bend, because the train tends to tilt quite a bit, and I'm assuming its not good to go fast + tilt, especially if a train is coming from the other direction. Today, we moved through the curve quickly, and then started to slow.
Naturally, I saw all of this as I manned my post, protecting the door of the rearmost car from people that threatened to detrain before me.
We came to a dead stop (again, not surprising), and I waited to get going, knowing we weren't too far out of Canton Junction. What happened next was certainly the most surprising and startling moment of my life, as there was no advanced warning of any kind - suddenly I found, in one swift yet disjointed motion, my head thrown against the glass pane of the door, and my entire body lurching in the opposite direction - and not just away, backwards, but down.
The lights were out, my hat was thrown clear, and my IPod wasn't playing; in fact, my headphones weren't in at all.
And upon further inspection, I realized I hadn't been resting uncomfortably upon a middle aged Hispanic woman shortly before being thrown onto the ground either.
She seemed none to pleased with this outcome.

That was the first 4-9 seconds after my train was hit by a box car rolling in the wrong direction. Everything after is a bit hazy, but I remember the following; people with bloody noses, a lot of pain, and a lot of anger.
I got of the train and looked down the track - I assumed we had been hit by an oncoming train. It felt like we had been hit by an oncoming train. I couldn't see anything though - it was only as I walked down the track later that I saw the single box car.
The conductor yelled for everyone to get back on the train (I'm glad to see that even though he knew we wouldn't be on time, he still had a schedule to keep). I did, briefly (I had to retrieve my hat, of course). But as people started to gather themselves (and, as its been 5 hours since, I'm confident to say that I still haven't gathered myself fully), everyone started clamoring to get off the train.

I was definitely confused - I called my wife, she told me something, but I didn't really figure it out. I saw some people, presumably people that weren't seriously hurt, walking down the tracks to the train station. I started out to follow them - I didn't know what else to do - the conductors had started creating pools of people, those who needed medical attention and those who didn't - and all I could think of was 1) WHAT THE HELL!! and 2) I NEED TO GET TO CLASS!!

I could hear sirens, lots of them, and a helicopter overhead. Help was on the way. I was dazed, and continued to walk down the track, leaving the wreckage behind. I'd say I'm not particularly proud of this, but I quite honestly don't know what I could have done - I was working on instinct and that instinct was to get the eff away. I checked in with the other people that had self diagnosed and made their way to Canton Junction - asking if they were ok and if they had seen anything I hadn't (such as a logical reason for a box car on the track of a major train thoroughfare). I called my boss (why? not sure, still not sure.) I called my wife again. She said to stay put (I think this was reiterating the previous message), but I was already way past that.

I had and still have a few lingering questions - why didn't the engineer warn the commuters? I can only imagine that the panic that would have caused though. What would a real train crash be like? How fast was the box car moving?? It couldn't have been going too fast - but if it caused that much havoc at low speeds, I can't imagine what it would be like to be in a real high-speed collision. And of course, the most important question, HOW DID THIS HAPPEN? How did a train heading to Providence 10 minutes earlier pass through unscathed, and yet a box car appeared seemingly out of nowhere, likely a mile away from the nearest track split and on a track it shouldn't have been on.

A lot of people, I'm quite sure, are very angry and very upset. I feel quite fortunate to have been able to walk away, without serious injury. And I feel quite concerned about the fact that I have to get back on the train tomorrow morning.