My Thoughts on the Republican Veep Selection

Gotta give equal time to the candidates... My thoughts?

Sarah Palin = Clarence Thomas

I Think the Check Cleared

I don't think I'm back, but I wanted to get this out.

My son started his final year of high school this week, but watching last night's Convention with him reminded me of something we did during his first year of kindergarten.

We lived in a small town at the time, alongside the kind of "real, heartland Americans" we hear so much about during elections. So it made for an interesting time when January and Martin Luther King, Jr. day rolled around. Many of Chris's classmates arrived for kindergarten utterly unprepared for a formal setting, and many had obviously lacked the kind of "stimulating" early childhood that all the parenting manuals had told us were so essential - a few had obviously never even held a book in their hands.

But when it came time for the teacher to talk about MLK, the kids knew exactly what to do. My wife was helping in the classroom that day, and was just shocked when a wave of racist comments came pouring out of a majority of the kids. Imagine that - kids who had likely never met a black person, who arrived at school unable even to name all of their body parts, knew that King was a "dirty nigger".

I was tempted that day to trade in my commitment to non-violence so I could go bitch slap some of my fellow parents, but instead I downloaded King's "I Have Dream Speech" and went over it with my son. I'm not sure how much of it Chris got, he was (and is) a precocious reader, but he was only six at the time, but I was struck by a particular phrase King used in the beginning of the speech, that of America's promise as bounced check. That image has stuck with me, until last night. Here's the passage...

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.

In a sense we have come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds." But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check — a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick sands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.

I'd like to think that last night, the check finally cleared.

Another Illustration of Why You Haven't Heard from Me

To the dozen or so of you who haven't taken me from your RSS subscriptions, I offer this from the indispensable xkcd:



You see, if I get started again, there's no place to stop.

Here's Part of Why I'm Not Posting

... I can't tell the difference between The Onion and "real" news sources anymore.

On the Slate website, there is a side bar with three links each from The Onion, The Washington Post, and Newsweek. Here's all nine - see if you can tell which comes from which:

"Why do they hate us?"

Study: Iraqis may experience sadness when friends, relatives die

Trips for Families with Teenagers

Bush Still Doesn't Get It

New Sitcom Pulls Back the Envelope

The Make-Believe of Green Politics

Losing My Jihadism

Drew Carey New Price Host

How Reality TV Influences Plastic Surgery Patients




(Answers: 1, 4, 7 are the Post; 2, 5, 8 are the Onion, and 3, 6, 9 are Newsweek.)

My take on the I Phone

I was excited when Apple announced the iPhone, most of all because it validated my unaccountable allegiance to Cingular and now ATT wireless.

Now that it's out, I of course don't have one. I'm not ready for it - I often can't even find my current cell phone for days at a time, and while my iPod is sitting right in front of me, I have no idea where the headphones are, which is why on a recent trip to Chicago with my son on Jet Blue, I had to watch "Hey Paula" with no sound while he was able to watch at least nine Simpsons episodes with full audio.

This means, once again, that I'm going to have to turn over the review to my distant relative - who is not me - Kige Ramsey:




A bit more seriously, I've been giving serious thought to how the very idea of same-sex marriage compelled Sen. David Vitter, a noted Christian, to have extra-marital affairs and use a prostitution service that provides, um, more than the basics. Seriously, I think I have this just about figured out, and I'll let you all know if and when I do.

This is Not Me

I may be on my way back to blogging. Or I may not.

But in the meantime, I need to make it clear that I am not Kige Ramsey, nor, for those of you who like to look at flip side of things, is Kige Ramsey me. I've reached the point in my personal development that I don't care (much) about what people think of me, but I'm still not developed/enlightened/evolved/mature enough to not care that people might think I'm someone I'm not.

I mention this because a vlog by Mr. Ramsey commenting on the latest arrest of a Cincinnati Bengal (the tenth in fourteen months! Wow!) is bouncing around the internets today. Why does this concern me enough to break blogging silence? I'll yet Kige show you himself:



The fine people at Deadspin have some helpful advice for my probably very distant cousin, who , I repeat for those with poor short term memory, is not me.

How to improve your Youtube home sportscast set-up:

1. Get somebody else to operate camera
2. Remove refrigerator from doorway
3. Show marginal enthusiasm
4. Prepare
5. Make sure calendar shows correct month
6. Update wood paneling.

That's all I have for now.

Good night, and good luck.

Linkage XXXIII

"Never use a lit match or open flame to check fuel level." Via BoingBoing, M-Law's Wacky Warning Label Contest. I also liked the Lotto ticket which said "Do not iron".

Surge Protection You can stand up to The Man with the latest "No Surge" Bush Surge Protection t-shirt. (Via Matt Yglesias)

Write What You Know A real live medical journal article from 1956 in which William Burroughs writes about his experiences with drugs "Letter from a Master Addict to Dangerous Drugs". (Via BoingBoing)

Handbags I love English sports commentary. Here's just part of an account (the whole thing is here) of a fight between two soccer players in the Spanish league: "In the final minute, Carlos Diogo trod on Luis Fabiano's hand, sparking a bit of head-rubbing, a lot of bad-mouthing and then a proper bout of fisticuffs, full of comedy windmilling and a superb right hook from Diogo that left Fabiano sprawling across the turf like Bambi on ice." Now that's good writin'! (Via Deadspin)

So Elvis, Darwin, and Nefertiti Sit Down at a Bar... is not the beginning of a joke but a real life meeting in Venezuela, where people seem to like to give their kids funny names, so says the NY Times. (Via Tyler Cowan at Marginal Revolution)

Two Wrongs, Finally, Make a Right

Nine years ago, I was the last person under the age of 50 and older than 18 to get a cell phone. I got it through Costco, following the logic that anyone who can sell you a really good hot dog and a soda for $1.50 must know something about cell phones. But then my service - I forget who it was - was bought by Cingular, and so my service was not very good.

Flash forward to a couple of years ago. I'd been vaguely unhappy with my service and since numbers were now portable, I resolved to get a new phone with a new service. And so I walk into the Cingular store, not realizing that the service I am about to sign up for for even a longer period is the same service I'm trying to get rid of. Whoever that guy was who wrote about how there are several different kinds of intelligence and how none of us have all of them must have followed me around for awhile.

Except today, I find out that maybe I was right all along, because while Cingular may have awful service, they're also the only service on which you can use this:

A Parent's Dilemma

My wife and I both grew up in SoCal and the Rose Parade was a part of that. We both spent the night on the parade route several times, and Wendy even worked on floats. The generational circle closed this year when Katie helped out with float decorating.

This means that for the first time in a long time I watched the parade on TV - at least until the brilliant Newcastle/ManU match came on. Priorities. We saw Katie's float and several others she contributed to. But then we saw this:



This, our course, is photo of the 501st Legion of Storm Troopers, nicknamed Vader's Fist.

My thoughts as I watched these guys walk by: 1. No Way! 2. They've gotta be actors - man, it must be tough to be an out of work actor. 3. They're not actors - their fans who paid their way here from all over the world to do this. 4. I wonder what their parents think.

Imagine you're the parents of a 32 year old who lives at home with you and whose Star Wars obsession has already caused you to set aside your hopes for grandchildren. And now his commitment to Star Wars has landed him a spot in the Rose Parade - clearly the peak of his fan boy career.

And so as a parent, does it make you happy that this makes your son so happy, or does it make you sad that this makes your son so happy?

Parenting can be hard work.

Review: El Cholo

So, I finally loaded all my cd's into iTunes, which of course means my iPod is now too small. Ah, the petty discontents of a suburban life. Anyway, I like to use the shuffle - it's like a radio station that only plays stuff I like, and the other day iTunes gave me one by Neil Young. I thought the next song was by Young, too, since it began with a jangly, slightly messy guitar riff. That was, at least until the singing began, and then I realized it was Radiohead's "The Bends".

It's an easy mistake to make. Just as there would have been no hip-hop without James Brown and no internet without Al Gore, there would have been no early 90's guitar rock without Neil Young.

I was thinking about this last week on my way home from El Cholo Spanish Cafe in L.A. on Western just south of Olympic.

El Cholo is the original Mexican restaurant. I mean, obviously, there had been restaurants owned by Mexicans who served the food of their home country or heritage, but El Cholo was the first restaurant that made its bones selling mild Mexican inspired food to white people. If you've ever enjoyed a meal at Chi-Chi's or Acapulco or any other chain Mexican place, almost every element of your meal got it's start at El Cholo.

They keep it old school here. Like many L.A. restaurants, the walls of the waiting area are covered with head shots. The servers wear guayabera shirts or full, off the shoulder dresses in a floral pattern. The salsa is the weak, spicy ketchup style favored by generations of white people, and the chips were such a throw back that they were fried in lard. (I'm just now getting the coating out of my mouth).



I ordered the oldest item on the menu (everything is listed with the year they first served it) - the Sonora Style Enchilada (1923). Rather than rolled, this is a stack of tortillas with chicken and cheese in between, with sauce, black beans, and a fried egg on top. Completely old school and really good. As a plus, it's goodness helped make up for the time I ordered something similar at La Fiesta Grande or some such place in Grand Junction, Colorado - the worst Mexican meal of my life. Wendy ordered - to make "a proper comparison" she said, the Number One Combination (1938) - which as always, was a beef taco in a hard shell and a cheese enchilada with rice and beans. She gave it her approval.

At the end of the day, it was better than the chain restaurants and so if you can just think of Mexican places like this as a distinct cuisine from that served by taco trucks, carnicerias, or even King Taco, it may be one of the best. It's definitely worth the trip at least once.

Two other comments, first, the crowd that night was amazingly diverse - Koreans, blacks, Latinos, white suburbanites, Chinese, USC grads in Hawaiian shirts. That was really cool. Second, Wendy and I shared a Margarita, a first for us. (We figured we'd have the whole experience). I'd never had any kind of distilled liquor before, and I can't say I'm fan yet. I suppose if I were ever in a situation where I had to have a drink I could have another, but after a few sips I was wishing I'd ordered iced tea. Pretty weak, huh?

Linkage XXXII

Hip-hop Lit 50 Cent has been a rapper, producer, actor and style maven. Now he's branching out into literature. Mr. Cent, as they would call him the NY Times, is the author of the recently released The Ski Mask Way: A G-Unit Book. I think this is cause for amusement rather than despair. I think. (Via The Hater)

Because Love Should Last Forever Via BoingBoing, How to Make a Rose out of Duct Tape.

Godfather to God the Father We lost a real treasure when James Brown died on Christmas morning. As you remember him, don't think of the drug addled man of his later years, but rather think of him like this: James Brown on the Tami Show. (Via James Demastus, who tells me he is named for JB)

She's Everywhere, Even the Future Via The Hater, I give you The Every Day with Rachael Ray Fortune Teller. No, really.

My Money is on "Hobbes" Tiger Woods will become a father for the first time this year, what will he name his child. A.J. Daulerio at Deadspin breaks down the odds (His favorite is Lil' Earl)

"The Ultimate Act of Hopelessness and Faithlessness"

Shane Claiborne, in the group blog God's Politics at Beliefnet, on the execution of Saddam Hussein:

"What do you think of that man?" the old guy asked in a raspy voice as I settled in next to him on the plane. He pointed to the face of Saddam Hussein on the front of his newspaper with a headline story of the looming execution. I gathered myself, and prepared for what could turn out to be a rather chatty plane ride. I replied gently, "I think that man needs some love." And the rather boisterous gentleman sat still, perhaps not exactly the response he predicted. Then he said pensively, "Hmmmm. I think you're right..." And finally, he whispered in a forlorn tone, "And it is hard to communicate love through a noose."

Sometimes we just need permission to say, "It's not okay to kill someone to show everyone how much we hate killing." As Christian artist Derek Webb sings, " Peace by way of war is like purity by way of fornication. It's like saying murder is wrong and showing them by way of execution." I am encouraged by how many Christians I hear voicing an alternative to the myth of redemptive violence in light of the recent killing of Saddam, folks who love Jesus and have the unsettling feeling that Jesus loves evildoers so much he died for them, for us. I have heard many evangelicals who see Saddam's execution as the ultimate act of hopelessness and faithlessness – after all it is humanity stepping in to make the final judgment, that this human created in God's image is beyond redemption. And for those who believe in hell, executing someone who may not yet know of the love and grace of Christ is doubly offensive.

(The entire post is here)

The hippies I read on the internets have been pretty bothered by the absolute fiasco of Saddam's execution: the mocking, the deed being done by Shiite militia members, the shoddy legality of the process, and the President's Orwellian praise for the way this has been carried out have all earned their ire. I merely chalked this up as one more botched and unintentionally ironic act by our leaders and their allies.

Claiborne's work brought me out of my cynicism. I find just a slight whiff of sentimentality in the post, but that aside, the idea of the execution as an act of hopelessness and faithlessness rings true to me.

We humans are called to be stewards of this broken and fallen world, and we are, indeed, our brothers keepers. This task is far too difficult to be carried out with merely human means. Ending violence with violence is an admission of our impotence, and so if Claiborne can really hear a rising tide of Christian voices proclaiming that love is more powerful than hate, and that self-sacrifice is greater than violence, then let me add my voice to that number.

Did He Say "nu-clee-ur" or "nu-cu-lur"?

Our old friend Pat Robertson recently went on a prayer retreat, during which the Lord revealed to him that there will be a major terrorist attack in the U.S. during 2007 that will cause "mass killing". (Link via several hippies) Robertson's death threat against Hugo Chavez got me going with public blogging a few years back, and even though I've tried to get out, Pat "keeps draggin' me back", and so I am.

With a true pastor's heart, Pat goes on to assure us, "I'm not necessarily saying it's going to be nuclear. The Lord didn't say nuclear. But I do believe it will be something like that".

I just love that last line - Pat presumes to read the situation better than God. Wow, I mean, wow - Robertson never disappoints. I imagine that looking at folks like Pat makes the Lord wish he could have a slight do-over with the Bible so He could include a specific warning about the dangers of hubris.

I was disappointed, however, that "The Lord didn't say 'nuclear'". I wish He (the Lord, not Robertson) would clear up the proper pronunciation of the word - does the middle syllable have a long "u" sound, like our President says it, or a long "e" sound, as those who live outside the states of the former Confederacy say it. Given the results of the recent elections and other Republican scandals, I 'd suspect that the Lord is saying it the second way these days.

I also spend an afternoon in prayer recently, and the Lord told me absolutely nothing about terrorist aims in 2007. He did tell me three interrelated things:

• Depend on Me more. No, really.
  
• That stuff about lilies and birds and focusing on today in the gospel of Matthew, I was serious about that.
• You have been preaching over the past year about how the power of the Spirit should lead us to extend the horizons of our expectations - it's time for you to start believing this yourself.

There you have it folks - sorry to disappoint. If the Lord tells me something really important, like whether Chelsea will catch ManU or if Beckham will be coming to the Galaxy, I'll let you know. Until then, that's all I've got.


PS: a nice bit of serendipity - just as I finish this post, iTunes serves up U2's "Grace".

Linkage XXXI

Boratology - Robert Saunders, a professor of a bunch of things at Farmingdale State in New York, breaks down the beef between Borat and his "home" country of Kazakhstan.

It's Dick Cheney's World, Were Just Living in It - A guy in Colorado sees the Vice President in an outdoor mall, walks nearby and tells him he thinks our policy in Iraq is bad. A few minutes later, he walks back through the area and gets arrested by the Secret Service in front of his kid. (Via Michael Froomkin)

What, Diddy's Only Number Twelve? - Jared Weiss counts down "The Fifteen Most Obnoxious People in Music. Part one (11-15) is here.

Don't Do It - Tyler Cowan at Marginal Revolution reads the research on extended warranties and says they're a bad deal. Except for maybe PC's (but not Macs, right?). Full story here.

"They're like Green Day for retards" - And now, Jared Weiss brings the noise with Part II (6-10) of his Fifteen Most Obnoxious People in Music.

Gilmore Girls Update

So, after last week, I'd resolved to give up on Gilmore Girls.

Katie asked why. "Because Lorelai is an awful person and I don't want to be around her anymore." (I believe in speaking clearly with my kids).

Then about forty minutes into the show, while toiling away at my desk a couple of rooms away, I heard Rory chewing Lorelai out for being self-indulgent and a big chicken. I walked in during the commercial, and asked, "Did I just hear Rory telling Lorelai the kinds of things I was shouting at the TV all last year?" "Yes", Katie replied, and then she asked, "Now will you stay?" So I did.

In the final few minutes I find out more about Lane's honeymoon than I wanted to know and also find out that she's pregnant. Lane as a mother and her mother as a grandmother and Zach as a Dad and the guys in the band as uncles could be a really great development, but since the series works more or less in real time, the baby won't come until at least the end of this season, so I'll have to temper my hopes.

Meanwhile, the episode ends with Luke and Lorelai having a chance meeting at the grocery store. Lorelai accuses Luke of having avoided the store, and Luke responds kindly and even graciously. Lorelai clearly wants out of there because, you know, having to talk to the man she nearly married and with whom she has a long history is a difficult thing and rule one of Living in Lorelai Land is never, never, never having to really face difficult things, at least head on, and at the very least, by herself. Lorelai always runs from trouble the first time and only comes back to it when trouble persists and even then only when she has assembled some sort of emotional posse shield her from the worst bits. The writers of the show may find this charming, but I find Lorelai's behavior and patterns morally suspect. It made sense for Lorelai to use the people of Stars Hollow when she first arrived as a teen with a baby, but at some point she needed to stop and grow up. Instead, like all true narcissists, she sees the people in her life as merely extensions of herself.

And so Luke awkwardly tries to suggest that it's OK that they broke up, somewhat to get through the moment but also, I think, trying to graciously make sense of the way that Lorelai showed him the door. All this gives Lorelai the pouts, and she responds by gesturing with her ice cream and telling Luke, "Well, my hand is cold" and then turning to leave.

I think we were supposed to feel for Lorelai at this moment, because it was pretty hard and our darling girl - and that's what she still is, a girl, not a woman - just. feels. so. deeply. But not me. I sat through all of last season because I thought the writers were playing a deeper game and were finally showing the dysfunctional side of Gilmore-ism. I thought we were seeing that for moment last night when they followed up the grocery store scene with a long shot of Lorelai, alone, staring into space. I was thinking, "That's right, Lorelai. Keep using people the way you do and you're going to end up just like this - alone, staring into space". But then Rory came home, forgot or ignored what she had said earlier, and cuddled and consoled her Mom, and all was well once again in Lorelai land.

But not with me.

With Project Runway's season coming to an end soon, we're going to have to find another gather-all-four-of-us family show, and I'm not sure what that will be.


Update: For those of you using RSS readers, sorry for the triplicate posts - Blogger was publishing when it was telling me that it wasn't .