A BIG BLOG

Let’s start this comeback right….with a post!  Here’s a fun Opinion piece from the New York Times, with which I tend to agree.  I’ve been amazed that John McCain would come out and tell “irresponsible” homeowners to drop dead.  I consider myself the least irresponsible person I know, and it’s still going to be difficult when our adjustable-rate mortgage starts adjusting in the wrong way.

“His economic thinking — which is, in any form, a brand-new phenomenon — harks back to the time when Republicans all seemed to be elderly rich guys who muttered a lot about bonded indebtedness. The public’s deep lack of enthusiasm for this worldview was what encouraged Reagan to change the subject to optimism and abortion.

The theme for his mortgage speech this week was basically McCain to Homeowners: Drop Dead. It was, he said sternly, “not the duty of the government to bail out and reward those who act irresponsibly.” The good news, he noted, was that out of 80 million American homeowners, only 4 million are in the tank, while everybody else is “working a second job, skipping a vacation and managing their budgets” the way Countrywide Financial intended them to.

He did, however, leave the door open for some vague, amorphous, undefined aid to good homeowners, as opposed to irresponsible ones who … did something irresponsible. Like taking that vacation.

McCain then suggested that the federal government ought to do something about getting regulations off the back of the financial markets and concluded with a call to reduce the corporate tax rate. It was not exactly a rallying cry for the masses.”

Note: You may have to have a NY Times account (free and worthwhile) to read the full story.

I just realized that I’m still getting a couple of hits a day on this blog, even though I haven’t posted here in ages.  For those of you that actually know me, the last year has been a stressful one, and my blogging was limited to some very specific subjects (and was not posted here).  Now that things are starting to get back to normal, I find myself wishing I had a place to vent about random stuff….politics, advertisements, etc.  In the past, this was my place to blow off steam without offending anyone looking for a more mundane review of my day-to-day activities.  I hope it can be that again.

I don’t know if I’ll be able to stick to it, but I’ll give it a shot.  Hope to see you here soon, and I’ll start directing more traffic this way if I can keep up with a steady stream of entries.

It’s been many moons since my last post, and I’m long overdue.  I have a lot to mention….most importantly a new job and a baby on the way.  However, those entries will allow for additional procrastination, and this one will not.

A dear friend of mine has just entered a contest called “The Search for the Next Public Radio Star.”  I realize this is a bit of an oxymoron, but suffice it to say that there is definitely a subculture (of which I am a member) in which working on public radio makes you a star.  The contest involves an online version of a ‘demo tape’ to display the entrant’s humor, professionalism, and on-air talent.  Jenny’s entry takes us to the rodeo, for one of the most dangerous contests this side of the neighborhood jungle gym.  Please take a listen and vote big for Jenny Weddel, America’s Next Public Radio Star:

Naptime Comes to the Rodeo

The danger. The cowboys. The glitter. We all have an idea of what a rodeo entails. But there’s a little-known rodeo event filled with chaos, tears, and mud on the face.

I almost got my first ticket today. However, instead of feeling sheepish and promising to change my evil driving ways, I’m going to rant against the police. A brilliant idea, I’m sure.
There’s an intersection near our house, where Manchester Boulevard meets the 5 freeway, through which much of the south-bound traffic from residential Encinitas/Leucadia has to filter. I won’t bore you with the gory details, but the options are:

1) Use the right lane, which quickly becomes the world’s longest onramp line, stretching at least half a mile.

2) Make an illegal right turn from the left lane (at a stop sign) into the second onramp lane.

3) Continue through the intersection and make an illegal U-turn in either a parking lot or a neighboring street.

Usually, I choose an impatient version of option number 1. I wait until the last minute before changing lanes into the onramp line, even though I get mad at others who do the same. This morning, however, I didn’t make it in and had to continue in the left lane. I considered option number 2, but decided against it for some reason (I’ve only ever done it once). That left me with option 3. I went up to the next street and turned right, hoping to make a U-turn in one of the many illegal U-turn zones.

As I turned the corner and started my U-turn, I realized that there were four other cars parked near the corner, having tickets written for them by two motorcycle police officers. I quickly aborted the U-turn and headed up the street, where I eventually made a 3-point turn in a condo’s parking space. I just barely missed getting a ticket. After making my way back to the onramp and heading for the flow of traffic, I noticed that there was also an officer at the top of the ramp, waving over people who had turned right from the left lane (option #2) so that he could give them a ticket.

In essence, the police (technically, the county sheriff) set up a series of invisible traps for commuters going to work, and could have caught hundreds of people within an hour. Do I think it “serves them right”? NO! On the contrary, effort should be focused on a solution to the underlying problem, rather than on exploiting a weak intersection to catch up on a ticket quota.

The solution is simple: make a right turn from the left lane (choice #2) legal. It would immediately cut the waiting line in half, and wouldn’t have a negative impact on the traffic flow. There are very few cars that come from the opposing direction, so they wouldn’t be delayed much, and there’s a stop sign at the intersection to prevent any accidents or right-of-way conflicts. Don’t punish us for bad design….fix the problem.

Here’s a graphical side note: Manchester Onramp.

I (and half of Encinitas) approach from the right and need to loop around onto the freeway.  The two cars at bottom-center should be able to turn right from where they are, thus making all of our commutes easier.

Here’s a quick traffic tip for all the idiots out there, from someone trying to get used to a daily commute again.

If you are changing lanes from one that is slow-moving into one that is moving faster, presumably so that YOU can go faster, you need to SPEED UP once the lane transition has been made. There are people in the other lane (read: me) that are already moving at a brisk clip and do not want to slam on their brakes just because you don’t understand the concept of traffic-flow dynamics.

‘Nuff said.

The good news: my flights to/from New Jersey on Continental had both televisions and meals…neither of which were to be found on my American flights to Toronto (through Chicago).

The bad news: What passes for comedy on Continental? Hope and Faith, which has been canceled, and Four Kings, which barely made it to air before it was shitcanned. And what passes for cinema? Click (awful, as I’ve already mentioned), Poseidon (a disaster movie while flying?), and Just My Luck (with Lindsay Lohan).

Remind me to bring a book on my next flight.

I recently watched parts of the movie Click for the second time. It was on a plane and without sound, but it reminded me of how much I hated it the first time around. Aside from the bad acting, ridiculously over-the-top plot oddities, and story that went on about twenty years (in the movie) too long, I’ve decided what really bothered me about the movie…it’s the same thing that made me dislike Bruce Almighty, though that at least had better acting. In the end, it’s about poorly planned and implemented superpowers that are completely unrealistic and annoying.

Don’t get me wrong…I’m perfectly willing to believe that a human could be given God’s powers, or that a remote could control the universe. I have no problem with suspension of disbelief. However, these movies producers NEED for things to turn out badly, so that the lead can learn about the true nature of family, hard work, and love. So they end up ruining perfectly good powers with a character that is truly an idiot. Even the daydreamiest twelve year old could come up with better uses for God’s powers. A few example scenes:

1) Jim Carrey gets behind on answering prayers because he’s too busy with his personal life. Ridiculous!  You’re GOD, for….your….sake. Make the prayers all be answered in a manner that you would find fitting, assuming you had the time to answer them all individually. Done!

2) Adam Sandler fast-forwards through years of his life in order to skip to an impending promotion. Stupid! Fast-forward through a particularly boring day at work, and pause when needed to catch up on some late work, but don’t fast-forward through the good stuff, too. Speaking of good stuff, DON’T fast-forward sex with Kate Beckinsale…not even once!  A backrub is worth the payoff, trust me.

Adam Sandler’s character isn’t entirely to blame, though I can’t say the same for Bruce Almighty. Sandler was saddled with a faulty remote control with a flawed feature set. I realize your Tivo might think you’re gay, but even a remote should know not to auto-ffwd through sex.

Also, the remote only really acted on Sandler’s perception of the world, not on the world itself. This means that when he makes David Hasselhoff speak Spanish, or widens him out like a funhouse mirror, Sandler’s the one that looks like an idiot because he’s giggling at nothing. LifeRemote Version 2.0 should actually MAKE him speak Spanish. Let everyone else figure out why.

In the end, it comes down to this…I could do better. So if there are any supreme beings or crazy Christopher Walken types looking for a beneficiary, I’d be happy to demonstrate. Because so far, these powers have been wasted on comedic geniuses.

My second and third weeks in Canada were nowhere as exciting as the first. No waterfalls, no Yankees, and no incredible restaurants to review (aside from my Chinatown experience). However, before Toronto fades into my distant memories along with the other 20 cities I’ve seen in the last six months, I wanted to give it just one more post.

First, a note about food. I asked my hosts a few days ago whether there was any such thing as “Canadian food.” The response, “buffalo and beer,” was only slightly kidding…but I certainly didn’t see any buffalo burgers being advertised on the streets of Toronto.

What I DID notice was that most Canadian food was just like American food, but with some slight variation…similar to how Alanis Morissette and Avril Lavigne are like American pop stars, but with some angst. I saw this trend in a few repeated examples:

1) Almost everywhere I went, there was some sort of “hot sauce” available, even for items that don’t generally have spicy versions. Examples of places I was asked, “Do you want it hot?” include an Indian buffet, a Greek restaurant (hot sauce on my gyro), a Middle Eastern place (hot sauce on my falafel sandwich). Maybe they’re just trying to keep their blood from freezing during the winter, but Canadians LOVE their hot sauce. It’s a trend I could really get behind.

2) Every time I ordered a Caesar salad (my standard barometer for the quality of an Italian restaurant), it either automatically came with, or was offered with, bacon bits. The quality of the bits themselves ranged from freshly crumbled bacon strips to the most processed of “Bacos,” but their availability/inclusion was universal. Somehow in its cultural migration from its origination in SW North America (Tijuana) to NE North America (Toronto), this interesting addition was made. It’s efficacy depended almost entirely on the aforementioned bacon quality, but I’m not against a conservative dribbling of yummy bacon onto an already-good Caesar.

3) Another odd topping of choice was sliced green olives, which ended up on both my gyro and on a hot Italian sausage from a street vendor. I was most surprised by this addition, but found that it added a surprisingly complimentary flavor to both items. It made for a messy sausage (hot mustard, green olive slices, pepperoncini rings, and a couple pickle slices for good measure) but it tasted like fresh-off-the-street-cart unhygienic goodness.

Toronto also has an incredible infrastructure of underground tunnels connecting almost the entire downtown area. This space contains stores, subway tunnels, food courts, and escalators into the lobby of every major building. I assume this arose as another concession to freezing winters, but it’s entirely foreign to me in my all-outdoor-malls San Diego life. One day I went looking for food and ended up two blocks east and two buildings north of where I began, all without leaving the subterranean maze. People even reference their lunch destinations by the building underneath which they lie, rather than by the name of any particular restaurant.

As a final note, I had a wonderful time in Toronto. All the Canadians I met (including office workers, taxi drivers, waiters, hotel employees, and ticket scalpers) were incredibly friendly and polite, with great senses of humor and a willingness to discuss just about anything. The city was beautiful, the economy was bustling (at least from what I could see), and the food was fantastic. I was very impressed and would go back in a heartbeat…just not for three weeks in a row.

As Ken Jennings or any other major Jeopardy champion will tell you, there are a couple important factors for winning repeatedly. The first is a quick trigger finger, and the second is the educated guess. With an educated guess, a person with only a shallow depth of knowledge in any particular category can still do well. Let me give you an example of how this operates in practice, which is sometimes how I play at home. Alex Trebek starts reading a clue, “This city in Morocco….” STOP! That’s all you need, right there. Translation: “Name a city in Morocco.” Though he will sometimes provide more information that loyal Moroccans may be able to use to narrow it down, about the city’s flea market, or 1930’s governorship, or departure from the British Empire, there is really no need.

Jeopardy assumes that most smarter-than-average Americans (your average Jeopardy contestant) will still have only really heard of one city in Morocco. Even those that know more will be smart enough to dumb themselves down temporarily and put themselves in the Jeopardy writers’ shoes. In the end, they’re writing for everyone smart enough to even WATCH Jeopardy, and have to provide the payoff at the end. A contestant buzzes in and says, “What is Casablanca?” And the home audience goes, “Oh yeah, I once heard that Casablanca was in Morocco!” Most Jeopardy translations are even easier…keep an ear out the next time you watch, and you’ll see that about half the questions can be simplified to about a five-word question: “Name an old female scientist: Marie Curie,” “Name a city in Georgia: Atlanta,” etc.

However, this post isn’t really about Jeopardy, though I’ve fermented this theory for years. It’s about politics, and using the same strategy for translating politico-speak. This morning before I left the hotel, John Ashcroft was on The Today Show, promoting his book. Now remember, he HAS to go on these talk shows in order to sell copies, and the reason he’s on with Meredith Vieira and not Tim Russert is because he doesn’t want to get asked the hard questions. He wants to hit a couple of softballs and then sell books to some security moms that are watching to hear about “The Faith Club,” a group of women of different faiths that have formed a local discussion club.

Now that I’ve set the scene, we get to Meredith’s questions. She mentions a report that Condoleeza Rice had meetings early in 2001 in which she was told that Al Qaeda was determined to attack inside the United States. The question: was Ashcroft, the US Attorney General at the time, told of those reports, and was he given any of his own warnings about Al Qaeda? His answer, “Well, we were given lots of warnings about Al Qaeda….” STOP! That’s all you need, right there. Translation: “Yes, I was given a warning.” When a POLITICIAN admits something that important, you know it’s because he has NO choice. The evidence is obviously overwhelming…he even said LOTS of warnings…and anything that is said beyond the introduction is really just filler.

He went on to talk about how those warnings were of threats “similar to the USS Cole and the embassy bombings,” but that there was no evidence of Al Qaeda wanting to attack within the US. First, since when do they care about solid evidence? And second, there WAS evidence…thus the report entitled “Bin Ladin Determined to Attack Inside US.”

Isn’t the American public smart enough to see through BS like this? I realize that it’s often more subtle, but for the most part it’s an easy call. “When did the Republican leadership know about the inappropriate sexual emails and instant messages from Republican Representative Mark Foley to one of his sixteen-year-old staffers?” “Well, we were aware that there was some impropriety, but….” STOP! Translation: “We knew a LONG time ago and tried to cover it up. Not only did we cover it up, but we let him remain in charge of the Committee for Missing and Exploited Children.”

They went on to talk about how they didn’t know the full extent, and that most of the ones they had seen were “harmless flirting,” etc, etc, etc. We’re dealing with a then-50-year-old Congressional Representative and a 16-year-old boy. And they didn’t bother to 1) ask some more questions, and 2) recognize the impropriety (and illegality) of ANYTHING resembling what they’ve found? How are they writing bills to protect children from MySpace when they can’t even be protected from Congress?

These situations frustrate me to no end. How is it that partisan politics has become so ingrained in our culture that even when corruption of the worst sort is demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt, constituents (and their representatives) would rather support the party than do what is right? When my Congressional Representative, Randy “Duke” Cunningham, was discovered to have taken MILLIONS of dollars in bribes from lobbyists, enough to buy himself a Rancho Santa Fe mansion, a boat (the “Dukester”), and enough gaudy antiques to gag a Victorian queen, did my district vote for a change?
Did they vote for the Democrat that had been close to winning the last election, in order to restore some dignity to the position? No, they voted for an ACTUAL lobbyist. Representative Brian Bilbray, who quit politics to lobby for various questionable causes.

I have a stomachache.

This week my hotel was closer to the north end of downtown Toronto, which introduces a whole new range of culinary options, including Chinatown. My dad had recommended a trip to Chinatown from his recent visit, and I had taken a peek during my first week, but this time was a bit different.

I stepped out of my hotel and walked toward the bright lights, and I didn’t stop until I couldn’t read a single sign. When I was completely surrounded by hanging (intact) ducks and pig heads in BBQ market windows and tchotchkes galore in every other storefront, I stopped and picked a restaurant at random: Rol Jui. It was empty (always a scary sign), but that was quickly remedied as several large Chinese families entered soon after I
ordered.

The menu was about ten pages of closely-spaced English and Chinese writing.  There we’re also hundreds of Chinese-only menu options posted on every wall surface, though the only reason I recognized them was because they were accompanied by prices. I thought about picking a random item off the wall, but decided it was too dangerous.

I considered ordering the pigeon, but I didn’t really feel like fowl. I also thought about the shark fin soup, but I didn’t want to be hypocritical about my environmental beliefs just for the sake of a new experience. There were plenty of other weird options, but I eventually made my selection.

I started with a spring roll that was nothing special, then moved on to the crab meat and sweet corn soup. I’m not usually one to mix my sweet and savory flavors, but it seemed to be a house special and I was not disappointed. It was similar to egg drop soup, but with fresh shredded crab and crushed corn. Yummy.

For my entree, I went with fried salt and pepper squid that was way better than I had hoped it would be. The squid was only lightly breaded and fried, and perfectly seasoned. It was a huge pile of large, juicy chunks of squid with a lot of flavor…they went well with chili sauce but were great on their own as well.

I don’t know that I could pick the restaurant out from a line-up…the whole street is a maze of multi-level shops/restaurants/nail salons…but it is definitely recommended. I suppose there’s a pretty good chance of getting authentic Chinese food in an area like this. I am happy I made the journey and didn’t play it safe.