Flight of the Vultures

I've taken four flights over the last two weekends and have flown a fair amount in my life.  I've learned a great deal from my travels and feel that I have grown as a person as a result of the people I have met and the places I have seen.  

I have also seen the darker side of travel, the seedy underbelly of the human trafficking business.  Knowing this and knowing humanity as I (obviously) do, I've come to the conclusion that the primary source of mankind's unhappiness lies in our inability to streamline the boarding and unboarding processes on commercial airliners.  

When we. as people, are flying from one locale to another it is usually for one of three reasons a) to work b) to vacation or c) to visit family and/or friends (sometimes mistaken for b). 

These situations are usually either highly stressful or carry the burden of high expectations. Either way there is anticipation and anxiety both of which are exacerbated by tight spaces, stuffy air-flow and the near grasp of the next portion of ones trip. 

This creates frustration which is first, held in to be expanded during the unboarding portion of ones trip, and second, expelled from the traveller onto those of whom he is visiting.  This anger then spreads from visitee to others and eventually we have famine, drought, locusts and plague.  

All because we have yet to overcome the challenge of boarding and unboarding commercial airliners.

Drunk

Shouldn't there be a bar named Drunk? I think it would be a clever satirical play on all the "trendy" single name clubs. Also I hadn't planned it this way but having seen it in print it could be Drunk? instead of just of Drunk.  Also, it could be Drunk. - with a period after it. Punctuation in bar names kicks ass. The stream-of-conciousness (I don't think I've ever spelt the word conciousness correctly) is due to A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius that I'm reading (having recently fallen upon the book What is the What, enjoying it and wanting to read more Eggers) and in part to a lack of time for a proper post.  Other shit that I've been thinking of writing lately includes: being more interested in Best of Craigslist posts from the city in which I, or you, live - which I would think is true for most people. Note: I just asked three people in my apartment if they engage in this behavior and none of them had ever read best of craigslist, which is insane to me, take a look.  Also, the hypocrisy of the NFL challenge system, by which they reward correct calls and punish for requesting them.  Finally, I want to write about shit that looks and feels cool but kind of  sucks - or might kind of suck but maybe doesn't (think PT Anderson films), people always come down on one side of that fence or the other.  I'm a fence sitter and I think a lot of others are as well - whether or not they're willing to admit it.  

Links: 

Interesting article on critiques of The Wire.  I'm excited about the connection of Lester and McNulty, I think that there are interesting moral implications for this combination.

Also, the City Journal has a fascinating article on the state of Black/Hispanic relations.  I hadn't read the City Journal before this article but I think I will more often now.

I'll be blogging at the Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona this weekend on this blog.  It's for the foundation I work for and it's a very worthy cause (I won't mention it here because it'd show up on google alerts and people I work with would read this). 

Top 5 Things I Fear Are Going to Happen To Me in Texas

I'm going to Texas this weekend. This will not turn out well.

5. A Mexican will emigrate into my body
4. I'll become an alcoholic, endure excessive amounts of failure, get appointed the head of an oil company, acquire minority ownership of the Texas Rangers, get elected Governor, run for the presidency, win, bring the country to its knees with my incompetency. This weekend.
3. I'll start using the expression "y'all" (I found this magazine when I typed "y'all" into google to make sure I was spelling it correctly).
2. I'll have delusions that I'm some sort of cowboy .

And the number 1 thing I fear is going to happen to me in Texas...I'll become a born again Christian

Note: I left "Get shot by a redneck with a concealed weapon" off the list because I've come to accept the inevitable nature of this concern.

I have much to write about next week including thoughts on Texas. I've been lax this week due to my responsibilities to Dance Retail News Magazine where my article on the greening of small businesses will be coming out in March.

Special note: According to my biography at the end of the article I am working on my first novel titled Excess, Success, and Recess: the life and times of Liam Grant.

Disbandment

I write with a heavy heart today as I use this space to regrettably announce the breakup of my rap posse the Extroditables. We had a great run, sold hundreds of thousands of records and fucked mad bitches but it was time to call it quits and I think we all realized this.

On a semi-related note I would like to take this opportunity to announce the formation of my new Mariachi band Hermann and the Bodegas.

Comprised of the former members of Cervantes and the Extroditables, Hermann and the Bodegas feature the most groundbreaking sound of our generation. Heavily influenced by the street sound of rap groups like Cervantes and the Extroditables, Hermann and the Bodegas blend the sound of urban decay with with the plaintive tones of the violin and the festive brass of the trumpet.

Visit H and the 'Degas myspace page or check out our website www.hermannandgenericbrands.com

Lone Drinker V 2.0

Hello and welcome to the fifth installment of the lone drinker. Tonight's LD is being brought to you by Rolling Rock and Fris Vodka. Rolling Rock: because most other cheap domestic beer comes in brown bottles. Fris: It probably rymes with tree but it tastes like piss.

10:58: A very late start to the lone drinker, I'm a beer deep and just watched this video. When I initially recognized the idea I thought it was almost self-evident comedy, unfortunately the idea was not fully realized.

11:15: Beer 3, sometimes I read an article and think about how stupid we will seem to future generations.

11:31: This is an idea that I hope to expand on when drunk: I read a lot of articles and hear a lot of people complaining about the stupidity of Americans and it's really starting to offend me. It doesn't offend me as an American but as a person. Frankly people are stupid. This fact is not unique to the United States it is a universal fact that a vast majority of people are stupid. Too often I read commentaries and blog posts, like this, where people pan America or Americans. The only people dumber than the subjects of these articles and posts are the people who write them and think that such behavior is unique to the US. Wake up mother fuckers, you guys are retards too.

12:28: I just slugged down beer 6 when I realized I hadn't posted in almost an hour.

12:35: This article speeks to the crisis of age that I plan on writing about in the near future. There's something abound and we haven't wrapped our minds around it yet.

1:11: When do things that we've seen/heard/experienced lose their interest and why? Alcohol seems to be one of those delightful treats that keeps on giving but much in the way of music, movies, and art seem to lose their ability to intrigue after a certain amount of examinations. Why? This drunk has no answers. 9 down (and not really drunk, lest you think I am, mother fucker. Want to fight?)

1:28: Switched to Vodka. Poured a vodka club into a Christmas Glass. I'm at the home in which I grew up (no one else is). Do any women still exsist that would put out Christmas glasses during the holiday season? Would I want to date such a woman? I don't think it's just the alcohol that makes that a freigtening proposition.

1:42: Let it be said that drinking by oneself is a wondrfully cathartic experience.

2:31: A decidedly poor LD, I just added a dose of vodka to my vodka and diet because I was upset with my output. I'm not witty, just drunk.

2:41: A plea to McNuts to write his own blog, he's got one but has yet to post: Hey dickbag, you want to write so do it. Pissing in the wind is only fun when you hit people with it.

Mvemjsnup

My
space
bar
and
period
button
are
not
working,
this
makes
posting
difficult,
stay
tuned
for
a
meditation
on
second
acts
in
American
lives
period

The Ruling on "the rules"

Esquire has a section in most issues (or perhaps all issues) where they have a series of "rules" presumably for modern male living. Unfortunately these "rules" are usually so goddamn esoteric college sociology professors are left wondering what they're talking about. Like Rule No. 568: The didgeridoo is the only instrument that can be displayed in your living room without you being able to play it. Thanks fellas, I had spent the last couple months contemplating whether it was a faux pas to hang my didgeridoo above my television. Crisis avoided.

In honor of the wrong turn that Esquire has taken with this gimmick, I'm going to begin posting a series of YFBFB's rules but instead of giving them weird numbers for no reason I'm just going to number them in order. I know it's novel.

Rule No. 1: If a person believes that you are going to burn in hell for eternity for not subscribing to their religion you get to think that that person and their religion are ridiculous.

The links:

Extreme Drinking, NYT style. I liked this article except at the end where every beer they rate is either 2 or 2.5 stars. What the fuck is that? The writer makes the entire article seem like the beers were surprisingly good then gives them all mediocre ratings.

100 amusing quotes, although I wish the author had stuck with historical figures, the post fades a bit when it gets to modern comedians.

The best article I've read on the softer side of Sexual Offenders in the last couple weeks. Actually it's really interesting.

This New Yorker piece is an excellent example of observational journalism. The author also does a great job of avoiding preemptively writing off the Clinton campaign as many might in a similar situation.

I don't really believe it but there are a shitload of rumors flying around the internet that the NH primaries were rigged. A healthy democracy requires a healthy amount of skepticism.

The freakonomics guys recently put together a study that had the extrapolated conclusion that prostitutes have sex with police officers more than they are arrested by them. I love those guys.

Be back tomorrow.

Zen and the Art of Dishware Maintanance

If doing dishes were a sport it’d be prison soap dropping; everybody dreads it and it’s not actually a sport. Yet the importance of proper dishware maintenance cannot be overstated.

The 20^th Century brought us a great advancement in dishware maintenance (no, not Mexicans). The automatic dishwasher freed mankind from the burden of cleaning up after himself, the ultimate goal in the whole of human progression. But the automatic dishwasher has not been without its faults.

The primary con of the automatic dishwasher is that it has softened our resolve - and our hands - to manually wash dishes. This is problematic because many apartments and/or living quarters still do not have automatic dishwashers, especially those that feature several 20 somethings occupying the bedrooms (multiple people sharing dishware further heightens the importance of clean plates, utensils etc.). As a result, an entire generation has moved into our cities without a thorough understanding of how to manually wash dishes - and the dishwasher is partially to blame for all of this.

More to blame however, is sloth. Honestly, it’s just not that hard to clean a fucking plate. It’s just not that hard. Yet everywhere I go plates are piled like skyscrapers in sinks and there’s more crud on cups in cupboards that in the grimiest of sewers. This is really a matter of lack of effort.

There is no such thing as a kind of clean plate and no reason to partially clean a plate. If I’m going to bother putting a sponge to dishware it is going to be clean when I am finished. It’s a character flaw to hold a contrary opinion.

Further, it’s not just the top of a plate or the inside of a glass that needs to be cleaned. When one puts a plate in a cupboard it is generally on top of another plate, logic dictates that the bottom of the invading plate must be clean to maintain the cleanliness of the initial plate. And a glass generally has a person putting their lips on the inside and the outside of its rim, therefore the rim needs to be cleaned - inside and out.

Dishware Maintenance is not rocket science and its not gang anal raping but it is an important aspect of comfortable living. Think about that next time you pick up a sponge (or a bar of soap).

Like a Woman Who Makes Her Living Off of Words She Can't Properly Define

I recognize the irony of writing the last post and then not posting for a week but sometimes life gets in the way. Anyway a couple quick thoughts, two links and a promise to be back tomorrow:

Can one be insane without being mad or mad without being insane?

An amusing aspect of modern living: my roommates and I have a toothbrush holder that doesn't really fit on our sink (it stands but whenever you turn the water on or off the cold water arm bangs into it). It's just inconvenient enough to piss me off every time I use it but just convenient enough to keep me from purchasing a new one. I have friends that have ice trays that are unusually shaped and kind of a pain in the ass. However, they hold water and when placed in a freezer create ice. Things that are just convenient enough to piss us off consistently without doing anything about them. I don't think these are isolated incidents.

I bought The National's record Alligator last week and it's gone a long way to confirming my suspicion that the National might be the best band on the planet right now (or at least New York anyway).

Two very funny old Onion articles:
Barbaro and in honor of the Iowa Caucasus

Be back tomorrow.