If you hate the same and hate change, you just hate...

I'm confused by the whole health care debate. Which is hard to do, considering I've spent a considerable amount of energy trying to avoid it. Don't get me wrong--it's not that I'm confused about it, or have no opinion. We NEED universal health care, and it's disgusting that we don't have it. I guess if you really want to be compared to Ghana, the U.S. is doing the right thing, but I was under the impression that this wasn't a third-world country.

What confuses me most about the Republican reaction is that their worst fear--one that isn't based in reality, like all of their ideas--is that they are most afraid that the federal government is going to decide who lives and who dies by denying or approving coverage. Which, unless I have an incorrect grasp on common sense, is exactly what the private health insurance companies do now.

As anyone knows, insurance companies have specific workers who are paid to find ANY reason to deny a claim. The conservative fear is that the government will do...that. So their big fear is that we will have a similar system to what we have now, the one they are going crazy trying to defend? Or is it that they feel like the government workers are Satanic and all health care CEO's are Mother Theresa? That's backed up by reality, sure....

Is that really what people think? I know conservatives don't have a grasp on reality, but that seems to be what I understand of it.

You're wrong, and you're a moron...

I'm completely ok with being wrong. It happens to me a lot, so it's hard for me to say with a straight face that I wouldn't accept somebody who apologizes after making a mistake. We will all be wrong from time to time. However, some people aren't willing to admit the mere possibility that they will ever be wrong.

In the media, this is known as a strength. The way to be popular as a sports host or a political host is not to be right, but to be boisterous and have strong opinions. Nobody's going to remember what you said two weeks ago, and even if they did, the call screeners are never going to allow them on the air. So if you said last year that the Detroit Lions were going to win the Super Bowl emphatically enough, you would get more listeners than somebody who passively picked the Steelers. Likewise, in politics, nobody is going to check up on you if you lie or stretch the truth about war, health, or who you've had sex with in the past 24 hours. (Actually, scratch that last one...)

In everyday life, however, this doesn't work as well. I have had friends who are 100% convinced of things, and not only are they right, but you're stupid for questioning them. This happens most often, to nobody's surprise, when it comes to politics and religion, two things that virtually never can be proven. If you say that the Lions are going to win the Super Bowl, they'll know you're wrong around...Week 9. But if they say that ________ is going to hell, how are you going to disprove that? If they say that if the President does this and then that and then that and every possible problem will be solved, chances are he's not going to do exactly what you want and you'll never know if it would have been successful.

When it comes to politics and religion, I feel that I'm humble enough to know that I don't have all the answers. I feel like I understand the concept of God pretty well, but do I understand everything? Of course not. My views are always changing. Politically, as well. I know the basics of what I think is right and what I think is wrong, but that doesn't mean I'm always right. I will state my opinions and you will state yours, but unless you say something racist or sexist or homophobic I'm not going to say anything against it. (Although, if you have really crazy views, I'll probably lose some respect for you...that's life and it's unavoidable.)

If you tell me you're right and I'm stupid, however, I'm not going to get a damn thing out of our conversation besides you being condescending. It's not going to help either of us. So if you can't have a civil conversation without being high and mighty, don't.

Glass Houses

Gloating is not my thing. I really don't like doing it, because we all fail, over and over again, and it's not fair to take pleasure in other people's misfortunes.

But there is one thing that I feel I can make an exception for. I have absolutely no respect for people who take a holier-than-thou approach to something, and it's hard not to feel good when it blows up in their face, even if you don't want to admit to it.

It is incredibly difficult not to feel some sort of perverse joys when the Larry Craig's of the world get caught in a homosexual relationship. When somebody makes a career out of attacking gays gets discovered...it's just desserts. Honestly, if he had been accepting of gay relationships and had been caught in a relationship like that, I would have felt bad for him as he was skewered on all the late night talk shows.

Now, onto the point of this blog...David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez being caught doing steroids. I love it. It's hard not to, since I'm heavily biased in this area. But it isn't the fact that they are being torn to shreds that made me happy--it's the Boston fanbase that constantly said how they were the team that did things right, gloating in the failures of others while an investigation done by one of their employees found no evidence of PED's on the team. (I know it's been said by others more eloquent than me, but George Mitchell looks really, really bad right now. Somehow he was able to find cancelled checks from a million people except the people he was trying to protect. Interesting.)

So it serves them right. I take no pleasure in seeing two guys anyone with common sense could see were on steroids being caught in the act. I do take pleasure in seeing people taking the "We did it fairly" defense are now saying "well everyone was doing it..." Nice try. It's true, but it's a little late to use it now.

Everyone did do steroids. Meaning, no, those titles are not tainted. Their steroided guys beat other teams full of steroids. We'll never know if a team with 17 guys on steroids beat one with 13, or vice versa. However, we will know that nobody is immune to it. If you have a team, your team has a lot of guys who did steroids in the past 15 years. Playing the innocence card isn't going to work anymore.

Who should you trust?

So many depressing stories out there these days. Chances are, your local politician is a crook. At least one of them. Between the governor, the mayor, senators, representatives--somebody is skimming money, paying off a prostitute, selling out their district's interests for cash. Not the kind of thing you want to hear when waking up in the morning.

Guess what, there's a chance your religious leaders are doing something terrible too! And possibly working with those corrupt politicians. When this guy is getting arrested, there's something really bizarre going on. Luckily, no matter what your affliation may be, chances are somebody of the faith has been arrested lately. Rabbis, Ministers, and of course...this guy.

Tony Alamo, a one-time street preacher who built a multimillion-dollar ministry and became an outfitter of the stars, was convicted Friday of taking girls as young as 9 across state lines for sex.

Alamo stood silently as the verdict was read, a contrast to his occasional mutterings during testimony. His five victims sat looking forward in the gallery. One, a woman he "married" at age 8, wiped away a tear.

"I'm just another one of the prophets that went to jail for the Gospel," Alamo called to reporters afterward as he was escorted to a waiting U.S. marshal's vehicle.

Must have missed the part about having sex with nine-year olds in my Bible...oops.

Now, your spiritual leader is probably not this guy. I would hope. But it does reinforce the need to know that the people who lead you in worship of whatever God you believe in and the people who you feel can "change things in Washington" are flawed and human. They will make mistakes. Sometimes, they turn out to be cretins, but that's rare--it's best not to think about it. But they will fail. Like you will. Think about things when they say them, because you need to be careful accepting somebody else's word as gospel.

Tweet This

I still can't come up with an opinion on twitter. I'm not sure if I love it, or hate it, or lovate it (horray for making up words). With all these people selling out and joining the site, I was one of few to go the opposite way a little while back and delete my account.

I kind of miss it though. But I kind of don't. Here is what I said about it in February...

I just don’t see the point. The most misused feature of Facebook is the status update, which allows you to say how you’re feeling at one particular moment. The problem is that it sometimes becomes an outlet for frustration and not a true indicator of your mental state. Twitter basically is this status update, except more geared towards what you are doing rather than how you are feeling.

In general, this is still true. However, I've seen a shift in the past few months. People are using twitter either a) instead of facebook, which is being ignored by and large as a place to update statuses and b) on facebook, by simply sending their twitter updates to facebook. As a result, there are things you can get on twitter that aren't on facebook (some people's updates, and celebrity stuff, from bands, athletes, etc.)

Not sure if that's enough to make me rejoin. One of the major reasons I stopped using it was that I felt as if it was becoming a place for people to talk about all the great things they were doing, which is a pain in the ass. A place to gloat. I don't need to hear about that, and me being a naturally jealous person, it became frustrating. I'm doing better with that now, so possibly in the future I'll rejoin (especially as more people keep joining). We'll see. I never said I was off twitter forever, I would have prefered to 'deactivate' like you can do with facebook. May come back soon, or never. You never know.

Novel Writing

If you ever feel like needlessly torturing yourself, write a novel. It's far more effective in bringing about frustration than eating glass or shoving a fork in your eye.

Now, don't get me wrong. There are some great reasons to write a novel, and it's incredibly rewarding to see your words on the page. However, it's an incredibly annoying endeavor for several reasons.

It's hard to know if what you're writing is actually any good. Have you ever tried to get friends to read a novel? It's not easy. A blog? Sure. That takes all of fifteen seconds. But longer form is a little trickier--people are busy, and they have better things to do than reading your novel.

Also, it takes a ton of discipline and patience, two character traits I wasn't exactly blessed with. It's not too difficult to be intrigued (or annoyed) with something and complain about it online. That doesn't take long. I've been writing this for like five minutes. But to develop characters, and continue to be interested in them page after page? Not easy.

This is coming from somebody all of 50 pages into his novel. I'm not sure what I'll be saying 180 pages into it. I may be shoving a fork into my eye.

In Enemy Territory

I've written (on my old blog, of course) about going back to church. I'm happy there, and I'm glad to be going after about four years of not going. Luckily, I go somewhere that doesn't rub it in my face that, in general, I'm out of my element.

Not because I worship Satan, and I'm a spy. Although that would be pretty cool. No, it is being a liberal in a conservative setting. It's like being a conservative at a Habitat for Humanity meeting. You're welcomed, of course, but you know that you're going to a minority.

I love being a minority, in general--fitting in has never been something I've strived for except for in my weakest moments. But...it leads to so many questions. I don't hate conservative people, I just can't understand them in any way. Conservative thinking is so blatantly flawed and has been proven so many times to not work, but people still follow it. God bless em I guess.

Once in a while, somebody says something crazy, though. Hateful, or uncaring, or borderline insane. And in those cases, it's hard to be the minority. Because you're not going to win any arguments if you're one against six. Unless you're really, really good at arguments. Which I'm not.

It is also fairly disconcerting when you think about it too much. Realizing, wait a minute, conservative ideas completely oppose Jesus ideas...he welcomed outsiders, believed in love for everyone, believed in peace, treated the 'least of these' with compassion. Or, as conservatives would call it, 'socialism.' (How the Republican party would try to destroy Jesus if he came back today is a whole different blog, sorry to say!). So, suffice to say, I'm not disavowing my vote for Barack Obama anytime soon, no matter how deep I may get into church affairs.

What I wonder about, however, is whether I even want to know. I've tried on numerous occasions to have people attempt to explain conservative ideas to me, to no avail. And by 'avail' I don't mean making it appealing, just understandable. So I'm not quite sure if that would be a positive development, to know more about what my conservative brothers and sisters believe--whether it will help me to understand them, or will make me lose respect for them because their ideas are crazy. It's hard to know, and I am not going to say I do.

Best music of the first half of '09

I usually wait until the end of the year to do any 'best of' lists, so I won't order this...just the best music I've heard so far this year.

In alphabetical order...

Better Than Ezra--Paper Empire
DL--"One More Day"
Surprised that they still are pretty good. Hadn't really heard much of them in...several years, but my dad likes them so he lent this to me. Some catchy numbers here. May see them next week at Alive @ 5, although last year's experience made me wary (basically, it's an excuse for 17 year olds to get drunk. You could put a mannequin with a boombox on the stage and it wouldn't make any difference to 97% of the people there.)

Neko Case--Middle Cyclone
DL--"People Gotta Lot of Nerve"
I've always been a fan of Neko, because nobody else has a voice like hers. And she writes really great songs. Shockingly, people are starting to notice, as the album debuted at #3 on the charts. Five years ago, that would have never, ever happened. A good sign for once in music.

Camera Obscura--My Maudlin Career
DL--"French Navy"
There are far too few female-fronted bands that actually have some pop sensibilities, but CO fits the bill completely. They can go from ballads to mid-tempo to all-out-pop without missing a beat.

Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band--Outer South
DL--"Roosevelt Room"
Far more of a band effort than any Bright Eyes release, Outer South contains two all-out rockers from Oberst, a number of great ballads, and SEVEN tracks sung by the rest of the band, the majority of which are pretty damn good. Couldn't recommend this more.

Eels--Hombre Lobo
DL--"Beginners Luck"
It's a new eels album. So it's good. Much more lo-fi than usual, it has a little bit of everything.

Green Day--21st Century Breakdown
DL--"Last of the American Girls"
Took a little while to grow on me, but there is more than enough here to make a solid record. A few great tracks, a few good ones, some that are a little bland...but overall, it's certainly worth buying anywhere but Wal-Mart. Not quite as good as American Idiot, but that's a very hard standard to hold yourself to.

mewithoutYou--It's All Crazy! It's All False! It's All A Dream! It's Alright
DL--"Every Thought a Thought of You"
Quite possibly the greatest Christian album ever made (I know that isn't saying THAT much, but still...), mwY has reinvented themselves yet again, slowing down the tempo, with Aaron Weiss actually kind of singing, writing catchy, unique, brilliant songs far better than anything they've done in the past. Great lyrics, as always.

Metric--Fantasies
DL--"Gimme Sympathy"
Never was a huge fan of the band before this album, but hearing the way they have evolved has been really impressive.

A.C. Newman--Get Guilty
DL--"The Heartbreak Rides"
The second member of the supergroup New Pornographers on the list (with Neko Case), Newman's second solo record is a 60s pop masterpiece.

Ben Nichols--The Last Pale Light in the West
DL--"The Kid"
Great EP from the Lucero frontman, based on a Cormac McCarthy novel. All-acoustic.

And also:
Dark was the Night: A Red Hot Compilation.
DL--Yeasayer, "Tightrope"
Great 2-CD indie compilation with songs from Sufjan Stevens, The Decemberists (who didn't make this list because I really don't love it, as much as I tried to), My Morning Jacket, Spoon and others.

PS--no Wilco either because I don't have it yet. I don't work in the industry, it takes time!

Staying 50/50

When I moved to Stamford, I was hoping to meet new people and make some friends--a sentiment that most people have when they move anywhere occupied by other human beings. Like most people, the time I had the most satisfying social life was in college. During my university days (I love using that phrase because it makes me sound like a minor character in The Great Gatsby), my friends were an incredibly varied bunch. There were Christians and athiests, liberals and conservatives (although...mostly liberals...I did go to school in a hippie town, by choice), tall and short...and of course, male and female. And I think I had the perfect ratio: about 50/50.

And that's how it should be. You need guys and girls in your life because they bring different things to the table. Preferably, its as close to 50/50 as humanly possible, especially if you're single.

I am currently nowhere near 'preferably.' I live in Fairfield County, Connecticut. Have you ever met guys from here? The overwhemingly majority are guys I wouldn't want to be within 50 yards of, for any reason. I have met more intolerable males in the course of a month living here than I did in all four years of college combined. Ego, self-obsorbedness, and expecting everyone to worship you is the norm, not the exception. While I guess this makes me look like a really great guy to anybody who gets to know me in comparison to that, there are plenty of downsides.

That downside is that currently, my ratio is nowhere near 50/50...its in the vicinity of 90/10 tilted towards the females. In some ways, that is awesome. In other ways, it's completely aggrivating. However, the question is whether this is a problem. And that is a question I never can answer.

You see, when you actively try to 'solve' this problem, it inevitably makes things worse. Because you either have to spend time with people who you don't really like (never good) or try to change yourself to attract people you also don't really like (also not good) or get yourself into situations you don't want to be in for the purposes of finding people you DO like (which usually doesn't work). I've tried all these things, and everytime, it fails, not surprisingly.

Then there is the sensible solution, which is to admit that it isn't a big problem and that it will work itself out naturally. However, this involves waiting. And waiting is something I'm pretty god-awful at, unless it's waiting in the form of procrastination, at which I'm a Rhodes Scholar. Yet this is the only solution that won't lead towards therapy and possible alcoholism. You can't change yourself. You can do things to grow, but changing yourself--to be more accepted--is not natural and blows up in your face approximately 103% of the time. The truth is, maybe, in a rich suburb, I get along better with girls than guys. There's nothing wrong with that.

new blog? perhaps...

There are a whole lot of things about wordpress that drove me up a wall, so I'm going to see how a blogger blog (bless you) looks instead...