These Gray Days

The funny thing about spring time is that you oscillate between days of gray skies and rain, wishing for the sun to come out, and then the sun comes out for a couple days and all you want is some rain to wash away the pollen.

These Gray Days
Lyrics by Jerry Joseph

It's a thin line hanging on the wall
Strike a little balance, shattering a fall
A thin line between charity and greed
What I want, what I need
Lately I ain't had much to say
Something seems to tie my tongue
On these gray days

A thin line between loneliness and crowds
Talking till you're burning, baby
A thin line between heaven and catastrophe
Who we really are, who we really want to be
Lately when things don't go my way
I'm taking comfort in these gray days

These gray days are better than others
It's a thin line between the oven and the sun
Thank God for giving me the cover
These gray days are better than none

Thin line hanging on the wall
Strike a little balance, shattering a fall
Lately I've tried to learn to pray
To see the miracle in these gray days

These gray days are better than others
It's a thin line between danger and the fun
Hold tight, my enemy and lover
These gray days are better than none

Lately I try to understand
Am I acting like a child or acting like a man
Do we take each other hostage
Or are we simply holding hands
Who's to say, on these gray days

Download an mp3 of this song from The Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh NC, April 21, 2007.
Full show from http://bt.etree.org/details.php?id=506103

Sidetrack hijacked

I remember in college a good portion of my friends had prescriptions to ritalin or other ADD drugs. They would doll them out when people had tests or papers, or honestly sometimes when people just had a hair up their ass and wanted to snort some pseudo cocaine I guess.

The trick that people learned was that when they took the stuff, they had to go study before it kicked in because if they didn't, they'd end up totally focused and zeroed in on something other than their books. I can't count how many times the house got cleaned up because someone forgot that rule, or I'd come home during spring exams and the grass that hadn't been cut in months would not only be perfectly mowed (with the diagonal checkerboard no less), but the clippings would be raked, the sidewalks edged, and the hedges trimmed.


What made me think of this? Well, it's 10:00 on a Thursday night. I have my first exam of the season on Saturday (which is also happily my second to last exam of all time, assuming all goes well). I put the coffee on around 8:30 and so far I know a lot about lawn striping and the failures of previous Carolina Panther drafts, but I don't know much more about Conflicts of Law than I did when I dropped an extra sugar cube in my java.

prologue: based on my google searches, I have discovered that the lawn care term of art is not "diagonal checkerboard" but that the effect is a variation of "lawn striping"

All my Ex's live . . .

Over a year ago I started a serial topic called "Texas is Great," but it never got off the ground. Well here is the latest installment. You can check out previous posts here, or by scrolling down a little and clicking on the "Label" list at right.

Texas Legislators Block Shots for Girls Against Cancer Virus

By RALPH BLUMENTHAL

HOUSTON, April 25 — A revolt by lawmakers has blocked Gov. Rick Perry’s effort to make Texas the first state to require sixth-grade girls to be vaccinated against a sexually transmitted virus that causes cervical cancer.

In a 135-to-2 vote that appeared veto-proof, the Texas House gave final passage on Wednesday to a Senate bill that bars the state from ordering the shots until at least 2011. Even many supporters of the governor resented Mr. Perry’s proposal as an abuse of executive authority.

“There was no public testimony — why we were jumping so fast into a vaccine that was not for a true communicable disease,” said Senator Glenn Hegar Jr., a Republican representing a district just west of Houston who sponsored the Senate bill to overturn the governor’s order. It passed 30 to 1 on Monday.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/26/us/26texas.html

The worst thing about this episode is that the Gov. was trying to do something that is truly progressive and what I think is a wonderful expenditure of resources. I understand that to many people an STD may not be a "true communicable" disease, but legislators need to look at public health realities rather than their personal sense of morals when deciding how to address medical issues.

The reality is that girls are sexually active at a young age. They are unlikely to ask their parents for the vaccine and many of the highest risk families probably can't afford it anyway. The government is in a position to save their lives, and the Texas legislature voted almost unanimously to let them die instead.


on the iPod:
Ryan Adams, Jacksonville City Nights

marching one by one

Today the ants are busy
beside my front steps, weaving
in and out of the hill they're building.
I watch them emerge and—

like everything I've forgotten—disappear
into the subterranean, a world
made by displacement.


These are the first words of Natasha Trethewey's poem Monument, from her Pulitzer Prize winning book Native Guard. She was on the News Hour this evening. Check the MP3 and more of her poetry here: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/indepth_coverage/entertainment/poetry/profiles/poet_trethewey.html


News of the Day

People like this give good normal liberals a bad name. When Nancy Pelosi thinks you're focusing on the wrong part of the story, that should make you stop and reevaluate the reasons why you're doing what you're doing and why you get out of bed every day.

Democratic lawmaker seeks to impeach Cheney

Reuters
Tuesday, April 24, 2007; 7:44 PM

(Corrects day of the week in lead to Tuesday)

By Thomas Ferraro

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. Democratic lawmaker opposed to the Iraq war initiated a bid on Tuesday to remove Vice President Dick Cheney from office that even his own party leaders dismissed as futile.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio introduced three articles of impeachment in the Democratic-led House of Representatives against Cheney, accusing him of having misled the country into its 2003 invasion of Iraq and, more recently, threatening Iran without cause.

"I believe the vice president's conduct of office has been destructive to the founding purposes of our nation," said Kucinich, who is making a long-shot bid for the White House.

Shortly after Democrats took control of Congress in January from Bush's Republicans, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she would not consider impeachment, a highly divisive issue that could tie Capitol Hill into knots.

"Nothing has changed. It's off the table," said Nadeam Elshami, a Pelosi spokesman. "We're focusing on tough issues like bringing the war in Iraq to a responsible end."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/24/AR2007042401963.html

$$$

This is the time of year that everyone hits up everyone for fund raising support for a good cause. Tina is my fourth friend to send me such an e-mail - I've already contributed to a charity that rescues homeless animals, a ride for research into childhood diabetes (that's the one you're born with, not the one you earn by eating like shit for years upon years), and my cousin's Relay for Life team, which earned over 20k.

Soon I'll be sending my own e-mail trying to raise money for the Race for a Cure breast cancer run/walk here in D.C.

I know that receiving these e-mails can get tedious, but after participating in the Race for a Cure last year, I can attest to how meaningful it is to see someone contribute to your cause and support your efforts. So - don't blow your whole wad on the first e-mail that comes across your in-box. The important thing is giving something, not giving a lot. Drop a 10 or 20 spot and the person will feel huge.

I kept a mental list of everyone who contributed to my fund raising and thought of them all as I ran my race.

So, if I did it right, I added a $ tracker on the side of my blog for Tina's efforts to go work with children in Costa Rica. Costa Rica - I know, that was my reaction, but what are you gonna do? She's my friend and I support her. You can too.

OCD Much?

The people that live above me vacuum a lot. I mean like, WAY too much. They are vacuuming right now - 10:17 on a Tuesday night. I hear them vacuum about 4 times a week, and I'm not home THAT much.

I don't know what to tell them. It doesn't bother me that much, but that's only because I am a student and it isn't that loud. I figure I just shouldn't say anything in case I ever start playing music late at night and they try to complain.

"What? You think my music's too loud?!!? Shouldn't you be vacuuming anyway?" And then they will suddenly realize that I am right, they should be vacuuming, and run back upstairs having forgotten that my music was too loud.


NEWS OF THE DAY:

I'll start working for the government next year, making less money than I could if I were working for the private sector. I hope these clowns don't ruin what really is a good benefit for me - and a program that probably goes a long way to getting commuters off the road.

U.S. Employees Selling Transit Passes Illegally, Investigators Say

By MATTHEW L. WALD

WASHINGTON, April 23 — To save gas, cut air pollution and unclog roads, the federal government gives its workers about $250 million a year in bus and subway passes. But many of the employees drive to work anyway and sell the transit passes on the Internet for cash, according to Congressional investigators.

“The metro cards are brand new, never used and do not expire,” read one online description for subway passes in Washington, where many of the sales originate. “I am selling these because I receive them monthly as part of my benefits at work, and I now have too many.”

Government employees who resell the passes are committing fraud, according to a report by the Government Accountability Office, scheduled to be released Tuesday by Senator Norm Coleman, Republican of Minnesota.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/24/washington/24perk.html

the bad fight

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that the Supreme Court upheld the abortion ban, but it is still troubling when we see an issue that is so clearly decided by the composition of the court rather than anything else.

While I generally don't agree with them, I understand what motivates anti-abortionists who view a fetus as a life as worthy of protection as all of ours. I think this most recent case really misses the target by focusing on late term pregnancies where the pregnant woman has demonstrated a serious commitment to caring for her child, but by some tragic misfortune is faced with a significant risk to her own health or the possibility of giving birth to a child with substantial debilitating physical or mental defect. In many ways, the early term abortions present a much more compelling moral argument for regulation. But that is neither here nor there.

What really troubles me is that this law doesn't actually save any life - it doesn't prevent a woman at a certain point in pregnancy from getting an abortion. All it does is prevent a woman who has made that difficult decision from getting the safest available treatment - she will still have an abortion, just with a procedure that presents a greater risk to her health. That is something that anti-abortionists are not talking about, and that is why this particular law looks more like paternalism designed to restrict women's freedom than a law motivated by saving fetal life.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/18/AR2007041802253.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/19/washington/19scotus.html

drugs are good

I would be remiss to fail to mention the shootings yesterday, but even though I am never anything more than a voice in the wind, I hate writing about the same thing that everyone is writing about. I will say only that this country is screwed. Things like this don't happen in other places. To be sure, Iraq has it's own problems with violence, but that does not mitigate what happens here. These types of things will continue.

On more upbeat note, until last week it had been well over 5 years since I last took antibiotics. Faced with the over-prescription of drugs in our society, I decided to fight the trend and not contribute to breeding the super-bacteria. But last week over the course of 2 days I entered an accelerating decline that left me hacking up things of unspeakable size and color. Unable to do what I normally do (which is shut down for 2 days and eat drink & sleep until I get better) I went to the doctor and grabbed a prescription for amoxicillin. It took all of 15 hours for me to start feeling extremely better. I have 2 days left on the prescription, and have been pretty much back to full strength for a while now.

I figure that since I feel better, I can stop taking the drugs.


SIKE!

Only your hatred can destroy me

If you want to know something about someone, check out who they are sleeping with. In case anyone is under the impression that Google is still part of a counter culture free internet revolution >>>

Google Reaches Deal With Clear Channel to Sell Radio Ads

By LOUISE STORY

Google will begin selling advertisements across all of the stations of Clear Channel Communications, the No. 1 radio station owner in the United States, at the end of June, the companies will announce today.

Google has been working for months to expand its ad sales operation into traditional media like newspapers, radio and television. To do so, it needs traditional media companies to allow it to sell some of their ads, and it had seemed to be making little progress in radio.

But the partnership with Clear Channel represents a step forward for Google. The deal will run for several years, and will give Google access to just under 5 percent of Clear Channel’s commercial time. That will include 30-second spots on all of Clear Channel’s 675 stations during all programs and all times of the day, executives at both companies said in interviews yesterday.

The companies did not disclose the financial details of the arrangement, except to say that Clear Channel would receive the majority of the ad revenue.

“It represents an opportunity to put what is arguably the hottest sales organization in the world to work selling our inventory, and we’re very excited about that,” said John Hogan, the chief executive of Clear Channel.

Mr. Hogan said that Google would bring new advertisers to his stations and would work with those companies rather than with Clear Channel’s existing advertisers. But, he said, the Google advertisers would have access to premium inventory — in contrast to some of Google’s deals with newspapers that are allowing Google to sell only leftover ad space. And, he left the door open for a broader deal.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/16/technology/16radio.html


on the iPod:
Daniel Johnston

little did he know. . .

Remember that movie trailer that you saw a while back and thought to yourself "man, that looks pretty good. I should go see that when it comes out." That movie was called Stranger than Fiction. If you haven't seen it yet, it's on DVD now and waiting for you at Blockbuster, Hollywood, or Netflix. You should see it. I don't see a lot of movies, but I will say that this is one of the best movies I've seen in a while.


It is not a Will Ferrell vehicle. It is a funny and dark and life affirming all at once. Dustin Hoffman is all that you would expect from him, and Maggie Gyllanhaal and Emma Thompson are perfectly cast. Mix in direction by Marc Forster of Monsters Ball and Finding Neverland and you have an impeccably acted film that is not too intense but not too bubble gum.


news of the day:

Lawyer Says Rove Assumed E-Mail Was Kept
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
Karl Rove, the chief political strategist for President
Bush, did not intentionally delete e-mail messages to avoid
creating a paper trail, his lawyer said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/14/washington/14emails.html

This is actually not that surprising to me and while it is difficult for me to believe anything that comes from anyone associated with the Bush administration, when I interned at a government agency I remember being shocked that each individual was responsible for retaining their own e-mail.


on the iPod:
Paul Weller, Days of Speed

written just for me

With just one week of classes left in my law school career, to be followed by a summer studying for (and hopefully passing) the Virginia Bar exam, and a cozy desk at a federal agency already waiting for me, I wonder what that high school me would think. I wonder what the college me would think, or even the post-college me that put everything I owned in a storage unit and drove cross-country for 10 weeks one summer.

Kurt Vonnegut

By VERLYN KLINKENBORG

If you read Kurt Vonnegut when you were young — read all there was of him, book after book as fast as you could the way so many of us did — you probably set him aside long ago. That’s the way it goes with writers we love when we’re young. It’s almost as though their books absorbed some part of our DNA while we were reading them, and rereading them means revisiting a version of ourselves we may no longer remember or trust.

Not that Vonnegut is mainly for the young. I’m sure there are plenty of people who think he is entirely unsuitable for readers under the age of disillusionment. But the time to read Vonnegut is just when you begin to suspect that the world is not what it appears to be. He is the indispensable footnote to everything everyone is trying to teach you, the footnote that pulls the rug out from under the established truths being so firmly avowed in the body of the text.

He is not only entertaining, he is electrocuting. You read him with enormous pleasure because he makes your hair stand on end. He says not only what no one is saying, but also what — as a mild young person — you know it is forbidden to say. No one nourishes the skepticism of the young like Vonnegut. In his world, decency is likelier to be rooted in skepticism than it is in the ardor of faith.

So you get older, and it’s been 20 or 30 years since you last read “Player Piano” or “Cat’s Cradle” or “Slaughterhouse-Five.” Vonnegut is not, now, somehow serious enough. You’ve entered that time of life when every hard truth has to be qualified by the sense of what you stand to lose. “It’s not that simple,” you find yourself saying a lot, and the train of thought that unfolds in your mind as you speak those words reeks of desperation.

And yet, somehow, the world seems more and more to have been written by Vonnegut and your life is now the footnote. Perhaps it is time to go back and revisit that earlier self, the one who seemed, for a while, so interwoven in the pages of those old paperbacks.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/13/opinion/13fri4.html

I wish this was a surprise

It should be fully clear by this point, with all that has been coming to light in D.C., that the administration really sucks. Not because of their political positions, but because of their underhanded back room corruption and sense of entitlement.

But I know I am wasting my time with this post. Everyone who has half a brain and an ounce of integrity knows how insulting and embarrassing the Bush Administration has been - regardless of your position on Iraq.

Turmoil Grows for Wolfowitz at World Bank

By STEVEN R. WEISMAN

WASHINGTON, April 12 — Paul D. Wolfowitz’s tenure as president of the World Bank was thrown into turmoil on Thursday by the disclosure that he had helped arrange a pay raise for his companion at the time of her transfer from the bank to the State Department, where she remained on the bank payroll.

In a chaotic day of revelations and meetings at a normally staid institution, Mr. Wolfowitz apologized for his role in the raise and transfer of Shaha Ali Riza, his companion, to a few hundred staff members assembled in the bank building atrium, only to be greeted by booing, catcalls and cries for his resignation.

Earlier, the bank’s staff association had declared that it was “impossible for the institution to move forward with any sense of purpose under the present leadership.” The association had helped spearhead an investigation into Ms. Riza’s transfer and raise, details of which came into the open in the last 24 hours.

The events injected a new ugliness into what had already been a bitter rift between Mr. Wolfowitz and many of the bank’s employees, who have questioned his suitability for the job as a former deputy secretary of defense and architect of the Iraq war, and have challenged many of his policies at the bank, especially those cracking down on corruption in which he suspended aid to several countries without consulting the board.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/13/world/13wolfowitz.html

and so it goes

Kurt Vonnegut was my first favorite author. Well, my first favorite author was the collection of people who wrote the Black Stallion books, but I gave up on being a jockey some time in late elementary school and didn't latch on to anyone again until we read Slaughter House 5 in highschool.

I'm not sure if people can understand the significance of finding a true counter-culture rebel with a cause in something that was being shoved down my throat unless you too found yourself trapped in a hoity-toity southern private school where everyone thought they were better than you but smiled to your face and focused on the most materialistic popularity oriented aspects of life, never thinking to see if they would like you because you weren't like them.

I wanted to be Kurt Vonnegut. I wrote my papers that semester in a copy-cat style that probably allowed me to get a passing grade only because my teacher was happy to see that I finally gave a shit about anything in school. I read other books that criss-crossed characters from that one. His work solidified my affinity for books and movies that deal in time travel. Not just going back to the past, but loops where your actions that haven't happened yet change what happens in the now.

One of the most memorable things I read by him in the last ten years was a piece in Playboy's millennium edition. He told the story of being a young boy riding down an old dirt road when his father pulled their Studebaker over to the side of the road and he and his sister leaned forward and they all looked at the odometer as it stroked 100,000. Just because. If we shared nothing else on the millennium, we shared a collective pause to stop and look at the odometer.

And now we can stop to share a collective pause and reflect on Kurt Vonnegut's contribution to our lives and our society.

I searched Google for a photo to put up here. There is no lack of selection, but it was difficult to find just the right one, with the right mix of anguish and mystery and "I know something you don't know" and happiness and love for life. I think this is the one:



Links:
http://www.salon.com/tech/htww/2007/04/12/vonnegut/index.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/12/AR2007041200164.html
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/achenblog/2007/04/kurt_vonnegut.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/books/12vonnegut.html

"Astronaut had Bondage Photos"

I'm glad I'm not the subject of that headline. Based on stereotypes though, doesn't it make sense that a control freak power trip astronaut would get off on being dominated? Here's the article: http://www.cnn.com/2007/LAW/04/10/astronaut.arrested.ap/index.html

Even the Washington Post ran this story. Embarrassing for them if you ask me. But I think we are missing the real issue here - why is this taking up valuable new space when we should be focused on the father of Anna Nicole's baby?

Forever testing the theory of "there's no such thing as bad publicity," I wonder how Target feels about this picture:

mo money

"Many experts have concluded that the nation's real estate boom of recent years was fueled in part by weakened lending standards that sparked excessive demand and drove up prices."

Everyone knew that interest rates were really low, and that the "interest only" mortgage structure was risky unless you expected to see a marked increase in your income - but people still decided to prospect on property. I was the beneficiary of the low rates for a while and exited the market earlier than anticipated.

To tell the truth, I am glad that the housing prices have chilled out while I finish school and get ready to find my home. It is completely likely that in a year or two if I buy property, I could buy some 5 year old construction previously owned by someone who couldn't afford it.

I don't feel that bad for people who made risky decisions, but I do feel bad for people who were swindled like this:

"In Atlanta, entire neighborhoods and condominium developments, especially those in affluent areas, were hit by organized fraud rings. Initially, these schemes pumped up housing values for everyone as artificially high appraisals helped the swindlers get inflated loans. Legitimate home buyers rushed in to get a piece of what they thought was a soaring real estate market. Now as the fraud is being exposed, their home values are taking a hit.

As more of these cases come to light around the nation, the question is: How much did an epidemic of fraud contribute to the frenzied housing market of recent years?"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/09/AR2007040901463.html

You say you want a what?

A while back I wrote about Nike's AC/DC add.

Why is YouTube so great? Because you can watch the commercial that changed it all:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztSYJNO4kac

This is also my first attempt at embedding a YouTube video in my blog.