green apron monkey

it's called federalism

So we've all had a few days to calm down.

The president in his estimable wisdom has decided to shore up support on the right by picking on the gays. Maybe he was scared of the prospect of Ralph Nader stealing up the votes of disaffected conservatives.

While I doubt that the Musgrave Amendment is going to be ratified any time soon, I do not advise complacency. This is one issue where I side unabashedly with those that oppose the amendment. Those who support it are choosing to divide the country for political gain.

I am usually delighted at the relatively peaceful coexistence of America's two strange halves, our liberal cosmopolitan coasts and our far more rural, conservative midsection. But we can be driven apart by angry rhetoric, and this is an issue that may do so.

Seriously, is there any particular reason why the rest of the country can't just let San Francisco issue marriage licenses to whomever they want to and politely pretend that it isn't happening? Legal minds point out that it would be problematic, that other states would be forced to recognize a practice that the population finds abhorrent.

I find that line of reasoning troubling. It turns on an argument which would undermine the very concept of our Liberal Democracy. I do not think that being forced to accept the legal validity of contracts between people that you don't like is a reasonable harm in the practice of a Liberal Democracy. (Hey you know who I don't approve of? People from Idaho. They all drive like senior citizens. We shouldn't be forced to recognize any license or law that Idaho implements). To embrace such reasoning is to embrace a kind of crude, illiberal utilitarianism.

Even if you care about the hardships of people forced to (gasp!) recognize gay marriage without approving of it, it is still dubious as to whether the hassle resulting from being forced to recognize San Francisco marriages is less than the hassle that's going to result from the cultural clash we are about to endure? Does any one think that? Aloud and to other people? Reasoning ones that argue back? I suspect not, on that last count.

Yes, San Francisco should have waited until the courts decided that the states anti discrimination clause permitted gay marriage. Gavin Newsome's political genius I think overrode his legal sensibilities in this case. But, the proper response to that is to let the courts hash it out. Why it becomes necessary to amend the constitution to prevent any states from acting out independently
is something that is obvious only to someone who is surely not me.

Fortunately we have prohibitively time-consuming process of actually amending the constitution on our side. The president needs two thirds in the house (probably doable), two thirds in the senate (getting two thirds on anything is tough in the senate these days) and ratification in three-quarters of the states. That last one is the toughest to estimate the chances of. Dahlia Lithwick claims that this exact number of states already have laws banning gay marriage on the books. Still, there is a difference between opposing gay marriage and thinking it should be a constitutional issue (ask Edwards and Kerry), and I suspect at least one state in that group will find this reasoning persuasive.

Still, it is a possibility and one to be feared. We live in a strange place, and the plates hift unpredictably, even in the sanest of times. I counsel patience and resilient opposition.

PSA

Pixies Tickets

long story about a small rat

Would you like to hear about my silly little traumas? Good, sit down then.

We own a snake. Kylee actually owns it. A snake is not something I would buy, though I do not mind cohabitation with it (I do not mean that, I hasten to add, in any euphemistic sense).

The snake, like most snakes, is supposed to persist on various rodents, namely baby rats and mice. Usually when one feeds a snake rats, one feeds it a special breed of retarded and tumor prone little sub-breed, known as "feeders".

Not our snake though. Kylee explained it to me, "Henrietta [the snake] is a snob and she can only eat the best." So this means that our snake only dines on fancy rats, the intelligent and friendly kind that make the best pets. (Rats do come in varieties that make it sound like a menu selection; small, large and fancy).

That is where things get tricky. I have acquired, quite against my will, a fondness for rats that I can't shake. They are smart, affectionate and they gross out the weak in spirit. The fancy rats in particular are an easy pet to bond with. Thus when the snake is fed around the house, it is usually done well out of my sight.

Snakes can be damnably finicky eaters, though. They won't eat if the conditions aren't right, if they've eaten recently or are about to shed. So it was a matter of time before one plucky rat failed to be eaten and would be forced to kill some time around the house until its ultimate constriction. Last week one did escape becoming snake food for whatever mysterious reason. Somehow the rat ended up in the kitchen and out its cage. I met it and we bonded. A nest was constructed for it out of an ice cream box and it was christened 'Mochi' (Japanese for "Tasty Treat" apparently).

This was all considerably foolish. This house is already inhabited by three spooky and very carniverous cats that would certainly covet mochi as a tasty treat. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that my new friend was likely to end up as nutrition and I was likely to end up heart broken. The cat would probably come out of the deal pretty well, though.

After a couple of days, I decided that I couldn't keep Mochi in a house full of predators. So, I took her on the BART ride of sadness and dropped her off at Petco. They had the right kind of bedding and were very happy to have a free fancy rat. The sales clerk immediately started playing with her. I left to ride home with an empty cage.

a lovely dilemma

It's no secret, I am a dorky fanboy.

It is also no secret that I am a dorky fanboy of The Pixies. Most of my friends own Pixies albums, and it is mostly due to my incessant playing of that band, my chattering about them and my dragging them to see Frank Black whenever he happened to drop by Santa Rosa or Sacramento.

It is indeed one of the great disappointments of my life that one of the bands that I love the most, broke just as I was reaching musical awareness. Indeed, it was probably the year I bought my first CD (Aerosmith, Permanent Vacation).

So, when The Pixies reunited and announced their tour I percieved that a great injustice had been righted. No more sludging through Frank Black's mediocre solo material. But only if I take action.

So I checked the tour dates. One date is at Freeborn Hall in my old alma mater, Davis. And it's on my birthday. Fuck. Yeah.

But then there's the other date, May 1st and that's the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival, it's two days and the lineup, just on the first day, includes a number of bands I've always wanted to see (Wilco, Hieroglyphics, Stereolab) some bands that I'm curious about (The Rapture, Phantom Planet, International Noise Conspiracy) and some that I would go see so long as I was there (Death Cab for Cutie).

The problem is that this might be total overload for my little fanboy senses. Seeing the Pixies obviously will be a very special time in a young boy's life, and it would probably detract from my enjoyment of Wilco and The Rapture. Then there's the whole music festival thing and the whole Southern California thing. Seriously though, $75 for one day and I would catch up on a whole year's worth of not really going to that many concerts.

I'm definetly leaning toward Coachella.

yelling is fun

The Free Speech Area is a puzzling thing.

It seems a little redundant. It isn't like you can't speak freely in Berkeley, unless you wanted to praise George Bush and urge people to vote Republican on open mike night at The Starry Plow. I wouldn't recommend that, even if there are not any laws against it. (There are no laws against that, right?)

But it isn't like there are a bunch of Republicans in The Free Speech Area (at least not when I've been there, though there was one fellow demanding that we take pity on George Tenet, a man that I don't plan on losing any sleep over). It really takes a moment to realize why the Free Speech Area is different from the rest of Berkeley. It isn't that the rest of Berkeley is unfree (far from it) but merely that The Free Speech Area is misnamed.

It's really The Loud Speech Area.

That's about it. The denizens of The Free Speech Area carry on their rantings at a much higher volume than is generally considered socially acceptable unless one is on a cell phone on the BART.

I expect that everyone will thank me tomorrow for clearing up this conceptual confusion.

selling musk to a ferret

Alex Tabarrok has the best idea I've heard this week.

I'll let you know if it gets surpassed.

yes, we are making fun of you

Baristas someimes develop nicknames for certain drinks. Sometimes it is based on some aspect of the drink, sometimes the particular customers or types of customers who buy it. I thought it would be interesting to write down a number of the ones I have either heard or developed over my many years at the bux. Some things are in common usage, but most of the list is probably idiosyncratic.

Young Litigator on Crack - a venti coffee, two shots of espresso. I used to work near a law school, and this was the student favorite.
Soccer Mom - a nonfat latte
Pepto Bismal - a raspberry white mocha.
Barista's Friend - iced chai
Fallen Vegan - a soy with whip mocha.
Pregnant Teenager - a nonfat with whip mocha
Bacon Stuffed Pork - anything breve and with whip.
Keanu - an iced drink with no ice. Whoa.
Britney - a carmel frappucino.
Surf and Turf - another name for the soy with whip drinks.
The Bowel Disruptor - venti coffee and a bran muffin.
Idiot's Frappuccino - an iced mocha with blended milk.
Pancreatic Shock in a Cup - there was this one customer who would have you fill up his grande cup a quarter way with refined sugar, stir in three shots of espresso then add ten pumps of vanilla, some 195 degree steamed milk and then extra whip cream.
Side of Insulin - really extra caramel.
One Arrow, Two Targets - anything extra hot and with no foam, but especially soy drinks.
The Drink Without Qualities - decaf nonfat no foam latte. Most people call this a Why Bother? but I had a lit major coworker who thought that wasn't creative enough.

annoying the annoying

We're all so very proud of Josh, who is growing up to be quite the public nuisance.

As reported in an AP story that has apparently been picked up by The New York Times:

Josh Grahek of Sonora stood upwind at a distance, close enough that the smoke from his cigar still wafted over the anti-tobacco activists. He carried a cardboard sign reading, "You have too much free time."

And that's not even the best thing he wrote on that piece of cardboard. The funnier, more detailed version of the story is recounted here.

explain

I still maintain that even if someone tells you, "I'm going to put ice cream in your belly button" that is not in and of itself, grounds to believe them.

coordinate

Nobody I really know likes George W. Bush that much. This should surprise no one. I live in Northern California, near Berkeley and amongst any particular gathering of my friends I'm usually the most conservative one in the room.

You can count me amongst those who think that, largely the Bush administration has dropped the ball. They have made poor economic decisions and questionable foreign policy decisions. Of course I feel much more comfortable talking about the economic decisions. The badness of the steel tariff and the dangers of not having a plan to deal with a long run budget deficit are easily demonstrable.

Personally I don't hold it too much against any president when they fuck up in relation to the Middle East. They all do that. I think it's delineated in a section of the constitution. "The President shall use the power of his office to promote instability in The Orient, through the use of fickle policy goals, casual and intemperate use of force and a foolish eagerness to do business with tyrants and fanatics." Not that it is particularly the fault of the executive branch, the Middle East been screwed up since it was dominated by the Ottomans. As P.J. O'Rourke puts it, "That's a place where not only do two wrongs not make a right, but where two rights don't make a right."

Nonetheless, the president has provided enough reasons to be unhappy with him, even given the difficulty of his job. Still, I am rather frustrated with his critics.

What is the problem with GW? Is it that he's too ideological? Is it that he has no ideology at all and is only beholden to special interests? Is it a mixture of both? Or is he just incompetent? Can we decide this, please, before we begin campaigning against him?

In the interest of harmonization, I plan on producing a small sample of Bush critics, and what they think is precisely wrong with administration. Apart from being an inherently interesting little project, it might help crystallize my vague feelings about what is wrong with our chief executive. I'll put it up in a few days. Any commentators who feel like being helpful should, well, comment on this post.

chaos

I feel pretty useless again.

Still struggling with adapting to a new place. Everyone I live with is an emotional wreck right now. I feel awkward, and unable to help, again. I try, but I'm useless, really.

I'm not very good at being a serious person.

So fuck all that, I won't.

There are some cool people coming to stay at my house for the comic con and APE. More cool people should come up on that weekend. (Here I'm looking at you, Sacramentans). There's probably enough room for about nine thousand people to stay here. It's on the 21st and 22nd. You know you'll love it.

So comment on this post and I'll consider you RSVPed for one superdorky weekend long party.

the marvels of stuff

I am having such a simple pleasurable moment right now, and so many things are contributing to it. It is fascinating to consider the range of work and trade that has contributed to it and the complex web of exchange that has made such a simple, relaxing and stimulating saturday morning.

Breakfast: Scrambled eggs with local red onions and bell pepper simmered in Trader Joe's fantastic Roasted Garlic Salsa. The coffee is a blend of south american beans, lightly roasted but surprisingly lacking in in citrus-like acidity common to South American beans. (Note, if you get your coffee from Starbucks and you like the milder stuff go for the Breakfast Blend over the Lightnote. It tastes less like lemonade). The coffee was, of course, gratis from Starbucks. You don't need to have three people living in your house that work at Starbucks, like we do, but I highly reccomend getting at least one person per household, there. A free pound of coffee a week when you are poor is very useful.

Soundtrack: an mp3 list created from four collections that includes the Dandy Warhols, Air, Elvis Costello, Lucinda Williams, The Who and Medeski Martin and Wood. Brought to me by a terrifying looking array of wires and chords as well as our liberal interpretation of U.S. copyright law.

Reading: Marginal Revolution. One of the most entertaining blogs by an economist out there and certainly the one I'm most likely to reccomend to my non-economist friends. Brought to me via the internet from two professors at George Mason University that I would almost zero chance of meeting in real life.

View: nearly unobstructed of the San Francisco Bay, (apparently 8% of the property value, but we rent) .

The impressive thing is that I am a pretty poor person, from an okay but not that well off family and yet this dazzling array of goods and services are available to me. Granted, I'm educated and white(ish) so I shouldn't get too carried away marvelling at the wonders of distributive capitalism as practiced in Our Fair Country from one good morning in my house. But it is certainly a marvel in reflection.

you are a dork

I'm totally ordering one of these.

lets have some art, yes?

So that sad bastard post has been sitting up for a little while. In the intervening time, my mood has gotten better and my life enriched.

I went to the MOMA to go see the Arbus exhibit with an old friend. The exhibit was intriguing. There was a fantastic photo of Jorge Luis Borges that I had never seen before. It managed to convey a fantastic sense of the man with very subtle effects. It seems that no one has seen fit to put it up on the web, otherwise I'd share it with all of you.

I also jumped around to the other floors of the museum. On the fifth floor, there was a display about the art of the nineties. Some of it was the standard Duchamp ripoff, piss poor installation piece nonsense that hijacked the museums during the nineties. I waited next to a plastic sculpture of an Anime girl with imporbable breasts for a very long time, because I wanted to hear one of the docents explain it to some befuddled tourists (undermining the distinction between high art and low art, it turns out).

I was pretty fascinated by the work of Lisa Yuskavage although I think you'll perhaps read something into that, gentle dirty reader.

Then we went to see some performance art in a gallery in the tenderloin. Peter was providing musical accompaniment to some relentlessly hip cinema.

Peter should get credit for enduring a good razzing from his philistine friends. I was probably way more entertained than any one has a right to by something so abstract. There's just something very delightful about seeing several superimposed twitching gloves. It was an event full of passed flasks and suppressed adolescent giggles.

So, again. Job bad, money lacking, but I'm now full of good spirits.

to be young is to be sad

Welcome to your midtwenties.

Perhaps by now, you've settled on a career, fallen in love with someone that you think you can be with forever. Perhaps you have a plan and are setting it in motion.

Have you? Good. You can leave the room now. This isn't for you.

I hope you don't mind that I kinda hope you get hit by a bus. It's nothing personal. You should really take it as a compliment. It is nothing more but the shallow heart of envy that makes me speak so.

The rest of us are stuck in dead end jobs, or finding out that the jobs we wanted, we don't actually want any more. Bouncing from one unsatisfactory relationship to another. Buried under a pile of debt and student loans we find ourselves just struggling to climb into the middle class.

Suddenly the taboo about drinking alone gets loosened. We go from drinking to have fun to drinking to not be miserable.

Our grandiose dreams were unattainable. Now we'll settle for not having to worry about the rent each month. If only.

what this movie needs is a vulture with three tits

The Last Unciorn is a really, really bizarre movie.

Mia Farrow's voice is scary as all hell.

The soundtrack is by "America."

"The quotation marks are so you don't think the entire nation wrote the soundtrack."

The funny part is when Thalisha gets up to fast forward through one song because it's too bad to listen to. That's only funny when you've endured three songs by "America" already. Then Mia Farrow starts singng. Then Jeff Bridges does.

Jeff Bridges sounds like an adolescent yelping for his supervisor to come help him.

The diaolgue is weird and random, and there's an insane butterfly and a creepy pirate cat. It's an entertaingly creepy way to spend an hour and overall it compares rather well with being groped by Vincent Price.

I think maybe after seeing that, I am ready to see Gigli.

Certain people have been trying to get me to watch it for a while. I'm warming up to it. One toe in at a time.

I'm almost ready to face the Bennifer.

partner of the month

They made me partner of the month.

They gave me some deflated balloons.

"Here, partner of the month, blow up your own damn balloons."

Then there's the bit where I have an expensive education and the most I can show for it is some deflated balloons and a lamenated piece of paper.

sensitive

Things have been sucking around here with surprising amount of force. I won't get into the details, but the car dying was just part of it.

So most of the house has been pretty depressed, and for good reason. But we did come up with a novel treatment.

We wrote some (very) amatuer rock and roll. The only one of us who knows anything about music is Kylee. Yet we put Richard in charge of keyboards, Thalisha and Tom on vocals, while I whacked two bibles together.

Tom and I wrote the lyrics. Here they are:

Sensitive Boy by either Lambshaft or Johnny Skullkicker and The Broke Ass Losers

Everybody knows
sensitivity blows

yessssss