What, you thought I was being vulgar? NASCAR is launching their own line of meats, which is just begging for lots of Jeff Gordon and Tony Stewart jokes.
Found via Boing Boing.
NASCAR Looking to Slip You Their Sausage
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Change is Good?
I caught up with one of my college roommates today. Tony and I are both pretty bad about picking up a phone and calling so we can go long stretches without talking, but we always pick up right where we left off. The big news is that he and his wife Amy are expecting their first child which begat his other big news which is they sold their townhouse and are moving into a big house.
Towards the end of our conversation he mentioned that he checks out my blog every once in a while and he can’t believe how conservative I’ve become. I think he used the term "fascist bastard" in there somewhere (you have to understand that Tony is from Scotland and taught me everything I know about cussing, which is alot) and he also wondered aloud how disappointed my mother must be in me.
I’ll admit I was a pretty liberal punk in college, but once I got out in the real world and started paying attention to things outside of my own little corner of the universe I definitely lost some of my leftist viewpoints. On the other hand I retain enough liberal ideas that I’d say I’m far from conservative. Still it was interesting seeing a glimpse of myself from the perspective of someone who knew the then me and the now me. Sometimes I miss the former but I’m thankful I made it to the latter since if my old self had held sway on my life path I’d probably be living semi-nude on a commune eating tofu and carrots. Yes, the whole world is better off not having to suffer through that.
How to Make a Grown Man Almost Cry
My daughter asked if she could ride her bike over to her friend’s house today. I said sure, but I wanted her home at 6:30 so we could have dinner. She didn’t show until 7:00 and I was more than a little pissed. This isn’t the first time she’s been late and the last time it happened she got a tongue lashing, so I was surprised it happened again. On top of that I have to admit that tardiness is probably my biggest pet-peeve, so I’m pre-disposed to getting a mad about it.
When she got home I told her we’d have to figure out a punishment, which sent her into major-league pout mode. She didn’t eat dinner (we went out for pizza) and sulked the whole time. When we got home I went back into my office to do some work and she came in to ask me what her punishment would be. I said it would probably cost her points (we have an incentive program that allows the kids to start each week with $10 in the bank, but throughout the week we give them points for things that are either done wrong or not done when they are supposed to be…each point is worth 50 cents), and she started to stomp out of my office. I told her to come back and then we had this conversation (I’m paraphrasing):
Me: "You don’t think you deserve to be punished?"
Daughter: "I punished myself by not eating dinner!"
Me: "No, you told me you didn’t want pizza so I’d say you were pouting."
Daughter: "NO!"
Me: "Well, I didn’t ask you not to eat. And this isn’t the first time you’ve been late, so I think maybe you need something to remind you to be on time."
Daughter: "The last time I was only five minutes late and you yelled at me…alot!" "It was only five minutes!"
Me: "It was more than five minutes, and it doesn’t matter. When we tell you to be home at a certain time you need to make sure you’re here on time."
Daughter, glaring at me says nothing.
Me, feeling the heat rise: "So you think it’s okay for you to be late even though you inconvenienced four other people? We were ready to go to dinner at 6:30 and we waited 1/2 hour for you. You think that’s fair?"
Daughter continues glaring and mutters something under her breath.
Me, heat REALLY rising: "You don’t want to be punished!? Fine, I won’t punish you. But remember this moment the next time you ask me to give you a ride somewhere or even better, remember this moment when I decide that it isn’t important to be at one of your soccer games on time and I feel like getting there 1/2 hour late. Just remember it."
Daughter, shooting death daggers at me with her eyes: "I HATE YOU!"
She turns and leaves. On her way out I say, "I’m sorry you hate me because I love you very much."
Daughter: "I don’t care."
I don’t care who you are, those last two hurt. Of course I couldn’t let it show (I’m a guy), but it stung like hell. Thankfully Celeste saw what was going on and came in and talked me down. She also coached me on how to patch it up…I’d tell you how, but I’m thinking I could rent Celeste’s advisory services to other fathers of teenage girls. If my household is indicative I’ll be able to quit my day job.
My daughter is only 12 and I’m worried I may not make it to 13. I don’t even want to think about 14-20. God help me.
BovineExcrement! Drug War Coming to Your Toilet
Two recent news stories involving the US Government and excrement:
According to a Washington Post article that bookofjoe highlighted, the US Government ran a test on a wastewater treatment plant in Fairfax County, VA to determine how many people in the area have used cocaine in the recent past. From the Post article:
County workers collected five days’ worth of water samples between
March 13 and March 17 at the pollution control plant in Lorton,
according to a March 20 memo from County Executive Anthony H. Griffin
to the Board of Supervisors.The plant, which processes about 67 million gallons of sewage a day,
takes in commercial and residential waste from about half the county,
including Fairfax City, Vienna and Fort Belvoir.The samples, which totaled about 500 milliliters, were shipped to
the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Rockville, where they will
be analyzed for traces of benzoylecgonine, the main urinary metabolite
byproduct of cocaine.
Nice work if you can get it, huh? My question is, "Why bother?" What discernible difference will knowing how many people are doing coke make? Does it matter whether 25,000 or 2,500 people are doing coke? How? Why? Why not spend the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology’s time on something useful, like how many toxins or traces of bio-agents are in the water? Maybe they already are, but I don’t like the idea that they might miss something because their trying to figure out how many people are pissing cocaine. Absurd.
The other story that ties our government to excrement, or at least the concept of excrement, is the story about the FCC deciding that the word "shit" and all its derivatives are not merely "indecent" but "profane." That means they can fine any broadcaster that airs the "shit" words for each incidence and they can also fine those who utter the words on-air. (If I’m ever interviewed on TV I’ll probably be broke at the end of 30 seconds). Jeff Jarvis takes great exception to this new FCC "nannyism" as he calls it and thinks that since bullshit is the single best term to describe much of our politicians’ actions that it is infringing on our free political speech to term it "profane." Read Jeff’s "In Defense of Bullshit" here.
To tie all this together I’ll say just this: we need to call ‘bullshit’ on much of what our government is selling us these days. Of course we can’t call "bullshit" so we’ll have to do what my kids do: come up with a suitable substitute. How about "Bush!"?
More Mason Love
A couple of economists at GMU have written an article for Slate that explains why Mason’s econ department and basketball team are very similar. I remember when Buchanan won his Nobel in 86 while I was at Mason; I didn’t have a clue what economics was all about (I still don’t) but I took great pride that our unknown school had a Nobel winner. Now that GMU can boast two Nobel winners and a Final Four team I’m thinking there might actually be an outbreak of, gasp, alumni pride!
Being Young Ain’t All That Great
According to this article in BusinessWeek the last decade hasn’t been particularly good for young adults at least in terms of household earning power. From 1995-2004 the median net worth of young households (25-34 years old) rose only 1.3% adjusted for inflation, while at the same time the net worth of households 35-64 rose 40%.
For some perspective it would be nice to know how much this varies from past decades. I always assumed that peoples’ peak earning was in their 40s and 50s so you’d expect the household gains to be greater in older households. And as the article points out one of the reasons that older households have done some much better is because such a large percentage own their homes and the real estate market went nuts from 95-04. So is the story that the gap between the two growth rates is much greater than in the past?
This just reaffirms what I’ve been thinking as I approach my 40th birthday; while being young was an awful lot of fun I don’t think I’d go back. Being broke definitely sucked but here are a few other reasons:
- It took me over ten years to figure out how to be a relatively decent, housebroken husband and father. I don’t EVER want to repeat that process again.
- While it was nice having a young body that seemed to bounce back from anything it tended to produce self-abusive behavior. Toilets are not meant to be hugged.
- Sleepless nights spent dealing with babies.
- Mornings after sleepless nights spent dealing with babies when you didn’t wake up and now you’re dealing with one extremely pissed-off, overwraught wife.
- Tolerating bosses who were basically sub-human because I needed the money and health insurance.
- Not knowing that the terms "fine" and "dining" are not mutually exclusive.
- Believing the tag line "made from the finest Bavarian hops."
- Not knowing that Bavaria was not the last name of a NY Giants tight end…you know, Mark Bavaria.
- Not knowing how to tell someone to f—off with a smile on my face and get away with it.
I could go on but you get my point: young = dumb + broke.
Friends at the GMU-UConn Game
A couple of the guys from my fraternity (Sigma Chi) scored some tickets to the GMU-UConn game and they sent this picture with them highlighted. Shane Womack also got to take his kids, which has to be an all-time great dad experience. Good on ya boys.
Billy Packer Can Kiss My Green and Gold Butt
Now that we long-suffering GMU Patriots alums are able to say our boys made the Final Four I only have one or two comments:
- I hope this is only the beginning of non-elite schools making big noise in the tourney. Conferences like the CAA and the Missouri Valley are putting out some quality teams and have been for years. I think the selection committee has recognized this for at least the last five years and it’s about time the college hoops cognoscenti also get a clue. Billy Packer is starting to look like he’s not only a misogynist, but he’s a misogynist who’s also an ACC/SEC/Big-10/Pac-10 (i.e. corporate) hack. He’s been sniffing ACC jocks since his days at Wake and I think it’s caused him to think he’s a lot smarter than he really is.
- Coack K’s comment about wondering how it works that the ACC grew in size this year and yet got fewer bids has caused me to re-consider how smart I think he is. Did he not watch the games at the ACC tourney this year? That was some pretty bad basketball that highlighted a lot of athleticism and poor fundamentals. Even the ACC is going to have down years and this was one of them, but once teams like UNC get some experience under their belts and can mix basketball smarts with raw talent they’ll be back at the top. Just being the ACC doesn’t give them the right to six or seven bids every year.
- A lot of people thought Hofstra should have gotten in instead of Mason because they beat Mason twice in the last two weeks of the season. What I hope people learned from this is that mid-major conferences like the CAA need to be considered for more than one at-large in addition to the conference tourney champ if the teams are worthy. Hofstra and Mason had very similar records and they battled with UNC-Wilmington and ODU in the CAA all year. I think they probably would have been a better selection than some of the last selections from the majors. I’m not saying that the CAA will deserve three shots on any given year, but when you have four teams that stack up well with other conferences and have the RPI to support it they should be considered for a third overall bid.
All that said I’m gonna enjoy this next week because it will probably be a while before it happens again. Lots of upperclassmen on this year’s Mason team, but with a Final Four run you’ve gotta believe that recruiting is going to get easier/better. Let’s just hope that Larranaga sticks around to do it.
NY Times Puts Google Maps to Good Use
The New York Times has used the Google Maps interface to plot all of its "36 Hours" travel columns over the last three years. Winston-Salem was recently featured and you’ll also find articles on Boone and Charlotte.
That’s a very nice, useful application of the Google API, not just another "Let’s do this just because it’s cool" application. I think it actually adds value to the columns since I could see using this a tool to find a getaway that offers something a little different.
Google Map Showing Location of NCAA Basketball Champs
This is kind of cool: a map of all the NCAA men’s basketball tournament winners. If you click on one of the balloons it will show you the winner, the location of the team they beat and the venue where the game was played.
North Carolina has three schools represented and there are more schools east of the Mississippi than west of the big river. Without UCLA’s run of championships in the 60s-70s you’d also see a much heavier tilt to the east in overall number of championships as well. Interestingly Virginia doesn’t have a representative but there’s still hope this year with George Mason still in the hunt. Have I mentioned recently that I’m a GMU graduate?
Befuddled 