B r a n d o m o n i u m

Six Seconds

2006-11-06T19:31:00.000-08:00

Liftoff is always three seconds too long. In that blink of time it takes to realize you're hurtling along in a tube of steel, aluminum and plastic, the inevitabilty of The Moment presents itself. This is a Moment of great unnatural properities. Soon this will be a either a giant, fiery, failed Experiment, or all rules will be broken. Soon, this feat of Man escaping Physics and Fear becomes a droning nothing. Just some time in a fairly uncomfortable waiting room chair.

Then the last three seconds arrives, and they last just as long as the first three. The cold, hard earth sneaks up, and the horizontal, downwards, upwards view (everything but foward) exacerbates the tension. But soon enough, back to our earthly business.

Until those three seconds arrive again.

Infernal Infringements

2006-06-29T06:55:00.000-07:00

After not having blogged for months, i'm on a roll...2nd one today.

I was reading "reader emails" on cnn.com about flag burning, and it literally makes me feel like i'm going to throw up in my mouth.

Take this one: "I am completely against being able to burn our flag in protest. Our flag is a symbol of freedom and when I see it flying, it reminds me that I am an American, proud and free. If you are that unhappy with America and what she stands for, then find another country and leave, but leave my flag alone!
P. Proctor, Statesville, North Carolina"

Do a lot of Americans really believe this? Even if most Americans are reminded of their freedom ,and feel uncontrollable patriotism and love for America when presented with a flag, do they not see the disconnect? Isn't it blindingly obvious that restricting the desecration of one inanimate object is a slipperly slope that would lead to further restrictions of first amendment rights?

If flag burning became illegal, how many of these acts would also become illegal?

- burning a photograph of a flag
- burning a home-made flag that is not made to "correct specifications", say missing a star
- burning a picure of the President, or the Constitution, or the Bill of Rights
- shredding, deficating on, painting, or otherwise desecrating a flag

Clearly, it would be preposterous to amend the Constitution to outlaw this one specific act. I am not saying I support flag-burning, but I support the openness of the constitution, and the freedoms that it guarantees to every American.

And to these true "Patriots" that are in favor of amending the constitution, take a moment to think about what you are asking the Congress to do. The freedom you enjoy today would be slightly limited if this were allowed, and it could lead down a dangerous path of further rights infringements.

The Wealth Of Nations (or, Individuals, or What is Republicanism anyway?)

2006-06-26T13:20:00.000-07:00

Time for a quiz. Guess where this quote came from earlier this week:

"I love it when I'm around the country club, and I hear people talking about the debilitating effects of a welfare society," he said. "At the same time, they leave their kids a lifetime and beyond of food stamps. Instead of having a welfare officer, they have a trust officer. And instead of food stamps, they have stocks and bonds."

A) A bleeding-heart liberal on the Bush administrations tax cuts to the wealthy
B) A billionaire investment mogul
C) A professional golfer
D) A New York Times editiorial interview with the president of MoveOn.org

Well, the answer is B - Warren Buffett - during an interview discussing his plans to give away over $30 BILLION dollars to charity.

Why is this noteworthy? Warren Buffett is a famous liberal Democrat - he opposes tax cuts, he is pro-estate tax, he complains that the taxes he pays on his home in Nebraska are too low, he supports welfare and public services - yet he is the worlds 2nd richest man, and is indirectly supporting the original intent of the Republican Party's agenda. He is giving his money to the foundation of the worlds richest man, Bill Gates (Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation), further supporting this idea.

Per Wikipedia, "In broad terms, Republicans believe the private sector is better suited than the bureaucratic government as the trust of a nation's direction and purpose." Essentially, the believe is that individuals more efficiently allocate funds to needy sectors of society than the government can, making taxation for this purpose ineffective. Furthermore, "the party founders adopted the name 'Republican' to indicate it was the carrier of 'republican' beliefs about civic virtue, and opposition to aristocracy and corruption." How far has Rebublicanism moved from this original mantra?! Conservatism, Rebublicanism - today they stand more for aristocracy, corruption, and greed than ever before, and it is the Democrats that have taken the moral high ground.

Is this a broader role-reversal? Are liberal Democrats the New Republicans? It's worth a few moments of pondering at least.

It would be nice of the Middle Eastern oil billionaires to act in the same way as their American counterparts and allocate even a fraction of their vast fortunes to their own societies. That's an entirely different blog...

bcc: All

2005-12-20T07:18:00.000-08:00

I'm going to start off by saying this isn't like me. Some things are meant to be personal, and politics are touchy at best. But this is fun.

I'll say that while I certainly lean to the left, i don't necessarily subscribe to a standard set of political principles. I'm a "practical liberal" i guess. Pratically liberal? Maybe. Regardless, this is sweet.

A few weeks ago Chairman Bush presented his "National Strategy For Victory In Iraq," which was more or less a huge PR campaign to try and regain a smidgen of public opinion regarding this mess of a war. Before I lose your attention, here's the cool part. It's available from http:// www.whitehouse.gov . Download it yourself if you want: http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/iraq/iraq_national_strategy_20051130.pdf ! Don't worry, I already did. Go to File / Document Properties and check out the author. It's "Feaver_P."

Why is this interesting? Well, Peter Feaver is "an experton public opinion about war, not war itself" (Nicolas Kristof, NY Times last week). he's a Duke University professor, and is the original author of this document.

It's just amazing that despite the absolute barrage of criticism this administration has received, it wouldnt' do it's homework and fix this little piece of metadata.

I wasn't the one clever enough to discover this, and there are about a billion blogs out there with a lot of commentary, but this excerpt from a particularly salient one is worth reading:

-----
Dr. Feaver was recruited after he and Duke colleagues presented the administration with an analysis of polls about the Iraq war in 2003 and 2004. They concluded that Americans would support a war with mounting casualties on one condition: that they believed it would ultimately succeed.

So, if you are the president, after receiving this news, do you :

A) Convene a top to bottom strategic review of your war efforts in Iraq, seeking feedback from commanders in the fields, expert military strategists and the Pentagon to ensure you are on the right track for ultimate victory; or

B) Deliver a fake "Major Address on the War" on a stage with quasi-facist set dressing in front of a crowd of uniformed soldiers legally required to cheer for you and then release a propaganda document disguised as a strategic plan whose every third word is "Victory"?

If you have any question which road this White House took, let me be the first to congratulate you on your recent recovery from a five year coma:

That finding, ....was clearly behind the victory theme in the speech and the plan, in which the word appears six times in the table of contents alone,

"This is not really a strategy document from the Pentagon about fighting the insurgency," said Christopher F. Gelpi, Dr. Feaver's colleague at Duke and co-author of the research on American tolerance for casualties... The document is clearly targeted at American public opinion."

-----

I'm just happy we're ignoring the genocide in Darfur, and headlines like this

Sweet dreams,
jb

Red Earth

2005-10-20T21:47:00.000-07:00

There were two disturbing, but unsurprising, headlines in the NY Times today.

The first, "The National Parks Under Seige" details how the management policy of the National Parks Service, which has been largely unchanged since the service was created, is being re-written in favor of (surprise!) commercialization in the face of conservation. It eases pollution controls, removes rules requiring motorized vehicles to have the "least possible impact," and requires park service employees to go through Washington for promotions. The engineer of this policy? Paul Hoffman, "a former Congressional aide to Dick Cheney and a former head of the Cody, Wyo., chamber of commerce."

The second, "Artic Map Vanishes, and Oil Area Expands" is truly amazing. A 1970's map of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge has vanished, and the new map, drawn up by the USGS prior to legislation regarding drilling for oil in the refuge, conveniently excludes indiginous peoples' lands which had been a barrier to opening up the area. While the Times does a nice job keeping the article as factual as possible, it's still hard to imagine a more compelling conspiracy theory. Hollywood couldn't do better.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. calls Bush "the worst environmental president in our nation's history" while discussing his new book, "Crimes Against Nature." Paul Krugman has said that Bush "values loyalty above expertise."

Even though his political capital is drying up amid plumetting approval ratings, I fear the the worst is yet to come. This administrations neverending cronyism and quid pro quo politics is truly appalling. The decision making process is more akin to a school boy choosing a wiffle ball team at recess; the best players are left on the sidelines, while the ranks are filled with friends, siblings, and sycophants.

I can't wait for this recess to be over.

meandering

2005-10-08T17:59:00.000-07:00

dusty sneakers in a sunny corner of the room. basket of crumpled tissues, several on the floor, from an early victim of fall. a few shots left on that roll. clean laundery, still unfolded, recently strewn on the bedspread.

still, filled with suspense, waiting for at least a new paragraph, i read on. three stories, intersecting only in my mind. focus.

at least it's sunny in that corner.

very

2005-09-29T21:56:00.000-07:00

the unmade bed, chaotic, peaceful, a remnant of a slower time
hurried as usual, conclusions reached before beginnings. looks
like you sleep on your side, a few lucid missteps in that fold

some leaves on the sidewalk, blown into a pile, no rake in sight
is this the order of things to come, or maybe what has already been?
there's no here in my restlessness or now in my slumber, only whys
overexposed pinpoints of light burning, disappearing, laughing so

symptoms of who

auration

2005-09-27T19:58:00.000-07:00

kinesis, not for too long. sitting (laying), perfect tingle of fall, summer lingering a bit longer. bells chiming, ice cream mi amigo? je pense qu'elle est parfaite, mais je sais que cela est la noix vraie. drums echoing off the school walls and buildings and hills. the J rumbles by, again, predictably, archaically shuttling and hustling. sneeze. laugh. yell. "wow, you're popular." honk. scream.

"sounds like a day in the park" or maybe "it's cocktail hour"

windy. arms barely touched. or did they?

birds are the audience, impolite observers, stuck on the ground you are! keys dangling, clop-clop-clop; must get in shape this year.

diesel smell, glass shattered, a picnic comes to an end. there was a bbq, ice cubes hissing on jet-black coals, hair standing up on my neck again. cooler than it looks, but wait till the sun sets. sage fuzz vellux awaits.

repetitive questioning, themes, didn't write back to myself. inspired? another need, not readily available to the senses, even though I feel senseless, and sensible. so many distractions, just as well. O! not again. but she makes me tick.

again in the sun, soaking, basking, back to the drawing board. trying to save this lapse, momentarily infinite and infinitessimal.

some child crying, laughing, calling for mommy. it's blue out.

parfaite.

Public Function ReturnToHere(Ret as MarkState)

2005-09-26T16:09:00.000-07:00

Static ThisSpot as Variant

Select Case Ret

Case MarkState = 1
ThisSpot = Me.Bookmark

Case MarkState = 2
Me.Bookmark = ThisSpot

End Select

End Function

---

and with that, I can avoid the user losing his/her spot on the form (b/c as you all know, users are unpredictable beasts)

hopefully no more geekposts

timing

2005-09-25T19:27:00.000-07:00

it's happening...

the fog's taking it's annual breather, and summer in san francisco can begin (as it ends everywhere else)

went to the beach today, which is a rather remarkable thing to say around here. it was about as close to perfect as it gets...cloudless sky, light breeze, sun blazing overhead.

i needed this

battle

2005-09-06T11:25:00.000-07:00

so Darren and I, both hip hop fans but serious white boys, have started battle rapping via email. Yup, we're too slow and lame to actually do it in person. Volume 1:

Darren:
Who are you home skillet callin me grimy,
keep that tude up and I'll get me a limey
we'll come on down to your neighborhood
ruff you up bad till I feel good
see its not that I think that you really deserve it
its more that I think that you just haven't heard that
There's only one spitter up here in this town
talking so much trash that you just might drown
in a tidal wave of thoughts so wicked and mean
I'll leave you devistated like the town of new orleans

JB:
nerves i conjugate, verbs i figure eight, yr mind state gets invaded like kuwait
too much on my plate, irate, don't complicate or wait, i'll bring yr fate
i congratulate, then desacrate, and wit yo ma i procreate under the golden gate
these rhymes are overweight, with my phat freight insinuate theres no debate, cuz, you can't relate

what the beck?

2005-07-17T23:28:00.000-07:00

So, I just spent the last hour walking around the hood with BECK (yes, Beck) and his (7-person) crew filming his newest video!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ridiculous, huh??!?!?!??! It was pretty fucking surreal, and it got better....the main assistant guy, who I was talking to a bit, was the guitarist for Death Cab For Cutie!!! How you may ask? Well, my roommate's friend from college, who lives in LA, is Beck's stylist, and is actually staying at our place tonite. She told us about the shoot, and we show up with her, pseudo posing as part of the crew (my huge Nikon helped!) For the first 20ish minutes were were just walking around my hood, popping into taquerias (el toro, mariachis, etc), as he played some songs and shiz.... completely surreal...

...pics!...

the photo gods...

2005-07-15T16:33:00.000-07:00

...are aligning against me! I didn't mention it in the last post, but anyone who knows me knows how much i love photography, and if I had said I have no pictures from Israel, it would likely seem odd.

Well, I have no pictures from Israel.

Yet. (I hope)

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Day 3: The Judean Desert. Wake Up, 3:00am

A moonlit desertscape, with the looming shadows of sheer cliffs shooting up from the Dead Sea, the lowest point on earth. Up, up, up, we go, snaking along the rocky ledges to the abandoned desert fortress known as Masada. Eventually the morning sky glows with the imminent rising of the sun that bakes this earth for all but a few days a year. At the top, sweating and panting, light headed and dazed, the sun rises, setting the ancient land ablaze in an atomic, orange glow. It's now 5:43am, and the day is only starting.

Breakfast back at the Hostel is typical Israeli; veggies, hummus, egg salad, fruit, and a transluscent, slightly neon juice drink that seems to be popular. Hit the road shortly after.

Back in the desert, we wind through desert canyons and riverbeds, eventually arriving at an oasis worthy of myth. Wading through the cool water as the sun is at full height, the fragility of life out here can't be more apparent.

Soon back in the bus, heading to the Dead Sea. By now exhaustion, dehydration have set in. Standing in 100+ degree heat, on sand hotter than the surface of the sun, I run towards the shimmering expanse of water, and hit it's lukewarm waters at full gallop...

...with my camera in my pocket.

(shift to past tense, dramatic moments adequately described)

And in that fervent moment, brain functioning at half power, excitement tingling in my fingers, I lost the previous three days, captured in around 250 photos. The notion of not being able to take any pictures from that moment on was most devastating though, until Rachael, feeling BURDENED by her camera (identical to mine) agreed to let me use my extra memory card and her camera to document the rest of the trip. Rachael, if you read this, baby, you rock!

But...yes, there's a "but"...the story isn't finished. I dumped the photos (a 256 and 512 card) onto Maras hard drive, as Rachael was continuing her travels. Mara, who lives in San Francisco, was going to let me grab them back in the city, and i've been twitching with excitement. Until today, when I get this email:

"you won't believe this...

my computer completely died this morning shortly after
i emailed you! i am having it serviced and having the
data retrieved, but this won't happen by this
afternoon! very very sorry! i'll keep you posted"

followed by:

"So my hard drive is seriously compromised and it is going to cost me $1,700
to get the data scraped! *(&)*! SO, please pray with me that everything is
recoverable!!! EXTREMELY SORRY if anything at all got compromised. I'm 90%
sure your pix are all intact, but there is always a chance with hard drive
damage- can't believe this is happening!"

So i'm praying....and hopefully I can add to this site what so many of you have been waiting for. Until then, enjoy these from other people on the trip:

http://share.shutterfly.com/osi.jsp?i=EeAuGbhw0YtWiH
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/boltnpads/album?.dir=/2118&.src=ph&.tok=ph7w6SDBuErBa569
http://photobucket.com/albums/y266/lansi/

Sh'ma, Yisrael!

2005-07-08T16:56:00.000-07:00

I'm not even sure who I told, but I just went to Israel. This was a life-changing experience, and the idea of writing down even the most fundamental aspects in a BLOG of all places feels like a cheapening of it all. But I'll ramble for a bit.

The themes: Survival, self-preservation, perserverance, identity, family. I can't explain how foreign, and yet familiar, the whole experience was.

generational, confrontational, inspirational...I will return Israel, the language less of a barrier, the politics less of a mystery. I learned I need to be more literal, be less intense. I need to make lists that I can finish. I need to stop feeling needed. "I know everybody here thinks they need you"

Avenu shalom alechem!

Room with a view

2005-05-26T22:22:00.000-07:00

Not your average cocktail

2005-05-26T22:01:00.000-07:00

Claritin + Zyrtec + Allivert = Crack

I was a loopy mess yesterday, which is far better than a drippy, sneezy, headachey mess. The birds and bees and shrubs and trees are really gettin it on, at the expense of my sinuses. I'm all for getting it on, but really, mother nature needs to use some self-control.

Never thought i'd be psyched for the fog to return, but today the cool, humid SF air was a relief.

I need to start writing some more meaningful stuff. This damn CFA is sucking the creativity out of me. Hopefully Israel will provide some motivation...

word.

Little Brother

2005-05-22T11:41:00.000-07:00

"Little Brother is a group that was actually, from what I've heard, discovered from the message boards on the Roots website over at Okayplayer.com, which, on the one hand is kind of cool, but on the other hand, is not really that cool at all. I mean, it was cool that they actually got into the game and everything, but I'm sure it'll somehow end up being bad for them in the long run. For example, Common started rolling with those dudes a while ago and hasn't been right ever since. Next thing you know, he was dating Erykah "Bad Hygene" Badu and wearing all kinds of weird clothes.

I hear Bad Hygene is with the D.O.C. now and flushing the yayo down the toilet and shit so whoever it is in Little Brother that ends up getting turned out, probably 9th Wonder (I can't remember any of those other dudes' names), will end up with that one toothless bitch from Floetry, which is actually cool for certain purposes (I'll leave that to your imagination), but otherwise entirely unacceptable. Mos Def will probably be the best man and also sing some kind of faux afrocentric version of that Jeffrey Osborne "Woo Woo Woo" song at the wedding. Talib Kweli'll be over by the mini bar getting all angry and threatening to beat people up and shit. Ten years from now, we'll be sitting around talking about how good Little Brother used to be before they started hanging out with the Roots."

killa

Inevitable!

2005-05-20T16:07:00.000-07:00

Perfect San Francisco Weather + 2 Weeks until CFA = TORTURE

(i had an awesome date last night.....probably shouldn't publically announce this quite yet, but i'm pretty psyched :-) )

predictability

2005-05-04T22:14:00.000-07:00

open the blinds, let in the sunshine and listen to the rhyme that defines the times
it's inescapable, irreplaceable, more or less unmistakeable

preach to the kids who won't listen, show em your ice, how it glistens
the nowhere and somehow that empties itself, nothing but top shelf
wait a minute or hour or day or a lifetime, but don't waste a second
with more of the same game that shames and blames on fifteenth and main

but beyond even, the picket fence, barbed wire, stone cold wall of now
amber waves of pain beckon, seas are crossed now with a click, no more
blink, and the inescapable, irreplaceable, more or less unmistakeable
distant oceans welling up, tsunami, to wash away what doesn't belong

the way of the world

2005-05-01T18:17:00.000-07:00

this man knows whats up

please consider his words truth (and please send me all interpretations/translations)

Die navbar, die!!

2005-04-27T20:53:00.000-07:00

Ok bloggsters, if you want to get rid of the nav/search bar that blogger put's up there automatically, simply add this to your headers:

<style type="text/css">

#b-navbar {

position:absolute !important;

left: -9999px !important;

}

</style>

word up!

done
yup
jb

1993-1997, electric relaxation

2005-04-13T20:36:00.000-07:00

Most people are nostalgic about their high school years, but I am about memories I didn't actually have...

Other than a few tastes of de la, tribe, pharcyde, and krs-one, I didn't realize what was happening in the world of rap at the time. It was the golden era of hip hop, and now i'm trying to compile as much music from that time as I can. My boy DJ Silentmic (who needs to post more often) is my guiding light on this endeavour...

---

"Sentence begins indented.. with formality
My duration’s infinite, moneywise or physiology
Poetry, that’s a part of me, retardedly bop
I drop the ancient manifested hip-hop, straight off the block"

nuff said

Finally figure out how to post pictures...

2005-04-03T20:14:00.000-07:00

wasn't that hard...just used the "<>" tag. so, this posting is graphic...enjoy (click em to enlarge)

(Kirkwood)

Updated

2005-03-20T18:06:00.000-08:00

Finally, fully updated my site....

I think it looks too much like the blogger site though, which was a complete coincidence. Ugh.

Reconnaisance

2005-03-19T16:52:00.000-08:00

The University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee just upset Boston College. If this was any other year post-middle school, I would undoubtedly be re-tallying my possible total for an NCAA March Madness pool.

This is the first year in at least 12 that I didn't spend countless hours researching, analyzing, poring over and dissecting the 64 teams in the NCAA college basketball national tournament. Nope, no brackets filled out this year. I feel like i've betrayed someone, but i'm not exactly sure who, or how. It's like I'm skipping Thanksgiving or some other predictible, requisite ceremony that's integral to my life.

But I must say, in the final minutes of the UWM-BC game, I wasn't worrying about my standing in the pool, calculating how many future games I got wrong already, or ranting about some 21 year-old kid b/c he missed a few clutch foul shots. It was the end of a basketball game, being played by those who love the game b/c they love the game, not b/c of $45 million dollar contracts or pride-massaging interviews or anything like that. Nope, I was watching an upset unfold, and loved every second.

Of course I can't help but wonder if I would have picked it this way...

Revenge Of The Herds

2005-03-16T17:44:00.000-08:00

Today in the NY Times (well, yesterday) there was an article - "No Need to Stew: A Few Tips to Cope With Life's Annoyances", and starts out:

"When Seth Shepsle goes to Starbucks, he orders a 'medium' because 'grande' - as the coffee company calls the size, the one between big and small - annoys him."

The article goes on to describe various folks' methods of getting pointless revenge at things that annoy them and they can't control. Attacking junk mail by stuffing business-reply envelopes and sending them back, so the companies have to pay twice for their marketing efforts. Signing known spammers up for catalogs and junk mail. Insisting on ordering a "small" pizza at Pizza Hut, even though medium is the smallest size.

These trivial tactics against daily inconveniences supposedly give individuals a "private sense of satisfaction," but I peg it as doing quite the opposite. Focusing ones effort, fixating ones energy; what better way to cement the idiosyncrasy firmly on the desktop of your mind? If only we could swap these pointless nuances of everyday life, with homelessness, racism, global warming, and the myriad other important issues that we choose to step over, look past, and ignore on a daily basis.

If you Google "revenge" some interesting results pop up. Commercialism prevails, even in this sector of the human ego. The first result is for "revenge unlimited", a company specializing in products and pranks and advice on how to get, yes, revenge. The third one down is the Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith website. You can find online voodoodolls, to "get back at your boss spouse, sports, politician, etc." Scroll down a bit further, and another movie site comes up, for "Revenge of the Nerds." IMDB comes up with 32 movies, actually.

It's amazing how integral the concept of revenge is in the human psyche. Maybe i'm just as revengeful and haven't realized my true potential yet, or maybe I just avoid the confrontation. Which reminds me of this article on "manliness" I read today....

Enough rambling, time for the first (of hopefully many) neighborhood happy hours. I've been meaning to get back at my liver for a while now.

Weather Libs

2005-03-08T17:01:00.000-08:00

I (adjective) the weather in (place). It's always (adjective) out, and if not, you can (verb) for a (period of time under 5 hours), and it will be (adverb) (adjective).

California is absolutely ridiculous. The Bay Area, in particular. This is one of those early spring/late winter weeks where it's in the 60's/70's and cloudless, and it's impossible to tell what season it is. It's as green as it gets in spring, warm and dry as fall, foggy at night like summer, and yet there is still 15' of snow within 200 miles (winter in the Sierras is beyond words).

I'm wearing shorts and a t-shirt, and it's snowing in NY. Sorry, folks.

The world as they know it

2005-03-07T16:48:00.000-08:00

Three-and-a-half years ago, the World Trade Center became a memory.

The only two people I know of that have maintained their positions on terrorism, democracy, patriotism, and the way-the-world-should-be, are George W. Bush (President, most influential man in the world), and Thomas Friedman (columnist, most understanding man when it comes to what really influences the world).

The Bushies spend at least 90% of their collective intellectual ability conjuring up devious media spins, and then repeat them so often that phrases like social security "reform" (re·form To improve by alteration, correction of error, or removal of defects; put into a better form or condition.), and war on "terror" (ter·ror Intense, overpowering fear) have become second nature. The mere fact that the phrases themselves are so blatenly partisan, makes debating the underlying issues futile.

Mr. Friedman, on the other hand, has repeatedly stressed two themes since America woke up to the idea that a significant part of the world isn't so happy with us. The first is educating and propping up the "humiliated," disenfranchaised, Islamic youth, and the second is the importance of a "decent" democratic outcome in Iraq, no matter how hard it is to stay the course.

Of course, volumes could be written on each of the subjects above. Mr. Friedman has written a few, that I doubt Mr. Leader-of-The-Free-World has bothered to read.

The appointment of John R. Bolton as U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. today is just another slap in the face of the world. As if this administration couldn't be more intimidating, more hawkish, more hardline in it's pursuit of "freedom."

I nominate Thomas Friedman. We have a black woman as Secretary of State, how about a Jew from Minnesota as Ambassador to the U.N.?

What do I know anyway?

Midnight Sun

2005-03-02T21:37:00.000-08:00

OK, I live in one of those cities where movies are filmed, celebrities hang out, and tourists tend to flock. But tonight I wish it were otherwise....

I live a few blocks from Dolores Park, which, granted, is an incredible little oasis in SF. Neatly tucked between the Mission, the Castro, and Noe Valley, perched on the side of an east-facing hill with vistas of downtown, the Bay Bridge, SF bay, Berkeley and Oakland, and Mt. Diablo. It's beautiful during the day, and (but?) attracts lots of people from many walks of life. Yuppies, hippies, hipsters, yupsters, homeless, latinos, gays, lesbians, transsexuals, transvestites, transgenders, children, parents, dot-commers, waiters, artists, and accountants. This fact makes it difficult to film a movie. So why not just film it at night...but make it daytime?

Currently, there are two gigantic, stadium-light-dwarfing supernovas planted on the hill, bathing my apartment, and much of the neighborhood, in virtual daylight. The sun set 5 hours ago. With my shades drawn, and drapes over them, I can still make shadow puppets on my wall. I imagine this is what the summer equinox above the arctic circle is like....

Time to attempt sleep, undoubtedly inviting dreams of beaches and deserts and the bright-side of the moon. G'nite.

Northern Exposure

2005-02-04T19:15:00.000-08:00

Emily rented the entire Northern Exposure series, and it made me realize how awful reality TV is. What happened to storytelling? Imagination? A doctor stranded in Alaska? It's brilliant, and i'm whining.

The State of the Union address was sort of like reality TV actually. Closer to one of the embarrasing outtakes from American Idol, that you can't stand watching, but peek thru your fingers b/c it's impossible not to. Scary stuff.

DNS

2005-02-04T18:00:00.000-08:00

So, i've owned jonathanbrandon.com for a while, but my lazy ass hasn't actually gotten around to figuring out how host it. I was toying w/ the idea of doing it myself, but i'm not nearly saavy enough when it comes to security, etc. 1and1.com will do it. SO, soon enough, my friends, i'll have a site. I'm the only person to read this, ever. Kick ass.

This is the best nature photo i've ever taken, hands down.

OK

2005-01-01T23:07:00.000-08:00

I'm not that important, or interesting, or even that good of a writer. But everyone has one of these, and i do want to be cool.

yup