Don't Want To Be An American Idiot

Well, for years and years we've been hearing about how American students score down around the bottom of the international barrel in math and science, and it looks like the chickens have finally come home to roost. No wait, before you start labeling me an anti-american reactionary just let me explain myself and what I'm talking about. I'm talking about Social Security reform.

Yeah, I know, I know, just reading the words 'Social Security' is enough to make most people hit that back button and look for another blog to browse, but I think it's worth talking about if only to illustrate just how math deficient we've become in this country today.

Here's what I mean.

As I understand it, we've currently got a Social Security program where working people contribute a portion of their earnings into a large pool of money that retired and disabled people can draw benefits out of it. Then, when those working people get ready to retire they will take their turn and draw benefits funded by the contributions of younger workers, just as those younger workers will someday live off the contributions made by the even younger workers that follow, and so forth and so forth, etc..., etc..., etc...

Now that's a great system so long as there are enough workers entering and contributing to the system to support those leaving and drawing their benefit. Trouble is that's not happening today, and it looks like the poor old Social Security system is going to run out of money around the year 2042. So, with that in mind, here comes the president's plan - The PSA, or Personal Savings Account.

The PSA is also called a privatization plan because under the proposal workers will contribute 10% less into the Social Security pool, and take that 10% they are saving and give it to high-commission, high-fee financial advisors who will then invest that money for them and earn far better returns on that money (before commissions, fees and expenses, of course) than they could have gotten had they let it to rot away in the current broken down Social Security system. That sounds pretty good but I think there's something wrong with the math.

Let's review, shall we?

We have a pile of money. The pile of money is shrinking because there isn't enough money coming into the pool to cover the money going out of the pool. So, according to the president, to fix the situation you simply reduce the amount of money going into the pool by 10%. Now I was educated in America so you'll please excuse me if my math skills aren't quite up to world standards, but if the pile is shrinking because not enough money is coming in and you decrease the amount of money coming in, won't the pile get even smaller? I know that can't be right because the president wouldn't propose something so mathematically 'challenged', but it seems to me if you want to save the pile then you have to decrease the amount of money going out, not coming in. But then I've never been very good at math.

Or could it be, might it be, say, wait a minute, you don't think this is some kind of political smoke screen, do you? You don't think the president is trying to dazzle us with visions of stock market riches just to conceal the fact that he's really just setting us up for drastic cuts in benefits? No, why would he do that? Just so he could deliver some fresh meat to those fat-cats over on Wall Street, a few tens of millions more fish to fry. No, that can't be right.

No, of course not. He's doing it because he knows that we the people are much savier, much more prudent when it comes to our money than those bureaucrats over in Washington. At least that's what he's said, and you know it's true. Why just think about it. I can't remember all the times Grandma Jean, Aunt Velma and I sat down on the porch discussing the best strategies for optimizing our portfolios, can you?

"Long term corporates" I remember Grandma saying.

"Oh, heavens no" Aunt Velma would reply, "not in this interest rate environment. I'd be hedging if I were you. Buy some puts and short the financials."

Then Uncle Barney would walk by.

"Honey bees", Uncle Barney would butt in, "that's the future. I heard this fella on the radio say in a couple of years the world's gonna run out of honey. Said 'buy honey bees' and in a few years you'll just watch that money roll in."

"Oh for goodness sake Barney, the world ain't gonna run out of honey. Who ever heard of such a thing?"

"Fella on the radio said so. Said that terrorists were secretly targeting beehives and killing off all the bees. Said in another couple of years there wouldn't be any of 'em left. Said now was the time to start buying bees cause they're cheap and in another couple of years they were gonna be worth their weight in gold."

"And how do you know" Aunt Velma would ask "if you bought those bees that the terrorists wouldn't come and kill you?"

"Hmmm, didn't think of that" he'd say." Still got my old 12 gauge, though. Yes sir, still got that. Guess if any terrorists come around a couple of blasts of buckshot ought to make 'em think twice. Guess they won't be wantin' to mess with my bees anymore. No I guess they won't want to do that, will they?"

"Ok, Barney, whatever you say. Why don't you go back in the house now and get ready for them terrorists. Me and Grandma Jean got to get back to our discounted cash-flow projections."

Anyways, that's how the president's going to save Social Security. Now it's up to Congress to do the math and contrast it with the democrats plan which I call "Problem? What problem? I don't see a problem here. Why are you trying to scare everybody." Unfortunately the democrats aren't any better at math than any of the rest of us, at least not on figuring out how the system is going to remain solvent when we reach the point where we have 2 workers contributing for every 1 retiree drawing benefits. Hey, no problem.

But rather than just criticize I think it's high-time I offered a few solutions of my own, don't you? Well it just so happens that I have some.

The first thing to do, as I see it, is attack the revenue portion of the equation. In other words, get more money flowing into the system. To achieve that I propose of a 'lobby' tax. In other words, a simple flat tax on all the campaign contributions and perks that Washington lobbyists so generously lavish on our representatives in Congress. I mean if we can't get rid of them then we might as well tax them, right? Of course we should and I think something like a 50% tax going directly into the Social Security fund ought to raise a couple of trillion dollars, at least. That in itself would be enough to pay for the president's reform.

However, I'm not naive enought to think that just increasing the revenue stream will be enough to save Social Security. No, to go along with the tax I'm also proposing cuts to the expense side of the ledger as well - what I call the 'Celebrex' plan. Again, a simple proposal to give massive dosages of 'Celebrex' to all our seniors over the age of 62 and then sort of let Darwinism take care of the rest. A brilliant idea if I do say so myself that would have the twofold benefit of reducing the size of the outlays from the system as well as answering the question, once and for all, if Celebrex is really as safe to use as Pfizer says it is.

Yep, increase revenues, cut expenses and Social Security will be solvent. At least I think so. You do the math.

Are You Experienced?

Have you ever heard of Rod Blagojevich? He's the governor who's trying to criminalize the sale of violent and sexually explicit videogames to minors in the state of Illinois. A noble cause, no doubt, but unfortunately a noble cause which makes it abundantly clear that we have a serious digital divide in this country today. And by digital divide I am not talking about the economic gap between the haves and the have-nots, but rather the divide between the clued and the totally clueless.

Not that it's a bad idea, mind you. I certainly don't subscribe to the idea that kids should decide what is and what isn't appropriate for them to have. It's just that the governor seems to belong to that select and rapidly aging population of people (or should I say generation of people?) who just don't seem to realize how much the world has changed and how far the technology has come. Digital content, all those little bits and bytes that encode so much of the data that people consume these days, doesn't know anything about state boundaries, or municipal boundaries, or county lines or even national borders. Digital content just flows naturally. It courses over the internet, nests cozily on CD's and flash memory cards, and is quite happy to make its home without regard to age, race or religion on any computer that happens to offer a friendly operating environment.

Doesn't the governor realize that? Don't any of the legislators or any of the corresp0ndents who reported this story realize that you can't ban bits? I wonder, for instance, if the governor has ever been to suprnova.org and downloaded a bitTorrent file? I'd say the odds are pretty slim. The odds that anyone in the Illinois state legislature has ever installed the eDonkey client and done any p-to-p sharing are equally slim, and the odds are positively microscopic that Brian or Dan or Peter (or Jim or Margaret or Ray, for that matter) has ever traded any warez over IRC or browsed through a Usenet group looking to violate someone's copyright.

Too bad, because if they had then they would realize the files they seek to ban are readily available through a number of different channels. Just go to suprnova.org and look through the hundreds and hundreds of games, movies, cd's and more that are listed in its directories. It's almost funny because if the governor did happen to browse through the listings he might be shocked to find that a cracked version of 'JFK Reloaded' (the game he says inspired him to institute this ban) is there for the taking by any 10, 11 or 12 year old curious enough to make the effort to download it. No parental consent or even money necessary.

What this legislation really shows, I think, is the enormous knowledge gap that exists between ignorant, serious-minded adults and their digitally savvy kids. You just have to wonder how any group of people can ever hope to be effective role models and leaders on technology when they are so far behind. I mean it's not like Napster or Morpheus or any of the other digital avenues that have opened up are anything new.

No, to be so ignorant you have to want to be ignorant. You have to want to bury your head in the sand and only be dimly aware of the changes that are happening all around you. And I can understand that, in a way. I know I tend to be a little old-fashioned myself. Sure, River City was backward and ignorant, but it was also wholesome and pure and the type of place where a fella' and his sweetheart could go down by the footbridge on a hot summer night for a little moonlight romance. But we all know that if the world was ever like that, it's not like that anymore.

So what do we do about these videogames? Well I'll tell ya', I don't know. I used to be a very avid videogamer in my younger days and all I can say is that the games have changed a lot since then. Now all I can do is look down from my ivory tower on these misshapen youth and wonder, just like everybody else, what the hell is going on. I do have this theory, though, and that is that there is just too much media these days. Too much TV, too much radio, too much videogaming - and these kids are getting pretty bored with it all. As a result the media moguls and content providers find that they have to go further and further over the edge to get the same response. I think they call it 'Extreme' and you see it in everything from 'Extreme Sports' to 'Extreme' TV to 'Extreme' Videogames.

How else are you going to be heard over all the noise?

What I do know is that a ban will never work. Everyone likes to say that better parenting is the answer, but how can that happen when the parents are just as clueless as the politicians and the nightly newscasters and all the others who seem so hopelessly out of step. No, I think first you've got to understand what you're dealing with, then you've got to decide if it's really a problem, and only when you've done all that can you begin to think about an answer. In the meantime, I'd say there are some people out there who have some catching up to do.

And that means you, Governor Blagojevich.

Ode On A Japanese Rice Cracker

It's a strange and wonderful world, and in all the world I don't think you'll find anyone stranger than the japanese. I know, I know, many will not agree and insist that their family and their ancestors are the strangest, but being half-japanese myself I can testify right here and now that no one does weird like the japanese do weird.

Take, for instance, the japanese rice cracker. There is nothing remarkable about this little treat and I'm sure you've seen them before. They are small and crunchy, usually with some kind of soy flavoring and often with little belts of dried seaweed wrapped around their bellies (what we call norimake arare). I admit to eating more than my share of them over the years and so it was only natural that I should pick up a box today while I was down at the local japanese grocery store.

Nothing unusual in that, certainly nothing worth blogging about, but then the strangeness appeared as I was looking at one particularly attractive tin of crackers all packaged and ready for the holidays, and spied these immortal words inscribed on the front panel:

"Women's History Never Ceases to Yearn for Beauty" it said for no apparent reason, and then said nothing more.

How deeply heartfelt, I thought, and not the sort of sentiment you usually find on a box of crackers, but why anyone would put such poetry on their holiday tins? Well, I couldn't tell you, but for a people who seem to make an art of everything from raw fish to flower arranging it seemed only natural and, well, japanese.

So all day today I've had this expression rattling around in my head. "Women's History Never Ceases to Yearn for Beauty" it echoes, like a bad dream or some stupid little jingle you can't stop humming. But at the same time I felt inspired - instead of the same old 'Happy Holiday' or 'Best Wishes And A Happy New Year' this company tried to say something different, even if I'm not exactly sure what they said.

And then I thought "What a great idea for a Christmas card". You know, don't send out of one of those family histories that people are always sending and no one gives a damn about. Give out a card that not only speaks of the holidays, but of rice crackers and women's history as well. To show you what I mean I've included a sample template to get you started. Simply cut and paste it into your favorite desktop publishing application and add your own little message inside, and then just wait for the hugs and kisses from that special little sweetheart of yours when he/she opens this card on Christmas Day.

----------------cut here-------------------------


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Oh, and if I happen to forget, Merii Kurisumasu everybody.

And Now For The Technology News...

The TIVO is a wonderful thing. You watch the shows you want to watch when you want to watch them and you can pause and fast-forward through commercials and all that other good stuff. I've had my TIVO for about 3 years now and it's certainly one of those technologies that once you have it you never want to give it up.

But that's old news and I certainly didn't come here tonight to talk about TIVO. What I do want to talk about, though, is Audiofeast. Sure Audiofeast has been around a while, but even though it's not anything new it's still not nearly as well known as its TIVO brethren. If you don't know what Audiofeast is let me briefly explain. It's an internet service (website, if you will) that allows members to download pre-recorded audio to their PC's and MP3 players. They offer such things as music channels and shows from NPR, PRI and a similar content providers. They have a free client that you download and install on your PC and a free 'basic service' subscription that you can use to sample their content. If you want content beyond the basics then they charge a subscription of around $3.00 to $5.00 dollars per month.

That's Audiofeast in a nutshell, and as I see it there are 2 major problems with the service as it currently exists. The first is that their music channels support only 2 MP3 players. That means that out of the dozens of MP3 players available right now, only 2 will work with their music service. Now, these happen to be fine players but neither one is exactly a market leader, and the vast majority of people who don't own either of these players are just plain out of luck, particularly the millions of IPod owners out there. Clearly there needs to be more player support here.

The second and more serious problem, however, is the lack of content. Sure, they've got most of the music genres covered but their NPR and other offerings are pretty slim. I can get Marketplace (a good thing) but no Car Talk or Terri Gross (a very bad thing), and the offerings beyond NPR and PRI are pretty spotty. I've got to admit I've never really felt it worth my while to pony up the subscription price just to get access to the 'Haunted History' show from the History Channel or 'American Chopper' from the Discovery Channel.

But despite the problems and the dubious prospects for it's long term survival, Audiofeast is very interesting because it offers a real glimpse into what I think is the future of radio - a future so obvious that I can't think why none of the great technological brains out there haven't hashed it out. After all, the promise of Audiofeast is audio content you want when you want it. You don't have to be at your radio at 3:00 in the afternoon to catch your favorite show, you don't have to buy a subscription or specialized equipment to listen to your favorite satellite station, all you have to do is tell Audiofeast (or a company like Audiofeast) what programs you want to record or what kind of music you want to listen to, and the software and the servers and the hi-speed connections do the rest. Now, if you could do that easily and inexpensively then who wouldn't want that?

The problem, of course, is that most people listen to the radio in their cars, and before any kind of audio revolution could happen there would have to be some way to get that content onto the car radio. But then, there already is, isn't there? In fact if you stop to think about it there are multiple ways to get the content onto the car radio. All you need are the kinds of car radios that can read, store and playback digital music.

The most obvious solution and the one that has already been tried is to build radios that can play back both regular audio CD's as well as data CD's full of MP3 files. Unfortuantely this requires a person to download the audio and then burn it to a CD, which is more work than most people want to do on a daily basis.

Another approach is to combine the car radio and the MP3 player into a sort of hybrid device that is like a radio with a hard drive. With such a device all you need to do is remove a cartridge-like hard drive from your car stereo, connect it to your PC via the USB port and then copy the content directly to the hard drive from your PC. When you are through you merely pop the hard drive back into your car stereo and you're set to go. The problem here, however, is that hard drives are not well-suited to the conditions found in most moving vehicles, particularly the shakes and bumps of the road and the extreme heat that can build up inside during the summertime.

A far better and simpler approach and the one no one has thought of as far as I can tell would be to build a memory card reader into the car stereo instead of a hard drive. As you know memory cards are far sturdier than hard drives and would be much better suited to the demands of a car-based system. Furthermore, thanks to the digital photography revolution most people are probably more comfortable working with memory cards than they would be with swapping hard drives in and out. Memory card readers are also small and compact, and the memory cards themselves are widely available in stores and on the internet.

The d0wnside to using memory cards is that they could not hold as much content as a hard drive, but I wonder how much content you really need to carry around with you in your car. I saw a gigabyte Compactflash card advertised for under $100 today, and a card like that should give a person at least 10 hours worth of audio content. More than enough to get most people through the day.

One other approach to getting the content into the car is add networking capabilities (most likely wireless) to the car stereo, making the car just another location on your home network. That would work but I think would still be beyond the capabilites of a lot of people out there. Maybe not, but the memory card seems much easier and is a technology that most people already know how to use.

However it's done, though, I think the combination of something like Audiofeast with the car stero would fundamentally change the entire radio business. Why wouldn't it? Like I said before, why wouldn't you want to be able to choose what you listen to on the radio if it could be cheaply and easily done? In fact if I was Clear Channel or Sirius or XM Radio I might be more than a little concerned. Just because Audiofeast hasn't been able to execute on this idea doesn't mean someone else won't come along and make it work. In fact I'd count it because it just makes so much sense.

But then, my predictions are usually wrong, or at least premature. I gotta tell ya' though, this isn't some future technology, and all that's needed is for someone to come along and put together the pieces.

And it would change everything.

The Secret Life of a News Junkie

"Don't go, Kimberly. Stay here with me. "

"No, no, I can't...It's too dangerous. If the insurgents find us there's no telling what they might do. We must go now."

"No one will find us. No one will hurt us as long as we have each other. Don't you know that? Can't you feel the passion burning inside? We'll be safe here. No one will come. It's just you and me."

"Oh, I want to stay. Really I do. If this were some other time, some other place...just hold me...hold me and tell me it'll be alright."

"I'll never let them hurt you. You know that. You'll be safe with me."

"I feel safe with you. I ..."

(BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!)

Alright, alright, shut up already. Damn alarm clock! Oh man, and I was having a great dream too. Me and Kimberly Dozier...I've had that dream before , but this time I almost...oh, nevermind. Something about a beautiful woman in a flak jacket, in a hostile land, surrounded by danger, that just gets inside a man and stirs him all up. Oh well, time to get blogging.

(Why couldn't I have slept just 10 more minutes longer? Damn, that dream was getting good.)

So what about these kids today, huh? That's always a good topic for a blog. I mean, where do they get their money? Designer clothes, fancy cellphones, $500.00 Ipods, where do they get the cash to pay for all this stuff? I tell ya', when I was a kid we had hand-me-downs, and transistor radios, and if you wanted to SMS someone you went over to them and tapped them on the shoulder. But these kids today, geez, they think that money just grows on trees.

Actually, they don't think money grows on trees, they just think that buying something isn't the same thing as paying for it. Not when you have credit cards, at least. I wonder whoever gave them that crazy idea? Yeah, you're right, I know who gave them that idea - George W. Bush. Just today I saw him on TV telling the nation how we're going reform Social Security and we're not going to pay for it. That's what I like about ol' dubya, just keep things simple. I like some of his other policies too, like "We're going to fight a war and we're not going to pay for it" or "We're going to protect the homeland but we're not going to pay for it". Consistency is the key, and he sure is consistent.

"Perhaps you could meet me in the bar later for a drink."

"Sorry, I don't date weird men. "

"No, you don't understand. I'm not weird...not really. The weirdness is just a mask I use to disguise my despondency and antipathy for all that is base and corrupt, all that is malevolent and lying, all that is venal, villanous and wicked in this wanton and depraved gutter of perversity and turpitude that we call planet earth."

"Then you're really a reporter? Like me?"

"No. Wretched, yes...cynical, yes...but not a reporter."

"Oh, I see. "

"Kimberly, don't be frightened. Here among all this death and ruin, if it's still possible to hope, if it's still possible to believe in anything, believe in me now. Believe in this moment, this one true thing, the only true thing that has any meaning in this faithless, godless world."

"No, it's useless, and yet I feel..."

So I was looking at the car ads in the classifieds today for no particular reason, and it sort of dawned on me as I was looking at the price of one of those German luxury models that, y0u know, I could afford that. I mean, I'm not rich or anything, but if I was to sell off some of my mutual funds I could go down to the dealership and hand over that kind of cash for some fancy-shmancy car with automatic this and leather that and all the other doodads they're putting into cars these days.

But why?

I live in Silicon Valley and believe me I see plenty of people driving around in their 60, 70, 80 thousand dollar cars and I always wonder " Can they really afford that or are they just trying to impress me?", and if they're trying to impress me, why? Just once I'd like to see them up there on the Suze Orman show and see if they really have it all together like they pretend they do. Believe me, Suze would get to the bottom of it.

"Hello, Suze, my name is Penny. I'm a 36 year old woman making $50,000 a year with $2,345,000 in auto loans and credit card debt. My question is should I be paying off the debt or starting a savings account instead?"

"Well, Penny, Ive got to tell you. If I were you I'd got out in the backyard and hang myself."

(No, no, no, I'm just kidding. Suze Orman would never say that. Sylvia Plath might, but not Suze Orman. Actually, Suze would start psychoanalyzing. )

"Tell me Penny, why do you think you have all this debt? Isn't it true that you have all this debt because you're foster parents sold you to a Mexican prostitution ring when you were 4 years old, and now you're trying to make up for your feelings of abandonment by buying things you can't afford?"

"Yes, it's true. Oh Suze, I just feel like I'm sinking further and further and there's no way to get out."

Yeah, get some of these Silicon Valley hotshots up there with Suze and she'd sniff them out.

"You're leaving tomorrow, aren't you Kimberly?"

"Don't try to cling to something that could never last. We both know that we love our freedom too much to ever be tied down."

"Yes, I suppose you're right. Will I ever see you again?"

"Who knows. Who can tell what the future holds."

"Where are you going?"

"Wherever there are people struggling, I'll be there. Wherever there is deceit, treachery, and hypocrisy, I'll be there. Wherever there are people crying out for honesty and integrity and principle, I'll be there."

"You mean you're going to Washington?"

"Goodbye, Tony. "

"But wait-"

"Shhh...don't say anything. I don't know what I'd do if you did, and I must go. You understand, don't you, I must."

And with that she was gone. Was it something I did, or said? No, it just wasn't meant to be. Maybe if I drove a nicer car...

Standing On The Shoulders Of Giants

I met the young boy at the mall as he was fishing through the selection of $150.00 starter jackets.

"Are you Terence?" I asked.

"Yeah, that's me. They said I'm s'posed to talk to you."

"Well that's right, Terence. As you know Senator McCain thought you and I should talk about steroids...that is, you know, about just saying no to performance enhancing drugs."

"You know anything about steroids?"

"Well I know they're dangerous."

"Says who?"

"Well, doctors and scientists and people like that."

"You ever used steroids?"

"Well, no, but-"

"Yeah, that's what I thought. You probably don't know nothin' about steroids 'cept what you read in the paper, do you."

"Look, Terence, Senator McCain feels it's important that I educate you about-"

"Senator McCain? Has he ever used steroids? I mean, if I give him some money can he go score me some?"

"Don't be ridiculous, Terence. Just because you've never used steroids doesn't mean that you don't know how dangerous they are. You don't have to drink poison to know it'll kill you, right? You take these steroids and they make you big and strong, until 'BOOM' - one day your heart just stops beating."

"The governor of California took steroids and he ain't dead. He's the governor, man, with money and Hummers and a big house in Hollywood and all that. If steroids are so bad for you how come he's not dead?"

"You're missing the point here, Terence. -"

"No, man, you're missing the point. I know what you're trying to tell me. We have these guys coming around school all the time talking to us about how bad it is to be doing what we're doing. You ask me they're just wasting their breath. What they ought to do is just send around an undertaker and say 'You know kids, someday you're all gonna die' and I could say "Yeah, that's right Mr. Undertaker, someday I'm gonna be dead, but I plan on having a whole lot of fun before I go'. You know what I'm saying?"

"It's not that simple, Terence. There's a lot more to life than birth and dying. "

"I know that."

"No you don't. It takes time to learn that. It takes time to learn how to live with yourself, and accept yourself, and be truthful with yourself."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about Barry Bonds. How do you think he must feel living a lie like that? Having to lie all the time, and then having to lie about his lies and think up new lies to cover the holes in the lies he's already told. How do you think he feels inside?"

"I think he feels great. He's rich and famous and they got a great big room in Cooperstown all waiting and ready for him to move into."

"But it's a lie, Terence?"

"No, it's not a lie. Everybody knows he's using steroids. You honestly think anyone was suprised when he got up in front of a grand jury and admitted it. C'mon, people got eyes and they know when they're looking at something ain't natural. How can it be a lie when everyone knows you're doing it?"

"Because he said he didn't use steroids. He was lying."

"Yeah, whatever. It don't bother me none if he was lying or using steroids. You know why? 'Cause it don't matter. When you turn on ESPN or Fox Sports or whatever, do you see those guys getting up there and delivering sermons about truth and honesty and athletic purity? Hell no, they've only got one thing to sell and that's who won the game and who lost. That's what the audience is tuning in for, that's what the sponsors are paying for, and that's what the sportcasters give 'em. Nobody cares about how pure a victory it was, or how virtuous the athletes were. You buy the winners and sell the losers - that's how it is on Wall Street, that's how it is in sports, and that's how it is in life."

"There used to be a thing called sportsmanship, you know. I don't suppose you ever heard of that."

"Yeah, 2,4,6,8, who do we appreciate...I know all about that. So what. Maybe it used to be about sportsmanship, but now it's about the money. And I don't know about you, but I'll take the money. Heh, heh, heh, 'Show me the money!'. You know what I'm saying."

"No I don't. Does that mean you risk your life and your health for a little cash in your pocket? What good is money going to do you when you're dead?"

"It won't do me any good when I'm dead, but I'll sure have a lot more fun along the way. Besides, what do you know about steroids anyways? There's a guy I know down at the gym can benchpress 400 pounds. Can you benchpress 400 pounds?"

"I don't know, but I doubt it."

"Then what do you know about steroids, huh? The technology's here, man, and you can't make it go away. You can't put that genie back in the bottle, so don't talk to me about what to do. It's a new world full of new p0ssiblities, and I plan to take full advantage of all of my opportunities."

"And if you get caught, what happens then. What happens when they take all those opportunites away."

"How they gonna catch me, man? Huh? How they gonna test for something when they don't even know what it is they're testing for. And you know what, even if they do catch me what can they do? What they can really do to Barry Bonds anyways? No, you go tell your Senator McCain that we don't need no educating about steroids. The guys down at the gym know a lot more about it than he ever will."

And with that the boy walked away.

From The Ol' Grab Bag

The fun of watching Jeopardy comes when you know an answer that none of the contestants on the show do. You know, when you're sitting on the couch saying to yourself "What a bunch of dummies. They don't know that? Everybody knows that. I can't believe they don't know that. I should be on that show. Geez, what a bunch of maroons."

(What can I say, Jeopardy just brings out the worst in me)

Lately, though, Jeopardy has been no fun because of that Ken Jennings guy. I don't know if you caught any of the shows these past few months, but that guy was really irritating. I mean, he knew everything, and he knew it so fast that you didn't even get a chance to hear the question before he was buzzing in with the answer. And that's why I'm so glad that after winning his 2.5 million dollars, Ken Jennings finally lost! Yeah, so long Ken, can't say it's been fun because I was getting pretty sick of you.

But if you watched the show on Tuesday night, you just had to notice that something seemed a little wrong. I don't want to say the fix was on, but it was a little fishy. He was getting beat to the buzzer and missing questions, and in particular he missed a Daily Double question about the name of the town in France that Patton's Third Army liberated at the Battle of the Bulge in 1944. I mean, that's a pretty simple question and I'm sure that most people know the answer, but for some reason the 2.5 million dollar man couldn't come up with it. Even though I've got no solid evidence and I doubt that the producers or anyone on the show was involved, I'd say KJ took a dive.

That's my theory, anyways, and if there was some hanky-panky going on, well, who cares? At least he's off the show and I can get back to hurling insults at the half-wit contestants again.

(No, I'm just kidding)

(No I'm not)


Well, here's one of those nights where I feel like blogging but don't have anything to blog about. That would stop a lesser man, but not I. Let's see, what can I blog on.

Unfortunately I don't do book reviews or I'd talk about this great little mystery I just read, but like I said I don't do book reviews. A lot of blogs do, but not this one. It was pretty good, though, called "The Cabinet of Curiosities " by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. It's the second book I've read by those two and I've really liked 'em both.

Oh, I know, I can talk about E-books. For some reason E-books never seemed to catch on and I can't figure out why. They're superior to regular paperbacks in so many ways, but I guess people tend to lean on the old and familiar. However, E-books do have their advantages, with the biggest being that you can read them in the dark (particularly good for mysteries). It's just a different experience reading an book in a dark room with the glow of your PDA casting ominous shadows all around, and I think once you get used to it it's hard to go back to turning on a reading light to read. Too much glare, too much reality intruding on your little imaginary world for my taste.

E-books also allow you to do other neat things like adjust the text size and the background color (I prefer large black text against a light gray background) and they also integrate well with electronic dictionaries so that you can look up unfamiliar words on the fly with just a tap or two of your stylus. Best of all, you don't have to deal with the bulkiness of paperbooks when you have an E-book - everything is stored electronically on your memory card or hard drive.

But E-books never caught on, and though they'll probably never disappear entirely, I doubt that we'll ever as extensive a selection of E-books as we do their paperback brethren. Oh well, it's a good idea that never found an audience.

Anything else I can talk about...hmmm, well Bush just got back from a fence-mending trip to Canada. Not that there' much to say about that but it does raise that age old question that we Americans have to deal with from time to time. Namely,

Does Canada Matter?

The answer, of course, is "hell, no" - Americans don't care about Canada, and I've raised the point before, but not in this blog. So I'll raise it again. I bet if you took a random sample of everyday Americans and asked them "What is the capital of Canada?" probably only 6 in 10 could tell you (It's Ottawa, by the way). If you then asked that same sample of Americans "Who is the Prime Minister of Canada?" I doubt if even 1 in 10 could tell you (give up? It's Paul Martin. Yeah, I never heard of him either). But to go even further, if you asked that same sample of Americans "Where is Canada?" I bet you not a single one of them could even find Canada on a map if it didn't have a little arrow pointing north.

That's just the plain and simple truth.

But I love Canada, sort of. I've visited it many times and even drove the Trans-Canada Highway a couple of times in my younger days. It's a great big beautiful country, and beyond that I can't say very much.

No, I must have some impressions of Canada that I can impart.

Well, let's think. Like I said it's big, temperate in the summer and colder than #&*$ in the winter. Uh, let's see, oh yeah you can drive 110 in Canada, only problem is they're on the metric system up there so 110 isn't nearly as fast as you might think. At least I didn't think so, and I think most Canadians agreed because when I drove through there they were all seemed to be doing 130 or 140. They like to drive fast, I guess, but then it's a big country.

What else, what else...oh yeah, they have mounties in Canada. Unfortunately, they don't wear Dudley Do-Right costumes or anything like that, just regular old uniforms like everyone else. That was kind of disappointing.

They have lots of Tim Horton's in Canada. In fact, you can't drive 10 miles (oops, sorry, I meant kilometers) without running into one. They're kind of like the McDonalds of Canada except they sell donuts instead of burgers. I even tried one once, but, and no offense Canada, I didn't think they lived up to the billing.

You know what's strange about driving across Canada, though. You can be driving along just minding your business when all of a sudden you get east of Ottawa and everything starts turning weird. And by weird, I mean french. Suddenly the stop signs all say "arrete", the street names become "rue this" or "chemin de la that", the bridges become "ponts" and some signs just don't make any sense at all. I never did figure out what that "a droite" or "garde de droite" or whatever it was meant, but it must not have been important.

Anyways, they just start changing things on you without any warning. I always thought it would be more "tourist friendly" if they would provide us language-deprived Americans with little information centers where they could sort of brush up on some of that french we haven't had to use since high school. It would be helpful but instead they just pick you up and throw you in the deep end, so to speak, and there you are left to fend for yourself in some weird foreign country.

Only it's not really a foreign country...it's Canada.

Luckily, if you keep driving east or just detour south back to the States things return to normal after a while, but you need to keep your wits about you at all times when you drive up there, because I tell ya' things can change at any time.

And that's about all I can say about Canada at the moment. I didn't mention the prices but when I was there they were obscene. Especially the gas, and Canadian gas stations are the only ones I've ever visited where they had actual loan officers on the premises to arrange that long term loan you're gonna need to finance your next tank of gas. Something to keep in mind, anyways.

Not much of a blog tonight, huh? Well considering what you paid I guess a media report, a book review and a travelogue are worth the cost of the subscription. Still it's amazing how a person can drone on and on and still have nothing to talk about. Reminds me of a girl I knew in high school, but let's not go there right now.