Communist Strike Again

A (sort of) look at tipping from a sociological point of view or some interesting observations from a bartender:
“The only times I really don’t make money with a full house are the kiddie shows—sixteen and over—a Latino music show, or anything kind of legendary that draws old Communists. They are, by far, the worst tippers.”

What a shock - communist don't tip well!
(link fixed)

Your Score: Rabbit

You scored 15 Ego, 19 Anxiety, and 15 Agency!

IT was going to be one of Rabbit's busy days. As soon as he
woke up he felt important, as if everything depended upon him.
It was just the day for Organizing Something, or for Writing a
Notice Signed Rabbit, or for Seeing What Everybody Else Thought
About It. It was a perfect morning for hurrying round to Pooh,
and saying, "Very well, then, I'll tell Piglet," and then going
to Piglet, and saying, "Pooh thinks--but perhaps I'd better see
Owl first." It was a Captainish sort of day, when everybody
said, "Yes, Rabbit " and "No, Rabbit," and waited until he had
told them.

You scored as Rabbit!

ABOUT RABBIT: Rabbit is generally considered Clever by his many friends and relations. He is actually a much better reader and writer than Owl, but he doesn't consider it worth mentioning. Instead, Rabbit's real talent lies in Organizing Plans. He organizes rescue parties, makes schemes to reduce Tigger's bounciness, and goes on missions to find out what Christopher Robin does when he's not at the Hundred Acre Woods. Sometimes, however, his Plans do not always go as Planned.

WHAT THIS SAYS ABOUT YOU: You are smart, practical and you plan ahead. People sometimes think that you don't stress or worry, but this is not the case. You are the kind of person who worries in a practical way. You think a) What are my anxieties about and b)what can be done about them? No useless fretting for you. You don't see the point in sitting around and waiting for things to work out, when you could actually work them out today and save yourself a lot of time and worry. Your friends tend to rely on you, because they know that they can trust you help them work things out.

You sometimes tend to be impatient with people who are less practical in their ways. You don't have much patience for idiots who moan about things but never actually DO anything about them. You have high expectations of everyone, including yourself. When you don't succeed at something, or when something goes wrong despite your best efforts to prevent it, you can get quite hard on yourself. You need to cut yourself some slack and accept that everyone has their faults, even you, and THAT IS OKAY. Let yourself be faulty, every now and then, for the sake of your own sanity.

via Rabbit

Cold War Drama

Ridley Scott is scheduled to direct the 1986 Reykjavik ballistic missile summit between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev.

Scott took on Alien, Gladiator, and Hannibal - I guess he's ready to take Gorbachev & Reagan.

via Kottke

Bush, Saddam, and the 9/11 Connection

Whenever someone who is not a conservative has found out that I lean to right I am always put in a position to defend Bush. I'm not a huge fan of Bush, I see his handling of the war (the first four years), the runaway spending, his handling of illegal immigration, and his disastrous appointments to important posts as disappointing. It's frustrating to defend someone you have problems yourself with.

The handling of the war is really what frustrates me the most. I was ambivalent about my support for the war when it began, later I thought it was the right decision handled completely the wrong way. In past wars when things weren't working the President would fire those that were ineffective, Bush just refused to severe ties with people who he saw as loyal.

David Frum writes:

The indifference to quality of personnel - always a problem - has now become the defining characteristic of the administration. The president continues to imagine he is pursuing one set of policies. But because he allows retiring principals to be succeeded by their deputies, and then those deputies to be followed by their deputies, he has passively acquiesced in allowing his administration to be staffed by people who regard his policies as at best impossible, at worst actively wrong. And then he is surprised when his administration does the opposite of what he wished! Of course it does! If you won't steer the car, it won't go where you want!

Where did things go wrong?

My own personal belief is that the first and most decisive error was the choice of Condoleezza Rice as National Security Adviser. The president chose two powerful national figures as Secretaries of Defense and State....Whoever the president chose, however, it was inevitable that State & Defense would clash. They always do. He needed a strong figure at NSC to broker those clashes. Instead, he chose the weakest NSC adviser in that institution's history. The result: a total breakdown of policy coordination. Millions of words have been written about the bad planning of the Iraq war. To my mind, though, the real puzzle is the failure of the president to act to correct those errors after they were exposed. It was apparent as early as the summer of 2003 that the war had gone wrong. Yet not until the summer of 2007 did the administration act in a serious way to change course. Rumsfeld wouldn't rethink - and Rice was too timid and ineffective to force him.

Frum's column is partly a response to Bill Kristol's article on how badly the administration has handled the PR of the report that links Saddam Hussein and Al Queda.

Relying on a leak of the executive summary, ABC News reported that the study was "the first official acknowledgment from the U.S. military that there is no evidence Saddam had ties to Al Qaeda." There followed a brief item in the Washington Post that ran under the headline "Study Discounts Hussein, Al-Qaeda Link." The New York Times announced: "Study Finds No Qaeda-Hussein Tie." NPR agreed: "Study Finds No Link Between Saddam, bin Laden."

And the Bush administration reacted with an apparently guilty silence.

But here's the truth. The executive summary of the report is extraordinarily misleading. The full report, released Thursday night, states, for example, on page 42: "Saddam supported groups that either associated directly with al Qaeda (such as the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, led at one time by bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri) or that generally shared al Qaeda's stated goals and objectives." In fact, as Stephen F. Hayes reports in this issue, the study outlines a startling range of connections between Saddam and various organizations associated with al Qaeda and other terror groups.....
The rise of Islamist fundamentalism in the region gave Saddam the opportunity to make terrorism, one of the few tools remaining in Saddam's "coercion" toolbox, not only cost effective but a formal instrument of state power. Saddam nurtured this capability with an infrastructure supporting (1) his own particular brand of state terrorism against internal and external threats, (2) the state sponsorship of suicide operations, and (3) organizational relationships and "outreach programs" for terrorist groups. Evidence that was uncovered and analyzed attests to the existence of a terrorist capability and a willingness to use it until the day Saddam was forced to flee Baghdad by Coalition forces.

It's now the accepted wisdom that Suddam had nothing to do with Al Queda, all the news outlets that blared the headline of the "no connection" dominate popular opinion. So now if I bring up the facts of the study with people who oppose the war, they will laugh in my face and, as the lefties love to say, - it will be all Bush's fault.

Heh

If this is "struggling middle class" then I too really, really want to be part of this demographic. Alas, by these standards I'm actually poor, actually by any standards I'm poor, but mostly because I suck at managing money!

Obama's Tax Returns for the past eight years:

$240,505 in 2000
$272,759 in 2001
$259,394 in 2002
$238,327 in 2003
$207,647 in 2004
$1,655,106 in 2005
$983,826 in 2006

More 90's Nostalgia: Green Day

Before Green Day became the wankers they are today, they were actually fun to listen to.


I remember all the little boys on the math team loving this record. Being the only girl of course I had to like it too and I did. I also loved the color of the carpet in the video, although the actual video freaked me out when I was little.

This is probably my favorite line in the whole song:
I went to a whore
She said my life's a bore
So quit my whining cause
It's bringing her down

Hmmm

Probably profanity laced music shouldn't be to listened while at work.

A Wise Observation

A friend of mine made an astute observation about women and men:

1. Women are crazy.
2. Men are idiots.

It's a generalization, but I find it works in explaining how men and women act. Especially when it comes to one another.

So here is a fine example of men being quite idiotic.

"Young men just find it difficult to tell the difference between women who are being friendly and women who are interested in something more," said lead researcher Coreen Farris of Indiana University's Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences.

This "lost in translation" phenomenon plays out in the real world, with about 70 percent of college women reporting an experience in which a guy mistook her friendliness for a sexual come-on, Farris said.

See clueless. Science says so.
via Ace

The Dark Lord Is Coming (Title borrowed from an e-mail from Samtron)

So Karl Rove and I have a date it seems! He is speaking at Harvard on April 4 and I'm going to try to see him. Since like a normal person I don't have a calendar my blog will do as a good reminder.

A Little Bit of 90's Nostalgia

So I creep...I remember really having a hard time understanding the song when I was in sixth grade. I sure liked those pajamas though. And the plaid shirt tied around the hips - classic.

It's Like This Woman Has Heard Me Talk About Myself For Years

So I have this horrible problem of apologizing too much. Especially around new people or when I'm nervous. I think with people who I known for a long time it's pretty much under control. But it's my default setting - saying sorry.
It drives me nuts, I've been doing it since I was in elementary school. I've long come to the conclusion that I do it as an "excuse for my existence." I've been surely but slowly trying to control this "tick" of mine.
Along with saying "sorry," I also find it hard to say "no" to people. Most of my friends know this about me and will point out that I'm not required to do something just because they asked me to, thus letting me say no without too much consternation. I have also gotten better about saying no, mostly because I'm fed up and also I have great examples in my friends such as J. and G. who speak their minds freely and tell people what they really think. I admire this quality a whole lot - I've actually been joking about wanting to take a class where where I can learn how to tell more people "no."

Seems I'm not the only one. Psychotherapist Jo Ellen Gryzb has written a book on the subject. I don't believe in self-help books, but I might need to get this one. One of the worst adjectives someone can use to describe a person to me is "nice." That's like a synonym for "bland" or "boring" person. Often times people describe me as nice and I'm kind of sick of it. I rather not be nice. This year I'm going to work hard on trying to be the opposite of nice.

Gryzb believes the symptoms of niceness are everywhere: every time we let someone off the hook, can't say no, avoid conflict to keep the peace, feel guilty when we ask for something, and get roped into something we don't want to do. She also believes our tendency to over-apologise reveals a worrying undercurrent. "If an apology isn't genuine," she says, "psychologically you are saying you're ashamed of yourself. It's almost as if you are apologizing for your very being."

Also the whole "nice" thing doesn't jive with my point of you of the world, I think it is better when people are selfish. You are looking out for yourself and other people are looking out for themselves, it makes a world a better place because in the end your needs are met. As the Gezb says in the article, "I don't offer apologies or excuses, nor do I put someone else's needs before mine. Becoming less nice has made me a nicer person."



That's also why I blog.

How Does This Finding Explain Kissing Cousins?

I'm a strong believer that pheromones play a big role in how attracted we are to one another and it makes sense that the way we "process" pheromones through our nose. Certainly there were times I thought I liked someone, only to not like how they smelled. Seriously, take showers guys. (I know it's not that kind of smell the article is talking about.) But one thing is for sure, you can't fake attraction.

What sexual cues do our scents give off? For one thing, we are more likely to be attracted to people whose scent is dissimilar to our own. Family members often share similar chemicals, so our attraction to differing chemical makeup suggests that sexual cues evolved to protect close family members from procreating together.

via Hot Air

Also: It's nice that they named this nerve "O." Those scientists are sure "subtle."

When There Is Too Many Things To Do

I recently ended up sending a work related e-mail without double checking it. The whole day I was running around like a chicken without a head - so it's no wonder that I sent out an attachment with a single sentence:

Thanks Jxxxxx, have a great wee

Ooops. A tad bit embarrassing, good thing the recipient of the e-mail had a sense of humor about the typo.

On Racism

An excellent blog post by Rachel Lucas about racism. For a long time I have maintained that everyone is basically is a racist. Rachel takes the idea and makes excellent points, points I was too lazy dumb to make myself.

On the definition of racism she writes:

And the second definition? If everyone who has racial prejudice is a racist, then I think I’m on pretty solid ground when I say damn near every single human being on the planet right now is, in fact, a racist. There is absolutely ZERO difference between blacks and whites on that point and everybody knows it.

Read the whole thing.

Crap

I really should do some work. However, it's impossible at the moment.

"The World Must Be Peopled!"

I've written before about my favorite part of Much Ado About Nothing and mentioned it before in a post about my name, with an explanation about the pun of the play title.

Here's the actual clip from Youtube. I still love saying, "there's was a double meaning in that!" Because there usually is, although here there isn't (hence the reason it's funny.)
It's kind of amazing how oblivious Beatrice and Benedick are about their attraction to each other, the pour all their passion into hatred. However, because of the plotting by their friends they come to see each others not as rivals but as lovers. Thank G-d for friends?

Hope

I really don't understand the people who look at a politician who talks about "hope," and feel reassurance. To me hope should be left in the sphere of personal dealings, not serious things like politics, where you hope people use there intellect and not their emotions to determine who is the best candidate (but I know that for the most part it is all about how the candidate makes them feel).

Hope seems like a pretty ridiculous thing to invest in. From personal experience, hope rarely pans out, it's something one clings to as a last resort. So I find it kind of nauseating that rational, smart people talk about hope like it's something tangible, something they can take as proof of someone's qualifications.

Question of the Night

Am I watching Veronica Mars because I want to be Veronica? Or is it basically for the eye candy of Logan? The dude is smokin. Seriously.
Okay in truth it's the witty dialogue. But really having Logan doesn't hurt.

For Casca:

My New Love

I happened to catch Louis C.K. on Comedy Central this weekend and he is my new hero. So quotable and so true.

Here is a sample. I love how he bitches about his kids and wife.
Look for the part of him bitching about how horrible his wife is at storytelling (around 1:27).



I know so many women who just can't tell a succinct story (I include myself in the group). Their stories are always filled with meaningless details and pointless asides and last way too long. I think all women should take a story telling class. Maybe then once in a while someone will actually listen. Learn to stay on track, ladies.


On a different note duck vaginas - only 3percent of ducks have one (thanks Peter):



Classic observation on the Post Office:

Somewhat misleading headline

"Obama confronts racial division in US

That's the headline yahoo is using at the moment. Seems a tad misleading, sure the speech addresses racial issues, but is because of Obama's racist pastor. Oh well, it's not like it's a surprise the media is spinning the story.

On Travel Plans

"We should definitely do a Y Tu Mama Tambien type of road trip to Mexico, but minus the cancer and maybe the threesome."

The Warriors

This link is mainly for Jessica, Peter, and Ace.
It's a spoof on the late 70's movie about very theatrical gang members from Coney Island coming together with other gang members in the city and then fleeing through the streets of New Yorkto make it home safely. Getting scared by such scary things as attractive girls. If you haven't seen The Warriors, I highly recomended it, especially the commentary track. It's an incredible piece of cinematic deconstruction. /sarcasm

Picture of the Day

Enlarge it to see the cuteness of it. More here of the Sony Micro ads "Store the Impossible."

Via Ad Goodness

Pretty AND Funny

Vanity Fair decided they have found the new trend: women who are funny and kinda hot to look at - incredible. They also decided to put them on the cover of their magazine and even hired Annie Leibovitz to shoot it. Here's a video of the shoot.

Takeaway thought - why is Sandra Bernhard included in this story?

Plus: Hitchens reacts to the reaction (the article above) to his article about women not being as funny as men.

Via, this Onion piece does a lot better at actually reading and reacting to the article.

Stupid Stuff Famous People Say

Angelina Jolie was asked "whether she thinks twice about riding motorcycles and flying planes now that she's a mother."

To which Jolie thoughtful reply was, "I don't intentionally ride a motorcycle without a helmet. I will always be careful. But I live a bold life, and I'm a happy mother because of that."

How do you "unintentionally" ride without a helmet? Do you sleep walk unto a bike and then thirty minutes later wake up and realize that without intention you didn't put on a helmet? Seems like a nice way to cover your ass about not wearing a helmet from time to time. Also someone who describes their life as "bold" is a douche.

A Little Gem Worth Checking Out

A week or so ago I got to see Killer of Sheep, a black and white film made by Charles Burnett in 1977 for UCLA Master Thesis. I was skeptical about liking the film, whenever I hear someone call a film "lyrical" I fear it is going to be dull and very, very, slow. Not this film. Some of the images of the film are still stuck in my mind.

The film centers around Stan, who works slaughtering sheep and lives in South Central LA in the 1970's. The film is shot in documentary like style, the images come off as both poetic and intensely real (one could argue that the two terms are not necessarily antonyms.) I loved how the movie became a little snap shot of a time gone by, this is right before the gangs and the crack hit the neighborhood.

Anyway, I don't really know what to say about this film except I really enjoyed - there were several scenes that genuinely surprised me and made me laugh. I just checked and the film is available on netflix. Definitely a movie worth putting in your queue.

Something Amusing For the Weekend

This is probably old but it cracked me up.

On A French Kick

I've been on an international kick lately. The other night I brought Italian antipasto, a Spanish cheese, some German wine, and a French baguette for a mini- Project Runwaay party at my friend's Sam's house. We topped it off with some English Toffee for dessert.

Today I'm continuing the trend but in the fashion department. I totally look like I came off the plane from Paris. I'm wearing my Father's old sailor shirt (white and blue), with dark jeans, and black ballet slippers. On top of it I have a burgundy scarf and I just got my nails done also in dark burgundy...all I need is a baguette, a cigarette, maybe a glass of champagne, and a copy of International Herold Tribune to complete the look. Also, my Italian haircut has grown into a French bop.

Jewish Overachievers

Ace and I have this running joke about how Jews fucking rule. Basically Ace makes fun of me every time I point someone who is successful or good is Jewish. He sees it as a "superiority complex" on my part or racist. I just like seeing "my people" succeed, I don't think a little Jewish pride is being racist. But if that makes me a racist so be it, I actually think all people are racist, it's how you act on that racism that makes a difference in my mind. I admire how much Jews have accomplished in the last century and half despite the adversity. I'm actually reading a great book called the The Jewish Mystique. It tries to explain why Jews are perceived they are and also why for example Jews are disproportionately represented as Nobel Laureates and in say the medical profession. It's a fascinating look at the Jewish culture from a non-Jewish author, worth reading if you are interested in the topic. Once I'm done reading it I might have a better fuller review of it.

Anyhoo, it seems Jews or at least Westerners seem to out pace their peers in every field....

Not sure if Adam Gadahn was born Jewish, but let's say he was. He was a very high-ranking Al Qaeda terrorist, perhaps number five in the whole organization, which means, sadly, that even when it comes to Al Qaeda terrorism, Jews and Americans are just better at it than most Islamist fuckheads.

Can't you guys even manage a decent go at this without fucking it all up? We've left a whole field of human endeavor wide open to you -- true, a thoroughly stupid and evil field, but we figure that's about your speed -- and you're still being outpaced by the Jews and Westerners and Jew-Westerners.

Guns in the right hands.....

The terrorist asswipe was taken out by a yeshiva student with a gun:


Yitzhak Dadon, a student, said he was armed with a rifle and waited on the roof of a nearby building. "He came out of the library spraying automatic fire ... the terrorist came to the entrance and I shot him twice in the head," he said

The scene would be very different if Mr. Daddon didn't have a gun on him. Just think of Virginia Tech, deaths of innocents were avoided.

I really want to destroy the fuckers who are responsible for this.

(Yes, I'm pro-gun rights....Betka don't have a heart attack.)

Funny Bumper Sticker

On my way back from lunch I noticed a very aggressive driver (that was a nice way of saying he was driving like his pants were on fire -typical MA driver) in front of me. He was in a huge pickup truck and it was adorned with a few bumper stickers. The biggest one caught my eye: NObama in '08. In smaller letters it said: Say no to socialism in '08.
For some reason I found this to be really funny. He also had other bumper stickers about having a gun in the car and democrats being afraid to come on FOX news. But that one was my favorite. At some point we hit a bit of a jam because of road repairs - and the guy pointed a middle finger at someone - I have no idea why. But I had to admire this asshole - driving in super liberal Massachusetts randomly giving people on the road the middle finger, while loudly proclaiming he hates the Obmassiah.

Question

Why is it so much easier to clean someone else's room instead of your own. I used to clean my ex's apartment and actually like it. I got a weird sick enjoyment from tidying up and playing homemaker. However, when it comes to my own room - I like nice and neat don't get me wrong...but the actual process of picking piles of clothes from the floor fills me with dread.
Same goes with things I must do for myself - like make doctors appointments or run the extra errand at the store - for other people it's not a problem, when it comes to my own needs I procrastinate for months!
Jeebus, I need to take care of this bizarre behavior pronto. I read somewhere that the reason most people don't succeed is because instead of doing the most important thing on their "checklist" the end of doing all the non-important minutiae and only get to the important "thing" last, or when they are tired, or when it's completely past the due date. The author claimed that if we just did that one important thing and the little stuff later most of us would be much more successful people. Something to procrastinate ponder about.