Burn It Down

I'll Be Back

Not like you missed me, but I just ordered a new computer (Lenovo IdeaPad 14” HD, 320GB HDD, 4GB RAM, other shit I don’t understand or understand even less) because even though I like my wife’s MacBook Pro, the touchpad thing drives me crazy.

Also, if anyone has any experience with this … we just got a Time Machine/Airport with this new MacBook, but the wi-fi seems to cut out a couple times a day and we have to reset it to get it back. Any hints? Email is on the right sidebar.

Seriously, This Is Awesome, Right?

I’m having a Super Bowl party (I just decided this), and we usually make a few kinds of chili. Given that the Saints are in the game and I will mercilessly mock anyone who roots for the Horsies, I want to get crawfish. They don’t sell them around here, but I can get 10lbs for under 70$. I have no idea how to make crawfish, but I feel like I have to get them. Even if it’s just me, my wife and three other people, we can pack away some chili and 10 lbs of crawfish.

I won’t be stopped. I can’t be stopped. Crawfish is coming to my house. Geaux Saints!

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Okay, There Was That One Time ...

Never has giving away my money made me happier than that INT. Everything that sucks about him on that play. Green Bay fans simply nodded when that happened.

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INTs count

Because I was looking to give away money tonight, dammit.

His Pain Is Their Gain

thejerkstore:

I will donate $10 to Haiti relief every time the Saints sack Favre. Who will match me?

I am down. I hope I’m donating a week’s wages, which would not be impossible.* JOIN US!

*Also, I tried to reblog this shit a minute ago and it never showed up. Got to get this in before the first sack.

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I Don't Know Why I Suddenly Remembered This Story

When I was in college, it snowed a lot one night. There was a kid from India who had never even seen snow before who lived across the hall from me. Rohan apparently got up at the crack of dawn and woke up his room mates to help him build a snowman, and he even put a bunch of his clothes on it. He woke me up a few hours later and brought me outside, excitedly. As I saw the snowman, he turned to me and said: “I call it … Snow-han.”

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On The Nose

Talking at work about the election today.

“That’s what happens when you run a prosecutor for an important seat. She tried to plea bargain a fucking campaign.”

When You Try To Please Everyone, You End Up Pleasing No One; Or, I'm More Pissed Than Bummed

I was a Dean supporter in 2004. When he dropped out and Kerry emerged as the winner, I went to Ohio and worked for him in suburban Cincinnati. I hated it, but I knew I had to. He lost (as if I needed to remind anyone). I still think that Gov. Dean could’ve won that election. That week might have been the most important of my life, but that’s ground for a different post. This one is about Kerry … and about Martha Coakley.

I’m a Massachusetts Democrat. More than that, I’m a Massachusetts Democrat raised by a Massachusetts Democrat who was raised by a Massachusetts Democrat and a guy who has voted Democrat since 04, after voting Republican since Eisenhower (because Lincoln won the war*).

Pulling the D is as American as apple pie, baseball and mom. It’s what I (we) do. But I’m not surprised that the state went elsewhere. I’d love to detail the national party’s failures over the last year, but that’s probably unnecessary.

A year ago, I stood on the National Mall to watch Pres. Obama inaugurated. I thought that we had learnt the lesson of 2004 (that of the centrist, un-personable candidate who ran not to lose rather than to gain something for the people they chose to represent) and moved beyond running candidates not because they were the best person, but because they were least likely to lose.

When the Senate failed to move on anything without 60 votes, I figured they were afraid of a media maelstrom that would eclipse any good they might do, which would torpedo their chances in 2010. When the national party stood silently as tea parties and racist propaganda against the president and their constituencies organized and threatened, I thought they realized how fringe those demonstrating were —- better not to get in the mud than lost in it.

I’m not a third party guy. I never will be in our system. As in many other things American, there are only winners and losers in politics; there’s no sharing. But I could not support Martha Coakley in any way until this afternoon when I finally and begrudgingly voted for her**. Coakley certainly represented, this afternoon, the best chance to keep 60 in the Senate and ensure …

…

You know what? Fuck this. I am pissed. I’m pissed because the establishment threw their support behind a candidate who they thought would please the most people rather than the one they thought would be the best Senator. And now, they’re reaping that harvest.

In twenty years, Scott Brown will be consigned to a trivia question. He’ll be booted in two years when the regular election comes around. Sadly, the people who put him there —- the people who threw their money behind her even though she hadn’t proven that she could run a competitive campaign nor that she was vaguely prepared to be a Senator —- will still be making decisions that impact people who’s only input on the political process that controls their lives is a single vote.

The Democrats —- both the national party and the elites who control the state party that never thought they could lose control of the most powerful seat in the Senate (before it was Ted’s it was John’s) —- earned this shit. They won’t pay a price for it, just like the powerful never pay a price for being wrong. I can only hope they might feel like shit, just for one night —- or two years —- because this is their fault, not the voters. If only they paid a penalty as stiff as the people who will suffer because of their timidity and inability to govern.

* Line stolen from John Prine, but seriously, Pop once rationalized a vote for Mitt Romney against TK with “Lincoln kept the country together” without sounding completely out of touch. He was a reluctant Republican always. His income depended on the military-industrial complex (that Eisenhower so famously warned against) but he had regrets, at least since I remember. When my Gram and he would vote, they always used to say, “Time to cancel each other out.” They knew that’s what they were doing, and they still went. I feel like there’s a sisyphusean beauty in that —- more than sisyphusean.

** I have voted for Republicans in the past. Most of them have since been indicted or switched parties, which I find amusing, but I’m not necessarily beholden to blindly pulling a lever based on “duty” or “loyalty.”