Not just a Liberal, but a Libertine!

11:50 pm - Forwarding Address

I never had anything bad to say about LiveJournal. I've been pretty happy here, really. But it's time to move on. Time to start using the domain name that we registered. So here we go. New, Blogger powered blog is available at: www.jasnmis.com/jas. Please give me a visit, let me know what you think. I promise to be more prolific in my posting there, as well.

Jason

08:49 am

Today is going to be all about taking it slow and steady...

I've got class this morning, then a break and then a study hall to finish up my homework. Thence on to work, in the snow. That's where slow and steady come in. Because, while the roads remain mainly clear (amazing just how much heat asphalt can hold), it's been snowing steadily for the last twelve hours.

People everywhere say that the weather is messed up wherever it is that they live. The homily that goes "don't like the weather? Just wait five minutes..." is bandied about in every corner of the globe, or at least in the lower 48 states of the US...and yet, it's only really in Colorado that I've experienced that. I was wearing shorts last weekend. This weekend, it'll be sweaters again. And, if the forecasters are right, 70 degrees on Monday. Welcome to the land of random weather.

So, yes, slow and steady. Finish my homework, have a leisurely day at the office, thence home to cook up a batch of chicken enchiladas and to relax! If all goes well, I should also be able to get most of the housework done (laundry and the like) before the weekend even starts, leaving much more time for vegetation and game playing and generally good relaxation time. It's not like there's much point in going out into the snow if we don't have to.

Note to self: check on rations for the weekend!

For now, the snow falls, my conference call calls, and all is relatively well with the world.

09:53 am

Just a quick followup to the last post...

It went from 24 straight hours of rain (glorious!) to 18 straight hours of snow. Welcome to April in Colorado. No big deal, really. It was warm enough that it never once coated the roads, just the grass and rocky areas. It was gone, entirely by Saturday night or Sunday morning.

And then, last night, surprise blizzard! Not much accumulation, but a lovely one-hour power outage right around bedtime, and the whole world is frosted nicely, except, again, the roads are utterly clear. Got to love the heat-holding potential of black asphalt.

12:53 pm

Yesterday, while having dinner with friends down the block, it began to rain. No surprise, the weatherbeings had been predicting it for days, and ominous black clouds were rolling in from the west.

So far as I can tell, it's never entirely stopped raining since, some eighteen hours of straight rain and drizzle. It's making me homesick.

I grew up in Salem, Oregon. There were weeks there during which we never saw the sun, trusting that it was still there because the clouds got lighter in color at appropriate times. Things would never, ever really dry out, except over the summers, and even then not to the degree that they do here in Denver.

I miss it, most often when it's twelve hundred degrees outside, and no matter how dry it is, it's miserable. I long, then, for seven to ten days of gray skies and constant water in the air, mud puddles on every corner, grass that's green and squelches under your feet, and the notion that, once you're done being outside, you can go inside, put on clean, dry socks, cook up some buttered toast and hot cocoa, and throw on some Bill Cosby comedy albums. I have no idea just how many weekend days I spent doing just that, when I was a boy.

My parents have decided to come and visit us, this June. I'm really excited to see them, seeing as it's been years, but part of me wishes that, instead of them coming here at the beginning of high summer, it was us going to visit them, right around October. The fantastic part of my brain says that somewhere, probably up in the attic, there's a stack of LPs with scratches in them of everything Bill Cosby ever reocorded, and I'll find a can of something to make hot cocoa with in the cupboards in the kitchen.

03:48 pm

Nicked from jeliza

You are a Dynamic Assertive: Charismatic,
nonconformists, creators of social change:
Dynamic Assertives, while they may be
trendsetters and revolutionaries, are basically
looking to control only their own lives, not
others'. They know what they believe in and
why, and what they don't believe in and why,
because these are the types of things they
think about. They are conceptually creative
and process-oriented.


What is your Natural Life Energy?
brought to you by Quizilla

11:01 am - Must be a good sign...

When I started at my current job, I had a desk in the middle of the main hallway. Everyone walked through my "office" to get anywhere. We joked about putting up some yellow tape on the floor to create 'walls' for it, in the style of Les Nesman from WKRP.

A couple months back, I moved into the old lab space. It's a huge cubicle, but not really all that private, as there are still public use computers that share my space.

Today, I got approval to move into a recently abandoned cubicle, and Gary, my boss, volunteered to hand-down his 2-drawer filing cabinet to make the transition a smooth one.

I'm not sure if it's just a good sign, you know, moving up in the world...or if I'm like a hermit crab, periodically shedding my shell when I get too big for the one I'm given.

11:50 am

I've been trying to figure out just what my earliest memory is.

I've got some really vague recollections of playing with a little kid whose house stood behind ours, back to back, sharing a side street. I can't picture him or his family at all, and they moved away before I started gradeschool.

There was a girl down at the other end of my block that would come over and play, or vice versa, when I was fairly young as well. She, too, moved away before I was old enough to go to school. I remember her name was Tammy, and that once, in a small wading pool in our back yard, she tried to flash me by dropping her bikini bottoms. Nobody that knows me now would believe it, but I actually turned away, embarassed to see. Lord knows what would have come of me had I been bold enough to look.

Both of those memories fall between '73, when we moved to Salem, Oregon, and '76, when I started attending Washington Elementary School.

I have another memory, one from first grade, and it's in the playground. We had a set of really large sewer pipes that had been laid out in a rough triangle, with an even large pipe set on it's end in the middle of the triangle. They were painted in bright, solid colors, though I only recall for certain that the center pipe was blue. We called it "playing in the pipes" at the time.

Other students, more industrious than we, had brought out magic markers and had written things on the inside of the pipes. I recall that there were three symbols right about dead middle of one of the horizontal pipes (the green one, if I recall correctly), and one of the three was a triangle, and we pretended that they were the buttons that would activate our space ship. It's my earliest memory of playing at being in space, though certainly not my last.

Some memories I can only place in time by the people that were around then. I must have been pretty young, for example, when my sister's best friend would ride her ten-speed over to our house to hang out. It was before they were sixteen, and able to drive, so that would make me younger than eight. The only reason I recall the ten-speed? I used to write little love notes to my sister's friend and leave them, like parking tickets, on her handlebars.

Another early crush, and one that I was so embarassed about, was Jana McCloud. Blonde and cute and blisteringly inteligent (even at the age of seven, I knew what was really important), I adored Jana. She moved when we were maybe eleven or so, and then moved back during middle school, so that I could crush on her again. And again she left and came back, this time in highschool, so that I could have enough courage to ask her to dance with me at the one and only dance I ever attended. I honestly doubt she ever knew that I even remembered her from TAG (Talented and Gifted) in 4th grade.

I really do wish I knew when this happened, because it's too funny to talk about. My friend Jim was goofing, said he was going to snort some Red Hots-- the little, red, cinnamon candies-- and kept putting them up to his nose and inhaling. We all laughed, and Marc said "keep that up and you'll end up with one stuck in your nose." Not thirty seconds later, Jim inhaled a bit too hard and lo and behold, "Oh, aah, it's stuck in my nose!" More laughter and Marc then proceeded with his prescient play-by-play. "You'll never be able to blow it back out," he opined, and Jim proceeded to prove him right. "Next thing you know, it'll start to melt," was followed by a whimpering cry, "Aargh, it's melting, and IT BURNS!"

Jim, not surprisingly in retrospect, dropped out of school in highschool, got his GED, joined the Marines and drove a semi for them for a living, after marrying a girl pregnant with another man's child. Odd duck, our Jim.

I'm not sure why I'm wandering down memory lane like this, but if you're reading this, and you get any sort of enjoyment out of it, please drop me a comment. I'm curious if I've got the materials yet for a book. :)

11:11 am

Sometimes, I wish I was a popular journal writer. I wish I had at least a few fans that tuned in daily, hoping against hope that I'd update my journal, and willing to start some insightful discussion about issues that I'd brought up recently. Or even spin-offs of ideas.

And then I read the comments at Pamie's Site and I think that instead I'd prefer to stay in the dark. Yeesh! One flip, sarcastic, albeit heretical joke and her comments board turns into a place where the majority are sane and wonder what the issue is and the vocal minority are all up in arms.

For what it's worth, I agree with Pamie. It's a good thing that Passion got bumped out of the number one spot at the box office, but similarly, I agree with Shadowboxer from the same thread, that I'm happy about that for the same reason I was happy when Titanic fever went away. Neither movie's success makes me happy, because the content is not my cup of tea, and far better that something else cleanse it from being constantly brought up in my vicinity.

Similarly, I agree with Pamie about censorship. It's time for the FCC to give up the bad fight. All the world outside our borders looks upon is with something akin to befuddlement: Why are they so worried about words and nudity when the real problem is our fixation on violence. Now, I'm no saint; I watch more than my fair share of violent media (hell, we just bought the Die Hard trilogy, and it's not exactly calming or peaceful).

Where do Pamie and I disagree? It's the whole Howard Stern thing...inteligent he may be, but funny, not really. Didn't he get the memo? Scatological humor is only funny when it's being done by badly crafted animated children.

09:51 am - Sick and Tired of being sick and tired

Three days into it, and I'm really tired of being sick. I believe the technical term for what I've got is The Crud. Headaches, body aches, general headcold symptoms. I can hardly wait for it to move into my lungs and turn into bronchitis.

After going for Chinese last night with the neighbors [the best Chinese food I've had in the state of Colorado, at the Great Wall in Brighton, Colorado. Totally unexpected in the middle of the sticks.], I spent most of my evening watching TV and reading online journals. I had instructed TiVo to record Mel Brooks' History of the World, Part One, but it was on AMC, and therefore butchered by the censors. Why couldn't it have been on FMC? They censor nothing!

Anyway, when that petered out, I turned to VH1. This weekend is apparently a celebration of Heavy Metal, and thus they showed The 40 Greatest Hair Bands and When Metal Ruled the World. It was a nostalgic evening for me, and made me realize that I really liked a great deal more hair metal than I'd ever been willing to admit. I think it must be like people that were teens during the 70's and disco. After '79, nobody wanted to admit that they enjoyed disco music, nor that they'd ever worn the awful clothes of the 70's.

In much the same way, I repressed my memories of being a fan of hair metal. Understandable really. Who wants to admit that they'd ever enjoyed the music of Faster Pussycat or Britny Fox or, god forbid, Enuff Z'Nuff. I think that it was a defensible defense mechanism.

10:30 am

How many companies would stop outsourcing their low-end jobs to other countries if they couldn't deduct the expense on their taxes? Isn't that the reason that they can deduct those expenses, because the government knows they'll get to tax them anyway, when the employees pay their income tax. If, on the other hand, those employment monies go out of the country and are never taxed, they shouldn't count as a deduction, right?

Of course, that means you'll also have to remove any tax breaks for paying other countries companies to do things for you as well, or they'll just add a layer of complexity and spin off other companies just to handle the outsourcing.

Why doesn't this work?

08:53 am

So I'm laying at home, feeling miserable. Flu, I'm guessing. Headache, body aches, stuffiness, the whole gamut.

And we all know just how crappy daytime television is. Especially for a guy that has a hard enough time finding something on during prime-time.

I didn't think about it until after the fact, but appropriately enough, I popped The Princess Bride into the DVD player. Appropriate because the movie starts with Fred Savage being read the story by Peter Falk, because Fred is home, sick. With mismelis out of town, who better to read me a story while I relax and try to get better than Peter Falk?

09:25 am

Some ideas that have been bouncing around in my head lately...

- You that have read this space know that I'm all in favor of inclusive marriage; that is, letting gay and lesbian couples get married. Not just civil ceremonies, not just domestic partnerships. The full deal.

But, to play at devil's advocacy, how do we counter the panicked outcry from the more thoughtful of the religious right-- that it's the first step onto the slippery slope to allowing marriage, and the rights devolving therefrom, to groups of three or more?

It's not me that's worried. I'm friendly with polyamorous folks here and there, and have no beef with the notion...but the Right will definitely think that they're the next group that'll push for a modification of the laws to include them. And then, if we do include threes, do we include fours, fives and more? And what'll keep a progressive from marrying everyone he knows that's out of work and uninsured, just so that they can be covered by his insurance??

How do we make marriage be as open as it should be, without making it dangerously open to exploitation.

- On another topic: when you ask most Christians why is it that sin even exists, if he's all-powerful, they will tell you that free will is one of his gifts to us, and we're called upon to do good because we want to, not because we have to.

In light of that, I'd like to ask the Catholic Charities why they balk at being forced to offer contraception as part of their prescription benefits to their employees. The old way, where they'd not pay for contraception, forces people to behave in a manner that makes the church happy. By following the new ruling, they're giving people the chance to show, by free will, that they're good catholics.

- I read a good deal of progressive media online. As such, I think I can speak definitively when I say that the use of derogatory nicknames (something that I've been guilty of, even here) detracts from the strength of any enclosing arguments. So, the next time you're about to pepper a liberal screed with phrases like "Bush II" or "Dubya" or the like, remember that all you're doing making yourself appear even more polarized than he is.

Other phrases to avoid: "Bushies", "Bushinistas", "Right-Wing Conspiracy" and "Pretender In Chief"

- I mentioned this in discussion on walbourn's LJ, but I'll bring it up here again. Which is better? A weak, ineffective Democrat in the Whitehouse this year that allows the conservatives to come back into control almost immediately, or four more years of Bush, after which we could nominate Michael Jackson as the Democratic candidate and he'd be a sure thing winner. Which makes it much more likely that we could instead put a real progressive in the White House and keep him and his successors there for a while.

- Here's a poser for you. You've got two scenarios to choose from. In the former, the U.S. already has Osama in custody, and is just waiting for the opportunity to trot him out, oh, come October. In the latter, he's not yet in U.S. custody, but is found somewhere near the November general election.

Would it be prudent for Bush to sit on the find until after the election? I mean, if the man is captured anywhere near the election-- heck, any time between now and then-- it'll be seen as nothing more than a publicity ploy, the media will speculate wildly that he was being held in reserve until his revelation would be most useful. Cynics around the country will trumpet the same message. Heck, Osama'll probably tell the world that he's being used as a political chip, just to piss off the sitting president.

So, is it a good idea for him to keep Osama under wraps? Or will they defy the cynicism of the world and parade him in a public trial for the rabid antiterrorist american public?

02:22 pm - Uhm...duh!

Bush Backs Amendment Banning Gay Marriage - Reuters
Bush backs ban on gay marriage - Financial Times
Bush backs gay marriage ban - Sovo.com

Okay, I know that our news services think it's news if the president takes a crap, but please! What's next?

Sun Rises In East - CNN
News Flash: Earth Thought to be Roughly Spherical - People Magazine
Closing Eyelids Produces Temporary Reduction in Ability to See, Scientists Say - Ladies Home Journal

10:10 am

Watched the SAG awards last night.

Things I really appreciated:

1. The total shutout, regardless of number of nominations, of Everybody Detests Raymond.
2. Lord of the Rings for best ensemble movie cast. Of course.
3. If you're going to pick somebody for actress in a comedy, and you're going to choose Will and Grace as your vehicle of choice, Megan Mullally is your only real choice.
4. Kiefer Sutherland for 24. It's not my favorite show, but it's one of the better ones on TV right now.
5. Did we happen to mention Raymond? In your face, Romano!

I don't know...everyone says that Raymond is the most popular comedy currently running...and yet, I can't stand it. Maybe it's just not meant for me, because, you know, I hated Home Improvement with a purple passion too, so go figure.

Bad things about the SAG awards:

1. Actually starting to wish we paid for HBO. No, not for Sex and the City. That's not my cup of tea...but heck, Angels in America was lauded by everybody!
2. Melissa Gilbert. Holy shit, what was wrong with her?

01:55 pm

I just read an article, at a website that openly admits to conservative viewpoints, and as there was no method that I could find on their website to respond to it, I figured I'd use my own little pulpit here to expound on "liberal" media and how they've tended to treat the SF same-sex marriages (a deliberate challenge to a law) differently than they did the posting of the ten commandments in a public building (another challenge to a law).

I should mention two things: first, I know that my take on this will absolutely not change the minds of most conservatives. Also, I know it's odd that I would have stumbled onto this particular article-- you can thank Google News for my varied reading material.

Now, why would people hold up the deliberate violation of a law, passed by "a majority of the people of California" as a model for civil disobedience and the right way to go about changing what some see as an unjust law, while those same people had the harshest of criticism for Judge Moore and his placement of a permanent monument to the ten commandments in the courthouse, a similar stance on a law that he saw as wrong.

Let's look at how these things were handled, shall we?

First, SF's Mayor Newsom announced his decision to allow same-sex marriage licenses to be issued publicly, asking for people to come, over a holiday weekend, and participate. Judge Moore had his monument installed over, if I recall correctly, also over a holiday weekend, when the courthouse was closed to anyone that might have commented on it. Interesting. Both were deliberately breaking the law, but it was the judge that was so sure that he was going to cause trouble that he had to do his work on the sly, when nobody was looking. Very interesting.

Second, opening up marriage to all couples, regardless of their gender or orientation is an inclusive, embracing act. It intends to make everyone feel welcome and a part of society, instead of forcing them to live in fear of 'the majority'. Putting a religious monument in a courthouse is divisive. It sets a mentality of 'us against them' with the 'us' including christians, jews and muslims - anyone, really, that reveres the Old Testament. And that might well be the majority of people in the United States. But it leaves a minority, those that follow other faiths, or none at all, wondering just what manner of justice awaits them at the hands of their non-coreligionists.

It's not hard to see why Mayor Newsom's actions are seen in such a positive light, while Judge Moore's actions were not. Sometimes, common sense is just more important than legality.

08:56 am

I've been reading, here and there, reports about Mel Gibson's new vanity flick, "Passion of the Christ," and all the furor that's been aroused by it.

As a non-christian and a non-jew, it's interesting to me how many people are worried about the portrayal of Jews as the killers of Jesus. I'm a logical guy, so first, let's assume Jesus really did exist. When I think about it, I say "sure, in the story, Jews killed Jesus. Who else was supposed to kill him, precisely? He was, after all, preaching primarily to Jews, and converting Jews to his faith, in a land peopled by Jews. Would it be better if he were somehow killed by Vikings?" I know, most people would like to think that it was just the Romans that did it, but even the gospels indicate that Jesus wasn't that big a deal to the Romans - just one more crack-pot. He even seemed somewhat conciliatory towards the Romans, with his comments about rendering unto Caesar and the like. So it's pretty obvious to me that, no matter what else christians might want to think, Jews did kill Jesus.

Where this becomes a problem is with the vast majority of christians, and you know the ones I'm referring to. The ones that don't even acknowledge that Jesus was a Jew in the first place, that he'd look more like Saddam Hussein than George Bush. They are the ones most likely to become enflamed. The world worries about them, and how, for them, The Passion of the Christ will be like an infomercial for the Klan.

So, what it boils down to is this: the concern over this movie is really much more a concern over the relative stupidity of middle america.

As such, I'm finally afraid, too.

08:26 am

From the UK Guardian Unlimited, regarding the United States:

To columnists in New York and Los Angeles, the fuss [over Janet Jackson's exposed breast] was baffling. In the conservative heartlands, however, the message seemed to be: "No sex, please - we're American."
...
This is a country in which Wal-mart, the biggest retailer, will happily sell guns, but bans racy lads magazines, partially obscures women's titles such as Cosmopolitan and Marie-Claire, and sells CDs with swear words bleeped out.

10:07 am

I've been debating, on and off, whether or not to try the Atkins diet again. I've got friends that are on it, and being successful with their weightloss, and I've not heard anyone that's gotten through the first two weeks actually bad-mouthing it at all.

Let me tell you why it would be just as hard as any other diet that's out there for me: selection. I've taken the documentation from the Atkins website, and trimmed out the food items that, while allowed, I would never voluntarily eat. This is what's left:

You may eat as much of the following as you like: Tuna, Chicken, Turkey, Beef, Pork, Lamb, Bacon, Ham, and Eggs. All should be fresh, rather than processed.

You may eat 3-4 ounces daily of: Cheddar, Gouda, Mozzarella, and Swiss.

You may eat 2-3 cups a day of: mushrooms, celery, jicama, and lettuce.

You may replace one of the cups of vegetables above with a cup of: bamboo shoots, snow peas, broccoli, string beans, turnips, water chestnuts, cauliflower.

You may eat any herbs and spices, so long as they contain no carbohydrates.

You may eat salad dressing, but oil and vinegar or lemon juice is preferred. For salad dressings, they must contain no added sugar, and have no more than two grams of carbohydrates per tablespoon.

All oils that are liquid at room temperature are okay, with canola and butter being prescribed as best.

Sweeteners include Splenda (sucralose), saccharin, cyclamate and acesulfame-K. No natural sweetener that ends in “ose” should be used, but maltitol is okay. Aspartame is to be avoided if possible.

Beverages include: water, broth/bouillon, and diet soda

10:33 am

I've just been informed of the brouhaha over the halftime show involving Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson. Apparently he was a little overzealous in his playacting and exposed one of her (reportedly pierced-nippled) breasts on national television in front of millions of viewers.

This only goes to underscore something that I considered yesterday, while peripherally watching the game. If television is all about ratings, because big ratings mean big advertizing money, why on earth haven't the big three networks used their consderable lobbying force to essentially undo every FCC regulation against nudity and sexual content on television. If there were a station that broadcast nothing but hardcore porn 24/7, and I mean broadcast, no pay per view, no premium channel, and no only outside of prime-time...They could show 24 minutes of commercials each hour, charge thousands of dollars per second for the privilege of having products advertized on those stations, and they'd take the entire 13-65 year old male demographic (plus assorted others) out of play on any other network.

Interestingly, this makes it seem that, contrary to what cynics have always believed, it's not just about the money. Apparently, it's also about the twisted set of 'morals' that America touts, where it's okay to punch, kick, shoot, knife, or even dismember somebody on television, but cussing and nudity are right out!

Is it any wonder we're in decline?

08:22 am

Just read an article this morning that stated that John Kerry would win the Democratic nomination, not because of any combination of issues, or even for the oft-debated "ability to beat Bush," but rather because of a combination of appearance and leadership charisma.

The author of the article (conservative viewpoint, at a conservative website) was of the opinion that, since Clinton, it's more important to have a certain "Clintonisma" to get elected than any other factor.

While I can see that having a level of charisma, and even of attractiveness, would be a boost into nomination, or even election, doesn't this fly right in the face of our current president? I find it hard to believe that anyone, Laura Bush included, finds George W. Bush attractive. I can't speak to his charisma, his stance on issues I hold dear being enough to entirely distort my personal impression of the man, but on attractiveness alone, he should never have made it as far as Dan Quayle in the Republican Primary.

Oh, but I did forget about the legacy factor. His father's dubious good name likely counted for more political coin than any physical factor did.