January in NYC – say it soft and it’s almost like praying
After being harassed by the cunts known as the TSA because they couldn’t understand how someone with a ticket for dean cameron and a credit card for dean cameron and a couple of other cards for dean cameron could possibly have a drivers license for dean cameron eikleberry. they made me go back to jet blowme and reprint my ticket with dean eikleberry. then, i told them they were destroying the country so they searched my bags like i was a nigerian packing tnt in his anus.
Good thing that i had stuff saying ‘NIGERIAN SPAM SCAM’ on it, eh?!?
But… i had the entire back row to myself…
Until a woman who took a handful or two too many xanax and jack daniels’sses collapsed and hit her head on the armrest, knocking her doped up self out.
They had her lie down in the aisle for 2 hours. i couldn’t really go back to sleep because that’s what an asshole would do (shut up!) so i feigned interest until…
“Do you mind if this woman sits here?”
“Um… no… of course not…”
So i didn’t really sleep.
There’s snow here.
It seems that my cabbie, a recent graduate of the cliche nyc cabbie school, had been told that ice and snow improve traction and braking times but was confused as to why it didn’t seem to work like that. Instead of vomiting, I got out at 6th and waverly and walked a fair distance instead of the location i can’t mention because i’m staying at a paranoid famous person’s place!!!
Ah well.
I’m thinking that having a child later in life as I’ve done is a good thing because I can’t stop thinking about how cool it will be to see him experience new things… snow, for example. It’s going to be difficult to be the “seen-it-all” guy with a little guy so full of joy and wonder at all of those beautiful things.
There’s that, too.
Besides the last 5 or so hours, I have a delightful life. My wife is beautiful, sexy, funny, smart and makes cookies… and I have a son who only wants to laugh and be happy.
But really. Fuck the TSA. Right in the fucking neck.
I have an atom’s worth of understanding what it must be like to “drive while black”. An RCH of understanding. To be regarded as guilty before proven innocent is a horrible thing and that is how the TSA is destroying this country.
An extra $740 bucks
What you’re looking at is $740 in ones and change. Later this week, I’m going to put it in the bank and then maybe buy one of these just because I can.
Or, do something responsible with it. Whatever.
How did I end up with $740 in ones and change at the end of the year? Here’s how.
Never spend a one dollar bill. Ever. It forces you to save.
If you’re at 7/11 buying the best coffee in the world every morning like I do, you pay with a five. Then you put those 1 dollar bills aside. You can’t spend them the rest of the day. That way, if you want to buy something stupid, like gum or condoms (I jest), you must pay with a bill larger than a 1. It makes you think about the stupid little purchases you make every day.
Any 1 dollar bill gets put aside and at the end of the day, they all go in to a box. Along with the change you acquired that day.
I take the subway to work every day and it’s $1.25 each way, so I use quarters for that, but I still ended up with some quarters in my change box. The change came out to just over $100. If you can do remedial math, you can figure out how many one dollar bills I had.
I don’t actually have 640 one dollar bills. There were days where, for whatever reason, I did spend 1 dollar bills. Those days, I put a five in the box along with any ones I had.
That’s that. That’s my savings tip. Now, I’m going to end up on the “I Can Teach You To Be Rich” blog and be one of those assholes who talk about “the latte factor”.
The only thing I would do differently is use the sharpie to cross out “In god we trust” the day I put the bills in the box. I got bored. This also makes me realize, I have about 600 “Where’s George” bills to distribute.
Hmmm. I need more time.
Speaking of holiday cheer: Fuck the IRS. I mean, really. Fuck you guys.
Oh, speaking of fuck you guys: Here’s to CESD, my voice over and loser commercial agency who dropped me the week after Duncan was born. Fuck you guys. Way to destroy a career. Well played.
Happy Holidays everyone!!!
some good news, sorta
Downsize DC is embarking on yet another grassroots campaign (it’s what they do) to roll back the wildly unconstitutional USA PATRIOT ACT. (I exaggerate to clarify)
The good news is that some parts of the PATRIOT Act could expire at the end of the year. This provides an opportunity to roll back many of these dangerous provisions. Toward this end Senator Russ Feingold introduced the JUSTICE Act (S. 1686) on September 17, Constitution Day. JUSTICE stands for the Judicious Use of Surveillance Tools In Counterterrorism Efforts.
Great Pleasures
One of the great pleasures I encounter each week is my Saturday download. It’s the day I hook up my iPhone and download my nutty podcasts. My current favorite is Skeptoid, which is described by Brian Dunning, the host as “…a weekly science podcast dedicated to furthering knowledge by blasting away the widespread pseudosciences that infect popular culture.” He’s done a couple of really great episodes about “organic” food and locally grown produce, but the most incendiary has got to be Sarah Palin is not stupid.
The Palin episode of Skeptoid points out how those of us who pride ourselves for being critical thinkers have to remember to refrain from ad hominem attacks, especially against those who have different beliefs than ours. It’s great stuff.
My other favorite, which I may have mentioned here, is the Skeptics Guide to the Universe. Steven Novella and his brothers, Jay, Bob along with Even Bernstein and one of several “skepchicks”, Rebecca, are the skeptic superfriends. Each week, they sit around and wax poetic about things skeptical. I was interviewed by them last week at TAM7, which is a true honor. Steven Novella has got to be the busiest man in the world. He blogs daily at Science Based Medicine as well as his own, Neurologica blog. Plus, he’s a neurosurgeon and does legwork for the Skeptics Guide podcast. The man is smart. Crazy smart.
I also listen to three tech podcasts: the Zend php framework, Ruby on Rails & JQuery. It sounds a lot like English. I’m pretty sure it’s English.
There’s also a guy who decided to read all of the Robert Ingersoll writings. Great. Nutty.
I put the new ones in the “Sleep” playlist and listen to that as I fall asleep. By the end of the week, from waking up in the middle of the night, etc., I’m pretty sure I’ve heard everything.
Fascinating, isn’t it?
I’m going to write about TAM7 real soon. No, really.
I am not afraid
The freedom fighters at Downsize DC have a great campaign going on. Downsize DC wisely points out that 200 times more “innocent American civilians” have been killed in automobile accidents than terrorist attacks in the U.S. and that our leaders have grossly overreacted to the threat of terrorism.
Take a look:
Penn y Teller
Penn & Teller have been using the Bill of Rights – Security Edition cards in their live show for a while now and USA Today picked up the story. Pretty cool.
http://www.usatoday.com/travel/columnist/baskas/2009-05-13-penn-teller-tsa_N.htm
Reading the comments on the page, it’s always sad to see how readily people will just give over to authority. It’s not about being made to wait in line, it’s checking to see what one would give up to feel safe. We all know that it’s for show. We know the searches at the airport are useless. They’re simply so some people feel safe and because “they” had to “do something”.
In other news, I’ve been doing web contract work at Disney Consumer Products. It’s been pretty great (and I would still say so even if it wasn’t great, so you really can’t tell, can you…) but it looks like it’s going to be ending next week.
In other noose, some big shot says they’re going to pay me to write The Nigerian Spam Scam Scam movie. Bring it. I’ll certainly have time. Well, until late July.
Man, the bride looks like she’s trying to shoplift a watermelon, unsuccessfully trying to hide it under her shirt. Lengthwise. Duncan seems to favor her right side.
He’ll be a right-winger as a kid and then grow up and be a fucking loser hippie. He hates me already.
Sick of Pigs aka Swine Flu
I can’t take credit for the “two minutes of hate” meme; that honor belongs to Mr. Orwell.
I can take some credit for spreading it around recently and I was very happy when my friend, Colin, called me with the understanding that this Swine Flu nonsense is simply Two Minutes of Hate.
Speaking of Two Minutes of Hate: Someone on FaceSpaceBook commented that the swine flu fear is just a ploy by those “evil pharmaceutical companies” to sell more drugs. I suggested he do us all a favor and stop taking medicine. Here’s hoping I’m unfriended or whatever it is that people like that do.
Speaking of death, I wonder if that god that danny gans believed in could figure out who he was doing impressions of.
Started a temp gig yesterday at a big entertainment company. Y’know… It’s those content management systems that keep us all employed. If it weren’t for the CMS, I’d have finished the gig today. As it is, I’m probably there another three weeks. Maybe more.
d’Anconia’s money speech
Hot damn!!!
I wish that I had read this when I was making good money.
Hot damn. This is good stuff.
Were I king of the world, I would pay a theater company full of libertarians (hahahahahahaha) a million dollars to spend a year workshopping the book into a stage production. It would be as long or longer than Nicholas Nickleby.
Or… a summer mini-series on HBO or Showtime. It would change the world.
Or people would laugh at it because it is so beautifully moral and idealistic.
When I read her stuff I feel like such an asshole. Her faith in the potential of humans. The way she demands one to be the best version of themselves.
Man.
When I listen to this book and read these passages again, my brain is infected by the assholes who sneer at her. I might have been one of them a long time ago.
You go, Ayn Rand. You go and you rock it.
Apparently, Atlas Shrugged is selling like gangbusters now. People are snatching it up. We are hungry for this purity. The cynicism of what’s going on in government is heartbreaking.
It seems like watching the end of the Titanic rise out of the sea right before it disappears forever.
Two Minutes of Hate
2 Minutes of Hate - March 31, 2009
Someone I know on Facebook is thrilled that your president has, for all attentive porpoises, fired the president of GM.
For that reason, I tag “the guy I had to read news to learn his name, Rick Wagoner” as this week’s TWO MINUTES OF HATE.
Ready? 1 – 2 – 3: BLAME HIM FOR ALL PROBLEMS!!!
more for the hipsters to sneer at…
This makes my heart soar….
Atlas Shrugged Tops Amazon’s Bestseller List
By Ayn Rand Center, 3/18/2009 9:05:51 AMWashington, D.C. – Earlier this year Ayn Rand’s prophetic novel Atlas Shrugged was selling at triple the rate it sold at in the beginning of 2008.
Now the novel is soaring to even greater heights, and its trade paperback edition is currently in first place in the Classics category on Amazon.com’s best-seller list for sales in the United States.
The 50th anniversary mass-market paperback edition of Atlas Shrugged ranks as #2 and the trade paperback Centennial edition ranks as #3. For several weeks Atlas Shrugged has been holding steady in the top 10 best-sellers in the broader United States Literature and Fiction category, and as of the writing of this release, different editions of the novel stand at #3, #5 and #6 in Amazon’s ranking.
In a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, explained the parallels between Atlas Shrugged and today’s events.
“In Atlas Shrugged, Rand tells the story of the U.S. economy crumbling under the weight of crushing government interventions and regulations. Meanwhile, blaming greed and the free market, Washington responds with more controls that only deepen the crisis. Sound familiar?”
Brook also stressed the importance today of the book’s often overlooked message that capitalism cannot be properly defended without morally defending profit and self-interest: “. . . only an ethic of rational selfishness can justify the pursuit of profit that is the basis of capitalism–and that as long as self-interest is tainted by moral suspicion, the profit motive will continue to take the rap for every imaginable (or imagined) social ill and economic disaster. Just look how our present crisis has been attributed to the free market instead of government intervention–and how proposed solutions inevitably involve yet more government intervention to rein in the pursuit of self-interest.”
Those interested in understanding the morality of capitalism can learn more in Ayn Rand’s The Virtue of Selfishness–which, at #12 in the Classics category, is setting records of its own.
Copyright © 2009 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.
