The American Dream Deconstructed

David Simon nails it. In one paragraph he has illuminated everything that has gone wrong with America.

Simon, on the other hand, is very angry indeed. "You are sitting in the deconstruction of the American Dream," he says, indicating Baltimore. "Which is to say there was a fundamental myth that if you were willing to work hard, support your family, stay away from shit that ain't good for you, you'd do all right. You didn't have to be the smartest guy in the room. The dream wasn't that everyone could get rich. It was that everyone gets to make a living and see the game on Saturday, and maybe, with the help of a government loan or two, your kid'll go to college." His anger is wide-reaching: deprivation in Baltimore, imaginary WMDs in Iraq and Wall Street scandals are all part of the same betrayal - of capitalist institutions "selling people shit and calling it gold".

Simon doesn't respond well to the criticism that perhaps things aren't entirely bad - that his shows' unremitting pessimism distorts a world where some people do defeat the crushing force of social institutions. Last year, the journalist Mark Bowden made that charge in the Atlantic magazine, and Simon hasn't forgiven him. "This premise that The Wire wasn't real because it didn't show people having good outcomes in west Baltimore ... I don't know what to tell him. We didn't spend a series in a cul-de-sac with people barbecuing; it was the story of what's happening at the bottom rungs of an economy where capitalism has been allowed free rein. And if he's telling me it's not happening, I want to take his fucking entitled ass and drive him to west Baltimore and shove him out of the car, at Monroe and Fayette, and say, find your way back, fucker, because you've got your head up your ass at the Atlantic."

Can we get this guy another TV show already?

I Found It

I searched for this a long time. I knew I had saved it, but I couldn't find it anywhere.

Many thanks to Hank for the great night. Most people don't get to see one of their favorite artists on their 30th birthday 5 minutes from where they live.

Crystal Video in Missoula Makes NPR

Read/listen here.

I think for Valentine's Day maybe I'll go rent a movie from there.

Double Jameson on the Rocks

Is there anything better?

The Story of My Stuff

Inspired by The Story of Stuff, I've decided to pontificate on my personal situation regarding "stuff."

I'm a man of simple tastes. I don't like overly garish things. I just like things that are easy to use and durable. That's why I buy Toyota vehicles and Macintosh computers, among other things.

If there's one thing I've learned over the past 12 years being an adult, it's that there are so many useless products that we buy. Stuff that won't last. We buy things and in 6 months to 2 years, they go bad and have to be replaced. I'm not sure that in all cases it's planned obsolescence, but it sure as hell feels like it.

Since I've been over 18, I've personally bought 3 computers for myself. 1 Sony/Windows POS laptop. 2 Macintosh computers, both still working fine, just like the day I bought them. If you count my wife's laptop, that's 3 Macs, all still in perfectly good condition, one of them 5 years old. Macs last.

People complain that iPods don't last, but I disagree. I'm not saying there's some bad 'Pods out there, but I've bought 3 and only one had to be replaced and it's still in use today. My oldest one is 5 years old and it still works as good as the day I bought it. iPods last, as far as I can tell.

I've owned 3 Toyotas and while I haven't pushed them to their limits, I'm going to. I'm going to drive my Tundra until my wife's next car is paid off, which will make it until at least 2017. I have no doubts that it will make it that far with no problems as long as I keep up with maintenance. Toyotas last.

As for other things that don't last so long...

Socks. Motherfucking socks. They just don't last. They last a maximum of 6 months, and I buy good socks. Every week I lost at least 1 sock because of a hole in the heel.

Cell phones. Don't even get me started. These things are meant to die after 2 years. Why do you think most contracts are for 2 years? Come on in, sign up for another 2 years, and get a new phone! It's like a bi-annual 2nd birthday.

Cordless telephones at home...these things are just like cell phones. They aren't meant to last. They usually have proprietary batteries and the software inside the phones are shit. For instance...just tonight I bought what I consider the best cordless phones available to buy that provide 4 handsets that are under $200. I bought the Panasonic KX-TG9344. It has AAA NiMH batteries that I will be able to buy later and replace them should they start to burn out. I could have bought more batteries for the shitty Motorola phones I replaced, but by the time I do that I may as well have gotten new phones because we hated those phones. The new phones are great, but I still have some major gripes. The FIRST mobile phone I ever bought had speed dial. Is that so much to ask? Yes, it has a phone book. I call about 4 people on a regular basis on the house phone. Put a fucking speed dial on the goddamn thing. I don't want to look up a number on a shitty GUI. I've got great number memory, so I could dial the thing by the time I go through the stupid phone book. Also, why doesn't the intercom function work on all phones? Why can't I pick up a phone, hit intercom and have it call all phones. Why do I have to pick which phone to call? Or, why can't it be an option at least? And in that case, why can't I put in my own names for the phones. Why is it just a numbered system? WTF!!

You get the point. I could go on about printers, pots and pans, etc. I've replaced both in the past week.

Shit is made to break, even if it's not. At the end of the day they are gypping us.

RE: People and Responsibility

Yep. It was just as bad as I thought it was going to be.

And so it ends...

So ends 12 days in a row off of work. In the past 2 weeks I've stayed up all hours of the day and night, drinking coffee, messing around on the computer and taking care of my new son. Most of all, just trying to relax. It's been a fun ride while it lasted.

Now it's over and I have that shitty feeling you get after being away from responsibility for a while and then having to go back to it. Americans really do need more time off of work. I get a good amount of vacation from my job, but it's still not enough. Especially when you use up 8 days at the beginning of the year.

It's been fun and now it's over. Tomorrow I'll be back to dealing with, you know, people and responsibility.

Stand by Me

This is the same poster I had in my room when I was a kid.

Even after 23 years, it still holds up. What a powerful film. It's even more powerful when you are holding your newborn son while watching it.

Every time I watch it, it brings back a lot of memories. In a way, it's a hard movie for me to watch. I'm not sure why, but this movie really stuck with me. It's my favorite movie of all time. It's a coming of age story for young boys on the road to being young men. Every time I watch it I see something I didn't see before. It's hard to describe, but to me, the movie is perfect.

River Phoenix was ahead of his time. He would have went on to do great things. Wil Wheaton continues to blog and use Twitter, which I'm going to start following again. He seems to really eschew any kind of celebrity that he gained from being a childhood actor. Sometimes it's hard reading things where the actors say they did other, better work elsewhere or when they allude to the fact that the movie didn't mean as much to them as it does to you. As they say, don't look at your heroes too closely. I have a feeling that after all these years, it's kind of hard for the actors to go back and watch that movie considering how River Phoenix ended his short career.

It's hard to watch that movie and realize how good movies were back then compared to now. Before cell phones and IMDB, there were quality movies. I'm not saying that Hollywood didn't lay a stinker here and there, but going to the movies just seemed like a singular event, something to get excited about. Back then, they were almost all great, even the bad ones. Maybe we just have way too much entertainment now. Maybe we have too many distractions. Watching Stand by Me hearkens back to a simpler life, for sure. Maybe that's just the way it seems looking back. Maybe at the time, they thought the 50s looked great.

I really would like to visit Brownsville, Oregon some day and check out some of the locations used in the film. When we visit Portland, I'm going to go there, take photos and have a beer at the saloon. From what I read on the Internets, the Blue Point Diner closed, but I saw a photo dated 2007 that had a sign up in front of the place on the other side of the saloon.

Hopefully one day when my son grows up he will enjoy this movie as much as I do. It's hard to imagine that eventually kids will want to go their own way and be their own person, but I don't ever want my kid to want to be around his friends any more than he would want to be around his own family as it seems the 4 boys in the movie do.

iPhoto '09 Complaints and Grievances

The new iPhoto is great, but there are some minor problems with it.

When you publish anything via Facebook or Flickr, it automatically makes an album on Facebook and a set on Flickr. Really annoying. I guess on Facebook it's not that bad, but on Flickr, you have to go back in and delete the set if you don't want it added as one. The other thing is, you can't change the metadata before uploading it. With the free Flickr Uploadr, you pick out the photos and then do batch operations and tagging, naming, etc. I'd recommend using Flickr Uploadr instead. As for Facebook, it's just the way it goes I guess. It sucks because I would really like to just use iPhoto instead of 3rd party alternatives, but I'm going to use what's better.

The facial recog software said my wife's stepmom looks like the little Arab guy from Bahrain that would pick up our beer pyramids after a night of drinking at the base. I thought that was pretty funny.

Using the media browser in Finder doesn't recognize Faces or Places under Photos.

Also, if you set a place as out in the middle of the ocean it doesn't show up in the columns in list view. I would imagine there is a fix for that. I was just going to find a funny underway photo and I geotagged all those smack dab in the middle of the Pacific. Needless to say, I couldn't find them later in list view. I also saw something on the discussion boards about a guy who was geotagging dives and he couldn't do it either. Hopefully that gets fixed.

On the other hand, loading photos from the camera into iPhoto is much, much faster and in general just going through your photos is much faster and more fluid. Also, they've implemented a fade when switching between photos.

As usual, Apple comes out with some great software, but you have to wonder what some of the members of the team were thinking when they made it. It's the little details which occasionally Apple gets wrong.

So far here's my map...that's about all I'm going to get as far as far as geotagging goes. I don't have a photo for UAE and I'm not sure if I took any photos when I stopped off in Spain on my plane flight to Bahrain.

Keegan's First Night Home

It was a little frustrating.

At about 10 pm, we kind of hit the wall in regards to getting Keegan to breastfeed. He would latch on and then fall asleep almost immediately. He became extremely fussy in about an hour and my wife almost caved and gave him a bottle. I suggested giving the lactation nurse at the hospital a call. Luckily, my wife knew someone who had a breastpump and let her borrow it a few weeks ago. The nurse suggested that she pump and give him the milk (or whatever the stuff is before the milk...I forget the name) in a bottle.

Thankfully, it worked.

After getting him back on track as far as feeding goes, he's doing a lot better now. He's drinking milk out of a bottle. When we go tomorrow to see the pediatrician, we might stop off and talk to the lactation nurse. He's gotta eventually start getting the boob, although pumping and using bottles isn't that bad.

I'm slowly getting the hang of being a father, but last night threw me for a loop. I had dreams of my kid screaming for hours on end. I guess most of the first few months is just trying to learn how to read their signals and how to quickly get them to sleep and/or be quiet...I mean, ahem, content.

Today I spent a good majority of the day geotagging nearly all of my photos in iPhoto '09. To look at all the places I've been on a map is pretty cool. I'm also slowly learning how to use my Canon Digital Rebel XT. I took a ton of photos in the past few days since Keegan's arrival and I realized that I wasn't doing something right. The more I use it, the better I get at it.

Well, I've had way too much coffee and too little sleep. That's how I get when I'm on vacation. I don't ever want to sleep because I want to enjoy the time off as much as possible. But I think tonight I'm going to attempt to get some more sleep than I have been in the past few days.

We 3 are Home

Finally.

After 9 months of a fairly easy pregnancy, we are finally home with baby. We had a baby boy, Keegan Elliot, born 1/28/2009 @ 1351. He was 9 lbs, 13 oz and was 21 inches long. A Flickr photo set with many more photos is here and the hospital webpage/guestbook is here.

My pug hardly noticed that there's now a newborn in the house taking up all of our time. Hopefully it stays that way. We are looking forward to some much needed time off and rest.

Raven's Brew: Deadman's Reach

Served in bed, raises the dead...

I picked up a new coffee today at the Good Food Store. I bought it because of the artwork on the package and because I've been looking to ditch the Costco house blend I've been tolerating for the past year. I haven't tried it yet, but from what I've read online, some people can't go back to other coffees after having Deadman's Reach from Raven's Brew.

I can only hope this is the case. Some things are worth the money.

I'm going to be needing some strong coffee due to lack of sleep in the next few months because of the new baby, so I figured why not? I just hope they keep it stocked at GFS on a regular basis.

Click to enlarge:

No More Pop-ups

I fixed the way Blogger handles comments by default, which is a tiny pop up window. It's now embedded below the post.

It's not even 6 am and I've posted two things!

2 Weeks Later...

And there's a maximum of two weeks until my son arrives on Planet Earth. They induce on the 30th if he's not here yet.

Better if viewed large:

First Post 2009

2009 is finally here. What to do? I'm reading an excellent book, listening to jazz, and drinking a cappuccino.

We finished the nursery today...almost. Maybe a few touch up spots, but it's mostly done.

Took down the Christmas tree and outside lights.

Morgan made tortellini soup. Pretty good for the first time.

It snowed like crazy. I'm loving it.

A nice way to end the first day of '09. And as usual, the obligatory promise to post more in the future, which is a real goal these days.

The End of 2008

Bah humbug! It's been a damn good year as far as I'm concerned. When people are pessimistic, I'm an optimist.

Yes, there's been some letdowns and some disappointments, but we got Bush out of office. We've elected what is easily the best choice (in my opinion) of any President since I've been alive. Here's to hoping he can fix at least a few things. He can't fix everything in 4 years, but hopefully he can right the ship.

Some highlights of 2008:

My son is on the way. Everything is going great and he should be here soon!

I turned 30 and with that gained some weird kind of adult, humble, calm confidence. I think the majority of adulthood revolves around figuring out what you don't like. Once you figure that out, the rest is easy.

I found some amazing music this year. Good god, did I find a treasure trove of music that only makes me want more and more of it. I'm a music fiend now. Some of it I haven't even been able to digest properly because I found something instantly gratifying that caught my ear and forgot to go back to it.

We bought a house. We love our house, even though we had kind of a disconcerting shock after learning that the cul-de-sac our house faces is not, in fact, a public street. It's a privately owned street that because of some beef the owner had with the builders of our house, he doesn't want people parking on it. Not anyone! Embrace disappointment and learn to love it! Owning is really just renting because we're all gonna die! House prices keep dropping, so I'm sure by this point we're actually losing money on our house. Awesome!

I've been doing the Christmas thing now for a few years or so...every year it's the same shit. A mad scramble at the last second to purchase something, anything for whoever I can find something for. Everyone else gets nothing. I always tell myself that I'll buy something after Christmas, but I never do. Next year I'm doing my shopping early online. I'm going to sit at my computer desk in my underwear, drink bourbon on the rocks and listen to the music I want while I shop for Christmas gifts with free shipping online. Fuck driving all over the countryside looking for gifts. Fuck the crowds. Fuck the all-encompassing systematic consumerism. Festivus for the rest of us!

In the interest of time, I must be going to bed. Even though I wanted to write more, If I don't post this, I never will. Especially not before 2008 ends.

An Update on Things

Lately we've been getting ready for the little one to get here. Boxes have been arriving full of baby items. So far we've got a ton of things we need for the baby. Little Keegan will be here soon.

Evernote rocks.

I've been listening to Brad Sucks a lot. Also a lot of Miles Davis. Currently listening to Chinese Democracy by Guns and Roses. It's better than I imagined.

Today is the 108th year of the Cat/Griz (Bozeman/Missoula) football rivalry game. I will be tailgating (read: drinking) with people from Bozeman who are Griz fans and drive here every weekend to see them.

Obama's family chili recipe is my new favorite recipe. Chili is easily my favorite food. Especially with cornbread muffins.

Last night was dinner at Sean Kelly's. I will never tire of eating there.

Every day affirms the fact that I think Missoula is one of the best places in the US to live. It has it's faults, but the positives outweigh any negatives.

The Jonestown cult in Guyana is absolutely fascinating. I still don't quite understand what made those people follow Jim Jones. I don't understand what all the fuss was about religious communism, but I still find it interesting.

Henry Rollins coming to Missoula on my 30th birthday was fucking amazing. I've watched 2 out of 3 of his recent documentaries. I will be watching the one about The Troubles in Ireland in the next day or two.

Voodoo Funk is my new favorite music blog.

I can't wait to see the movie The Best Bar in America. The trailer makes this movie look better than I thought.

We stomped the Bobcats 35-3.

Sarah Palin is the Bumpkin King

Sarah Palin is dumb as a rock, has a sketchy past, and has some downright scary beliefs about the world. She's a goddamn country bumpkin hockey mom. I can't even imagine how the hell she got this far. Seriously, she's scaring the shit out of anyone with any intelligence in this country. Just yesterday it was released that she has now fudged on her 2007 tax returns.

I was going to make one post containing all the Palin related items floating around the Internet over the past two weeks, but I've decided not to. Anyone who's paying attention at all can find those items.

Because she didn't completely blow it on the Biden debate, she's now being hailed as a "breath of fresh air" by some republicans. What? I can't honestly imagine how anyone could even consider this woman eligible for much more than an assistant manager at a department store. The only reason she did any better at the debate was because she was groomed to regurgitate her talking points. She wasn't asked hard questions, and when she was, she just rambled on about whatever she wanted. At times she read straight from her notepad.

I just read an interview with her where she was annoyed at the Katie Couric interview because she didn't ask enough questions about what she stood for. So basically, Katie Couric asked you simple questions about your life and beliefs and you couldn't answer them, so she's annoying? Palin just thinks she can say whatever the fuck she pleases and it's supposed to be enough? I guess it was the liberal media bias that made her come up with those answers. Where is the creative editing when you're listening to two people talk? I'm confused.

Aside from the fact that the woman is not the most eloquent speaker, she can't even answer simple, basic questions. Couric asked her what kind of newspaper she reads and she couldn't name one. In one part of the interview, she just starts rambling on autopilot, bouncing from one talking point to the next.

At the debate, the only thing she did was come up with generic, canned answers. She never said one thing of substance. And unbeknownst to me because I missed the first 25 minutes of the debate, she used the terms, "betcha", "dern right", and "Joe Six Pack." I don't see how connecting with the lowest common denominator is anything other than what it is. I think she thinks she's going to connect with the Wal-Mart shopping/redneck/troglodyte/bumpkin part of the population. God help us.

I'm just baffled at how this vapid, clueless woman is even close to becoming the Vice President.

More Financial Doom and Gloom

From an article in the Missoulian about how the local condo sales have slowed down:

Eric Hefty, developer of The Corner on Brooks Street and South Higgins Avenue, isn't as confident as Coffman, but still thinks the high-end condo market is strong.

“These are really going to be as good as you get,” Hefty said. “The people that have the ability to afford the upscale units are a little different.”

Different, eh? Thanks Mr. Hefty!

The Emmys Show No Love for The Wire (again)

The losing streak continues through their final chance at one.

Thanks Emmys!