September 20, 2004

• Not a political post, just some things going on in my life:

  • I’ve quit my job as a bouncer and barback at Ground Zero. While I do like the work, I really need to work on getting my freelance web consulting job together before I find myself evicted
  • I spent last weekend in Las Vegas celebrating the wedding of two good friends. I lost everything I spent gambling (all $2.50), and in general find Vegas to be the municipal equivalent of a Cadillac SUV – pure wastefulness in the name of conspicuous consumption. I walked 10 – 15 miles and got a reasonable sunburn. Nonetheless, I saw a ton of college friends and had a great time hanging out with everyone.

    The long and short of it is I do not feel the need to return to Vegas (unless someone wants to spring for plane tickets and tickets to some Cirque de Solei events), but I’m glad I went and had something I enjoyed doing to make the trip worthwhile.

  • Work, Motorcycling, Band, Relationship, and my sister’s upcoming wedding in Tennessee are now the focus of my attention.

  I hope everyone out there is doing well. Please pay enough attention to what’s going on to be able to cast your vote on November 2nd, but try not to spend too much time lest you fry.

  Here’s a little something to share from Joshua Norton II, Emperor of The United States and Protector of Mexico:
  

  sandwich

  I have a hard time trusting someone who’s never been punched in the face. I don’t want to hang too much on that; not everyone who gets hit in the face learns what they should from it, and there are definitely people who understand the lesson without ever having gone to school (so to speak). But, in my experience, getting hit in the face is the quickest way for a regular person to learn that other human beings exist outside their own minds. Whether they know it or not, most people go through life like they’re watching a movie, or playing a video game. They empathize, but they don’t sympathize– until one day they zig, and one of the images on the screen reaches out and bitch-slaps them and suddenly they’ve got a whole new appreciation for how other people think and feel. It’s like the first time a little kid gets burned playing with fire. You see that same look on a lot of people’s faces after the first time they get tagged. Like, “Ow! Hey! That hurt!”

  That moment of pain teaches little kids something about the reality of fire that they seem to have a hard time understanding otherwise. So it goes with the first taste of the proverbial knuckle sandwich– a culinary relative of the fruit from the tree of knowledge.

  So perhaps that explains where I get my empathy and understanding of other people’s motivations – all the punches to the head I took in high school and junior high. Unfortunately, the fact that I was rather sensitive before junior high undermines that theory, but who knows.

  Seriously though, I love reading Norton’s web log Strip Mining for Whimsy. He mixes creative writing, politics, and personal anecdotes using a writing style that I really enjoy.

  Oh, hey, does anyone out there have any opinions on whether or not I should revamp how this web log looks?

  (oh, on the “currently playing” – I’m actually listening to Vol 5, but xanga didn’t have that one listed)

  • 10:27 am
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