Gifted Slacker

I would rather not vote. Not because it let’s me say I have no responsibility for poor policy and legislative decisions. I believe I have as much responsibility for those things as people who vote for them.

However, when my all-over-the-place ideology conflicts with something like the Patriot Employer Act, I won’t vote for those who endorse it because I don’t need to be a hypocrite in a way that I can avoid. (I will say that I won’t eat cookies for my health, and that you shouldn’t either. But you and I both know I’m going to eventually have a cookie.)

If the Patriot Employer Act is enacted and turns out to be the best thing for the economy and everyone involved, then I will be ecstatically happy that I was proven wrong.

A question occurred to me as I wrote this, and I’ll leave it as a mind-reading exercise for the reader: Why does the philosophy behind this potential legislation remind me of something born from the same people who opposed NAFTA?

Obama has what is likely a very bad idea.

I was almost going to vote in the upcoming presidential election until I learned of this. The Patriot Employer Act doesn’t make me dislike Obama per se, but it reminds me of why I don’t vote.

I don’t agree with a lot of the things Arnold Kling has to say on politics, but I agree with a bit of one of his recent posts:

Elections, rather than representing an opportunity for “change,” are instead a massive marketing extravaganza on behalf of the status quo. They are, as I remarked in another recent post, geared not toward changing policies but instead toward achieving “quiescence” for existing policies.

Many times, when someone points to a truth that goes against common perception people see the person making the point as saying something negative, insulting, or just plain false. When in reality that person is just stating facts.

Is it really an insult to say that by definition Roger Ebert* is a movie reviewer and not a movie critic?

Public opinion definitely labels Ebert as a critic. The public consciousness perceives the work of critics to be a higher status pursuit reviewing. So people see calling him a reviewer as taking away his status as critic. I think this is where the perceived insult comes from.

Criticism is more abstract and more objectively useful. On the other hand, reviews are subjectively useful (they help me decide what to buy) and more economically impactful. This is similar to the perceptions surrounding psychologists that are doing research and those that are counseling sick people.

What’s the difference? One is theoretic and concerns the state of the art; it mostly concerns experts. And the other is concerned with helping people who aren’t experts. Thus our society sees the researcher as having higher status than the practitioner, even though both are working with the same ideas and materials.

Unthinking acceptance of the culturally endorsed group of thoughts bugs me a lot. I think people are slaves to their reality and the collective reality of their culture. I really wish more people could see their way to perceiving their world from multiple perspectives, so they can see reality more clearly than the reality that is fed to them.
Do me, and everyone else, a favor and call a reviewer a reviewer an attack an attack**.

* At least in the context most of us know of Roger Ebert in, he is very much a reviewer. He very well could be a known critic, but I don’t know much about the world of film criticism.

** “To divert by the way, it is an utterly unfair critique, and ignores Cooper’s manifold literary virtues; one may point out that in Samuel Clemens’s era, Cooper was widely considered America’s greatest novelist to date, a position Mark Twain later supplanted. The essay can also be read–as it rarely is–as a calculated, and highly effective, attack on a literary rival, and as such, should be treated with far less respect, and far more skepticism, than it normally is. There: In the space of a paragraph, I’ve written an effective critique of a work of criticism.” — costik

While deep in a session of morning hackery, I came across this site. There were 9 posts made in less than half an hour. Before I visited I was sure that it was some sort of link-spam blog, or whatever.

Turns out there are no ads on the site and the posts are long. Apparently it is some sort of Spanish language mathematics and science blog written by a student called Evelyn.

If Evelyn is writing all of these posts herself, I’m astounded at her speed. I wish my Spanish were better so I could tell if they were interesting and well written

I’m just working hard, and this is part of that hard work.

This task is ridiculously difficult.

Inspired by Megan –

Life is not a zero-sum game; the more people we have playing to the fullest of their abilities the better the world is for everyone.

Angry, pissed-off, ass-kicking Megan is awesome. And, yes, she can kick my ass and yours, too. That does not bother me.

The points in her post that I disagree with are minor. I don’t really agree with her views on meat and locally produced food.

I can’t actually view the front-end of my blog. Everytime I try and load it my browser goes into an endless loop continually reloading the site. This means I can’t make comments, so if you posted a comment today your response is posted as an update to the entry.

Ethan, this means you.

A list of all the food I miss from Albany, Troy, and Saratoga Springs:

1. D’Andreas for pizza: sweet, flaky crust, very non-greasy
2. Putnam Market for the Putnam Street sandwich and their big cookies
3. Cupcakes from the Bread Basket
4. The butcher at Lake George (can’t remember the name)
5. Clifton Park Pizza for the greasiest pizza ever, Venezia pizza for old times sake, and the place that opened the year I left for really good huge slices.
6. Ali Baba for the best Turkish food in the area. Lavash bread and raita to die for.
7. Deli & Brew for some of the best buffalo chicken pizza ever. They do an awesome sicilian pizza, too.
8. Sitar for one of my favorite Indian meals on planet earth. Chicken Tikka Massala, naan, vegetable samosas, mixed appetizers… *drools*
9. Sushi Thai Garden in Saratoga Springs for some really nice Phad Thai and Prik Prow fried rice.
10. Chris’s bakery for a cannoli
11. Bella Napoli for… pretty much any baked good. Radio bars are one of my favorites.
12. Indian Ladder Farms for apple cider and doughnuts.

Update in response to comments: Karavalli is excellent. I only got there a half dozen times before I moved, so I don’t have the long standing love for it that I do for Sitar. Latham Biryani used to be AMAZING, but the last several times I went there it was shit.

I’m having trouble remembering good Mexican food in that area. Pancho’s is usually really good tex-mex, and the El Mariachi restaurants were always hit or miss. Bomber’s has good burritos but you can’t really call that stuff Mexican.

It’s been quiet around here lately, and it doesn’t look like it will get any noisier anytime soon. I’m sorry about that. Hopefully you’ll all live without my linksterbation.

Anyway.

Two Saturdays ago I was walking back from grabbing food at Gregg’s (ew, I know) when I was approached by a teenage girl. She wanted to me to go into the newsagent and buy her a bottle of vodka. I declined with a smirk.

This would be a completely mundane story if I stopped here. However, that’s not where this story ends.

As I turned and started walking away, the girl offered me a blowjob to run her errand! Well, me being me, I crossed my eyes in shock and started walking faster, at which point she offered the whole shebang. I could barely keep myself from running!

Can’t these kids get some meth somewhere, or at least find a few liters of gasoline to huff. They obviously don’t have enough brain cells to worry about becoming any more retarded than they already are.

From Jason Mulgrew:

“Sexsomnia. This is exactly like it sounds like. Years ago, an ex-girlfriend told me that I started feeling her up in my sleep, before I tried to make out with her. In the morning, I got the “Do you know what you did last night?” line and I thought for sure I had peed or poo’ed in her bed. When she told me what I had done, I had no recollection of it. But, whatever. I’m awesome, and I like making out and sleeping, so it’s only natural that I should combine the two. I chalked it up to a one time thing.

But it wasn’t. Over the years, I’d fall asleep next to whatever girl happened to be getting back at her ex and/or father at the time, and I’d wake up and we’d be doing it. I’m not talking like heavy petting here; we’d be doing it, like actual intercourse. In the midst of this, I’d suddenly come to consciousness, completely disoriented, grasp what was going on, and totally keep going. Because it was awesome.

[This wouldn’t be an R, because for this sex to happen, the girl would have to acquiesce. Basically, I’d be asleep and start trying to be smooth. My ladyfriend would be woken up by this, would either think I was awake or I was doing my sleep sex thing (depending upon how familiar she was with me), and would either go with it or push me away. If she pushed me away, I’d wake up without knowing what happened. If she kept going, I’d wake up and be getting laid. Sweet.]

[Also, I think that ex-ladyfriends would go with it because I’m probably a much better lover in my sleep. While sexsomniaing, I don’t speak at all. While conscious and having sex, my every move is peppered with talking, like "Geez, I’m sorry" or "Whoa - is that what it’s supposed to look like?" and "I swear I just washed there."]

I don’t know what causes this. It’s not as though it would happen after weeks of not getting laid. In some instances, I would have sex only an hour or two before, then “wake up” and want to do it again (which is very impressive, considering it takes me 24-96 hours to recover between non-masturbatory orgasms; I only need ten minutes and a sandwich between beat breaks). And at first, it was kinda rare, but in my last serious relationship, it occurred maybe once every eight times my ex and I shared a bed. Weird? Yes. Awesome? Goddamn right. Anytime I can get right to the good stuff without having to use any foreplay or purchase any fancy dinner and do it while I’m sleep, well, that’s just fucking terrific.

(However, because of the sexsomnia I can never, ever, under any circumstances share a bed with a dude. Just not a good idea. At all. Talk about Russian roulette. Yikes.)”