All My Loving
(10-19 July 2006)
19 July 2006
Happy Birthday to Adam
Zimmerman
-I am really sick of everyone trying to make a story out of the evacuation of
US citizens from Lebanon. If I see one more person whining about being stuck in a volatile Middle Eastern country &
demanding that the US come swooping in to save them... It drives me nuts. The role of the US government is not
& should not be to play rescue eagle to all of its citizens no matter where they go or what they do. If you're
going to travel to Lebanon, have a plan. Be prepared for things that have characterized 20 of the last 25 years in
Lebanese history. You don't go skydiving without a pack & then call the feds from midair chewing them out for not
having a parachute ready! & on the government side, the real story is how laughable the attempt at peacemaking in
the region is, not that they aren't evacuating precious spoiled Americans fast enough. There wouldn't be a need to bail
out 25,000 people if the US actually utilized foreign policy to stop the war. Instead, the wink-&-nod stance with
Israel is basically endorsing the razing of Lebanon, creating the perspective that the only viable government response is to
pull everyone "valuable" out of the country rather than make the country livable. If you're going to
criticize the government, please pick the right issue, because otherwise you make all critics look stupid.
-Speaking of
political issues that bother me, I actually don't have a scathing response to Freez's post about national debt from a few
days ago. Partially because I had no idea that other nations carried such staggering debts & had in fact heard
things to the contrary, that the US was a debt leader. Assuming the veracity of Freez's numbers, it actually does
change my perspective on the issue, & simply remind me how differently I feel about debt than almost everyone else in
this century. I have no interest in my life of ever owning a credit card, car payments, or a mortgage. Most
everyone I've discussed this with finds it laughable, but I just don't see any reason to go into debt for such material
possessions. I intend to save & plan so that it would be conceivable to buy things like that outright, but the
trashcan of interest & the oppression of indebtedness are just things that I don't want to engage. I'm perfectly
happy without anything that I don't actually have the money for. Clearly the rest of my peers & the industrialized
nations disagree.
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-Three extra-inning road losses against great AL East
teams in four games... does it get any more frustrating than this? Especially when the third one, against the Yankees,
was the result of a blown call that writers acknowledge in articles was the wrong call!! I can't remember the
last time I saw that. How can you throw Hargrove out for arguing a call that the papers say was blown? I guess
none of this would be as frustrating if the M's were in the AL Central, & I'm being led to believe we actually have a
shot at the playoffs. But we're really not that far from breaking through.
-No one said it would be easy. Everyone said it
would be hard. You can forgive me for not fully believing them a little, right? Perhaps. I knew it would be
hard. Just not this kind of hard.
-Poker is still fun, even if it's not the focus it was a year ago. I
am getting used to the idea that I will probably never play in a World Series of Poker & I can relax a little about the
whole thing. It's a pretty silly goal anyway.
-Resolving to do things. & follow-through.
Both are critical. I guess remembering is part of the follow-through. It's all key.
-I think the US
really just wants Israel to reoccupy Lebanon & Gaza. Feeling overstretched & convinced that Terrorism is the
new Communism, it's containment all over again. The whole thing could hinge on how important Syria thinks it is to keep
Lebanon as its own playground rather than sharing it with Israel. Poor Lebanon.
-Well yesterday was wonderful, with us going down to
Monterey, seeing the Aquarium (which has shrunk enormously since my last visit in 1986), & eating a Thai dinner in a
surprisingly cold town. We stayed in Salinas since most of Monterey was booked, expensive, or both, then headed up to
Santa Cruz to the Boardwalk. For one thing, the "Boardwalk" lacks any actual boards! For another, while
I often like a midway/rides scene, I somehow just wasn't feeling it today & so we came home after one trip on the
people-mover. I think that I just got overwhelmed by all the people. Dunno. Anyway, it was a fun little
jaunt, but I think trips will have to cover more distance to feel like a real getaway in future. Also, the Aquarium was
just bound to be a disappointment after how large it's loomed in my memory & imagination for 20 years.
-Em & I are heading to Monterey for the weekend to
celebrate our anniversary. Neither of us have been to the Aquarium since we were kids, despite talking about going a
lot. I'll try not to break down crying at the sheer size of the model whales this time. Updates upon
return.
-Three years! I told a few people at work today,
& they were almost all stunned that I was married. It then occurred to me that before my boss & I started
working there, there may not have been any married people working in the building. So... I guess it surprises people.
But seriously, no men wear rings on their left hand ring fingers unless they're married. But people probably
don't look in a work environment where no one is married. Huh.
-The world really is collapsing everywhere. My
comments just 2 days ago still couldn't have anticipated how much has happened since. At what point is the critical
mass going to be so great that people start problems just because they feel no one is watching?
-Em is getting more press! In fact, she wrote the
latest report that CALPIRG wrote, & there are more articles about its release in SF, LA, & SD. But she can't be
in 4 places at once & thus only gave the actual press conference in Sacramento. Good stuff.
-I meant to post
earlier about how the All-Star Game was perhaps the best in history. It was. Jose Lopez scored the tying run
& the M's can now have home field in the World Series if they get there. A 2-out 2-strikes lead-changing triple!
Wow!
-The headlines are really playing can-you-top-this... Israel is invading Lebanon again? When the person
who ran with the most peaceful platform of any major world leader on the planet right now is running simultaneous invasions,
you'll forgive me for thinking there's no reason for hope.
Happy Birthday to Dom
Williams
-Yesterday at work had shades of January 2003. Which was simply surreal.
There are many times that I worry I'm on pace to wake up at age 42 wondering what happened to my life. I really
hate that feeling. Sometimes I think there is almost nothing more important than doing things to prevent that from
occurring. At least work has a tendency to stretch out time a little bit, make each day last longer, make it a little
more milkable for valuable creative time. & the job really isn't sapping me the way so many jobs or commutes have
before, & it's not worthless. All the ingredients are coming together. I just need to remind myself that this
takes work as well.
-Can you feel that tension? Can you see the hotspots flaring up worldwide, a new one every two
or three days? Today, India/Pakistan joins the crew. When the world gets smaller, what happens when violent
tension is the hot new virus? We've already had voters expressing their paranoia & reacting to violent vitriolic
leaders with even more of the same. & even where they haven't, people like Ehud Olmert have pulled a militaristic
rabbit out of their peaceful hat. Guns blazing, Mr. Speaker. I shudder to think that this is July & that
there are really no peace-minded leaders with any power on the world stage. Who's going to step up to start preaching
to all this violence? Even Canada, Germany, & Japan have conservative hawks in power! I don't think
anything's beyond solving at this point, but I don't know who's going to bring the solutions, & sheer odds dictate that
at least 2 of these situations will get out of control.
-Two things competing for irrelevancy in a sea of actual news
today: 1. I don't care what Materazzi said to Zidane, there is no combination of words in existence that could
come close to justifying the response. If he called him a terrorist, all Zidane did by reacting that way was prove that
he had the same outlook on violence as a terrorist... that extreme violence is a viable way of proving a point. 2. The
talk about whether the deficit was inflated or not is irrelevant. The national debt is $8.4 trillion.
I'm not convinced there is actually that much money in the country, but that's the figure. So all this debate is
over less than 2% of the overall debt. Is all this hoopla necessary? The summation is still that if we didn't
have nuclear weapons, our government would have no solvency whatsoever.
-CNN.com constantly features Time's headline article as
part of its ownership tribute, but the latest headline has just gone too far. The lead story, titled "The End of
Cowboy Diplomacy", makes the case that Bush has undergone a dramatic policy shift in his approach to issues like Iran
& North Korea because his cowboy diplomacy has failed. The people who wrote this article are uninformed partisan
fools. Anyone who has been paying any attention can remember that Bush has always treated North Korea with kid
gloves & failed to use a tenth of the bullying, pressuring, & harsh rhetoric that was used in Iraq. This is
because NK actually poses a threat & doesn't have oil. Bush has been towing a middle-ground line with Iran, mostly
because he's trying to calculate whether he could reasonably invade it (or fuel insurgency against the current regime) from
Iraq, because he actually thinks the Iraq War is winnable & can cause stability. There's no policy shifting.
No changes. No learning. He's always wanted to bully the weak & ignore the strong with the goal being
crusading in the Middle East & securing oil profits. This is much more damning than some sort of idea that he's
retreating from policy with his tail between his legs. He's just a little more sophisticated than Time thinks, &
even less open to change.
-The HR Derby was fun, but lacked anyone who I really like. The NL young guns sure are
powerful, but having no M's or Giants & no one who was around 5 years ago in any meaningful way... I dunno.
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