May 6, 2008
how i spent my day

i am going to provide a link in the next paragraph, and you should not click it. i am not even kidding. do not click it.

i spent almost all day watching videos on youtube of cats making other cats. the plots in most of these videos are the same: it starts out with one cat, and by the end of the film, there are between two and four cats, the newer ones being much smaller and grosser than the original. what sets the one above apart from the others, though, is the special effects. the sound crew did an excellent job, and it's nearly impossible to tell which bits are CGI. well done.

after watching nearly three dozen "related" videos, i simply don't understand how someone could continue to believe in god. i mean, those videos are really gross. what is up with that?

today was hill day, and i am going to feel it tomorrow. my nike+ was almost calibrated, but then it uncalibrated itself, thanks. also, thanks for making your whole website flash, so that firefox can't remember the password for me. i just have keychain generate my passwords, so i have to go and look it up every time i want to see your site tell me about how my sub-7:30 miles on sunday were done above 10:00 pace.

clinton has been hitting the eye-wincing rhetoric with both guns blazing lately:

We're going to hit some of those balls out of this stadium and out of our country stadium. ... We're going to round the bases, we're going to score a lot of runs and we're going to feel really good about the home team, namely the American team, the team we're all a part of!

i haven't the slightest clue what exactly a "country stadium" is, but i'm sure some of my friends might suggest that the "balls" she is referring to are things like "fiscal responsibility" and "military restraint". at least that's how they might put it in mixed company.

If you want to move forward you put it in D. If you want to move back you put it in R.

this is the stupidest thing i've ever heard. i wouldn't normally let this bother me, except somehow cbs is still america's most watched network? i don't understand people at all.

but this worst is this:

The Terrible Towel is clearly part the team - "I will wave it as we go across that goal line for a better America in January 2009," Clinton told the diners in Pittsburgh.

with this quote, not only has she become dead to me and almost everyone i've ever met, but if for whatever reason she manages to steal the nomination, she's given mccain an ad he probably only has to run twice to win ohio in a landslide on his way to the presidency. also, i haven't been able to find any photos from this event, but i suspect there may be a giant PANDERING ACCOMPLISHED banner hanging behind her.

when i saw obama speak here in boston back in october, one thing that impressed me was the fact that, although he did congratulate the city on the recent world series victory by the red sox, he said that he was actually a white sox fan, and that he wouldn't pretend to be a red sox fan just because he was in boston. and, for once, red sox fans took the "classy" road and nobody tried to run him over with their car (do not click the "[ + ] Enlarge" link there).

i can't wait until this election is over so i can go back to writing about my dreams again. i had a good one last night.

May 4, 2008
sundays are for life

i had a good run, despite the claims by my wildly inaccurate nike+ to the contrary.

May 3, 2008
saturdays are a waste

probably the highlight of today was buying a half gallon of milk that came in a glass bottle. their farm - or at least corporate headquarters - is 18 miles away from my house, which, coincidentally, how far i am to run tomorrow. there is a $1.50 bottle deposit for the milk, which is already half gone. it was good.

number two would probably be just about memorizing the 24-bar chord progression for the song i've been working on with my guitar teacher. i am also trying to figure out the keyboard part, which is maybe a little more fun.

btw i recommend the following abp filter if you are going to browse songmeanings.net:

songmeanings.net#DIV(style=font-size: 13px; text-align: center;)

May 2, 2008
the end of a week

just before they closed for the day, i managed to pick up a nike+ sportsband from marathon sports. i am excited about taking my running ocd to a new level.

today's shields and brooks had some great comments by mark shields, about obama's steadfast opposition to the gas tax holi-gate:

What Obama ought to do is say: This is the worst of Washington politics. This is what it is. This is bait-and-switch. This is Washington politics at its cheapest. They really think you're dumb. They think you're so dumb that they can buy you off.

...

And he ought to do it just on the basis and tie it -- this is the same kind of politics that had a "Mission Accomplished" sign up five years ago, that said there were weapons of mass destruction. That's what's wrong.

And I'm telling you what you don't want to hear. You want someone that tells you what you want to hear? You've got McCain, and you've got Clinton.

i haven't really gotten into the new portishead yet. i am a big fan of the vinyl+usb dongle distribution method.

May 1, 2008
isn't goldilocks the one that gets eaten by a wolf?

today, clinton likened herself to a fairy tale character, but most coverage i've seen hasn't picked up on this gem:

guess what? we are going to expect you to move toward higher gas mileage cars. we just don't have enough of them that are affordable enough for everybody to be able to do it right now.

i liken that to something from a fairy tale. the internet has my back on this one:

i know this is not a fully scientific survey, but it clearly shows that, in fact, the opposite of what clinton says is true: fuel-efficient cars are more affordable than gas guzzlers. i don't know exactly what it means for the Yaris to be over twenty times more fuel-cost efficient as the M6, but fortunately that's not something clinton wants you to be concerned about "right now."

the only way to reduce america's financial burden of oil is to stop needing it. what does a gallon of whale oil cost these days? the answer is nobody cares. the sooner politicians stop trying to win votes by making people think it's still ok for them to drive cars everywhere, the sooner, well, i don't even know what. but it will be a good thing.

at any rate, perhaps in a couple of weeks the mainstream media will pick up on this one too, as they finally have with the gas-tax holiday, which i broke long ago.

April 29, 2008
more like it

i have become increasingly uncomfortable over the past few weeks. one sunny, warm day after another. this was not the april in boston i remember from my youth. where were the soaked trousers, the sidewalks full of disintegrating worms, the flooded T stops?

i still don't know where they were, but they are here now. as unpleasant as this weather is (it's the only new england weather i don't enoy any part of), it is at least reassuring.

congratulations canada for finally getting iPhones.

April 22, 2008
back to day one

i'm now 25% of the way through my training, and at hills day number two. these are "long" hills, and take about two minutes. i run them just about as hard as i can, trying to keep the same pace for the whole workout, and try to finish strong. it's tough.

but the one nice thing is that i run them on heartbreak, where, yesterday, some twenty-five thousand people ran it, including lance armstrong. i saw him run by my neighborhood, and i wish i could say it was an amazing thing, but it was just a guy running by in a yellow shirt. ok, he won seven tours, so, yes. it was pretty exciting. anyway he had this to say after the race:

Then I had this period where everybody seemed to talk them down - 'They're not that big a deal, running the hills of Boston; don't worry about it.' They were wrong.

so today i wake up early, struggle to get out of bed, and feel a little tired and pretty stiff. my sunday run was amazing - still buzzing from saturday's game, full of energy from my pasta dinner the night before, and the two short runs in the previous days - it was perhaps the easiest sixteen miles i've ever run. today was not going to be like that.

on my fifth trip up the hill, someone was biking up on the other side of the former comm. ave. street railway median. he yelled out to me, "you shoulda been here yesterday!" initially, a groan was the only sort of response i could muster, but then after thinking about it for a couple of paces, i yelled back, "next year!" without looking back, he raised his arm, and gave me a thumbs up.

the last two hills a little bit easier this week.

April 20, 2008

the game last night was amazing. i am simply not accustomed to teams i like coming back repeatedly, giving up a lead, and then still winning. especially not in elimination games.

i had to watch a full hour of bill moyers journal before i was calm enough to fall asleep.

April 18, 2008
i figured it out

sometimes, when i'm on the T listening to my iPod, i sing a little too loudly and get strange looks.

the ghosts are here,
the ghosts are here.
bleu, blanc et rouge,
bleu, blanc et rouge.

we're gonna win this!
we're gonna win this!
we're gonna win!

game six, saturday night.

April 17, 2008
a proportional response

yesterday's posts seem to have resonated quite strongly with my readership. i received both an email and an instant message about them, and from different people no less. this is unprecedented.

first, i'd like to issue a clarification on one matter. it comes to my attention that perhaps not everyone might see the absurdity in mitt romney being someone's friend, let alone someone that i may even know. with that in mind, i offer you the following two interpretations; feel free to come up with your own as well:

1. by "friend," i may have meant mortal enemy
2. by "robert," i may have meant someone other than robert love. for the sake of this exercise, this person may be considered imaginary.

i am trying to move on with my life from bush's comments yesterday, as otherwise i'll get nothing done today due to stress and freaking out, but wanted to point out that i don't see secularism and relativism, as i understand them, as leading directly to hedonism; i like to think that they recognize that there are slippery slopes on both sides of a hill.

instead, i leave you with the following headline from cnn:

CNNMoney: U.S. currency sinks to new low

the article goes on to cite a youtube video that surfaced over the weekend, showing the Dollar at a party, quite inebriated, making out with some girl of, if the comments are to be believed, considerably ill repute:

April 16, 2008
it seems like everyone else came up with mccainonomics too but i refuse to be deterred

i seem to still be grumpy about last night's hockey game, so hold on.

John McCain Believes We Should Institute A Summer Gas Tax Holiday. Hard-working American families are suffering from higher gasoline prices. John McCain calls on Congress to suspend the 18.4 cent federal gas tax and 24.4 cent diesel tax from Memorial Day to Labor Day.

i will let the url speak for itself, in its full UUID glory: http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/Issues/4dbd2cc7-890e-47f1-882f-b8fc4cfecc78.htm.

you can also tell he's serious about cutting down on government waste, and showing his connectedness with hard working america with his use of the less-technical three letter html extension.

anyway, i don't know why mccain thinks that removing an 18 cent-per-gallon gas tax is going to result in anything other than an increase of 18 cents per gallon going to the oil companies. the market is already bearing... whatever the current price of gas is. i'm going to take a page out of robert's friend[1] mitt romney's book:

Jacob Berkman Believes We Should Double The Gas Tax.

Or Triple It.

the cost of gas is only one of the many costs of car-obsessed life. while electric cars and the hydrogen economy crack pipe may solve the gasoline problem, they do not in any way address many of the other problems, some of which are listed at the wonderful carfree site.

while i cannot (publicly) suggest car free cities would solve all of modern society's ills, a lot of our nation's problems are greatly exacerbated, or caused outright, by the shift to care-based cities. since it's these taxes that supposedly pay for our governments subsidizing truck-based shipping (as opposed to rail or ship), removing these taxes distorts the playing field even more. and while i'm all for suspending maintenance of the federal highway system, i don't quite think that's what mccain has in mind here. i saw no explanation of what would be done to offset the lost tax revenue.

in addition, we will never break our addiction to foreign oil if the government continues to come to the "rescue" of the automative and petroleum interests at every turn. the only way we're going to make progress is if people start to see the true costs of their cars, and start seeking alternatives.

John McCain Will End Policies That Contribute To Higher Transportation And Food Costs. Ethanol subsidies, tariff barriers and sugar quotas drive up food prices and hurt Americans.

long-time readers are already familiar with my views on corn-based ethanol, so it should be obvious that i support this measure.

unfortunately there is no mention of, say, farm policies that "entitle" ranchers "to up to $40,000 in disaster compensation from the federal government, even though the nearest debris[, from the columbia explosion,] landed 10 to 20 miles from his cattle."

you should really go read that last article there, i'll wait.

[1] see clarification: http://wednesdaynight.org/diary/2008/04/17

April 16, 2008
he said what?

some of my friends today thought i was making this up, but here it is, on the web, so it must be true:

In a world where some no longer believe that we can distinguish between simple right and wrong, we need your message to reject this "dictatorship of relativism," and embrace a culture of justice and truth.

-- pres. bush, welcoming the pope to the whitehouse

never in my life could i imagine someone putting those two words together; five seconds worth of research shows that it was from a mass given by the pope three years ago:

We are building a dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one's own ego and desires.

i will leave it at that.

April 15, 2008
day twenty-eight

today was my twenty-eighth straight day running, and it was a good one. my streak won't last another week, as i have a well-deserved day off on patriots' day, after a 16 mile run coming up this sunday.

when i first tried this new training program, i spent the track days at the MIT track, as i couldn't find any tracks that looked open to the public and closer. last night, i found downes field. it's about two miles away, which is a good warmup/cooldown distance, and my knees enjoyed its more rubbery surface, when compared to mit's track. i realized that i've already run past it twice before as it's on the BAA half marathon course.

anyway, today's workout was 4xMile, and i did them all around 6:45 without too much trouble. i'd like to bring that down to 6:30, but it looks like the latter workouts are 6xMile, and that might be tough. either way, next week is back to hills instead.

tonight's game was not quite as fun as sunday nights, but it wasn't the habs blowout that i was a bit worried about. the difference tonight was one lucky bounce, and as we saw in 2004, it's the fourth win that's the important one. i'm still looking forward to seeing game six at the garden saturday!

April 9, 2008
playoffs.

well, it is playoff time! i'm going to every game here ing boston again this year. wish we had home ice; sunday seems so far away...

since i don't have cable anymore, i've been listening to the radio feed from calgary this evening. this is just what my faux-canadian accent needs.

April 8, 2008
eight years prior

as i didn't have a job, and had only recently turned nineteen, my freshman-year lawsuit threat felt, at the time, a bit more than a thorn in my side, even though it never amounted to anything.

times were a little different back then. i remember reading the copyright laws on the library of congress gopher site. i wish i had saved those pages somewhere, but they seem to have finally made the transition to the www.

in other news, i'm on day 22 of my training program. i've run each of the last 21 days (since returning from SF), which is, by a long shot, a new record for me. my reward? hill repeats. at least this program doesn't go up to 10 hills like the other one, and after measuring the hill on google earth, i only need to run half of it. at least this week.

April 1, 2008
don't even start it up

what he said.