Lying Down on the Job Again

Yeah, so 3 weeks have gone by. It's easier to do than you might think. And what's worse is that I still don't have a heck of a lot to write about.

Finally got around to watching Precious last night. Definitely the feel-good, laugh-out-loud, uproarious comedy of 2009! I can't believe that was Tyler Perry playing Precious! Seriously though, you can put that one squarely in the category of "really good movie that I never want to watch again." Still to this day I don't know when a good time to watch a movie like that is. You don't wanna watch it when you're in a great mood 'cause it'll certainly put a stop to that and I'm not sure you wanna watch it if you're already feeling crappy 'cause then you'll really feel awful. Still, probably better off with the latter as opposed to the former. Then again, if you're a big fan of schadenfreude, then this is definetely the movie for you! In any case, very good performances all around and I believe this marks the first appearance of Mariah Carey in a non-terrible movie. Funny side story; her role was originally to be played by Halle Berry, but she had to cancel at the last minute due to a scheduling conflict. I would have loved to have sat in on that casting session:

"Guys, bad news. Halle Berry's out."
"Great; who are we gonna get to replace an Oscar-winning actress on short notice?"
"I've got it: Mariah Carey!"
"Perfect!"

In other news, if you've got even a tinge of sci-fi nerdish tendencies I recommend that you head over to http://www.redlettermedia.com/ and check out the 70-minute Phantom Menace or 90-minute Attack of the Clones reviews. Both are pretty hilarious and are easily more watchable (and rewatchable) than the films themselves. I can't really explain them in any way that actually will mean anything to the uninitiated; it's one of those things that has to be experienced. Most people watch the first one (they're divided into 10-minute chunks on Youtube) and are like "huh?!?" but you develop this weird compulsion to keep going. By the end of about the 3rd or 4th, though, you'll "get it" and be able to decide if it's your cup of tea or not. He's also done some Star Trek reviews too, and they're really good too but since I'm not as big of a Trekkie I like the Star Wars ones better.

That's it for now. I'll try not to make it another 3 weeks again.

In Celebration of Pedestrian Accomplishments

So on Tuesday I broke my previous record for beating the original Legend of Zelda on the NES: the new record is 54 minutes. I was on the el when I did it and yelled out in celebration. Somehow the other passengers weren't quite as enthused as me and edged slowly away from me. Oh well; more seat room for me. I had initially set a goal of beating it in 45 minutes, but now I don't think it very likely. This new time was only 3 minutes faster than my old best and I don't really see a whole lot of places where I can get that much faster. Probably time to turn my attention to another pointless activity.

Anyone else sick to death of hearing about Tiger Woods? Am I missing something that makes this a big story that needs to be reported on daily? And I would have no problem if it was just the tabloid shows, late night TV, and E! talking about it - that's what they're for. But I have a real problem when CNN starts reporting this as actual news. Let me recap the story from my perspective: it turns out that an extremely wealthy and successful athlete was repeatedly unfaithful to his wife, who was not at all pleased with him when she found out and assaulted him, and as a result he took 4 months off of golf. Which part of this even qualifies as mildly surprising? I know that not all athletes cheat on their wives but the perception is that most do so, again, it shouldn't be very surprising. Exempting Tiger Woods from this was as foolish as exempting Michael Jordan from it.

Of course, I guess I'm the one who shouldn't be surprised. I've never agreed with the media's obsession with Tiger. I have no problem when they focus on him when he's atop the leaderboard, but I can't tell you the number of times I've seen the highlight recap or a golf tournament where all they do is show shots of Tiger and then say something like "Tiger finished in 6th, 5 shots behind the winner." And then maybe they show one 2-second shot of the winner getting his trophy and then move on. That's disrespectful to the winner and to the game.

All that being said, Augusta is easily the most beautiful course in the country and looks fantastic in HD, so I'll definitely be adding golf into the hockey-and-Cubs sports repertoire this weekend.

I'm Back!

You may have noticed a slightly new look to the blog. I got a few complaints that the white font on black background was such a stark contrast to the rest of the web's black-on-white that it was hard on the eyes so I decided to change it. After having a few days to get used to it I think I like it better, even if it now looks more like almost every other blog on the net.

So after a week of R&R down in Houston I'm back and . . . well, pretty damn tired actually. But no matter. Today is Opening Day so all is right with the world! It will also hopefully be the day that we get to witness Duke go down in humiliating fashion to big underdog Butler. And if we can add in a Cubs victory the day will be complete! I'll try to put together a Cubs preview (which I skipped last year) sometime this week but overall I'm actually a lot more optimistic than most Cubs fans are. I'm predicting 89 wins and a wild-card berth.

Didn't do a whole lot down in Houston, which is exactly how we planned it. Got out to play golf once and grandma and grandpa were nice enough to babysit one night so Christy and I could go out to dinner and see Hot Tub Time Machine. The movie was meh but it was very nice to be able to get out and have a date night. Other than that we just did a lot of visiting with family and chilling out as best we could and as baby would allow. There are some flight horror stories but I think I'll let my wife handle those tales over on her blog. Overall Anabelle was a real trooper and was happy to just go along with whatever we were doing on any particular day. We're very lucky that we've got such an easygoing baby. Hopefully she doesn't realize that she's going easy on us and decide to ramp it up.

We got back in yesterday and I had a package from Amazon waiting for me. It was the new blu-ray of Toy Story that just came out last week. So I popped it in last night and Wow! That is definitely a showcase disc for a blu-ray player and HDTV. And that's pretty amazing considering that the movie is almost 15 years old. Given the limitations of the projectors at the time I think it's quite probable that the movie has never looked as good as it does now. It's also the first time I've watched the movie in about 6 or 7 years and it's every bit as good as I remembered it. It's probably the quintessential example of a film with a story so simple that even 2 and 3-year-olds can understand it but with a ton of extra layers packed in for older kids and adults too. Highly recommended addition to your blu-ray collection. It's also made me excited to see Toy Story 3 this summer; although I think Anabelle will still be too young for it. That one may end up being a rental.

What the health?!?!? (Revisited)

Well, that was quite an exciting weekend to say the least! 48 NCAA tournament games and health care reform. What will this weekend bring? Forecast calls for a flurry of basketball activity ending by Sunday and continuing fronts of Republican anger. So either because I work in the healthcare industry or because I'm viewed as a super-being of awesome intellect (I'm sure it's the former but I like to pretend that it's the latter) people have been asking for my take on the newly enacted healthcare legislation. My take on it has pretty much been consistent and was well articulated by last week's Economist: it was worth passing, but only just barely.

The positives that the bill does are very real. An additional 32 million people getting insurance, an end to lifetime caps, and an end to denial due to pre-existing conditions. Now the negatives. It does pretty much nothing to bring down the skyrocketing costs of healthcare apart from the fact that providers shouldn't have to worry nearly as much about the uninsured not paying since, in theory, almost everyone will be insured. But offset that against a lot of these newly insured now consuming more health products than they did before and I'm not sure you have a gain. Then there's the suspect claim that it's going to be partially paid for by cuts in Medicare and to that I'll just say this: I'll believe it when I see it.

It also does nothing to address medical malpractice reform. In fact, probably the thing that sticks out most and the biggest overall negative are the things that this bill doesn't do. For all the fury and threats from the bill's opponents you'd think that we had just taken a bulldozer to the entire healthcare industry. But what's remarkable is that very very little has changed. The insurance industry basically just gained 32 million more members thanks to the new quasi-mandate that everyone has to buy health insurance. It's a bit of a double-edged sword though since insurers can't deny people and can no longer place lifetime caps. That makes pricing policies a great deal trickier. The hope is that the increased membership spreads the extra costs around enough to not drive up premiums. We'll see if that pans out.

And that's pretty much the extent of it. We've decided to spread out our health costs over a wider base in exchange for less people being without coverage. That's all well and good except that the health care costs, along with Social Security, are going to beyond bankrupt us and, while I don't believe that this bill hurts us in that regard, it really doesn't help us either. And given the shitstorm the country went through to get it passed it's extremely unlikely that this issue gets touched again for a long long time (with the exception that Republicans are certainly going to run on a platform to repeal it).

One long-term effect that I do see is that this in fact *could* be the beginning of the end for private insurance in this country and the first step towards single payer. Not that I think that's a bad thing, mind you (other than the unfortunate side effect of me losing gainful employment). Here's why. It has to do with the combination of insurers not being allowed to deny for a pre-existing condition and the penalty on consumers for not buying insurance. The key will be the dollar amount they put the penalty at, and the correct amount would be whatever the cheapest insurance policy is. Otherwise you've basically taken away any incentive for anyone to buy insurance. Think about it. You don't carry insurance and maybe pay out of pocket for seeing a doctor a couple times of year when you get sick (which is still much cheaper than insurance). Then something catastrophic like a heart attack happens to you. Well, you just have a family member fill out an insurance application on your way to the hospital: the insurer can't deny you for a pre-existing condition and can't charge you more for being higher risk. Then of course once you recover you instantly cancel your policy again, because why would you carry it when you can just get it again if/when you need it later? It doesn't take a whole of this happening before it quickly becomes an unprofitable model for the insurance industry. Now maybe there's something else in this bill that prevents the situation I've described from happening, but I haven't seen it. The strength of the mandate to buy insurance will be absolutely key.

Oh, and I was a bit amused when I got an e-mail from John McCain right after the legislation passed. He had this to say: "The fact remains that by a two-to-one margin, Americans do not want this bill to become law. " Boy, the Republicans and Fox News sure do love their polls lately. I remember when polls were nothing more than just, like, a puff of air. But apparently they're quite important now, since the Republicans agree with them. But probably not for long considering that now that the bill became law the opinion has changed again and is now favorable. Allow me to just state unequivocally that a poll should never be a reason to do or not do anything. It should only be used as an indicator to tell you how good of a job you're doing at getting your message out. The poll itself should not be the message. The tactic of endlessly repeating one poll that favors your position so that the next time it's taken it favors your position even more is a stupid human trick worthy of Letterman and should be treated as such.

A Brief Update and a Rant

Well, work is substantially complete on my various tax projects so I can start to relax just a little bit. Which is good timing since this weekend is the best sports weekend of the year! Even not having the Illini in it hasn't dampened my spirits (much) and at least now I don't have to worry about getting pissed off when they lose in the first round (and no, I'm not going to much care when they lose in the NIT).

Then a week from this Friday we are heading down to Houston for a week, so it's nice to have a lot of time off to look forward to and, with any luck, by the time we get back we'll have some decent weather here (wishful thinking probably).

I had the Oscars on in the background and I realized once and for all that "in the background" is the most attention I will ever pay to that bloated, self-important ego-thon. I think I'm just a little sick of people getting up on a stage and acting like they've just cured cancer. It's like the one lady I work with who sends every single e-mail with the little high priority flame/exclamation and has all her voicemails marked "urgent". Like, "look at me, I'm so important!" It's just obnoxious. And it wouldn't be so bad if it was just the Oscars. But not a single week goes by between January and March where you don't have a different one of these award shows (though mercifully most are not televised) where all the same people are nominated, win, and say essentially the same thing all for, when you boil it down, playing dress-up and make believe. Which is not to say that it doesn't take effort and isn't a skill - it is. But so is household electrical wiring or changing a carburator but they don't hand out awards for that. As a capitalist, I think that they get their recognition in the form of very large paychecks. I don't think it's necessary to give them lots of little gold statues as well. Of course, as a capitalist I also realize that by having it on my tv (even just in the background) I'm contributing to the problem. Maybe next year I'll host an Oscar party where we do something (anything) other than watch the Oscars and then at the end of the night I'll go online and read off the list of winners. Who's in?

Taxes, Taxes Everywhere

My, how time does get away from me!

Lately I have been buried in the wonderful world of taxation. This year I am charged with not only doing the taxes for my family's pizza operation in 2009, but also the sale of the business as well. Then thrown into the mix I'm getting my first taste of corporate taxes by doing those for my friend Dan's title company. Throw in a couple personal taxes into the mix (including my own) and . . . let's just say that I've become intimately familiar with the IRS website over the last couple of weeks. It's times like these that I wonder why I became a CPA. It's not that I particularly enjoy taxes. I think it's just that I hate and fear them just a little less than most people, so it makes me a prime candidate. Come to think of it, that probably explains why I'm an auditor too.

Quick update on my book quest. So far I have combed through all 3 of the Presidential debates from 1992 and just finished reading a book about the entire campaign (Mad as Hell: Revolt at the Ballot Box). Even though it was much more about the political spin involved in a campaign than it was about the actual platform of the candidates, it was very interesting and should serve as good background and at least give me a timeline for events. And I now know more about Paul Tsongas than I ever thought I would. Next up for me will be to start sorting through some primary sources from the campaign: I'd like to get a copy of Clinton's economic plan that he revealed in the summer of '92 and I also need to go through his nomination acceptance speech at the '92 convention. Then I think I need to start spending some quality time at the library going through old Time, Newsweek, and Economist magazines from '92. But of course, all that will be saved until after taxes.

Tangentally related, in reading the title "Mad as Hell" it reminded me that I still had not seen the movie Network and decided to rectify that. I've still been watching quite a bit of movies lately but that's the only one that I can label as a "must see". It fluctuates between being pretty dated and almost eerily prescient and at times it's a little unfocused, but it is always entertaining and there are some scenes, dialogues, and monologues in it that stand up to some of the best ones ever written for the screen. Definitely add it to your Netflix queue if you haven't seen it (since it seems like you aren't able to get any new releases from them anymore anyway).

Just a quick hit on some of the other movies I've seen lately. For those who charge that Al Pacino can't act, you should definitely check out Dog Day Afternoon. After the first two Godfather's, it's probably the last time where he really truly did some acting before he just started playing Al Pacino for the next 30 years. Unless, of course, you count his waaaaayyyy over the top and cartoony (but awesome) portrayal in Scarface a couple years later. Oh and I finally saw Hitchcock's Rebecca. I hesitate to give it such a mediocre review because I absolutely adore Hitchcock, but the movie just didn't do it for me. I think it's just too dated and the premise has been ripped off too many times. What was a "shocking twist" in 1940 is now an overplayed cliche. I realize I shouldn't hold that against Hitchcock (and I don't) but still it's what caused me to have a pretty ho-hum reaction to the movie and thus I can't really recommend it except to Hitchcock die-hards (who have probably already seen it).

Finally, I agree with Ebert that this year's Oscars are pretty easy to predict. The Hurt Locker for Best Picture, Bullock and Bridges in the leading categories, Waltz and Mo'Nique in the supporting categories, and Bigelow for Director. James Cameron will just have to console himself with a Scrooge McDuck-style swim in his vault.

Bayh Bayh Evan

Forgive the horrible pun, but I couldn't resist (and I'm also surprised I haven't seen that used anywhere else in print; the press is usually all over that).

In any case, the announcement this week that centrist Democratic Senator Evan Bayh would not seek reelection was another blow to Democratic control in Congress and, to a slightly lesser extent, the President. On the one hand, I applaud Senator Bayh for bringing some more attention to the bitter partisanship in Congress and not simply laying the blame for it on the Republicans. On the other hand, I wish that he (and other Senators) would do more of that as part of their ordinary discourse and not just a retirement speech.

Remember how so many of us Obama supporters hoped that he'd help usher in a new era of "post-partisanship"? How long ago that seems now. It's not that I'm disillusioned with Obama; I don't think he deserves much of the blame for this. His only real mistake in this regard was in ceding too much control of the domestic agenda to Congress. As it turned out, it was akin to giving a 6-year-old the keys to the family car. The results were fairly predictable. But I can't blame Obama for that because every strategist and pundit agreed that the thing he needed to avoid above all else was making the Clinton mistake of dictating a plan to Congress without their involvement and having them revolt (again, like a bunch of 6-year-olds).

So I guess the lesson is that you shouldn't trust Congress with anything you wouldn't trust a 6-year-old to do and, in general, it's about all you can do to keep them in matching shoes and from eating paste.

Anyway. so I don't blame Obama (much). But I can certainly blame Congress and there's a whole lot of blame to go around there. The Republicans established early on that they would take up the mantle of obstructionists. As has been repeatedly said by me and many others, that's good politics but bad governing. If you're the majority, the way to combat that is to project the image that you're acting conciliatory but the other side is spurning you at every turn. The olive branch that's being set on fire. But the Democrats did themselves no favors in this regard. Years of frustration from 12-years of a Republican ruled Congress still seethed below the surface, and the Democrats basically acted like the Republicans would be forced to go along with their agenda or would be rendered irrelevant. Well, if you're going to have that attitude, you'd better be sure you can hold your party together to pass your agenda. And of course they couldn't (didn't).

The other thing they couldn't do was sell any of their (limited) ideas to the American public. I challenge anyone to give me a good example of a Democratic Congressional member going on the offensive against a Republican. There are a couple, but they are nearly universally used as a response to a Republican attack. There's a good quote from Democratic strategist Paul Begala (in a variation of an old Patton quote), "The purpose of a campaign is not to respond to every one of your opponent's attacks, it's to make the other son-of-a-bitch respond to your attacks." And the Democratic Congress has just done an abysmal job at this. You can only deflect so much before some attacks get through, and if you're not able to get any in yourself, well, as one of my favorite comic strips once said (in lampooning sports commentators), "It's very hard to win if you score less points. Even with a good defense."

So to bring this back on topic, it's lamentable to be losing another centrist - regardless of party affiliation. It's yet another step in the continuing polarization of our government. Governing by ideology instead of practicality is just simply not going to allow us to meet the challenges we need to as a nation and as human beings. And the sounds you hear on CSPAN will sound more and more like Nero's fiddling.

Crazy Heart and Crazy Idea

Finally got a chance to see Crazy Heart yesterday. I don't think it's possible to talk about the movie without comparing it to The Wrestler. They certainly are similar. I enjoyed both films immensely, but I find myself taking the unusual position of saying that while I believe The Wrestler is a better film, I enjoyed Crazy Heart more. The Wrestler just has an overwhelming bleakness to it that, while it doesn't detract from the film's merit, makes it inherently more uncomfortable to watch. Crazy Heart hits a lot of the same notes (unintentional pun) but on the whole it's just a much more optimistic film. Whereas Jeff Bridges' character seems largely indifferent to the destructive effects his lifestyle has on his body, Rourke's seems to almost actively seek out his own self-destruction. A big part of that is the differene in the subjects: has-been musicians still usually fare quite a bit better than has-been wrestlers. Case in point, given the choice who would you rather be: Tom Cochrane or Jake the Snake Roberts? In any case, Crazy Heart certainly abounds with cliches, but Bridges' performance is fantastic and he deserves the Oscar (as Rourke did last year, but hopefully Bridges will actually get it).

In other news, I've decided to embark on a mission to write a book. Specifically a non-fiction book. Even more specifically, a political non-fiction book. As long as I've watched political debates, particularly the Presidential ones, I've always been struck by the fact that we ask our candidates to exhaustively state their positions and plans on every issue we can think of and then whoever is elected invariably only gets to even attempt, at most, about a fourth of what they wanted to. So I've always wanted to read a book that examined the main issues of each Presidential campaign and then follow them through the winner's Presidency to see what progress was made. Was the issue just completely forgotten? Did legislation get introduced but then defeated? Did some major event happened that drastically shifted the nation's priorities? Well, after doing some searching I don't see any such book out there so I've decided that I'll try to write it.

My plan is that I am just going to start with one particular election and the next Presidential term and try to write that portion along with my introduction sometime over the next year. If that goes well and I'm not completely demoralized and defeated, I'll try to use that to get a literary agent and then, hopefully, a publisher. The eventual plan would be to examine all the campaigns going back to Kennedy-Nixon in 1960 (I like that as a starting point since that's when debates were first televised), but we'll have to see how it goes. It's a long-shot I know but hey, the worst thing that can happen is that I spend a lot of time learning about historical politics and get some experience writing non-fiction, and that's not a horrible thing as worst possible outcomes go. I intend the book to be non-partisan, meaning that I will try to focus on just what the candidate said that he wanted to do and compare that to what the President did. I want to completely set aside the question of whether or not they "should" have done it. Unfortunately, that of and by itself is quite dry and academic. Where I think it can be made more interesting is in exploring the decisions that a President made which were not mentioned in the campaign. Were there things said during the campaign (maybe in response to a totally different question) that gave insight as to how this President would respond to this or was his response just completely out of the blue and at the whim of the political winds of the day? More importantly, are there things we should look and listen for from candidates other than their official positions that will actually tell us more about the kinds of decisions that they will make?

So in any case, it's certainly an ambitious project. The campaign I've decided to start with is 1992, followed then by the 92-96 Clinton presidency. I did this for a couple reasons. First of all, 92 was a really interesting campaign. It was the first time in 80 years where we had a "real" 3rd party candidate (in the sense that he garnered nearly 20% of the popular vote and participated in all of the televised debates). I also find H.W. Bush and Clinton to both be really interesting (I initially thought about doing the 1988 campaign but god help me I'm just not ready to devote tens of hours of my life to Michael Dukakis). Finally, I think that the 15-20 year timeframe is long enough ago that I can get some good historical perspective but recent enough that I should have no shortage of sources. I've got 5 books on the way just to give me some good base knowledge, and I'm currently in the process of going through transcripts of the 3 debates. So far it's every bit as interesting as I was hoping that it would be. So if anyone has any good book recommendations on the 92 campaign or early Clinton presidency I'd love to hear them.

Pay No Attention to the Fee Behind the Curtain

I think I've just invented a new cause that I want to take up. There is something about the idea of sales tax and tipping that has always bothered me. No, I'm not going to host my own Tea Party and no I don't have some kind of Mr. Pink philosophical objection. I've just always been uncomfortable with the whole idea of "this item or service costs X, but to actually obtain it will cost you X + Y". It seems to me that if I go to the Apple Store for a new iPod and my credit card gets charged $217.84, then $217.84 is its price. Yet it gets advertised for $199. Why?

And every time a fast food comes out with a 99 cent value menu, they always run a commercial with a guy walking in and pulling out one crumpled up dollar bill from his pants and leaving with a 99 cent item. And every time I see that I think "Bullsh*t!", but then again maybe I take my Taco Bell commercials a little too seriously. And speaking of Taco Bell, who knew 2 weeks ago that the "Bell" came from founder Glen Bell? I sure as hell didn't. But I digress . . .

In any case, it was always something that just generally annoyed me but over the last 5 years or so I think it's really been elevated to an actual problem worthy of significant attention.

Let's set aside the issue of sales tax for now. Apart from that, I don't think that you should be allowed to advertise a price for something when it's impossible to procure the item for that price. But that's exactly what cell phone companies do. They will advertise a phone for $199, contingent on you agreeing to a 2-year contract. I'm fine with that stipulation (relatively speaking). But the problem is that you go in to purchase it and right at the end of the process they tell you "oh, there's also a $30 connection fee to set the phone up on the network." Wait, so if I don't sign a 2-year contract the phone will cost me $399, and if I do sign the contract it will cost me $229, so who is it that can buy the phone and walk out with it for $199? No one! So why do they get to advertise that as the price?

Ticketmaster is even worse. If you buy 4 tickets to an event you end up paying at least one more ticket's worth of fees. Again, setting aside the truly asinine labels like "convenience fees" (wow, isn't it so convenient that I actually received the tickets I paid for?) they use to describe these blatant price gouges (I've always just lovingly referred to them collectively as "horseshit fees"), they are another example of complete dishonesty in pricing. I used to assume that all the money was going to Ticketmaster and thus there was some form of legitimacy in that they were acting as a middle man between the venue and the purchaser and thus were charging a fee (granted, a ridiculously high fee) for their service in much the same way that Fed Ex charges to get a product from producer to customer. Yet I recently discovered (thanks to an article in The Economist) that most of the money from these fees goes back to the promoters and the artists. But wait, I thought that was what the face value of the ticket was for? Basically it's just a big racket whereby an artist can claim that they are keeping ticket prices low for their fans while at the same time pocketing the extra money. True, there are some instances where you can go to the venue and purchase the tickets without paying the fee, and in that case I'm fine with it. But there's also plenty of situations where tickets are available online only and that's just another example of an item that has a "price" at which the item can't be purchased.

And I'm not even gonna get started on car dealers . . .

So now we get to my cause that I'm going to take up - total price transparency. All brick and mortar locations will be required to display (and advertise) the price at which the good or service can actually be procured for. Can't be done you say? Lots of places already do it! When you go to the movies, the price on the ticket and the price displayed for the popcorn and soda (exorbitant as they are) are the prices you actually pay. Same thing when I go to my barber, or to a bar. Why can't other businesses do this? It's not like they don't know the sales tax amounts and it's not like they change all that often.

Online pricing is a little trickier, since by their nature they serve many different geographic areas. Still, it's not an insurmountable problem. Just make it clear that what's being displayed is the "base price". And you know how practically every site makes you create a profile when you buy something? Well, when you're signed in they know where you live so they should be able to update the prices accordingly. But I'm flexible about that. The key is to eliminate those nasty little extra fees they are going to charge everyone at the end that has nothing to do with where you're located.

To me, this is really just an extension of the concept behind the Freedom of Information Act. I think we're entitled to know, before the absolute last second before purchase, exactly how much out of pocket a product is going to cost us. And businesses should not be allowed to advertise anything other than that amount. To do so is dishonest and does a tremendous disservice to all consumers.

What's on your List?

So Christy and I actually got a chance to go out into the world sans-baby on Saturday. The occasion was a friend of ours' 30th birthday celebration (who turns 30 in 2010? 30th birthdays are sooooooo 2009). By the way, for all those who DID turn 30 in 2009, my brother came up with a great excuse to celebrate your 31st: it's the 10th anniversary of your 21st!

But I digress. Anyway, during the course of the evening Bon Jovi's Livin' on a Prayer came on and I mentioned to Christy that, after much thought, I'm putting that song on "The List". To clarify, The List was invented for and necessitated by Paradise City. It was the first, and for a long time only, entry that I classified under the category of "songs that I think are good but that I can happily go the rest of my life without ever hearing again." I just think that there is a little counter in each of our brains that keeps track of how many times we've been exposed to a particular stimulus and once we reach a certain point (which I think is variable) there's no longer any reaction. You're just numb to it. It's not like you actively dislike it now; it's just that you can no longer (and can't ever envision being able to) "get into it". Off the top of my head, here are the songs on the list:

1. Paradise City

2. Livin' on a Prayer

3. Pour Some Sugar on Me

4. Runnin' with the Devil

5. We Didn't Start the Fire

6. You Shook Me All Night Long

7. Baby Got Back

8. Jeremy

9. American Pie

10. Piano Man

One caveat I should mention regarding numbers 9 and 10. Both of those songs I actually CAN still listen to and enjoy but only briefly. I want them to end after about 2 minutes, but of course they go on for another 4, so I'd rather they not come on at all.

Then there are also the following 5 songs which, while not on the list quite yet, will inevitably be on there. The slide is irreversible; it's just a matter of time. They are:

1. Here I Go Again

2. Like a Prayer

3. Billie Jean

4. Jessie's Girl

5. Welcome to the Jungle

I'm sure there are many more that I'm just not thinking of right now. Yes, most of the songs on the list are from the 80s. Make of that what you will.

So, fellow readers, what's on your list? Keep in mind the rules. We're NOT talking about "songs you can't stand" or "songs that are overplayed". These are specifically songs where if someone said to you "this is a good song" you'd absolutely agree, but you still wouldn't want to listen to it. For instance, I'm reasonably sure that "Smells Like Teen Spirit" would be on a lot of people's list, but it doesn't make mine for the simple fact that I never liked it in the first place. Similarly, I never need to hear "Ice, Ice Baby" again but I don't put it on the list because even though I did like it at one time I would never defend it as "good".

Monday Musings

Just a couple thoughts that occurred to me over the weekend:

First of all, on the late night wars. Two things bother me, or rather two opinions bother me. One is the opinion that Conan O'Brien is a victim. Look, I've always liked Conan and I think he's pretty funny but let's be honest: the guy just got paid $33 million to NOT host a tv-show. Every day of my life, I've NOT hosted a tv show. Where's my check? I think that NBC and Leno pulling the plug on him was unfair, but he's been adequately compensated for it and then some. He's not a victim. The second opinion that annoys me is people responding to this story with "how can these celebrities get paid and companies throw around all this money when there are millions starving in the world" or some derivation of that. Entertainers and athletes are paid exorbitant amounts of money. Deal with it. They are paid that much because their is a market for their services, and that is the market rate. If you don't like it, I'm sure that Cuba and Venezuela would be glad to have you.

I was saddened to learn that apparently Dennis Hopper has late-stage terminal cancer and is facing his final days. Did I just have my head in the ground or has this just not been widely reported? Not like I'm the world's biggest Dennis Hopper fan but I've always enjoyed him and his work. I loved him in Easy Rider, Apocalypse Now, Blue Velvet, Hoosiers, True Romance, and, yes, even Speed and I think he qualifies as an American film icon. And not even the worst of human beings deserves the slow horrid death that cancer brings, so all I can wish for him is as little pain and as much peace as possible in his final days. It's times like these where I think that instead of the endless memorials and tributes that are going to be shown in his honor after he dies, wouldn't it be nice if we paid tribute to him now while he's still around to enjoy and be touched by them? That's something that's always seemed so backwards to me.

The other strange bend to this story is that he's apparently using his final days to file for divorce from his wife, supposedly to keep her from contesting his will. That just seems like some misguided priorities to me. You find out that you've got a month or so to live and rather than trying to cope and be at peace with it and learning to detach and disassociate yourself from materiality and things that will no longer be of concern to you shortly your thoughts turn instead to "Bitch ain't gettin my money!" And his wife, for her part, is certainly not doing much to elicit sympathy. Under their pre-nup, she is still entitled to one quarter of his estate even if they're divorced. So does she say "I don't care about the rest of the money; let's not spend the rest of our time together fighting." Nope. She's supposedly "barricaded herself into their house" while he's been at the hospital. Classy. And they have a 6-year-old child together (Galen). So always remember Galen: even (and, apparently, especially) in the face of death, money is always the most important thing.

The Downfall of the Two Party System

I intially started this as a response to Weir's comment about the difference in Congressional voting patterns between Republicans and Democrats, but as is so often the case I found that I had more to say about it then I first realized and thought it deserved to be a topic in it's own right.

I believe that we are currently witnessing the downfall of the two-party system. To be sure, it will be a slow, painful, agonizing death but I think that we've seen the cracks in the foundation already and those cracks will just widen given time. Allow me to elaborate.

The fundamental weakness of the two-party system is, unsurprisingly, its binary nature. Outside of the primaries, you don't get a diverse range of choices on the issues. You don't like candidate A or candidate B's position on a particular issue? Tough luck; pick one. This can be overcome when the system is functioning at its best, and that's when there is a semi-clear line of demarcation between the two parties that occurs at or near the center of the political spectrum. In that scenario it's fairly clear what each party stands for and when you elect more members of one party you can have a reasonable expectation of their priorities and you can also expect that they will more or less vote together. But the fundamental flaw which cannot be overcome in this system is that you have no good method of registering discontent with the ruling party other than to vote for the other side. That often leaves the electorate in the awkward position of voting for someone they don't ideologically agree with, just because they're fed up with what the current party has been offering. And small wonder that these voters are fickle and will abandon you the first chance they get; they never agreed with you in the first place!

But the real breakdown occurs when one party, rather than being spread throughout their half of the political spectrum, becomes ideologically clustered around the last 20% of it (as the Republicans have). Then, by definition, the other party is left to cover the remaining 80%. That might seem like a good thing for the party with the wider base, but it actually becomes a huge hindrance. You've got somebody who is 10 "points" right of center in the same party with someone who is all the way left. At that point the question becomes less "why can't you two stay together on an issue?" and more "why the hell are the two of you in the same party?"

Here's the other problem. The Democrats don't actually cover the remaining 80% of the spectrum abdicated by the Republicans. At heart, most Democrats are left of center. So they move to the right to try and fill the void left by the Republicans but they're not going to go all the way to 30 "points" right of center. I'd say they're probably only going about half that far - to about 15, but let's not get hung up on the numbers since they're pretty arbitrary anyway. The point is that you've now got a fairly sizeable gap in ideology between the two parties and that's a huge problem. When the two parties each inhabit an entire half of the political spectrum, the members in the middle aren't too far apart, no matter which party they belong to. That makes compromise feaible and, since they are by definition compromises by centrists, they tend to be pretty good ones. But now that you've got a gap in ideologies between the parties - forget it. It might as well be a chasm as far as compromise is concerned.

So the result is depressingly logical: complete gridlock when the Democrats are in charge and lots and lots of legislation that the majority of the country disagrees with when the Republicans are in charge. Taken in this context, it makes all the sense in the world that the period of our greatest prosperity (recently) occurred when we had a Democratic president with a Republican congress (94 - 2000). We avoided the gridlock of the Democratic congress while at the same time the Republicans were forced to come back towards the center to avoid a veto.

So is this unavoidable? I don't think so, but it will take a lot of time and, most importantly, a lot of courage from a small group of people (but then again isn't that the recipe for most major changes?). I used to think that the Republicans would be the ones splintering. That the fiscal conservatives would disassociate themselves from the religious fundamentalists and return to the center. I think they had a chance to do that, but that ship has now sailed. They realize that their base, while extremely passionate, is small and thus abandoning the party for the center would most likely just lead to political obscurity. Some (like Bob Barr) went to the Libertarian party and political obscurity was indeed the result (unless you consider .4% of the vote in the 2008 Presidential election to be "relevant"). Others (like Jim Webb) flipped and joined the Democratic party. But most just shuffled to the right along with their colleagues.

So what about a new 3rd party springing to national prominence? I just don't see it happening. Perot had a chance to do it in the early 90s but he was only interested in getting himself elected; the creation of a viable 3rd-party alternative was not on his agenda. Nader's Green Party? I don't think they'll ever have mass appeal, even among the left. Libertarians? There was a time when I'd like to have thought that but then something changed. I went to one of their meetings and they are just an incoherent mess. The Economist hit it right on the head when they said that they can basically be put into two groups: anarchists and drug decriminalization advocates. Hardly a platform with mass appeal.

So, yes, that leaves the Democrats as the most likely to fracture, and I'll give you a script for how it might happen. They lose power in either 2010 or 2012. The Republicans then proceed to pass a lot more legislation that is horribly unpopular. At some point they probably get us involved in another war too. The people once again get fed up with them and give the Democrats another go. The Dems take control and all the same gridlock happens again. The electorate is fed up with them yet again, but they also still remember that the Republicans haven't done anything they agree with for a long time. So then the key will be that a small group of important and popular Democrats have to get fed up as well. And it would probably have to be a group of either just retired or those thinking about retiring who don't have a whole lot to lose. It would be a big risk but if you got enough people to jump at once and enough momentum you could basically have a microcosm of how Obama overtook Hillary in the primaries. If you are able to move people from "well that's nice, but it'll never happen" to "wow, there might really be something here" you can do anything.

Hey, I can dream can't I?

Why the Democratic party is like a 4-year old

So thanks to the special election in Massachusetts yesterday, the Democratic party will no longer wield a super-majority in the Senate. This is seen as a big deal. And it certainly sounds like a big deal. No longer will the Democrats be able to wield supreme legislative authority, effortlessly passing bill after bill and relentlessly ticking off campaign promises. Oh wait, they weren't doing that. Remind me again about all the shining legislative achievements they've pushed through in the 6 months since Franken was sworn in as the 60th Democrat. It seems to me that they were languishing, and largely failing, to keep all of their caucus together while the Republicans just voted "no" to everything. And it further seems to me that they will still be doing that.

But from reading the news and the blogosphere you'd never know that. Pundits are talking about the Democrats being "devastated" and Democratic bloggers everywhere are lamenting the loss of the super-majority. And the more I read, the more it all started to seem very familiar. Let's roleplay a little - and no I'm not talking about getting out my dominatrix outfit (which I look damn hot in BTW). It's 3 months before Christmas and all your 3-year-old son can talk about is how much he wants a Buzz Lightyear action figure. On and on he goes about how great it is and how every night he dreams about it and generally how perfect and wonderful his life would be if only he had a Buzz Lightyear action figure. And on Christmas morning he gets it and you watch his eyes light up and he jumps up and down screaming and tells you how amazing and wonderful you are for getting it for him and how he'll never be bad again and will love it and cherish it for ever and ever. And for the next few weeks he goes everywhere with it. Eats with it, sleeps with it, goes to pre-school with it. And he treats it with the reverance that a monk would treat a first edition of the Bible. But then gradually the novelty of it all starts to wear off. Inevitably it starts getting nicked up and eventually after one too many ill-fated takeoffs a wing snaps off and once you caught him in the nick of time before he subjected Buzz to "military stress testing" with a lighter and an aerosol can. And eventually Buzz just gets thrown in the toy chest with everything else and gets largely forgotten about. Fast forward a year later and you are looking to give away some toys to Goodwill and you say "he doesn't ever play with this Buzz Lightyear anymore so he'll never miss it. And I bet some other kid would really like it." So you give it away. A few days later your son notices that it is missing and now, of course, he is irate and inconsolable. "How could you have given away my favorite toy in the world?!?!?! I loved that toy and now there will never be another one like it . . ." and so on.

So I guess what I'm saying is that no matter how rarely your child plays with a toy, don't give it to Goodwill. It's just not worth the hell you're going to catch.

No, wait, that's not it. The point is that the Democrats finally got the one thing that they've wanted forever. And they were really excited when they got it. But then they misused, neglected, and then ultimately stopped using it and despite that now they're all horribly depressed that it's gone.

So now supposedly the new gameplan is to try and get the Senate version of the healthcare bill to pass the House, thus bypassing the reconciliation process and negating the need for it to pass the Senate a second time. My opinion? If the idea of bringing a bill back to a place where you control 59 of the 100 seats fills you with such terror that you will do anything to get around doing it, then maybe it's not a very good bill. What the Democrats should do (and of course won't) is just start over. Pass a small bill that just eliminates pre-existing conditions and lifetime limits, declare victory, and move on so that maybe you actually have some legislative accomplishments to run on this November. That's what they should have done even before yesterday, but it's even more what they need to do today.

My Gratuitous Top 10 List

As (sort of) requested here is my list of the top-10 movies of the "aughts" with caveats galore. The first being that there are many films which I know are excellent that I haven't yet seen. And I only put about an hour of thought into this after consulting about 10 different "top" lists on the web, so there's also almost certainly at least a few movies which I have seen that I'm just plain forgetting about. Take that as an open invitation to try and persuade me with which masterpiece I'm obviously missing. So without further ado:

10. The Dark Knight - I wonder if Heath Ledger's performance would still have garnered the same acclaim had he not died. I'd like to think so, because it's simply one of the best performances ever filmed. The rest of this movie is nothing more than a decent superhero/action movie, but with his performance it's enough to elevate it onto here.

9. High Fidelity - Ah the movie that introduced the world to Jack Black. A romantic comedy for people who hate romantic comedies. Just the right balance of comedy and drama with just enough philosophy thrown in.

8. The Fog of War - This shouldn't surprise any frequent reader, since I've talked extensively about this documentary on here on at least two occasions. If you still haven't made time to see this, consider this just one more nudge.

7. Memento - I feel a little odd putting this here, because I find that I spend a lot of time arguing that this movie isn't as good as most people think. However, that's because I find myself talking to a lot of people who want to place this up there with the greatest films of all time and I'm just not there with it. Still, as just a pure cinematic experience this is hard to top. Few films have the power to just reach out and grab you from the opening credits, engross you in a story, and not let go till the end as much as this one did.

6. Almost Famous - Another odd one because looked at separately no component of this movie stands out as exceptional. Everything (story, dialogue, directing, characters, acting) is pretty much good but not great. But what can I say? I just flat out love it! Probably the best way I can describe it is "immensely watchable". I can pretty much watch this movie any time, any place. That's a rare quality for a film. I remember that after seeing this in theatres, it was one of the 5 films they were offering on the little personal TVs on my flight to Amsterdam (it was pre-"On Demand"; the movies just ran in a loop). I think I ended up watching it 3 times on the flight over and twice more on the flight back.

5. Pan's Labyrinth - I am a sucker for a good fantasy (which are, admittedly, very rare) and this is one of the best (even despite the fact that, technically, it may not even qualify as a fantasy). Some of the most engaging scenes and breathtaking images.

4. Lord of the Rings - Speaking of great fantasy . . . OK, so maybe it's a cheat to include this all as one movie, but I think it's actually more of a cheat to split them up. It's clearly all one story and I like them all equally anyway.

3. Waking Life - There are only two movies ever where after I finished watching it at home I've just instantly watched it again. This is one of them (Trainspotting is the other). This film pioneered the "live animation" look that's now unfortunately been ruined by investing commercials. It's the perfect look for this film. Yes, it's really "just" a collection of scenes where random people wax philosophically but I found every single scene engaging and almost all of them had at least something to say that I'd never thought of before. I also learned how to lucid dream from watching this film. Talk about practical usage!

2. City of God - When I first saw this film, I think I told everyone I knew that they needed to see it. But when they inevitably asked "what's it about" I found that I could never explain it in a way that made it sound even a fraction of as interesting as it really is. I find that I still have this problem, so I'll just say this. I guarantee you that no one who has watched it would dispute it's inclusion on this list.

1. Mulholland Drive - This will probably not be a very popular choice. This is a movie that splinters people. It's the ultimate "love it or hate it" movie. After I recommended this, a number of people saw it and then asked me to help explain it to them. Curiously I found that for everybody (myself included) whether or not you understood it was irrelevant to whether or not you liked it. It took me probably 5-6 viewings before I felt like I understood everything (or *almost* everything) but fitting all the pieces together was probably the most enjoyable part. Watching it, letting it all sink in, coming up with theories during drives to and from work, then rewatching it to see how my theory fit, and then doing it all over again. If that sounds like torture, then this is not the movie for you. If it sounds like fun though, you've got a fun little puzzle ahead of you. A word of warning though; the DVD has no chapter stops. Yeah, David Lynch is a quirky guy (to put it mildly).

Honorable mentions: Minority Report, Kill Bill (1&2), Inglorious Basterds, Avatar, Spirited Away, Best in Show, WALL-E

5 Movies that I'd like the 2 hours of my life back:

5. Transformers I and II - I love the Transformers. I still have the original 80s movie on VHS. I also don't have a problem looking at Megan Fox. But you'd find yourself both more entertained and more fulfilled staring at a Megan Fox poster for 2 hours - even if someone took away the poster after 30 minutes and you were stuck staring at a blank wall for the next 90.

4. Dumb and Dumberer - I didn't expect the genius of the Carey/Daniels original, but I did expect to laugh at least once. And I didn't. Not once. This is the start of a common theme for the rest of the movies on this list: when you don't have an idea, DON'T MAKE A SEQUEL!

3. Ocean's Twelve - One of the few films that actually made me angry as I watched it in the theatres. A pivotal plot point that revolves around the fact that Julia Roberts' character looks like Julia Roberts. Are you f'n kidding me?!?!?!? You. Can. Not. Do. That.

2. The Whole Ten Yards - I like to imagine that during filming right after the director yelled "cut" each time Bruce Willis and Matthew Perry just burst out laughing in disbelief that they were getting paid for this. I don't think this movie had a script. Seriously, I don't.

1. Matrix Revolutions - Even after "Reloaded" I still defended this series. I had faith in the Wachowskis (being a big fan of Bound and the original Matrix), that they would tie up the loose ends and wrap up the story in a satisfying way. I could not have been more wrong. After seeing it, I remember writing an e-mail saying that "I wish when I had gotten to the theatre Keanu Reeves had just kicked me in the nuts and stole my $7. That would have been more honest." I still feel that way.

Happy New Year, Decade, Etc!

OK, so as usual I'm not exactly on top of things. Oh well.

First of all, I was very excited that yesterday my favorite Cub of all-time was finally recognized as one of the best players of all-time. Dawson, Mark Grace, Ryne Sandberg, and (believe it or not) Shawon Dunston are the reason that I am the Cubs fan I am today. Congrats to the Hawk!

Random thought; as I was walking around in the cold earlier this week for some reason I started thinking about futuristic movies (there is actually a train of thought that led to this, but I'll spare you). I realized that I have never seen a movie set in a "happy" future where it was cold. Anytime it is cold in the future, it's always as part of a desolate world where the Earth has become a barren wasteland or somehow uninhabitable for humans. Now the opposite isn't true; just because it's warm in the future doesn't mean it's happy (e.g. Waterworld and Mad Max). It's as if to have a happy future, we have to solve winter. So help me out here movie buffs: can anyone think of a movie where a happy future still had cold in it?

Hope everyone had a good Christmas and New Year's. I don't know about you, but it didn't really feel like the end of a decade to me. It might just be that the end of the last decade was such a big deal that everything else pales in comparison, but even though I was young I recall the change from the 80s to the 90s being a far bigger deal. Personally, I think the culprit is that it never really had a good name. Saying goodbye to "the aughts" just doesn't have the ring of the 80s or 90s.

Avatar

So as promised I got the star rating for Avatar up on Saturday. However, I thought that a little more discussion about it was in order.

As far as this film representing the next leap forward technologically in film, I can tell you unequivocally that you can believe the hype. It is hands down the most amazing looking film I've ever seen. Cameron has managed to create a living, breathing world in a way that has never been done before in the history of film. And he has done it, presumably, almost exclusively with CGI. And the fact that I say "presumably" is itself a remarkable statement. Because I simply can't tell. There are things I saw which I have no possible idea how they would have been created without CGI, but there's no "dead giveaway" that makes me able to say for sure that it is. I think that Cameron learned (which, sadly, George Lucas did not) that most of the time where you run into trouble with CGI is when you have CGI characters present with non-CGI ones. He sidesteps this by basically making everything (and everyone) CGI. I counted only a very small handful of scenes where CGI and non-CGI characters were present in the same shot, and the shots were either so brief or they were so laden with other effects that your eyes aren't drawn to the differences. Ccompare this with, for example, the scene near the beginning of The Phantom Menace when we first meet Anakin. Anakin's master is all CGI and we don't believe for a moment that he's actually in the shot with the actors.

It only took me about 20 minutes into the film to realize that it was a guaranteed Oscar winner. Seriously, if it doesn't win Best Visual Effects they should just do away with the award. Sorry Star Trek, looks like you picked a bad year to come out.

Basically the movie looks so amazing that even if everytime a character had opened their mouths to speak chimp noises came out instead it still would have been a 4/5 star movie. So it should have been a no-brainer for it to earn 5 stars. So why only 4.5? Well, the story and dialogue are quite underwhelming. The story (in its largely spoiler-free form) is basically The Last Samurai meets The Secret of Mana. It's a serviceable story and it's never boring but it also abounds with cliches. I can totally forgive that, because the look of the film is so spectacular that in a way it's nice to be in the confines of a familiar story. You can feel free to look around and admire all the little details (and believe me there are a TON) without having to worry about getting lost. The dialogue, however, is another story. There's at least a half dozen examples where one character says to another character something that the other character would obviously already have known and it's clear that the only point is to provide expository dialogue. It just feels very unnatural. Also, there is just no form of subtlety here at all. As just one point that isn't a spoiler of any consequence but just summarizes it perfectly, the humans on the planet are mining for a rare mineral. And rather than just name it something that already exists, the writers decide to invent a new one and the name they choose is "unobtainium". The film is unabashedly pro-environmentalism and anti-war. There's nothing wrong with that but, again, some form of subtlety would be nice. The worst part is that it's unnecessary; the themes would have come through just fine without several characters basically outright stating them. It feels dumbed down, and maybe that's the point. All in all, it's certainly not something that ruins the movie but it is a detraction. I just wish they'd spent maybe $2-3 million less on the effects and invested in a decent rewrite of the dialogue.

Overall, the movie is just what it promises to be: a true cinematic experience. If you are thinking that you will eventually see it, do yourself a favor and see it the way it was meant to be seen: on an IMAX. The 3-D is awesome but not compulsory, in my opinion, but the large screen is. I don't know how the film will hold up once it gets to Blu-Ray but I guarantee you anyone that pops it in for the first time is going to say "wow, this would have been amazing to see on a huge screen." Don't be that guy (or girl).

I Am S-M-R-T

So, I have been playing a lot of online poker recently. And surprisingly enough, I have been doing well for a change. I bought in for $105 over the Thanksgiving week and through last weekend I had cashed out $300. But I started to feel a little bored with it and thought "you know what? For once in my life how about cashing out while you're still doing alright and before you get to the point where you've suffered 12 bad beats in a row and are vowing never to play online again?" So on Wednesday night I cashed out $100 of the $109 left in my account and thought "ok, I'll just screw around with this last $9 and then I'll take a break for a while." So that's what I did. And here's where the smartness comes in. At 10:00 at night on Wednesday I decide to enter a $3.30 tournament with 865 players. And I start doing really well. But at about 11:30 I start doing the math and realizing that with 250 players still left even in the best case scenario I'm going to be there a while. But what can I do? I'm certainly not going to just give up and go to bed. So I keep playing and playing. We get down to 45 players left and I'm actually the chip leader - but it's 1:30. Finally, I lose a couple bad hands and get crippled and then the final blow comes when I flop top pair (Jacks) and push only to run into pocket Aces. I'm out. It's 2:25. Final finish: 20th place. My payout? $8.54. Yep, I missed out on about 4 extra hours of sleep for less than $10. To those of you who are single (or at least don't have kids) that's probably not that big of a deal but let me assure you that when you are the parent of a 3-month-old sleep becomes quite precious indeed. It's sure as hell worth more than $2.14/hour. And of course, I just turned around last night and lost the remaining $14 in my account so really it was all for nothing. Oh well, at least I now really will be done for a while and I still did turn a profit (again, for now).

Leaving work in less than an hour to see Avatar. I'll have at least my star rating of it up by tomorrow (I know you all can't wait). Next week I am in the office on Monday, working from home on Tuesday, and then have the rest of the week off. As much as I will miss Christmas in Texas, it will be nice to just have 5 days off and not have to travel anywhere farther than Aurora and Tinley.

For you sports (and especially Cubs) fans out there, it was just reported that the Cubs finally traded Milton Bradley; and no, it wasn't for The Parker Brothers. It was for Carlos Silva, who is arguably the worst starting pitcher in MLB right now. The worst part about all of it is that I now can no longer make fun of the Sox for trading for Juan Pierre. My only hope is that during the Crosstown Classic next year I get to see Pierre bat against Silva. I'd like to know what happens when a player who specializes in hitting very week ground balls to second meets a pitcher who specializes in giving up towering home runs?

Playing Catch-Up Again

So as you might be able to tell if you look to the right side of this page, I've continued my recent kick of watching lots of movies (or at least lots more than I have in some time). And the result has been rather underwhelming. While I didn't expect the likes of Terminator and Angels & Demons to wow me, I had high hopes for Up in the Air. And while it was "good", I actually despised the ending so much that it seriously crippled my appreciation for the movie as a whole. Without giving anything away, it has one of those endings which make you re-examine earlier events in the film and realize that they don't make a whole lot of sense. Very disappointing. Still, given that as of this morning it got nominated for 6 Golden Globes (including Best Picture) I appear to be in the minority. As a side note, it was nice to see that my 2 favorite films so far this year (Inglorious Basterds and 500 Days of Summer) were also nominated for Best Picture.

I've got tickets to see Avatar in 3-D at the Navy Pier Imax on Friday. I initially bought tickets to it with the idea that it would be a fun, mindless sci-fi action movie. Now, however, after seeing Ebert give it his most glowing review ever, IGN come pretty close to that as well, and it too getting a Best Picture Golden Globe nomination, I would have to say that my expectations have definitely been raised. I can't really argue with the people who say that the previews do not look promising, but my response is this: please name me one feature film James Cameron has directed that isn't good (at least in the last 25 years)?

I'm still following the health care debate closely but I don't even really know where to start with that. Four months ago I wrote (of Democrats) "if you sit there and worry about every opinion poll and detrimentally alter the bill to fit the popular mood of the hour, you've got a good chance of ending up with a spectacularly crappy bill. And that's what'll get you killed in the election next year." Sadly, this looks to be exactly the route that they are following. I've seen the focus since that time shift dramatically from "we need to pass sweeping health reform that will ensure that every American is covered and that costs are kept down" to "we need to do everything in our power to pass something so it doesn't look like we've just wasted an entire year." Other than the actual Senators currently out pushing it, I don't know a single person that likes the current Senate bill (though, since it seems to change almost daily, I'm not even positive what the "current" Senate bill incarnation is).

Ironically, about the only that Republican-leaning and Democrat-leaning voters can agree on these days is that this bill is terrible. If they pass it in its current form, it will basically achieve nothing they set out to do other than (maybe) insuring a few more uninsured. It will do nothing to increase competition or keep costs from sky-rocketing, and they didn't even make an attempt at litigation reform. And even for the extra people who will be covered, with the amount that the bill's going to cost it will almost undoubtedly end up being far cheaper if the government just sent those people a check every year for the rest of their life and told them to buy their own insurance from a private insurer. And that's before they end up adding all the inevitable pork that will go in via the amendments that will be necessary in order to get this thing passed. As low as my expectations always are for the Democrats to be unified when they control Congress, I really stand in awe of their ineptitude right now. It reminds me of watching the Bears this season. You can learn to take the losses. There's no shame in just flat-out getting beat. What is so hard to swallow is when you don't get beat; you beat yourselves. I am constantly reminded of the Lewis Black joke: "The Democratic party is a party of no ideas, and the Republican party is a party of bad ideas. So you got the Republican standing up saying 'I've got a really bad idea' and the Democrat stands up and says 'and I know how to make it even worse'." Or, to paraphrase Lyle Lanley, "Y'know, a Democrat in power is a little like a mule with a spinning wheel. No one knows how he got it and danged if he knows how to use it."

Back to the Cold

So anyone who has been following Christy's blog knows that we just got back from spending Thanksgiving in Houston. It was a great trip and we did a lot of relaxing but both Christy and I managed to catch a cold on our last day there and combined with the turn in weather it has made the adjustment back a little more difficult than usual.

A few people have asked me for my opinion on the "climate-gate" scandal. I think that this guy sums it up for me pretty well. If you don't feel like reading that article, the gist is that I think it's an embarrassment and I am a staunch believer that scientific dissent should never be bullied or silenced for political, theological, or ideological purposes. But I think the outrage has been severely misdirected. The ire should be reserved for the individuals involved in the e-mails. Instead it seems to be being used to suggest that the whole case for climate change has now somehow been undermined, and that's just not true. The fundamental evidence behind climate change being real and man-made remains as strong today as it did 2 weeks ago, and nothing I've seen in any of the e-mails changes that one bit. Yes, there are admissions of things that are unknown and unexplained, but that is hardly a smoking gun. Every year scientists find out new pieces of information on evolution and make corrections to prior assumptions, but each revision does nothing to call into question the initial theory put forth by Darwin 150 years ago. Creationists like to leap on every change and reside in the margins of what is still not known to "prove" that evolution is incorrect, but that is just a failure in understanding the scientific process. Something as complex as evolution or climate change is unlikely to ever be modeled to the point of 100% accuracy, but it is not necessary to achieve that level to draw the conclusion that they are correct. Still, again, that does not excuse a lot of the bullying and dismissive tone and tactics in the e-mail. Like it or not, one of the consequences of free speech is allowing others to put forth misinformation and things you don't agree with. History has proven that where science is concerned the facts always win out in the end, even if it takes a lot longer than some people are comfortable with.

Not much else going on right now. I updated my reviews with a few more movies I've seen. I was surprised how much I enjoyed Adventureland; I highly recommend it. The new Christmas Carol, while decent, really just made me want to go home and watch the Muppet version, which I dutifully did on Tuesday. I'm also finally getting around to reading again. Currently, I'm making my way through What the Dog Saw . . . and Other Adventures; the new book by Malcolm Gladwell (of The Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers fame). This book is actually just a collection of articles he has written for The New Yorker over the years but it is just as compelling as his other books, even if it doesn't have a single common theme like his other books. At about 20 pages per story, they are long enough to be meaty and substantive but also short enough to be accessible for people who don't like making a commitment to reading 400+ pages.

Aghanistan - Time to Pack It In

Let me start out by stating what I believe should happen in Afghanistan. There should be a truly multinational coalition (say 20-25 countries) committing a total of about half a million troops that all have the understanding that they will likely be there in some form for a decade or more. There has never been a successful counterinsurgency (at least in the last few hundred years) which lasted less than a decade and so that should be the expectation (discounting the 8 years we have already been there since we're now just about back to where we were in early 2002). I believe that if we leave Afghanistan the Taliban will once again take over and all of al Qaeda will move back in and set up camp. The force I've outlined above is what I believe is necessary to achieve a long-lasting stability.

Here's the problem. It's not going to happen. Our "coalition" is essentially us and Britain and about 10-15 other countries who have committed a couple hundred troops each. And most of those countries are now losing their taste for even that level of involvement. So, like it or not, that is going to leave us to do almost all the heavy lifting ourselves. Right now we have approximately 68,000 troops stationed there. Now General McChrystal has reportedly asked for 45,000 more. And I don't blame him. Roughly speaking, 68,000 is one Memorial Stadium-full of soldiers. While that's a lot, it hardly seems like an adequate enough force to secure an entire country. Even with the additional 45,000 (which is by no means guaranteed), we're just talking about upgrading from Memorial Stadium to Michigan Stadium. Again, I am just skeptical that it's enough to get the job done.

So while I think it's going to take a couple hundred thousand troops at a minimum, even if we were capable of it I just can't possibly in good conscience recommend that we supply them all. So if we're not going to have the international support we need, and we're not capable of supplying all the troops ourselves then in my opinion we're just delaying the inevitable and losing more soldiers in the process. This is the epitome of the bad choice/worse choice scenario. From where I'm sitting it seems like the only thing worse than leaving is not leaving.

I think the final straw for me was the election debacle. Before then I could at least somewhat convince myself that we were helping support a legitimate democracy in the Middle East. But instead it appears that we are backing an extremely corrupt regime that seems to only really care about clinging to power and cannot or will not bring about democratic reform. And while it may be better than the Taliban, I don't think it's enough of an improvement to warrant a seemingly endless commitment of blood and treasure.