| A sign of our times... |
[Dec. 19th, 2008|09:23 am] |
This morning as I was driving in to work along the longest continuous road in America, I saw a forgotten, tattered and torn American flag flying high over a vacant used car lot that had gone out of business.
It occurred to me that there may be no more fitting symbol for the downfall of our once great nation. |
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| APOP! |
[Dec. 10th, 2008|06:49 pm] |
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View all Denver events at Eventful</div> |
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| (no subject) |
[Nov. 8th, 2008|06:49 pm] |
| [ | music |
| | I Am X - Think of England | ] |
So far the best gift I have gotten is the new FREE single from I AM X...
Available here:
HERE!
Download it NOW.
A real post will follow shortly. I have to do a year end review, and perhaps even a 30 year lifetime retrospective...
More to come!
RemCit |
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| Happy Election Day! |
[Nov. 4th, 2008|08:27 am] |
One more insightful article about why not voting is fine!
To sum these things up in 3 simple points:
1) Your vote means (statically) nothing, yet it costs you time an energy
2) The true underlying reason most people vote (given the above) is peer pressure
3) Voting makes you "feel" better about a "democracy" that is increasingly corrupt - endlessly delaying what we really need in this country - a true reformation.
So! - DON'T VOTE!
RemCit
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Still undecided? Then just don't vote
Really, a high voter turnout doesn't make our democracy work better.
Joel Stein
October 10, 2008
Don't vote. People will try to guilt you into it, but stay strong and resist. I'm talking to all of you who don't feel strongly about either presidential candidate, not just those 80 undecided idiots seated at Tuesday's town hall-style debate. Those people just crave attention and are way too proud of skimming enough Google News headlines to formulate a question. Give each a hug and a Debate Attendee diploma and I bet they'll pick a candidate real fast.
Voting is not an act of charity. It doesn't help anyone else. It's an entirely selfish act of expressing your opinion and asking for policies you want. If your mere opinion added to our nation's well-being, it would be patriotic to take telemarketing calls. And I'd read the e-mails you send me.
A high voter turnout doesn't make our democracy work better. Canada typically has a turnout of more than 75%, and it has yet to pick a leader anyone's heard of. If voting truly helped other people, you'd get an orange drink and cookies along with that "I voted" sticker.
Almost half of those who are eligible won't vote this year, and that nonparticipation is a legitimate expression of feelings about our political system. You'll be saying that none of the contenders convinced you but that your vote is available next time to someone who does. It's what I say every week to "American Idol."
Organizations that try to increase voter turnout -- Rock the Vote, HeadCount, the New Voters Project, the League of Women Voters and the Dorky Self-Important Guy Whose Office Is Near Yours -- will try to guilt you into casting a ballot. Most will use the scare technique of telling you that if you don't vote, you will forfeit your right to complain, which, if there had just been some Jews at the Constitutional Convention, would have been ensured by an 11th Amendment.
But I'm pretty sure that not voting is the safest way to assure your right to complain. Because if you do vote, the odds are slightly better than even that you're going to vote for the winner, which will ruin your ability to gripe about him. If I were John McCain, I'd put all my money behind ads that say "Vote for me so you can complain for the next four years."
Last week, a heap of celebrities appeared in an online video, self-produced by Leonardo DiCaprio, sarcastically telling people not to vote. After DiCaprio, Ashton Kutcher, Natalie Portman, Usher, Demi Moore, Tobey Maguire and Ellen DeGeneres told you not to vote, Courtney Cox asked, "Who cares about your children's education?" Jamie Foxx added, "Who cares about global warming?" Halle Berry: "Don't vote. Unless you care about healthcare." Forest Whitaker mentioned welfare and the minimum wage, and Dustin Hoffman talked about gay rights and abortion rights. Then they all pretended they were going to wait around on screen until you click over to a site that will register you to vote. The superior, self-satisfied tone of the video not only made me not want to vote for president, it caused me to throw away my Writers Guild awards ballot.
Such campaigns to increase voter registration all seem disingenuous because they are. There's a reason all the organizations trying to increase the number of voters are full of liberals. It's because poor people, minorities, the undereducated and the young are the least likely to register; the higher the turnout among those groups, the better the Democrats do. The reason no one is trying to "Country Music the Vote" is because George Strait fans already vote. We don't "Rap the Vote" because the only words that rhyme with "vote" are the Democratic-unfriendly "Swift boat," "zygote" and "sports coat."
But it's not only the political scheming of Democrats. The entire ruling class wants you to vote for the same reason dictators claim a 100% turnout: Casting a ballot tricks you into believing you have as equal a stake in the power structure as the rich and connected. It's a basic political-science axiom that citizens are less likely to revolt if they feel they determined who gets to look down Arianna Huffington's blouse at political soirees.
So feel free not to vote. Just remember, if so many groups' main objective really were to strengthen democracy, America would have gotten rid of the electoral college by now. |
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| More Anti-vote propaganda! |
[Oct. 30th, 2008|08:11 pm] |
You can't argue math...
___________________________________________________________________________________________________
Don't Vote
It makes more sense to play the lottery.
By Steven E. Landsburg
Posted Wednesday, Sept. 29, 2004, at 11:58 AM ET
We might be headed for another close election, which means your vote could really matter this time, right? Wrong. Your vote didn't matter in 2000, it never mattered before 2000, and it's very unlikely to start mattering now.
Last time around, everything came down to Florida, where Bush's official margin was 537 votes. (Yes, yes, I know, if they'd been counted differently there'd have been a different margin and perhaps a different outcome. But that's not what this column is about.) If any one of Florida's 6 million voters had stayed home, Bush's margin would have been 536 or 538 votes, and he'd still have won. Even if you voted in the most hotly disputed state in the mostly hotly disputed election in American history, your vote did not change the outcome.
Your individual vote will never matter unless the election in your state is within one vote of a dead-even tie. (And even then, it will matter only if your state tips the balance in the electoral college.) What are the odds of that? Well, let's suppose you live in Florida and that Florida's 6 million voters are statistically evenly divided—meaning that each of them has (as far as you know) exactly a 50/50 chance of voting for either Bush or Kerry—the statistical equivalent of a coin toss. Then the probability you'll break a tie is equal to the probability that exactly 3 million out of 6 million tosses will turn up heads. That's about 1 in 3,100—roughly the same as the probability you'll be murdered by your mother.
And that's surely a gross overestimate of your influence, because it assumes there's no bias at all in your neighbors' preferences. Even a slight change in that assumption leads to a dramatic change in the conclusion. If Kerry (or Bush) has just a slight edge, so that each of your fellow voters has a 51 percent likelihood of voting for him, then your chance of casting the tiebreaker is about one in 10 to the 1,046th power—approximately the same chance you have of winning the Powerball jackpot 128 times in a row.
For those of us who live in New York State, the situation is far worse. Last time around, about 6.5 million votes were cast for major party candidates in New York state and 63 percent of them went to Al Gore. Assuming an electorate of similar size with a similar bias, my chance of casting the deciding vote in New York is about one in 10 to the 200,708th power. I have a better chance of winning the Powerball jackpot 7,400 times in a row than of affecting the election's outcome. Which makes it pretty hard to see why I should vote.
The traditional reply begins with the phrase "But if everyone thought like that ... ." To which the correct rejoinder is: So what? Everyone doesn't think like that. They continue to vote by the millions and tens of millions.
Even for the most passionate partisan, it's hard to argue that voting is a good use of your time. Instead of waiting in line to vote, you could wait in line to buy a lottery ticket, hoping to win $100 million and use it to advance your causes—and all with an almost indescribably greater chance of success than you'd have in the voting booth. |
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| I post this every election year now... |
[Oct. 30th, 2008|09:51 am] |
Once again reminding you to question why you do what you do...
Your vote makes NO difference - The candidates are the same. The system is corrupt beyond all measure, so why associate with a filthy process?
RemCit, once again reminding you -
DON'T VOTE!
Please read below for the ONLY thing about voting that ever made any sense to me at all.
________________________________________________________________________________________________
Why Vote?
A Swiss Turnout-Boosting Experiment
By STEPHEN J. DUBNER and STEVEN D. LEVITT
Within the economics departments at certain universities, there is a famous but probably apocryphal story about two world-class economists who run into each other at the voting booth.
"What are you doing here?" one asks.
"My wife made me come," the other says.
The first economist gives a confirming nod. "The same."
After a mutually sheepish moment, one of them hatches a plan: "If you promise never to tell anyone you saw me here, I'll never tell anyone I saw you." They shake hands, finish their polling business and scurry off.
Why would an economist be embarrassed to be seen at the voting booth? Because voting exacts a cost - in time, effort, lost productivity - with no discernible payoff except perhaps some vague sense of having done your "civic duty." As the economist Patricia Funk wrote in a recent paper, "A rational individual should abstain from voting."
The odds that your vote will actually affect the outcome of a given election are very, very, very slim. This was documented by the economists Casey Mulligan and Charles Hunter, who analyzed more than 56,000 Congressional and state-legislative elections since 1898. For all the attention paid in the media to close elections, it turns out that they are exceedingly rare. The median margin of victory in the Congressional elections was 22 percent; in the state-legislature elections, it was 25 percent. Even in the closest elections, it is almost never the case that a single vote is pivotal. Of the more than 40,000 elections for state legislator that Mulligan and Hunter analyzed, comprising nearly 1 billion votes, only 7 elections were decided by a single vote, with 2 others tied. Of the more than 16,000 Congressional elections, in which many more people vote, only one election in the past 100 years - a 1910 race in Buffalo - was decided by a single vote.
But there is a more important point: the closer an election is, the more likely that its outcome will be taken out of the voters' hands - most vividly exemplified, of course, by the 2000 presidential race. It is true that the outcome of that election came down to a handful of voters; but their names were Kennedy, O'Connor, Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas. And it was only the votes they cast while wearing their robes that mattered, not the ones they may have cast in their home precincts.
Still, people do continue to vote, in the millions. Why? Here are three possibilities:
1. Perhaps we are just not very bright and therefore wrongly believe that our votes will affect the outcome.
2. Perhaps we vote in the same spirit in which we buy lottery tickets. After all, your chances of winning a lottery and of affecting an election are pretty similar. From a financial perspective, playing the lottery is a bad investment. But it's fun and relatively cheap: for the price of a ticket, you buy the right to fantasize how you'd spend the winnings - much as you get to fantasize that your vote will have some impact on policy.
3. Perhaps we have been socialized into the voting-as-civic-duty idea, believing that it's a good thing for society if people vote, even if it's not particularly good for the individual. And thus we feel guilty for not voting.
But wait a minute, you say. If everyone thought about voting the way economists do, we might have no elections at all. No voter goes to the polls actually believing that her single vote will affect the outcome, does she? And isn't it cruel to even suggest that her vote is not worth casting?
This is indeed a slippery slope - the seemingly meaningless behavior of an individual, which, in aggregate, becomes quite meaningful. Here's a similar example in reverse. Imagine that you and your 8-year-old daughter are taking a walk through a botanical garden when she suddenly pulls a bright blossom off a tree.
"You shouldn't do that," you find yourself saying.
"Why not?" she asks.
"Well," you reason, "because if everyone picked one, there wouldn't be any flowers left at all."
"Yeah, but everybody isn't picking them," she says with a look. "Only me."
In the old days, there were more pragmatic incentives to vote. Political parties regularly paid voters $5 or $10 to cast the proper ballot; sometimes payment came in the form of a keg of whiskey, a barrel of flour or, in the case of an 1890 New Hampshire Congressional race, a live pig.
Now as then, many people worry about low voter turnout - only slightly more than half of eligible voters participated in the last presidential election - but it might be more worthwhile to stand this problem on its head and instead ask a different question: considering that an individual's vote almost never matters, why do so many people bother to vote at all?
The answer may lie in Switzerland. That's where Patricia Funk discovered a wonderful natural experiment that allowed her to take an acute measure of voter behavior.
The Swiss love to vote - on parliamentary elections, on plebiscites, on whatever may arise. But voter participation had begun to slip over the years (maybe they stopped handing out live pigs there too), so a new option was introduced: the mail-in ballot. Whereas each voter in the U.S. must register, that isn't the case in Switzerland. Every eligible Swiss citizen began to automatically receive a ballot in the mail, which could then be completed and returned by mail.
From a social scientist's perspective, there was beauty in the setup of this postal voting scheme: because it was introduced in different cantons (the 26 statelike districts that make up Switzerland) in different years, it allowed for a sophisticated measurement of its effects over time.
Never again would any Swiss voter have to tromp to the polls during a rainstorm; the cost of casting a ballot had been lowered significantly. An economic model would therefore predict voter turnout to increase substantially. Is that what happened?
Not at all. In fact, voter turnout often decreased, especially in smaller cantons and in the smaller communities within cantons. This finding may have serious implications for advocates of Internet voting - which, it has long been argued, would make voting easier and therefore increase turnout. But the Swiss model indicates that the exact opposite might hold true.
But why is this the case? Why on earth would fewer people vote when the cost of doing so is lowered?
It goes back to the incentives behind voting. If a given citizen doesn't stand a chance of having her vote affect the outcome, why does she bother? In Switzerland, as in the U.S., "there exists a fairly strong social norm that a good citizen should go to the polls," Funk writes. "As long as poll-voting was the only option, there was an incentive (or pressure) to go to the polls only to be seen handing in the vote. The motivation could be hope for social esteem, benefits from being perceived as a cooperator or just the avoidance of informal sanctions. Since in small communities, people know each other better and gossip about who fulfills civic duties and who doesn't, the benefits of norm adherence were particularly high in this type of community."
In other words, we do vote out of self-interest - a conclusion that will satisfy economists - but not necessarily the same self-interest as indicated by our actual ballot choice. For all the talk of how people "vote their pocketbooks," the Swiss study suggests that we may be driven to vote less by a financial incentive than a social one. It may be that the most valuable payoff of voting is simply being seen at the polling place by your friends or co-workers.
Unless, of course, you happen to be an economist. |
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| Who let the Goon Squad in? |
[Oct. 8th, 2008|02:55 pm] |
WOW!
America, as we know it, is OVER. About the only thing left for crazy ass Ben Bernanke to do is extend the Fed's loaning power to ME, personally. I expect this any day now.
You see, I would be less crazy with the funds than all the crooked CEOs of all the companies who buy and sell America's elections and votes. No question. I would run this bitch smoove and eazy... Word.
I can even prove it.
How?
I have a spreadsheet.
You should see it!
It has formulas, and graphs, hell - I even put in a couple of macros in there (complete with buttons to activate them)! I don't think the CEO of GM can do that shit.
Anyway, with my spreadsheet, I could clean up this shit. That spreadsheet is all I need. That, and a bottle of rum. Good rum. Really the rum is the more important of the two.
The two blend well together - rum and spreadsheets. You should see the stuff you can come up with a half bottle in. It's sweet. Not so with politicians. Politicians we can do without. There is no room for politicians or lobbyists on my spreadsheet.
Jefferson, Franklin, and Washington would be proud of my spreadsheet, but not my rum - They were whiskey drinkers... Washington even distilled his own (Well done!) They would not be proud of our current political system, I am fairly certain. They really forgot one critical component in the Constitution.
They sort of hit on it, but they couldn't see the secular moves that the world would take. Here is a thesis:
"The separation of Church and State was actually intended to be a separation of External Power and Government."
The idea of separation of Church and State is (roughly) that the State will not enforce or endorse a religion. Well - I argue that this notion should be extended to Corporations too. The state shall not reinforce the power of private enterprise. Period.
Imagine a government built by and for the people, where corporate interests couldn't interfere. Corporate crimes were prosecuted, and there were no breaks, no loans, no tax benefits, no earmarks, no cronies, just a true, competitive marketplace - separate from government. Bad investments were punished by bad returns. Prudent risks were rewarded by reasonable returns. Corporations might even publish the salaries of their top officials - so investors could make wise decisions about whether they wanted to trust those corporations with their money. But the Government had nothing to do with it.
The Framers said that the Federal government should be subservient to local laws. For real. Look it up. Small, local government was the way they envishioned life, and I like it. Where did that end up? The Republicans grew government more than any other administration in history, and are deeper into corporate pockets than anyone. The Dems are all for big government. Where does that leave us? Citizens who are concerned about the ability to make choices, protect the environment, but generally want to be left alone? I don't know!
Therefore - I don't vote.
I drink.
And work on my spreadsheet.
Both of which have all the answers.
I'm going to start a new religion - surrounding drinking and spreadsheets.
You should join.
It'll be killer.
Also, Roger Clyne will be an integral part of the religion. Lot's of philosophies there - but more on that later.
That's all for now.
RemCit |
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| How to fix America... |
[Aug. 26th, 2008|03:41 pm] |
This week Denver is hosting the DNC. People are all abuzz, but I don't really care. Nothing will change, no matter who is elected.
But I have a plan to fix this fucked up mess. Did you know the National Debt is up to $175,000 per person in the US?
Here it is - Short and sweet:
1) No more deficit spending - I have to live within my means, and so should the government.
2) We settle on a tax rate that people can live with. It doesn't really matter what it is, because the Government has to live with whatever it gets. NO deficit spending (See #1)
3) Every taxpayer gets a little form with 50 or so little check boxes. Each box lists a program or a budgetary expenditure that you can choose to support or not. Think education is important? Check that box. Want green initiatives? Check that box. Want a strong military? Check that box. Or don't. Doesn't matter.
4) In the end the share of taxes you pay gets divied up based on the number of check boxes you check, and those programs get that money.
5) Next year, you get a little pamphlet, or prospectus, telling about each of the 50 check boxes, and what they accomplished last year. Don't like the results you are seeing? Don't support it again. Like what one program is doing? Send it more money and make it more successful.
I can't help but feel that if there was some accountability in government and visibility into how our money was actually used, Americans could actually wake up and take more notice of what we are doing as a country...
Just my .02.
Word. |
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| It IS true! |
[May. 22nd, 2008|01:22 pm] |
...It IS always Happy Hour here!
I would like to stay a while!
The problem?
The rest of the song is true too... I haven't see my girl in 15,000 miles.
That is the pain that burns the most. Forever.
It is disgusting to think, no, know, that I could have any girl in the bar that I want... But, "Smile to the girl at the door - another $4 dollar whore... But don't look her in the eyes - she'll break your heart..."
She also doesn't speak English.
4 hours on the road today renders me closer to done here, but 10 drinks into the evening (MEKONG!), but sadly, no closer to home, and my love.
YES! this may sound cheesy, and and you may hate it - but FUCK YOU! Stop reading if you want. This is how I feel. Get over it.
When you have traveled over 40,000 miles in the span of 2 and 1/2 weeks, leaving the person you love behind you for better than half the time, then you can tell me a pussy. Until then - SHUT THE FUCK UP! - AND I'LL SEE YOUR BULLSHIT AND RAISE YOU A PREMIER EXECUTIVE PASS ON UNITED AIRLINES WITH FREE UPGRADES. Fuck off.
Enough said. I don't want to hear it.
I miss my wife, I miss my home, and even though I am living (part) of a dream, it is not the same without her here.
I will see you as soon as I can, and I love you!
E |
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| I flew all the way over Taipei today... |
[May. 4th, 2008|02:41 pm] |
Greetings from Singapore, friends!
I have arrived in the dead of night (that would be day, to you all on the other side of the globe), and can't sleep, so I thought I would post a "hello".
"Hello"
Tomorrow should bring me to see more of the city, and do some training for our reseller partners!
More to come!
RemCit |
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| Mexicosis |
[Apr. 22nd, 2008|02:21 pm] |
Greetings from
I am here on business. Our meetings have gone very well, I am pleased to report, and this afternoon I will be enjoying some fun.
Here is (roughly) the view from my windows:
I miss you all... Wishing you were here.
The best words that I have found to describe this place come from dear, dear Roger:
"We found a place that's not a where
A time that's not a when
And there is not a why in sight at all
The speed of the light is the pace of the sun's rise and fall
And in this place that's not a where,
this time that's not a when,
where there is not a why in sight at all
We'd like to extend our stay
Got dreamin' to do today
Just doin' our job anyway… now cancel our wake up call"
Now, the beach calls...
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| En Tequila es Verdad... Musings on a Sunny Sunday |
[Apr. 13th, 2008|03:02 pm] |
Hello!
What a weekend.
I kicked it at the Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers show Friday. What a great time & a great band. I have a feeling that the 2 albums I purchased will be THE soundtrack of the summer... I guess I'm just Captain Suburbia - I'm not to young for anything, anymore... I see all my friends and neighbors a the liquor store!
It was great to see the Pard this weekend. Life seems good for him - Off to Germany soon. Perhaps one day in the future our international futures will collide on a project or company or two...
One thing is for certain - The future of America is a Sad, Sad, Sad state... Gone are the days of US as a superpower... We are the "has beens" of the 22nd Century, and if you can't live with that, you better get out - Like I am planning on ...
Me? I'm putting my money on the international distributors I've been entrusted with managing at work. I fly to the far east late this month and early next to meet them all... Bangkok, Signapore, Macau... Should be an adventure.
One way or another the great will find a way to make it. The rest? Welcome to the nation wide rust-belt... You simply can't build an entire economy on consumption alone. And the future of production, both industrial and technological, is moving to India, China & elsewhere. Sad but true. Don't say I didn't warn you - En tequila, es Verdad, as I mentioned in the tagline. (Here's to life!)
Sorry - but Clinton, Obama, & McCain are all, as Mojo Nixon says, scratching the paint on a big giant machine. It's over. It was over more than 20 years ago when America implemented a public schooling system that was based off of local taxes, as opposed to implementing national academic standards and holding students to them. Our populace just can not compete. Fear for the children. I fuckin' do.
But, that is for me to deal with by competing, and I am fine with that. The strong shall survive, and I will do what it takes to ensure that I do. Period.
So! On to other, happier aspects of life, the universe, and everything:
I have been having several conversations of a spiritual nature of late with my significant other. (OHHH! A Lay-DEE!)
The contrasts here are quite striking. She is quite in tune with spiritual matters, whereas I am an ignoramous. I often question whether my complete lack of desire for and ignor-ance of a spiritual side of my life is a hinderance, or if I am missing out of something.
All I know is that every time I try to think about that stuff I get mixed up and crazy. It gets too close to that subject I like to refer to as "feelings" - and we don't deal with those, if we can help it. Relating to some people are the exception here, but definitely not the rule. When it comes to dealing with most people the responses are modulated. We have specific modalities in which to handle the comings and goings of life - and 93.45% of circumstances can be processed by those. Rote responses in which we can handle the interactions in a cold, calculated, fashion that result in win-win situations for all parties concerned.
An additional 3.89% of all situations can, frankly, be ignored.
The remaining 2.66% warrant legitimate, real, emotional response. If you are one of those people or things, understand how rare, and indeed, important you are in my life.
HAHA! Cold precision strikes again!
What a great name I have been branded with. "Cold Precision" - Thank you P/S... It is much appreciated.
Speaking of cold precision, this post has now gone through several revisions. I have corrected spelling, grammar, and synatax errors throughout the post. This, despite the fact that I am what law enforcement would refer to as more than legally intoxicated, I am sure. Just for fun, and as a bold experiement, I am going to no longer correct my text past this point.
How deeply ingrained is the desire for accuracy in my life? Probably a great de3al, as evidenced by the fact that this section here is the hardest part I have had to write so far. In fact, I havce commited no less than 4 o more errores now, and I have wanted to correct them. But I ahve not. and that drives me mad! They say that manners cost nothing. This is true. Pefrection costs time. This is what I strive for, and it takes a great deal of time. This paragraph is a mess! FUCK!
Is this the true me? A neurotic mass of wrote responses that only a few individuals can see past and get true reactions from?
Yes.
Is that a sad a nd tragic way to life? I have no idea. but, it seems to work forme?!
HAHAHAH!
More importanly= would I wish it for a child that I have?
Hard to say...
I think it has real, true advantegs. FUCK! What a mess! I can still type FUCK! well though.
The advantages are that one can keep life in constant perspective. This is truly importan, and I think largely missing from our society. I am a firm believer that the maintenance of perspective is the dividing lvee make that line a mess and a success. Once one has achieved that success, than one can and should be reawarded with all the fun and happiness and gladness that one can achieve. So yes, I belive that to be a successful nerotoic reck (FUCK!) is a great way to live, because success becomes a habit. What is more, a habit that you don't have to think about, and then success is just life.
After that?
Enjoyment! (Here's the hope, at least!)
Things to do today?
Fiesta, #1...
Siesta, #2...
yEa, that ought to do...
We're pirates, banditos, and beach bums.
Cervesas, tequilas, and sweet rums!
So, until next time!
Here's to life!
RemCit |
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| Word UP! |
[Mar. 2nd, 2008|04:00 pm] |
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Is it just me, or does the fact Cameo's video for "Word Up" features a cameo of Levar Burton elevate that piece of, ahem, work - to "brilliant" status? |
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| Barkeep! Another Mekong, please! |
[Feb. 8th, 2008|06:09 pm] |
Well. Here I sit on a Friday night after a whirlwind week, hot on the heels of a whirlwind week just one week prior. Next week? A whirlwind week:
Sunday night I fly down to Orlando to try to push a quarter of a million dollar deal forward with Anheiser-Busch. After that meeting Monday morning its off to a teleconference with Jacksonville, and then back on a plane to Denver. Once I land I need to get a hold of the folks in Singapore to close the Hard Rock Pattaya deal, and schedule when I am going to Bangkok. On Tuesday I'll work until about 2, then go to the airport to catch a plane down to Dallas where on Wednesday we have a meeting with all of the Hilton brand managers for a potential corporate wide roll-out with them. Then its back to Denver, where I (thankfully) get a day in the office, which will pretty much be back to back teleconferences with one of the largest churches in America, the Verizon Corporate Headquarters, and NKG Sparkplugs.
Thankfully, I am taking Friday and Monday off.
Odd part is, I can't remember ever being so busy, and it is kind of making me crazy.
It is good and bad. I have to work this hard to get the hell out of this fix I am in with the townhome - It sucks having all your equity sucked up by a bad market. I'm not upside down; I'm right a break even, and that means that if I'm ever going to put together a down-payment for a house, I have got to bring the Benjaminz myself. So, I do what I must.
So, if you see a plane flying overhead next week, I'm probably on it.
And if you raise a glass to lifetimes past, won't you raise a glass to me? 'Cause I'm as lonely as a sailor, shipwrecked on the sea...
Keep livin' the dream, y'all! |
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| Follow the Dancing Life... |
[Dec. 23rd, 2007|02:28 pm] |
| [ | music |
| | Jimmy Buffett - School Boy Heart | ] |
Here I am.
A Sunday afternoon a quarter bottle into Sailor Jerry, having listened to my new Roger Clyne & the Peacemaker album, and into the 2nd disc of "Jimmy Buffett Live at Wrigley Field." The sun shines. These are good times.
But I ask myself - Why didn't I get the kind of advice I really NEEDED 10 years ago - at the start of life on my own. I guess it really started all before that. People said "Study what you LOVE." - I studied Biology. What a rotten choice. Of course, I've made the best out of it, but it is nowhere near as good as it could be.
If somebody came to me and said, "Eric, the secret to life is not loving what you do, but learning to do everything, and do it to the best of your ability, and loving the fact that you can do it, if you try hard enough." That is such a different view of life. It set someone up for valliant attempts & excellence at what they truly do find a passion in. Couple that with this: "There is a difference between "Life" and "Livelihood". What you do for a living, you may grow weary of if it is your life. How about this? "The most effective people in the world have placed themselves, financially, in a position to do what they want." This last point may be hard to understand unless you have been proximal to truly wealthy people. People I am talking about who can start up their own charitable foundation, if they want. Or build a building, or start a company. People who can truly CHANGE the world.
If I knew those three things... Man, life would be different. But, even so, life is GRAND, and I belive we can still learn lessons later, that would have been helpful earlier... So, the story has just begun.
So, if you're raised a glass to love you've passed, won't you raise a glass to me?
And...
If your bottle's empty, help yourself to mine...
And here's to LIFE!
Cordially yours...
RemCit |
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| Sometimes you're better off dead... |
[Dec. 1st, 2007|03:05 pm] |
Well!
What an amazing turn of events the last several weeks have provided me.
For one, I am lucky to be alive.
Yep! Helluva thing, almost dying.
For the record, I was the "passenger" in a "passenger side T-Bone collision." Lots of fun. Obviously, I survived, thanks to the fact that I WASN'T wearing my seat belt. The oncoming vehicle crushed the passenger side front door 2 FEET into the passenger cab (READ: into ME!). Had I been strapped in, I would be crushed and DEAD! Awesome.
Luckily, I rage against the "Nanny State" at every turn and am a scofflaw regarding seat belts, SO! I live to tell the tale. The tale of being extracted from a BMW 3 series that my friend was driving us to lunch in by the "Jaw of Life." The tale of spending 3 days in the hospital while the doctors fret whether I have internal bleeding, a broken collar bone in 2 places, and a broken pelvis in 1 or as many as 3 places. (Still can't get a straight answer on that...)
At any rate, the true irony of ironies is the fact that one year and approximately 3 months before this incident I wrote a sworn afidavit to the city of Arvada that the intersection we were turning left in was EXTREMELY dangerous due to a very tall median that some brilliant city planner decided to put BUSHES in as well! This afidavit was part of my boss's case against the city when he got his classically restored car smashed in the exact same way. My boss was unsuccessful in his suit, but I am sure as hell going to go after the city for this. That intersection is a fucking terror. This shit is dangerous, and I have paid the price.
At any rate, one smashed shoulder and one smashed hip, and 3 weeks later, I'm at least up and around. I discovered that I can play videos on my PC Phone. Right now I'm watching Bad Santa on the phone as I type this. I have also learned how to steal videos off of Youtube and save them as either MP3 or MP4 videos, so it isn't all bad.
Incidentally, if you get a chance to see "The Mist" it is one hell of a depressing movie.
I hope to be up and around an fully functional within a couple of weeks. I am supposed to go (for work) to some or all of the following: St. Thomas, Trinidad, and Bangkok. I was supposed to go to Puerto Rico next week, but I'm fucked for that. Can't pick up a suitcase, can't get on a plane. My hip got in the way of my cool.
At any rate, I can't drive yet, and am going crazy. If any crazy folks reads thiz, and wants to give a fella a ride, let me know. I'm climbin' the walls!
Hope all is well in the world outside my window... That's all I can see!
Ever see the movie "Rear Window"? Great flick - that's my life, except the neighbors across the way are just stoners, not murderers... So it's a lot less suspenseful.
Hope all is well.
RemCit |
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| I can't get to sleep! I think about the implications! |
[Jul. 22nd, 2007|12:23 pm] |
I haven't posted in next to forever, and I'm not really going to start now.
So, I will just say that I am greatly looking forward to seeing Colin Hay, of Men at Work fame, LIVE on August 4th at the Soiled Dove Underground.
If you have not heard any of his latest work, you really owe it to yourself to visit his myspace page and check out "Are you Lookin' at Me?"
This has been an unpaid endorsement...
RemCit |
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| Strange days on Planet RemCit |
[Jun. 16th, 2007|12:01 pm] |
Hello all!
In the past 4 or so days I have discovered that the absolute disruption of one's schedule can completely alter one's perceptions of the way the world, and, more specifically, oneself actually works.
For example:
I have discovered that I probably don't actually need to eat any more than once a day.
I have been so busy lately, that I have been skipping lunch, which I never used to do. Breakfast fell off the face of the planet sometime after college, and I found I never really missed it. Now, for the past week or so, Lunch has been the latest victim, and you know what?
I don't miss it at all.
Now, I figure that the elminination of another meal from my life will only impact me positively. First of all, think of all the time I will save. An hour each day. Pretty impressive.
Assuming I took special time out for lunch every day of the year - all 365 days, I would have squandered over 15 days of my year eating lunch (at an hour a pop)! Even at half an hour to eat, that is a whole WEEK of my life I'm getting back! YES! Think of all I could do with that time?!
Secondly, I have never been one for packing my lunch, so lunches have been whatever garbage a nearby restaurant happend to serve me for between $5 and $10 a shot... Think about the savings involved here...
Assume my average lunch is $7.50 - Over 200 working days a year I save: $1,500 each year. That is significant.
Thirdly, I know that I am not the healthiest fellow - but I've got to figure this can't hurt me. Cutting out MacDonalds & the like can only be a good thing. What's more, this program is bound to help me lose weight... Think about it - Your body HAS to work on some kind of a budget, right?
SO, the less energy I put in, the more I have to dip into my energy savings to survive... Eventually I will use up my savings & come to some sort of an equilibrium.
This strikes me as the laziest way to lose weight - It seems to me that you can choose to do either more of something, or less of other things... I could do MORE exercise, or I could eat LESS food.
Doing less of things is always better than doing more of them, in my book, so I just chalk this up to reaching a goal through lifestyle simplification... Two less things to worry about this way:
1) Worrying about weight
2) Worrying about what to get for lunch
How many diets actually take things OFF of your mind?
I'll tell you how many: 0. That is why they suck.
That is why this is awesome.
At any rate, I think I'm going to go ride my Motorcycle...
BYE! |
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| Dancing with the Darkness... |
[Mar. 15th, 2007|09:04 pm] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | The Couch | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Sting - All This Time... | ] |
A dark mood has struck, and again I find myself turning to the cold vestiges of the ether/sur-real world of the internet.
As the darkess surrounds me, the music washes past my ears. I desperately try to let it calm me, but to no avail.
The past two week have been wasted fighting an illness of undetermined origin. A hateful malaise that seems to cling somewhere in my soul, never yeilding its hateful hold on the beach-head within. It lurks, waiting for the right time to launch the next wave of invaders to crush my will and destroy my abilities. It has become the thorn in my side. Inside. Where I can not reach to remove. All I can do is shift, to try to minimize its stinging effect, but still, I feel it... Gnawing within.
A hateful dread has gripped me. The events of the day spin in my mind, reeling from frame to frame - I wish for an intermission that never will come. How did I get here? What did they expect? What have I done wrong? Is it to late? Am I a fool? Why am I still here? Self doubt grows with every minute. The core that is within has begun to rot. A wretched emptiness fills my mind as I play through non-memories of "what if's" to which there is no answer - no expectation - no solution... And yet I am responsible.
I am the product of my own creation. I have neglected to create myself. By external comparisons I am a failure. I can only learn from here - I have nothing to offer. The round hole becons, but I have only a square with which to answer.
Still, the solution lies out there. Currently beyond my grasp.
I must redouble my efforts. Learn everything I may. This is not over yet, and I will not go down without a fight. Learn from those you can. Use the strength of others to supplement your weaknesses. Learn from their strength. Do what is necessary.
Now that the way is clearer & the desires are expressed - Be the change you wish to see in the world. |
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remcit's journal