teh Mexigogue

In the pre-blogging times all the events of the past year would be as a blur to me. My time frames normally get screwed up and I tell a story about something that happened “about four months ago” and it turns out to be a year and a half old. But now, thanks to the blog, I can actually reference exact dates. In fact words on the internet can be pulled up for posterity so that in later years, if I happen to kick the bucket and my kids want to know more on what dad was really about, they can prevail upon Google to unhand some of their cache files and they can be like “Wow. So that is how dad’s mind worked? Say what you want but if genetics has anything to do with it, we’re screwed!

I’m off my point. So now as the nation takes inventory of 2004 I can reflect on my own personal year by browsing through the blog archives to determine my biggest accomplishment of the year. The year’s posts were so extensive that this is going to take some time to determine what exactly was the greatest thing I did this year. It will take some time to read and decide. I shall do so now.

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Got it. My greatest accomplishment of 2004 was that I watched the Excorcist!!!

So sue me. It was a slow year.

But oh well, my year had some other highlights as well, including but not limited to: I won an award in the pool league, bought a jive turkey sandwich, got invited to a threesome (which I deleted because I didn’t want my son reading about it), took my kid to my old high school in preparation for his freshman year, bought a digital camera, masterminded the Boobie Wars, won a pool bet teaming up with UNLV against some suckas, dunked on Walt Frazier, and got introduced to the Russ Martin show. Not a bad year if I do say so myself.

There were some other things of significance that happened this year and if you were involved in something that was left out of this list oh damn well I don’t feel like writing html links all freaking day. There is coffee to be drank and Yahoo! pool to be played.

I dreamed of stacks of money last night. It must have been inspired by my seeing Zach hustle another player out of about $350 last night, seven consecutive $50 games. So last night I dreamed of stacks of cash and I also dreamed of burritos.

This morning I wake up and I have the day off. Today is also payday so I’m going to go get my stacks of cash and while I’m at it I’m going to get a burrito. Then I’m going to get a handrolled cigar from the smokeshop downtown. I love days off, I love coffee, I love getting a nice handrolled cigar and a fat dripping burrito. Ooh freaking rah!

The Q Dawg showed up at Leroy’s after doing a four month stint in the county jail (I don’t want to say his name on the blog but Ghandi and UNLV know who I’m talking about). He picked up right where he left off shooting pool like he hadn’t missed a day.

Navea was tipsy and she threw a breakdancing move at me, waving from the shoulder, through the arm and out the hand to me. I waved it in through the hand, arm, shoulder and into my torso just like in the old breakdancing movies. I heard Zach shout out “Aw shit, Mike can breakdance!” Little did he know that’s the only move I can hit. Then Ghandi did the unscrewing the lightbulb move and sticking his finger in the socket followed my the whole body electric shock move.

That’s kind of old school by today’s standards. I can’t figure out if we were really really cool or really really really wack. Who cares? I’m gonna have cash, a cigar, and a greasy burrito! I love the holidays!

Here’s an interesting snippet from a recent CNN article regarding the acamedic world and politics:

A recent study by Santa Clara University researcher Daniel Klein estimated that among social science and humanities faculty members nationwide, Democrats outnumber Republicans by at least seven to one; in some fields it’s as high as 30 to one.

The rest of the article just blew right by me. When I read this I got to wondering why is there such a liberal tilt in the academic world, at least when it comes to the humanities. The rest of the country is split almost evenly (if political party affiliation is any indicator) but at college campuses the tilt is decidedly left.

I believe this is because the kind of person who would pursue a career in teaching is usually motivated by something other than money. If they were motivated by money there are degrees you can get that would yield more money than teaching. It’s more likely that a person would take this career because they are socially minded (a people-person, if you will) and people persons are more likley to be liberal.

A people person would ask “Can the worker survive on this kind of money?” An ideasss person (another Russ Martin-ism, Phelps will get this) would ask “How much value is does a person in this position bring to the company?” It’s not that the ideasss person necessarily hates people, it’s just that he is looking at the idea itself has to work and if not then all bets are off. If the market can’t sustain the living wage, then the system itself will die and then so much for either the living or the wage.

Political affiliation is heavily influenced by personality type. This is why an individual’s politics don’t necessarily correspond with income. Republican tax cuts are often seen as favoring the rich but there were just as many Bush/Cheney signs in poor neighborhoods as there were Kerry signs. Similarly many Hollywood actors will remain Democrat no matter how wealthy they become. The key element in political affiliation may very well be weather your focus is on people or on ideas, or as Ayn Rand might put it, mercy versus justice.

When viewed in this respect there it would appear that liberal bias in academia happens quite naturally, just like a conservative bias among economists. No one really becomes an economist because he’s a “people-person”. And people don’t generally become university professors for the money. With certain personality types gravitating to certain professions, there is bound to be a tilt here and there. It’s not necessarily due to an intentional bias or a grand behind the scenes scheme. The issue is more likely whether or not your focus is on people or ideasss.

I got to work 45 minutes early this morning. The first thing I did was to brew a pot of coffee. Then I logged on to the computer and heated up some breakfast food, and went to the restroom mirror to make sure that I don’t have lint on my person or dry skin that needs to be addressed. No problems, my morning is all set to plan. I go back to get a cup of Starbucks and there’s a problem.

No coffee cup.

As I’ve metioned in a previous post I love my coffee cup. It has character and distinction. I got it at an Islamic store in Dearborn in 1998 or so. It’s got “Allah” written on it in Arabic script along with a short surah from the Qur’an on the back. Sure it’s missing a handle but that’s because we’ve been through the wars together (by wars I mean the moves from state office building to new state office building whenenver we have a restructuring which happens quite frequently). I’ve been given other coffee cups but I store all of those away as none can light a candle to this one. And now it was gone.

I began searching the office spaces to no avail. It wasn’t in the breakroom either and I made a point to look in the sink, on the counter, on the break table, and both in the upper and lower cabinets. After about ten minutes of looking (and no coffee drinking I might add), I began to suspect foul play. I did a mental rundown of the likeliest suspects. Who doesn’t like me? Wait, let’s try a shorter list: who is in the office this week?

It couldn’t have been the new person. She’s way too nice and she has the least amount of motive. It couldn’t be Kelley. She’s knows me very well and is quite aware that I rock. Could it have been the guy who inspired the Coffee Jihaad? That seemed the likeliest suspect but he seems to be way over it. The more I thought the more perplexed I became. I really needed some coffee too and there was a full pot but I refused to drink from another cup.

I started to think that maybe the overnight cleaning crew had trashed it overnight after mistaking it for junk due to the missing handle and worn lettering. They wouldn’t shitcan Old Glory for having a few bulletholes I thought, and then resolved to make one more scan of the premises before resorting to plan B (which would have been problematic because I don’t have a plan B). Kitchen? No. Work area? No.

I went into an empty office for the third time, the place where I took my lunch yesterday so as not to be disturbed by the idiots who stop me mid-chew to ask what I’m eating, and there it was on top of a filing cabinet where I had (presumably) left it. My coffee cup! I smiled, grabbed the cup, rinsed it out, and poured myself a cup of coffee! (ok I didn’t really take the time to rinse it out but can you blame me, I was excited plus you can’t develop a really good resistance to bacteria unless you constantly expose yourself to it).

Now I have cup, I have coffee, and I have blog. Blog-cup-coffee makes for one happy Mexi! Happy Tuesday!

A story about a guy who got shot in the head for not giving up his cell phone from an ABC news article:

Taylor told The Macon Telegraph he was walking to a friend’s house around 9 p.m. Monday when a man approached him and asked to use his cell phone. “I said, ‘No,’ then he said he would take the phone,” he recounted. “I said, ‘No,’ then he pulled out the gun and shot me in the head. I didn’t even know I was hit until I felt the blood coming down my face.”

But that wasn’t the end of this guy’s bad day. Determined that if he was going to die it would be in the presence of his loved ones he walked two miles to his mother’s house only to find that she had been moved to a nursing home! D’OH!!!

Personally I would have walked to a hospital, but that’s just me.

I shouldn’t laugh at that story because the guy didn’t deserve to get shot. But there it is.

Here is a totally undoctored photo of me. I’m a bad motha (shut’cho mouf!)

Pimpin’ ain’t easy. . . unless you’re me! I’m so cold I can walk around outside in a t-shirt while the snowmen are throwing on extra scarves and bubble coats! I’m SUPA BAAAAD!

From Ayn Rand’s novel:

“Whenever anyone accuses some person of being ‘unfeeling’, he means that that person is just. He means that that person has no causeless emotions and will not grant him a feeling which he does not deserve. He means that ‘to feel’ is to go against reason, against moral values, against reality. He means. . . What’s the matter?” she asked, seeing the abnormal intensity of the girl’s face.

“It’s. . . it’s something I’ve tried so hard to understand. . . for such a long time. . . ”

“Well, observe that you never hear that accusation in defense of innocence, but always in defense of guilt. You never hear it said by a good person about those who fail to do him justice. But you always hear it said by a rotter about those who treat him as a rotter, those who don’t feel any sympathy for the evil he’s committed or for the pain he suffers as a consequence. Well it’s true - that is what I do not feel. But those who feel it feel nothing for any quality of human greatness, for any person or action who deserves admiration, approval, esteem. These are the things I feel. You’ll find that it’s one or ther other. Ask yourself which, of the two, are the unfeeling persons. And then you’ll see what motive is the opposite of charity.”

“What?” she whispered.

“Justice, Cherryl.”

“These neighborhoods are still poor” I said “because when affirmative action came into play and people from here started to get jobs they didn’t reinvest in their communities. They didn’t build this place up, they moved out.” I wasn’t really voicing my own thoughts, it was something that I had read in a book and had sounded good at the time. The subject of the book had been race and poverty.

“Can’t blame them” the other guy said. “I wouldn’t stay here if I had the chance to leave.”

He’s missing my point, I thought. “What I’m saying is that what they did is no better than the white flight that happened when minorities first moved here. Only this time it was minorities moving away from minorities. They forgot where they came from.” Now along with paraphrasing a book I was tossing in hood terminology.

“Just because you’re from here means you have to stay here your whole life? You can’t want anything better for yourself? That doesn’t make sense.”

I hadn’t expected this line of reasoning and it was making me uncomfortable. I was trying to argue on the side of what was good and right. This guy was turning the argument around and making me look like I was placing limitations on people for extraneous reasons. That was usually what I accused the other side of.

“How are we ever gonna improve” I changed course “if we don’t look out for each other?”

“So if I’m a white guy,” my friend says “I’m allowed to look out for myself and place my own interests first, but if I’m a minority I have to put the group first? I don’t buy that. If I get out of here I’m not thinking about the group, I’m thinking about my kids. I don’t want them here going to these schools where they have to worry about getting jumped by these thuggish kids around here. My first responsibility is to me and my kids, damn everybody else out here. They have to look out for themselves just like I’m looking out for me.”

That was the beginning of the end of what had been my group mentality focus on politics. I no longer think or act as a member of a group unless I’m talking about people I know and am down with. I don’t say hey me and that guy are in the same tax bracket, therefore we are part of the same group. Or because we’re from the same neighborhood, race, or school. I stopped thinking like a member of a group because I realized that when I thought hey you can’t move out of this neighborhood and into a nice one because you have a responsibility to us because of your race, then that made me the racist. And I could not be down with that. That would make me just like my enemies.

Collectivist thought can even result in pronouncements that are just plain absurd, like the rapper Nas calling Tiger Woods a coon in his latest rap because Woods identifies as a human being rather than being black or Asian or whatever. Earth to Nas, Tiger is not even from your same background so what gives you the grounds to criticize him for defying your group that he was never in? This whole thing makes Nas just as fucked up for Tiger to deal with as Fuzzy Zoeller. Hey, maybe Nas and Fuzzy out to form their own group. They can be called the idiots!

The Associated Press is reporting that the family of a Marine who died in combat has been denied access to his E-mail account raising privacy and family rights issues.

“I want to be able to remember him in his words. I know he thought he was doing what he needed to do. I want to have that for the future,” said John Ellsworth, Justin’s father. “It’s the last thing I have of my son.”

But without the account’s password, the request has been repeatedly denied. In addition, Yahoo! policy calls for erasing all accounts that are inactive for 90 days. Yahoo! also maintains that all users agree at sign-up that rights to a member’s ID or contents within an account terminate upon death.

“While we sympathize with any grieving family, Yahoo! accounts and any contents therein are nontransferable” even after death, said Karen Mahon, a Yahoo! spokeswoman.

While the action taken by Yahoo appears harsh to some, I think it is the right decision. While it can be argued that individual privacy rights terminate upon death, in the larger scheme of things if families were given rights to member accounts upon death it would certainly erode user trust in the system.

There is a level of comfort in knowning that only I can access my Google E-mail account. If I had secret issues I didn’t want my family to know about, I could talk about them in my E-mails with reasonable assurance that they will never be divulged, even upon my death. Maybe I’ve been boning midgets on the side and e-mailing them in secret but if Google suddenly made it standard practice to open member accounts to family members upon death, that would destroy the comfort level that I currently have. I think it would make us all do a bit more self editing, and that woud be a loss for us all.

While the family of the Marine in question has suffered a terrible loss, rather than fight Yahoo for access to his account, they should cherish the fact that he sent them whatever he intended them to have. Allowing them to rifle through his account would not only violate that man’s privacy rights, they would also violate the privacy rights of whomever he may have corresponded with his account.

I never take time off during the holidays. My one solace in life is that during the Christmas season everyone else takes time off work so they can have extended vacations and I always choose to work because it’s always dead and I’m able to catch up on stuff without having to be bothered with people. But here it is, December 20th and they’re still here. People! Nasty, bothersome, unfunny, disturbing, boring, mouth-breathing people!

I had planned on throwing on the headphones and catching up on data entry while listening to the Russ Martin show all week, but NOOOOOOOOOOO! Michael, can you help me with my computer? Can you help me with this box? Can you kill this spider? Can you train the new person on phones? Hey look, I do this stuff all the time. I wanted a quiet week but this week I see it’s going to be more of the same. I’m ready to jump on a grenade!

Grenades! Now there’s a thought! Smoke grenades, flash grenades, incendiary grenades, fragmentation grenades! I could clear this place out in a heartbeat! But just my luck some small-minded person probably put something in the employee handbook so now there’s a prejudice against workplace violence. The unjustice never ends!!!

How about if I just wear the grenades in plain view and everybody else suddenly decides to take the day off? There we have the best of both worlds: no violence and I still get my way. Make the people go home. The chick who reminds me of Nicole Kidman who used my hands as her handwarmers last week can stay. So can the other two chicks who talk about the football games. The girl with the baby arm growing out of her face is all right too. But everyone else can leave!

I hate people and I hate Elton John singing “Candle in the Wind”. Make up your mind, is this song for Marilyn Monroe, is it for Ryan White, or is it for Princess Di? You diminish the dedication everytime you tack someone else onto it. Note to the blog people, if I die and Elton John tries to sing that song at my funeral, KICK HIM SQUA IN THE NUTZ!!!! Somebody has to teach him a lesson! Sic Rae on him, bust a cap in his ass, knock him to the ground and break his oversize glasses! But DON’T let him sing that song at my funeral! It’s bad enough being dead, I don’t want some self absorbed has-been spam dedicating that song to me! He can take the week off too!

I might edit this rant. I might not. People are getting me twitchy!