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And the rivers will run with chocolate
What's the big deal about Democrats winning the House in November? Well, for one thing:
Democratic Representative Henry Waxman of California, one of the most dogged critics of the Administration, would be in line to chair the House Government Reform Committee and could write witness lists instead of open letters to the West Wing.
Wahahahaha.
Eight Days in May
I have long had a deep-seated fear of the city by the bay, San Francisco. If you're a SF partisan, let me just tell you why, in a story just may frighten the pants off of you. It was 1999, I think, and I was in San Francisco for the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, a three-day event where the idea of a really good time is a biological anthropologist and a linguist getting together over lattes in the hotel Starbucks between panel sessions. I kid, but this is no South by Southwest. Maintaining my sanity meant using my meal breaks to get far far away from the convention center.
On this day, as I set out in search of lunch, a woman walked toward me on the street carrying a bag from Taco Bell. I regret to inform you that at this point in my life there were few things that I liked better than a couple of refried bean chalupas (like a gordita, only deep fried) from the Bell. I asked her where I could find some and set off.
I was a few block down the road when I heard the sounds of a street fight! Feet and fists hitting into human flesh, some yelling, and a low murmuring of general concern. As I turned the corner on to the main road, before me was this scene: a silver mime lying on the ground and curled up in the fetal position (one of those mimes who dress completely in silver and paint every inch of exposed skin with silver paint, like this). I admit, I hate those guys and their creepy metallic faces, but that's no excuse for what was happening to this one.
Standing one on the tummy-side and one of the back-side of the mime were two men, taking turns kicking him with such force that each kick lifted him them up off of the ground. In what was really quite a commitment to not breaking character, the mime lay on the ground in silence. As the men kicked, they yelled profanities, things that I just remember as "F--- you! F--- you!" I walked to the rather large crowd of people who stood watching and asked a lady what was going on. She said, "the mime hit on one of 'em" and rolled her eyes.
I still distinctly remember my thought at that moment: "damn, tough town." (This didn't end a la Kitty Genovese -- as I stood there, a couple cops arrived.)
I tell you all this now because Jane and I are planning a trip out to California this May and I'm looking for suggestions on places to go that don't include the land where gay mimes go to get their asses kicked.
Seriously though, I'm sure San Francisco is really a lovely city, but it doesn't really make sense to include it this time around, as we're starting out in San Diego to visit Jane's brother and only have 8 days for the whole trip. So we're thinking now that we may try to stay within the general San Diego, LA, and Big Sur (?) area and have started using out Rough Guide to make a list of some of the beaches and restaurants that we want to be sure to hit.
But neither Jane nor I really know much about California at all, so I'm looking for suggestions for some more knowledgeable people. So, if you had a car and a little more than a week to explore (Southern) California, where would you go?
What's next for Ben?
Given that conservatives do tend to take care of their own (especially the young ones) to a remarkable extent, it'll be instructive to watch where Ben Domenech goes from here. Heritage Foundation, perhaps? We'll see.
Heyho, conservative visitors
Not ever day that my blog referrer logs show multiple hits coming in from RedState...
Austin notes
I really enjoyed my recent trip down to SXSW. It was one of those experiences, thought, that can be difficult for me to process -- whole buckets of new information coming in without really strong unifying themes. I'm not going to bother trying to make sense of any of it just yet, and am instead going to just throw out some impressions, things I learned, and notes on people I met. Enjoy.
- The guy sitting one row ahead of me on my American Airlines flight down to Austin was watching Entourage on his video iPod and holding it just out of my line of vision, though I was able to see several seconds of a scene where Vince and Eric are walking and talking around a pool. The palm trees were a mere inch high, crystal clear, and swaying in the digital breeze. I'm not much of a coveter by nature, but at that moment I wanted to rip the iPod out of his hands and run and hide in the bathroom with it.
- I have discovered Google's technique for acquiring new "web 2.0" apps: (1) wait until I hear about them and resolve that I am unable to live without them, and then (2) rewind the Google time machine a bit, scoop them up, and shut them off new users. See Measure Map for website stats and Writerly for online word processing.
- Under the category of, as my dad says, "it's amazing the ways that people can make a living": there are people, Burnie Burns for one, whose work consists of writing short dramas that they perform using the characters in immersion video games like Halo and Second Life, "filming" these interactions, and then selling them on highly-popular DVDs. This is called machinima, a terrific sounding word.
- Mike Krempasky is a dangerous man because he's a supremely bright conservative operative who says funny, non-threatening things like: "College Republicans just turn mice into rats. They don't move them up the evolutionary chain, they just make them meaner" and then liberals laugh and forget that he's plotting their destruction and the global domination of Walmart.
- I got to eat BBQ (well, fried green tomatoes for me, meat for him) with Craig Newmark, the Craig of Craig's List, and pretend that I didn't know who he was until it came up in conversation after the question, "so what do you do?" He's a super nice guy who for a long time handled all of the customer support for Craig's List himself. Now he has a few folks who help him with it but he stills does a lot of it, day in and day out. A few weeks ago, I wrote a rather stern email to Craig's List when I was mistakenly blocked from the site for "abuse" and now I feel kinda bad about it.
- danah boyd hosted a panel in which we played a game where we each came with an original secret and then saw how it spread across the room, a la the game of telephone. Of the secrets, two of my favorites were: "When I was a kid, I thought that I was an 'Injun,'" and "I mix cereals," which I have to imagine could only come from the mind of a Catholic. Five or so were of the variety of "I have a crush on danah boyd" who is undeniably cute but I mean, come on, isn't that just embarrassing for everyone involved?
- It's hard not to like Henry Rollins. More on that here.
- Matisyahu, the Hasidic reggae superstar from right here in Brooklyn and a favorite of mine, is sweeping the nation. When Liza Sabater and I pulled up to Stubb's BBQ on Friday night in a bicycle cab (long story involving several pints of Shiner Bock, a few hours at the Cedar Street Cafe, and a several block walk that seemed far too long at the time) and I saw his name on the list of acts for the weekend, I jumped up and down, rattling our peddler/driver quite a bit. And in a sure sign that he's quickly becoming a phenomena, his name later came up during a panel discussion on online viral self-marketing.
- Mark Warner is running for President and his new online team of Jerome Armstrong, Nate Wilcox, and Trei Brundrett were at SXSW to gin up interest and support. I'm intrigued, I admit.
- There are some genuinely cool people working in this "space" -- a term I generally dislike but seems appropriate when discussing the broad swath of things covered by SXSWi, just a few of whom are Christian Crumlish, the aforementioned Liza Sabater, Lisa Stone, Amanda Marcotte, Neil "The Ethical Werewolf" Sinhababu, Henry Copeland, Tikva Morowati, Michael Silberman, Justin Oberman, and and many more seemingly cool people that I didn't get a chance to meet but look forward to doing so, like Jason Fried, Jim Coudal, Joel Spolsky, and the aforementioned danah boyd.
- And finally, I don't know how I have lived this long without the very tasty Michilata, a Bloody Mary-esque drink made with Mexican beer. As far as I can tell, the recipe is thus: Combine 1 1/4 oz. tequila , 3/4 oz. fresh lime juice, 1/2 oz. fresh lemon juice, 3-4 dashes of Tabasco sauce, 1/4 oz. white wine vinegar, 1-2 pinches salt, 1-2 pinches seasoned salt, 2 pinches black pepper, 3 oz. tomato juice; shake and strain. Fill glass with Mexican beer of some sort (I had Negro Modelo), salt the rim, and garnish with a lime wedge. Yum!
Nothing is written in stone
I know this is goofy, but it cracked me up each of the three times I walked past it this weekend. It's engraved in the walkway outside the fabulous Northshire Bookstore in Manchester, Vermont. Simple pleasures.
Here, Ruby
 One of the things that I picked up in SXSW is that Ruby is not just the three-legged wonder cat that Jane and I took care of for a bunch of months last year (the world's third most fantastic cat, behind Tiny Scola and Sarah Scola, R.I.P). I tell you, that cat may have been absent one functional leg, but damn was he was fast and agile. He'd scoot from the kitchen through the living room up the stairs and all you'd see was a shmear of orange. There's a lesson in there somewhere.
Anyway, seems like every other panel at SXSW had a mention of the Ruby programming language that powers the Ruby on Rails framework, upon which are built some of the most progressive web apps out there, like Basecamp and 43 Things.
Because I like learning new things and I dislike not knowing things that seem both interesting and powerful, I'm gonna try to learn how to build something, anything, using Ruby on Rails. I've started with this tutorial but it's been slow going so far. Before I get too deep into it, if anybody has any ideas of a better way to go about it, by all means leave them in the comments.
Hunting IITians
I go away forever, and only come back to ask a favor. Here's the deal. I'm in the market for anybody who has graduated from one of the Indian Institutes of Technology (knowns as "IITians") who might consent to answering a few questions for a possible freelance article that I'm working on on the social significance of the schools. The specifics are here and if you know of anyone who might be interested, please, of course, let me know.
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