Satisfaction

It's been a good day.

Sleep late, cook breakfast, listen to Czechs rout Denmark, prepare spaghetti carbonara, walk all the way to Costco, eat cinnamon pretzel, but groceries, walk home, finish reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. All in all, a day full of accomplishment leaving me pleased with myself.

Desire

The promise of 160 liters of Czech beer would motivate me to win Euro 2004. If only I could somehow sneak onto to Czech squad and get to take advantage of the offer.

I say the damnedest things

A couple of odd sentences I reportedly caught myself uttering this week:

"There appear to be dark clouds on the horizon."

-- Spoken the other night as Joe and I stared at weather forecasts and radar projections, trying to ascertain whether it would rain on his girlfriend when she biked over that evening. Noteworthy only because it was meant literally for a change.

"I think Schwarzenegger's smart enough not to."

-- One that should have been qualified to have instead said "Schwarzenegger's handlers," in reference to the Governator's unwillingness to ally himself closely with Dubya and risk alienating his constituency in California.

This ad is supposed to say what exactly?

Dubya's got a new ad on his Web site that depicts the members of John Kerry's "coalition of the wild-eyed." (If nothing else, this coalition at least appears to be numerically stronger than the "coalition of the willing" that invaded Iraq.)

Granted, it's calculated to appeal to Bush's base. But that said, anyone who isn't already rabidly conservative or fascist (and I'm not dealing in hyperbole on this one) would be hard pressed to find this ad portraying Bush in a favorable light. Maybe it's just me, but I think invoking Hitler -- even if, presumably, it's to liken your rivals to him -- isn't the best tactic, especially when the comparison is so abstract, understated and muddled that it leaves the viewer with the impression that Candidate Bush is being equated with Hitler.

To wit: The ad features a video of Hitler, with chants of "Sieg Heil" in the background and a text overlay reading "What were war crimes in 1945 ...." which then fades into a video of Bush, gesturing in a manner eerily reminiscent of the Hitler salute, with the text "is foreign policy in 2003."

In fairness, it is taken from a MoveOn ad, and it even shows the MoveOn logo at the end of the clip, but it's easy to miss and easier still to be left thinking Bush is using Hitler's "final solution" as a manual for his foreign policy.

And a greater sin than this is a second, inexplicable juxtaposition of Hitler and Bush. It begins again with images of Hitler and his fiery German bluster, with the text "God told me to strike at al-Qaida and I struck them." Then it transitions to scenes of Bush, still with Hitler speaking, with the text "and then He instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did." While I'm guessing this was also a MoveOn montage, there's no credit this time. Not to mention, it makes the juxtaposition of Hitler and Bush all the more striking and jarring.

But, since this ad is intended to appeal to Bush's base, maybe it's apt to conflate him with der Führer. After all, Bush has remarked about how much easier this would be if it were a dictatorship. But frightening, nonetheless.

You've got mail, sucker

Shedding some light on that annoying slogan of AOL's online "service," it seems that a rogue at the company can be thanked for AOL users (be ashamed of yourselves, be very ashamed) getting flooded with spam. A 24-year-old AOL software engineer from West Virginia stole AOL's list of 92 million customers and sold it to a spammer, federal authorities said today.

Self-criticism

Seems I've neglected this a while. Not without reason, of course. Well, at least some reason. Last weekend I made a whirlwind trip to visit Colleen, and while I had my computer with me, I wasn't about to siphon off precious moments from hanging out with her to update. And sandwiched around that I've been doing the normal things that occupy my evenings. Mainly reading, along with the occasional trip for groceries or some other errand. Exciting stuff, I know.

Really, I just don't feel like there's much to report these days. Or at least I don't feel the pressing need to post daily. That makes me a pretty lousy blogger. And it isn't exactly helping my writing. It would be good to make a habit of devoting at least some time each day to writing, simply to keep my skills up and to hopefully hone them a bit. But trying to sacrifice the time for that is challenging. Obviously I'd love nothing more than to reclaim the nine hours I spend either at work or traveling to and from work doing whatever struck my fancy. Certainly it'd free up a lot more time for reading, writing and language learning, the intellectual pursuits that occupy (or should occupy) a fair chunk of my free time. Plus, I do manage to cram in close to two hours of reading between my commute and my lunch hour. And in all fairness, I wasn't exactly a paragon of productivity back in the days four months ago (hard to believe it's been so long -- or so little -- already) when I wasn't gainfully employed.

Still, it's a challenge. Mainly I think it's to try to reclaim some time for myself when I can just "vege out" a bit, ditching the books and just sort of relaxing. Maybe I already do that a fair amount. I don't know. But I can't bring myself to rot in front of the idiot box, and I just feel so idle when I'm not doing something. I know, I know, being idle is a means and an end unto itself. But it's the way I feel, anyway.

I keep telling myself that it'll change soon. Part of my slavish devotion to reading owes to the knowledge that Joe's books will be leaving my apartment in a little more than a month, so I'd best be reading them now while I have the chance. But this ridiculous commitment to reading really seems to have consumed me. I mean, I'm starting to wonder if, after several months, I'm going to stop reading for my own edification once I have more free time, or at least more time freed up. But, then again, once I have classes and required reading and homework, I'm not sure I'm going to want to heap more of same upon myself when I don't have to be doing it. I'd like to thing at minimum that I'll take up some other hobbies, or maybe start indulging pop culture to some extent. (Well, at least lower culture, in my effete, erudite view.) But it'll be interesting.

In other news, it's looking more likely that I have a place to live in Seattle. At least, the folks renting this room are exceedingly enthusiastic about me living there. They basically want to seal the deal by next week, I think just because they're keen on the idea of having it rented. And I'm pretty up on the prospect of living there. From the pictures I've seen, it's a pretty nice place. It's fairly cheap, too. And the folks seem pretty nice. So I think it'd be a good fit. I'm just trying to get someone to check it out for me to make sure the place actually resembles the pictures. I feel pretty good about it, as is, but it'd definitely give me greater peace of mind to have someone I know kick the tires and such. Of course, Steve's actually getting pretty busy at his posh summer law firm gig, so it might not be prudent to wait for him to get a chance to inspect it. We'll see.

Don Pablo

I want to live in a world where no one is excommunicated. I will not excommunicate anybody. I would not tell that priest tomorrow: "You can't baptize So-and-So, because you are an anti-Communist." I would not tell another priest: "I will not publish your poem, your creation, because you're an anti-Communist." I want to live in a world where beings are only human, with no other title but that, without worrying their heads about a rule, a word, a label. I want people to be able to go into all the churches, to all the printing presses. I don't want anyone to ever again wait at the Mayor's office door to arrest and deport someone else. I want everyone to go in and come out of City Hall smiling. I don't want anyone to flee in a gondola or be chased on a motorcycle. I want the great majority, the only majority, everyone, to be able to speak out, read, listen, thrive. I have never understood the struggle except as to end all struggle. I have never understood hard measures except as something to end hard measures. I have taken a road because I believe that road leads us all to lasting brotherhood. I am fighting for that ubiquitous, widespread, inexhaustible goodness. After all the run-ins between my poetry and the police, after all these episodes and others I will not mention because they would sound repetitious, and in spite of other things that did not happen to me but to many who cannot tell them any more, I still have absolute faith in human destiny, a clearer and clearer conviction that we are approaching a great common tenderness. I write knowing that the danger of the bomb hangs over all our heads, a nuclear catastrophe that would leave no one, nothing on this earth. Well, that does not alter my hope. At this critical moment, in this flicker of anguish, we know that the true light will enter those eyes that are vigilant. We shall all understand one another. We shall advance together. And this hope cannot be crushed.

-- Pablo Neruda, Memoirs, 227-228

Horrors

So I'm in Costco today, picking up my usual weekly double of bananas and bagged salad, and as I'm making my way to the traffic jam that is the weekend checkout line, I steal a quick glimpse of the books on sale at tables in the middle of the store. But I do a double take to make certain that my eyes are not deceiving me. I thought I saw Tolstoy, but that seems out of place for Costco, which sells mainly best-sellers and cookbooks, not literary classics. A second, longer, more careful look confirms that I did indeed spy Anna Karenina, and also the sad truth of it: Tolstoy's great novel is a summer selection of Oprah's Book Club.

Nooooooooo!!!! While I consider Anna K (Karenina, not Kournikova) one of the all-time literary masterpieces and a must-read for anyone who appreciates good literature, I feel that it's somehow cheapened by having earned such an honor(?) from Oprah herself. But at least if Ms. Harpo saw fit to assign a 900-page tome for summer homework, she chose a master work of Russian literature, rather than, say, the drivel of Ayn Rand.

Remembering Reagan

A week's worth of reminiscences and tributes to Reagan. Hopefully it's over and done with.

To some, particularly those who participated in the lionization of the man this past week, I seem cold and cruel toward his death. Maybe I am. I've tried with limited success not to revel in his death. And if the platitudes spewing forth were concerned strictly with the personal, it might be easier. But somehow the political has been invoked far too much, certainly by my taste. And once the political comes into play, the gloves come off.

I cannot in good conscience gloss over Reagan's "accomplishments" as president: massive dismantling and neutering of government social programs, an unfortunate legitimation of "supply-side economics," repugnantly massive defense spending, an unfathomable national debt, the active support of Central American death squads, sowing the seeds of modern strife and terrorism. To sweep this litany of misdeeds under the rug would be to live in bad faith. Not gonna do it -- wouldn't be prudent.

Disrespectful to the dead though it seems, such reflections are no worse than the lengthy procession of politicians -- I can't even say it's just Republicans, since Democrats seem to be tripping over themselves to identify with Reagan (see Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich) -- claiming the mantle of Reagan in an attempt to score cheap points. Frankly, I find it a lot worse to dance on someone's grave in pursuit of personal political gain. All I'm trying to do is speak the truth, even if it's not what a lot of people want to hear at this moment.

And I'm not going the route of Cuba's Radio Reloj, which had the harshest words I've seen so far about Reagan: "He, who should not have been born, has died."

What really irks me, and what I most dreaded when I first learned of Reagan's death a week ago, is the preposterous claim that Reagan, Cold Warrior-in-Chief, deserves credit for the fall of the Berlin Wall. I'm sorry, but it's just not true. Having read fairly extensively in the literature on this era and the history, knowing considerably more than the typical American (especially those who advance such a claim), I can report that the role of Reagan in the fall of communism is regarded as a non-factor. More accurately, he simply isn't mentioned in the relevant literature. At least not by any scholar of renown or merit. Communism fell mainly due to internal factors. If you want to look past the Iron Curtain for potential causes, the Vatican -- not Washington -- is where you should set your sights. The rise of John Paul II -- a Pole -- to the papacy in 1978 did more to undermine communism than Reagan's Cold War posturing, SDI or Western militarism combined. It was the triumphant return of John Paul II to his native land, this time as pontiff, in the late 1970s that encouraged Poles to shed their fears. And it is credited for the rise of the Solidarity movement in 1980-81 that helped precipitate the fall across Eastern Europe in 1989. Or so says the British historian Timothy Garton Ash, was of the most eminent scholars of this period, having spent significant time in Eastern Europe and been witness to the crucial moments in the collapse of Communist regimes in Poland, Hungary, East Germany and Czechoslovakia in '89. I trust Garton Ash. I mean, He was there. He speaks authoritatively.

But beyond having to grit my teeth and elevate my blood pressure at the recitation of this fallacy by many, it alarms me to see the varied movements afoot to more lastingly honor Reagan. Renaming highways, redesigning currency, revamping Mount Rushmore -- this is full-scale cult of personality, the likes of which you'd have to go to North Korea (or perhaps Turkmenistan) to witness in this day and age. Unfortunately, I think the irony is lost on most of the public, and certainly on those anti-Communists trying to promote the personality cult.

Ah yes, anti-communism. Let us not forget that Reagan abused his position as president of the Screen Actors Guild to blacklist the Hollywood Ten. He was a bona fide McCarthyist. May this be an inextricable legacy of his.

All of this does, however, give added relevance to my interest in the history of communism. At least to me. Ecletic and dated it may seem, I still can't help but notice these parallels to the present. Perhaps (well, pretty bloody likely) I'm in a tiny minority of Americans who feel thus, but it's inescapable, the sense I get of being in an environment not dissimilar to life in the Eastern bloc. We face growing state repression and a government in power by electoral manipulation (never forget it was Stalin who astutely noted that "The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.") Unfortunately, citing this example, the only solution seems to be a long, arduous and often frustrating journey of living in the truth and refusing to accept the lies that prop up the regime. Eventually, when a critical mass is achieved, the people collectively will stop believing it, and the government will be returned to the people.

Welcome to the O.C. Airport, bitch!

Orange County is such a crazy, messed-up kind of place, but I always feel like the folks who didn't escape it like I have can never fully appreciate the insanity that is Orange County. But this at least gives you some idea.

Because it appeals to my immature side...

Controversy in Austria.

Disaster averted

I nearly suffered a crushing defeat early this evening, the kind from which one's morale can never fully recover.

Cycling a relatively brisk pace up to my Middle Eastern bakery of choice for some falafel and hummus, I jogged onto Clark Street for the stretch run of my journey. Since there is some ongoing road work at that particular stretch, narrowing the space available to traffic, I went onto the sidewalk to ride past the huge cemetery.

But first, some background: The triangle bounded by Clark, Southport and Ashland is something of a black hole of public transportation. Far removed from any train line, it suffers the additional misfortune of having bus routes terminate there, meaning it's quite difficult to go much north of there if you don't want to go along Clark. So this area forms the CTA's own Bermuda Triangle, where buses enter but never emerge. Or so it seems. This is why, among other reasons, I never take the bus that way. In theory it'd be convenient for me to hop a bus on Ashland to the Middle East bakery, since both my apartment and the shop are a block from Ashland. Except that, of course, the line terminates about 12 blocks too far south. Since I have the benefit of being two-wheeler, I just bike up Clark, and I always overtake at least one and often two or more Clark buses en route.

Today, however, I was alarmed when a Clark bus passed me! That just doesn't happen. The 22 is always bunched up, with two or even three buses running as if in convoy. But because the CTA insists on having bus stops every block or two, and traveling by the bike has the advantage of playing hard and fast with traffic rules, I always -- always -- pass this emblem of the public transportation system that is supposed to dissuade me from wanting to get around the city any other way.

Instinctively I broke into a dead sprint after the bus, but to no avail. It kept pulling away and I feared all was lost. But after liberally interpreting several stop signs and traffic signals, I managed a mile later to finally pass that cursèd bus at the finish, just before I turned off Clark to stop at the bakery. Victory, snatched from the jaws of defeat!

Reason No. 53,476 why I hate Americans

So many times I've heard sports fans whine about how they don't like hockey, how it's always dull and low scoring, how every game invariably ends 1-0, or worse still, in a tie.

Ostensibly this is a criticism of the excessive reliance by most NHL teams on defense-first philsophies, and the unfortunate prevalence of the trap in its various manifestations -- neutral zone or otherwise.

Now, savvy hockey fans, folks with more than a casual or sarcastic interest in the game, will often articulate this very critique. Yet they couch their criticisms in much more intelligent and sympathetic terms. Yes, the trap is unfortunate. Yes, ties are unsatisfying to all parties involved. But fundamentally the game is great; we just need to tweak the sport slightly so that the incredible athletes playing it can show off their breathtaking talents. And even still, a low-scoring affair might seem dull on the surface to the uninformed, but many a great and exciting tilt has featured hardly a goal.

Take last night's contest, Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Finals between the Tampa Bay Lightning and the Calgary Flames. Sure, the score was 1-0. But I challenge you to find a more aesthetically pleasing and enjoyable match. Tampa scored the lone goal barely two minutes into the game on a well-executed two-man advantage, then managed to hold on for the bulk of the game. The Flames battled valiantly, generating many golden chances and having some beaucoup opportunities thwarted only by stellar goaltending or timely defense. This game featured odd-man rushes, fantastic saves and plenty of hard-nosed physical play. If you're capable of appreciating something other than the puck meeting twine, then this game featured plenty to hold your interest.

For that matter, this entire series has been like that. Not a glut of goals, but lots of excitement and energy. Both teams play hard, hit a lot, but also generate scoring chances. Tampa has some of the finest skill players in the sport at the moment, and they are capable of Kodak-quality puck movement. Calgary has skill, but also lots of grit; you won't see a team work harder to get the puck to the net. Both squads make for fun watching. Hell, in the first period of Game 3, the two stars of each team, Tampa's Vincent Lecavalier and Calgary's Jarome Iginla, dropped the gloves. These are skills guys mixing it up with one another, all because they're leaving it all on the ice in their respective quests for the Cup. You don't see anything quite like that in any other sport.

Back in late February, I had the good fortune to watch the Lightning in person in the only NHL game I made it to this season. I was thoroughly impressed with the way they controlled the ice as an offensive-minded unit, making an art form of puck movement, and playing with the speed and skill that is often too lacking on most teams. That night, I knew that I wanted to see Tampa Bay go deep into the playoffs, simply because it would make for good hockey to watch (especially if, as it happened, my beloved Kings weren't around in the postseason to pique my interest even higher).

And as these playoffs progressed, it became apparent that Calgary was another team to watch. Or rather, another team that would be fun to watch. Beyond being the plucky underdogs, having missed the playoffs for seven straight years prior to this, not having won a playoff series since their lone Cup in 1989, they bring an intensity to their skill that makes for great TV. By the time the conference finals rolled around, as I was gauging potential championship matchups, I really wanted to see a Tampa Bay-Calgary final. Not only because I find it blasphemous that "O Canada" hasn't been sung prior to a Finals game in a full decade, but also because I thought it would make for edge-of-your-seat viewing and a terrific, well-played, hard-fought series. The first four games have borne this out.

Unfortunately, the rest of America (still) doesn't get it.

Ratings thus far for the series have been abysmal. The lowest for the Finals since broadcast and cable networks began carrying them.

Granted, I'm sure they're suffering because 1) half the teams in the series play outside the United States, 2) the two teams represent two of the league's smallest markets and 3) neither squad is a marquis name to the general public. But it's still really sad to see. All those folks not tuning in to a hockey series that is all you could hope for as a spectator.

Just another reason I'd fit in so much better in Canada.