The Real Pat Blair

Scheduling job interviews. Annual meeting at work. Arranging for the return of the sweet, sweet nectar of life, also known as Air Conditioning, to my car… and it is, I must say, sweet. After a year of basically no functioning AC, I am now using it at every opportunity. If I am driving down I-35 and somehow stumble across a star gate to Siberia, odds are good that I will be annoyed, but will not turn the air off, just because it’s THAT sweet.
Meetings. Phone calls. Trying to do repairs - which I am highly unqualified to do - on a vintage tube amplifier - with all the wrong parts. The “Red Dwarf” marathon that started approximately 14 hours ago and now appears to be in ‘hiatus’ mode… if anyone can come up with 1 good reason to do nothing but watch TV for 18+ consecutive hours, I’ll be mighty impressed. And then I’ll prove you wrong. And don’t tell me its OK because, “its entertaining.” Making fun of retarded kids is entertaining; that doesn’t mean its right.
Picking up prescriptions. Picking up cash. Packing… it has been an unusually busy week, even for me, and then Paul up and decides to get married on Saturday, AND asks The Lone Strangers to play the reception. How about a little notice, bud, hey? OK, we knew about it months ago, but it still snuck up pretty quickly.
There have been so many blog-worthy happenings over the last several days: Al Gore freaking out and turning into a combination Ross Perot/Ralph Nader (that crazy uncle that most people wish would just go away). Worries about summer terror strikes. A whole lot of bickering about gas prices… though it is nice to see experts like Holman W. Jenkins Jr., Pete Du Pont, and The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board getting on the band wagon and agreeing with me. I am, once again, ahead of the curve.
In spite of all this, though, I’m outta here. I’m going up to Wisconsin, the land of beer and cheese (as opposed to, say, milk and honey, like Iowa), and taking a four day weekend. There will probably be very little blogrification taking place. As Cartman would say, “Screw you guys, I’m leaving home!” Happy Memorial Day!

I’ve discovered my new method of dealing… with EVERYTHING.

There was a bit of a slow-down on the Golden Gate Bridge the other day, as if San Francisco traffic wasn’t bad enough, already. Apparently a young deer decided that the forest was greener on the other side of the bay and decided to make its way across from Oakland. If the animal ever makes it back, I think it officially becomes a Raider. In reality, though, it is lucky that it’s not (ahem) dead meat: if I’d had to bet, I would have said that this particular incident would end with a Mercedes-Venison Sandwich (band name, +3). After all, a bunch of west-coast rush hour commuters aren’t going to let Bambi get in their way, are they?
Well, yes, if they’re a bunch of tree-huggers. According to the article, authorities closed off northbound traffic and slowed the southbound lanes. I don’t know what, exactly, these people are authorities over, but I sure hope it’s not anything important, because their resource-allocation skills aren’t so sharp: they used 2 (TWO!!!) bridge maintenance vehicles to ESCORT THE DEER across the bridge. If I were a Bay-area driver, I’d be a little concerned about why my bridge wasn’t being maintained, but maybe they didn’t think it all through that clearly.
Anyway, after a twenty minute delay, the deer finally made its way into a wooded area (Why did the deer cross the bridge? To get to the National Park!) and traffic resumed. When I first read this story, I thought it was a cute little tale (white and fluffy?), but the more I thought about it, the more it reminded me of another story that I’d heard involving my father and the city of Los Angeles, a volatile combination if there ever was one.
My dad and his boss were walking down the street when they saw a large area of the sidewalk that had been cordoned off with “Caution” tape. City workers had been trimming the branches of the trees that lined the street and come across the home of a bird. The bird took some offense to the fact that her home was about to be trimmed up and started dive-bombing any pedestrians that got too close. So the “authorities” decided to do what any good Californian would: close down a huge chunk of sidewalk (maybe a lane of traffic, too, I can’t remember) and put up a sign: “Caution - Aggressive Bird.”
When my father and his boss came upon this scene, their Midwestern sensibilities got the better of them, and they began pointing and laughing hysterically. A lady approached the howling pair and asked them what was so funny. They tried to explain, and must have failed, because she then asked them what THEY suggested doing about the situation. “Lady, where I’m from, we’d shoot the bird.” My memory is a little fuzzy, but I’m pretty sure she didn’t find that amusing, either.
What’s the point of all of this? The world has gone nuts. But in addition to that, and possibly more importantly, it made me realize that, in our efforts to do the right thing and make sure that everyone is happy, we sometimes miss out on the simple, easy, and obvious solution. So, what is the simplest, easiest, obviousest (+5, no explanation required) solution? That doesn’t involve fire-arms? Instead of shutting down traffic for a half-hour, how about giving Bambi some Federally funded swimming lessons?

Are you familiar with the Lone Strangers’ catalog of original music? Have one (or four) song(s) that you’re a huge fan of? Then go to www.lonestrangers.com and VOTE on which songs you think should go on our upcoming EP, “Things Have Happened.” Now is your chance to be heard, but act quickly, because we’re going to be in the studio soon. Participate in the democratic process - tell your friends, and then GO VOTE!

Well, yesterday was the alleged “gas-out,” where consumers vent their frustrations with ridiculously high gas prices by not purchasing any. For an entire day. Boy, we sure showed those money grubbing oil companies/Arabs/tax-and-spend liberals! They were so scared that prices went up another $.04/gallon. You’d think that, after trying and failing for the past 3 (at least!) years, people would give up and stop forwarding that email. Yes, you’d think that, but you’d be wrong.
Wait, tax-and-spend liberals? What is he talking about? Has Pat finally gone off his rocker? Well, yes, but that happened years ago. You hear everyone talking about evil OPEC, but no one mentions that the Federal gasoline tax is 18.4 cents/gallon. Yes, back in 1993, William Jefferson Hormone Clinton decided that 4.3 cents wasn’t enough, so he jacked it up nearly 25%, doing an excellent job of protecting the middle-class, I might add. I guess he felt like the states were just making too much money on each gallon sold - Iowa, Nebraska, Illinois, Minnesota, and Wisconsin get 20.1, 24.6, 19, 20, and 30.1 (!!!) cents/gallon, respectively.
For my mathematically challenged readers, this means that for every gallon of gas you buy in Iowa, you are paying $0.39 - nearly 20% at $2.00/gallon - in taxes. How do we get gas prices down? How about we lower taxes? No, that can’t be right - it must be the fault of the money-grubbing corporations and the Bush administration. It couldn’t be taxes. And it certainly couldn’t be the fact that there is a huge demand for the product, either.
So while we’re holding our collective breath and waiting for a tax reduction (and turning collectively blue), here are some practical ways to deal with gas prices:
1) Drill in Alaska. No wildlife will be hurt because nothing actually lives where we need to drill - it is just too cold and miserable. It’s almost as if God put the oil there so that we could drill for it without killing/disturbing anything.
2) Continue to pursue peace in the Middle East. This is long-term strategy, but stable, market-driven democracies will do a much better job of naturally controlling a market.
3) Realize that fuel cells are on the way, and that gas prices are largely a temporary problem. Cheap, renewable energy is going to happen sooner or later. The geopolitics of it frighten me, but we can burn that bridge when we come to it.
4) Realize that, while the gas prices are still ridiculously high, you are still paying for it. This means that gas is actually probably UNDER priced, because we are all still willing to pay even more than we currently are. I don’t know what the point is where demand would drop and it would stop being profitable to increase the price, but I think it’s a long ways away. So until we’re paying $7 per liter like they do in Europe (that’s about $28/gallon, for those of you who art students), we should just be glad that gas is so cheap, and smile while we fill up our new Hummer H2 (city use only).

I know many of my readers aren’t die-hard news junkies like, say, me, so I wanted to inform you of a breaking development that created hardly a blip in the national media: THEY FOUND WMDs IN IRAQ. I don’t even know why this would surprise anyone, or why anyone would base an entire political campaign on the fact that they had not been discovered (yet) - ahem - but, to remove all doubt, they’re there. An improvised road-side bomb containing BETWEEN 3 AND 4 LITERS of sarin nerve gas fizzled, causing minor injuries to some troops. They’ve also found shells with mustard gas, too.
So Saddam Hussein, the lying mass murderer who used chemical weapons on citizens of his own country, had illegal weapons of mass destruction. Shocking. Well, maybe the war was justified after all.
Incidentally, reports are starting to surface that the train accident in North Korea may have killed some Syrians who may have been bringing suspicious materials (read: chemical weapons) into the country. Take this, as you would with any other news coming out of North Korea, for what it’s worth, but keep it in mind when trying to decide which public officials to trust with your life.

Quote of the Day:
“The difference between Mr. McCain and Mr. Levin on Iraq makes Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld look like the Olsen twins.”
The Wall Street Journal on the names given by John Kerry as his possible Defense Secretaries.

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Last night, as I tossed and turned, unable to sleep (as opposed to this morning at 1:30, when I immediately sat up, wide awake, convinced that it was time to leave for work) and pondering my own mortality, I decided to do what any other normal person: look it up on the internet. I am, truly, a 21st century digital boy. Well, not so much of a boy any more, apparently. I was a bit surprised, perturbed, even, by what I found.
One of the first life expectancy tables that I found - fairly generic, broken down by race, gender, and year of birth, predicts that I, a white male born in 1979, will live to be 70.8 years old. I have always assumed, incorrectly, I guess, that I would live to be a little bit older than that. I don’t know how old, probably 75, I guess. It seemed a reasonable guess. But 70? Point 8? This means that, even though I feel like I’m still just barely getting started, my life is more than 1/3 over.
I decided to look for more information. After all, there are lots of factors that need to be included in the calculation. There also are, it turns out, a lot of nut-job life-expectancy calculators on the internet. Most of the surveys only had a few questions, and included such gems as asking how many times a week you eat bacon or how populated of a region you lived for purposes of smog. I could be wrong - I never took statistics - but it seems to me that things like traffic accidents and gunfire probably play a more significant role in life-expectancy than smog does. Unless you have a political agenda to push, that is. Also neglected in these surveys were the cities of birth and residency and the occupation of the soon-to-be-dead. However, since I do insurance in Iowa instead of insurgence in Iraq, I guess its OK to assume that these won’t be significant factors, either.
I did find one survey that seemed to be put together fairly accurately. Since it’s difficult to accurately answer multiple choice questions when the truth is generally somewhere between B and C, I ended up doing it twice: once cheating towards the healthier answer, and once towards the less-healthy. According to this one, I will end up calling it quits after between 76 (so good!) and 62.6 (no good!) years, a wide range if there ever was one. Since I am a type-I diabetic, odds are that I will be on the lower end of that range. This means that I am about due for a midlife crisis.
The most amazing discovery, however, was not that I am practically half-way to my grave. No, what shocked me was my Body Mass Index, or BMI, a number that can be reached by putting your height and weight through a number of convoluted mathematical exercises, including multiplication and differentiation. The BMI is, near as I can tell, a number that invented by sadistic math nerds in the government as a long, unnecessarily complex way to tell 97% of the population that they are fat without letting any of the poor, overweight people even realize it. According to my BMI, I am obese. I wish someone would have told me this, because I had no idea.
Someone should get the word out and market this better: See Your Doctor, You Might Be Obese. Obesity: The Silent Killer. Obesity: Mirrors Just Aren’t Good Enough Any More. Your Scale Lies To You. Heck, we could even get Kate Moss to be the spokesmodel for obesity prevention since the BMI scale seems to be based on her being just a touch on the heavy side. For crying out loud, where’s a government subsidized education program when you need one? Someone call Ted Kennedy! At least now I understand what people are talking about when they site studies saying that 83% of the population is obese; it just means that 17% of us will float away in a strong gust of wind (by “us,” I mean “not me”).
Wonderful. I started off the evening as a mild insomniac and finished it fat, old, and dying. Sweet dreams! All in all, thought, it’s probably not all that healthy to worry about this very much, and besides, the odds are just as good that I will live to be 95 as they are that my car will explode next time that I start it, leaving nothing but pieces of Pat (which, by the way, would be an excellent name for a rock band). Nonetheless, if you are curious to see such a bloated specimen, you can click here to see someone who has no hope left but to serve society by rocking.

Okla. Bill Authorizes Breast-Feeding in Public

Just for the record, while I haven’t read the text of this bill, I’m pretty sure that the legislation in no way applies to my peer group. Because I know some of you were wondering. Sickos. What I was wondering about, on the other hand, was when the Ames City Council disguised themselves as Oklahomans and hijacked that state’s governing bodies. Talk about a severe case of over-reaching, over-regulating, over-ridiculous politicos! Do we really need a LAW for this? Does anyone confuse breast-feeding with indecent exposure?
Certain types of people with specific characteristics, sometimes referred to by scientists as “men,” might be uncomfortable with public breast-feeding, but that doesn’t make it indecent. Hugh Grant movies make me uncomfortable - is he indecent? Ok, bad example, but you get my point. Has any cop ever tried to arrest a woman for breast-feeding? I doubt it, but if you ever witness this, first, get your video camera, because this one is going in to Americas Awkwardest Home Videos. Second, go hit the cop with the stupid stick until you start to see common sense forming inside of his extraordinarily dense cranium.
This is nothing more than the advancement of the nanny-state, where they have laws for everything. Before you know it, along with smoking, they’ll start including flatulence regulations in clean-air acts. Think I’m kidding? I know the slogan already: “Do it for the children!” I’m sure that’s what they said about House Bill 2102, passed by the Oklahoma House of Representatives, which specifically exempts breast-feeding mothers from prosecution under public indecency laws. As an added bonus (and further proof of its absurdity), the bill, which still needs to be passed by the Senate, also exempts breast-feeding mothers from jury-duty. When you see judges demanding tangible proof in order to grant the exemption, mothers dragging their 8-year-olds into the courthouse, and lawyers calling for mistrials since their mommy-murder-suspect client can’t get a jury of her peers, don’t say that I didn’t warn you.
The bill was not without controversy, however (can’t these elected idiots do ANYTHING without controversy? Apparently not, but I won’t even get started on that one); Rep. Carolyn Coleman, who, I might point out, is a woman, voted against the bill (the article doesn’t say, but I’m assuming none of the men involved had the stones to oppose it) because she was unhappy about the removal of language stating that the mother must be “modest and discreet.” Expert witnesses, however, disagreed. Yes, expert witnesses. If there is one thing I want to do before I die, it is to be an expert witness at a hearing about breast-feeding. This would take place, presumably, immediately before my passing, but it would be worth it.
Anyway, an opposing viewpoint was put forth by Crystal Stearns, a lactation consultant (What do you want to be when you grow up, Franklin? I want to be a lactation consultant, mommy!) - and really, who can argue with a lactation consultant, and, furthermore, how many times can one cram the term “lactation consultant” into 1 sentence? Four, if you count run-ons and parenthetical statements. Sterns (did I mention what she did for a living?) argued that a “modest and discreet” clause left the law open to too much interpretation by a prosecutor or judge. God forbid we depend on our judges for interpretation. She took offense to the suggestion that mother and hungry-one could liaison in a restroom:
“Would you eat your lunch or dinner in the bathroom?” she asked. “If you wouldn’t eat your meal in a bathroom, why would a newborn baby have to be forced to do that?” I wouldn’t want to crap my pants, but we force newborn babies to do that every day. Maybe we should stop talking, stop legislating, and start thinking. Please?
Nope, more talking: “It makes it sound like there is something vulgar or nasty about breast-feeding, which is a very normal body process to nurture a baby. That’s what breasts are there for, to make milk and feed their baby.” I tried to reach our lactation consultant (sorry, I had to do it once more) for an opinion about what, exactly, my breasts are there for, but she was unavailable for comment - probably trying to figure out the purpose of eyebrows.
It’s things like this entire mess that make you wonder if Solomon, in all his wisdom, ever raised an eyebrow at his subjects, tossed his specter aside, and asked, rhetorically of course, “For crying out loud, will you act like adults - just this once?!?!” Then, realizing it was all a pipe dream, he sighed. And ordered all the stupid people sawed in half. The end.

Australian officials worried about their countries declining birthrate have come up with a solution: a cash-for-kids deal. Treasurer Peter Costello included in next year’s budget a one-time payment of $2,100 (US$) for first time mothers. While this seems a bit sexist to me, I think I’ll probably move there anyway and take Costello’s advice: “You go home and do your patriotic duty tonight.”

Two words: butt facials. I could expound, but I won’t. Trust me: it’s better this way.

Wait a minute, the record labels realized that they could make money selling music online - and then immediately jacked up prices and created more ridiculous rules? Man, I didn’t see that one coming. They’re breaking previous promises about albums being only $9.99? Didn’t see that one coming, either. Here’s a prediction, record execs: eventually people are going to realize that, in the equation of paying $12 and getting a physical CD, case, liner notes, and artwork vs. paying $10 and not getting any physical item, but instead getting highly restrictive intellectual property rights, something is not adding up. Wait, you mean that record companies are screwing people out of money?
People realized that, in a good faith effort to pay for what they consume, they got ripped off, so they stopped buying CDs and downloads and started stealing music for free again? Don’t tell me that you can’t see that one coming.

H is for “Holy Crap, I Rock!”

Well, my vacation (if you can call it that) is over: Mr. Blair is back from his brief break (bodacious alliteration, +13) and ready to rock, roll, and regale you with ridiculous (+7 more!) anecdotes. Speaking of ridiculous, the Interfraternity Council (IFC) at Penn State voted on February 9th to designate all of their fraternity houses as “Rape-Free Zones.” I can think of no better way to say, “Happy Valentines Day!” (Rhyming, -6). What is this world coming to when frat houses, the last bastion of sexism, declare themselves rape-free? NOW where am I supposed to commit sexual assault? Colorado hotels?
Wait a minute, isn’t, according to that pesky thing called the law, every place a rape-free zone? Is there any place that is not? Does anyone actually hang out there? Other than rapists? It seems to me that this is the equivalent of declaring a car dealership to be a murder-free zone. It’s a nice thought, which appreciate, but isn’t it a little bit silly, especially since the declaration has no real effect? At least in alleged Drug-Free zones around schools, the penalty is ratcheted up if you’re caught breaking the law (as a side note, I’ve always wanted to get one of the t-shirts that say “My Body is a Drug-Free Zone” and then sit outside of a school and do insulin shot).
What happens if a rape does take place in a frat house? Do they have to take back the declaration and revert to being a “rape zone?” Is the punishment worse? Does the house get de-fratted? Do you have to call an exterminator for that? No, none of the above. Nothing happens. What’s the point? Are the voluntary education classes really worth this much hullabaloo? Nah. What really happened is that a bunch of IFC guys bowed to pressure from radical femi-nazis and tacitly accepted responsibility for something they probably didn’t do. Why? Trying to get in these girls’ pants? I guess if the guys haven’t learned by now, they deserve whatever they end up getting (STDs?). On the plus side, they get a cool sticker to put on their houses, and chicks dig stickers.
So ladies, what do you think? I’m going to put a sticker on my front door: “This House is a Rape-Free Zone.” Will that make you feel safe, comfortable, and at ease? The guys at Penn State seem to think so. Although “intelligence-free” seems more accurate. And “girl-free.”

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On an unrelated note, since my music topics seem to generate interest, does anyone have the new Modest Mouse CD? Want to loan it to me? I really dig their new single, Float On (which, I might add, sounds quite a bit like the Talking Heads), but I am suspecting that, as was the case with The Darkness (whose single sounds quite a bit like AC-DC), I will not like the rest of the album all that much. If that turns out to be true, I will, as was the case with The Darkness, just buy the song on I-Tunes.