So I made it into Relevant's online magazine for the second time.
The link is on the left, under "Leaving The Tidal Pool."
It's somewhat exciting, but a little disappointing too. That's just life I guess.
I heard something on Radio Lab, the best science podcast out there, that says that the better we are at lying to ourselves, the happier we will be. In short, the more in touch you are with reality, the more depressed you become.
Fascinating.
I just posted a new review for Eagle vs. Shark. I think it's one of my best reviews ever, or at least one of the farthest reaching and most nonsensical.
Now I'm watching George W. Bush's final State of the Union speech. Ever. Just seeing that smirk on Dick (aptly named) Cheney's face makes me so glad he's leaving. In Man Without A Country, Kurt Vonnegut writes that he is going to sue the British Tobacco Company because he's been smoking unfiltered Pall Mall's since he was 12 and is now alive in a time in which the three most powerful people in the world are named Bush, Dick, and Colon. Then he slipped and hit his head and died.
Barack Obama is in the audience. As usual, he looks great. That is one classy man.
The last State of the Union address that a president gives is usually used to frame the legacy that the president wants to coerce the public into believing. So NPR tells me. I'll be honest - as much as I have grown to dislike the Bush Administration (going from a complete fanboy in 2000 to being vehemently opposed in 2008), it is sad to see any administration falter as badly as this one has. Without 9/11, Bush and Co. would have been nothing more than a nepotist back-scratching white deck shoe frat party. But whatever possibility of change and growth those neo-cons had was lost in the caveman scrabble of 9/12 et al. It was like Stanley Kubrick's 2001, but backwards. And with talking.
Bush has spent most of this whole speech talking about education and health care. It's like listening to a less-philandering Bill Clinton who didn't worship Alan Greenspan. Where's the red meat? Where's the Republican ideas? I haven't heard "9/11" a single time and have heard "terror" only once. Where's the big stand on foreign defense? Oh, he just alluded to 9/11. And he said it again! Now he just said "terra". That's close enough to terror, I'll give it to him. If Newt Gingrich ever did really make a Contract with America, then it's long been broken. I remember those days. I learned about them on The McLaughlin Group. Small government, a focus on strengthening America at home and abroad, and moral integrity. I won't say Bush's DC has become Imperial Rome, but the image of decadence clothed in classical living can't be that far from anyone's mind.
Now he's talking about Iraq. Whatever happened to the grand vision we had for Iraq? Greeted as liberators? The oil in Iraq will pay for the reconstruction and occupation? We will have soldiers on the ground for under six months? Now it's about controlling the violence? Sectarian killings are down? Where did this milquetoast version of the Republican war machine come from? This is something I would have expected from Clinton if we had put soldiers in Kosovo instead of just bombing. This is like post-Kennedy McNamara. Victory is no longer an option. Now we're just racing for a tie, or small loss at best? At least the Democrats are saying that we should leave because it's a failure and not trying to cast a staggering miscarriage as a success. How can a nation be so myopic as to not remember why we were told we were going to Iraq and what we would achieve there?
The other week, I watched an interview with one of the former deputy chiefs of the CIA. He was saying that he could not believe that people doubted the fact that we had waged war in Iraq for oil. Within 10 years, this former chief declared, it would be a publicly accepted fact that Iraq was the first resource war of the 21st Century. That's crazy.
Michael Chertoff looks like The Scream.
I wonder who's giving the Democratic response to the State of the Union. A couple of years ago, Bill Richardson gave it. He was a rising star in the Democratic Party, or as rising as someone that established could be. Now he's reduced to begging for support in the New Hampshire debates. Sad.
Well, Bush is finished now. Thankfully.
Sucks.
He's the film reviewer for Maxim and doesn't even deserve the piddling journalistic respect that jerk rag would get him. In my spare time, I'm a little bit of a movie reviewer myself, although I do it for fun, free movies, and the overwhelming excitement of getting stuff in the mail.
I know for a fact that I have never seen a movie with a glowing Peter Hammond endorsement on the cover and come away not wishing for those two hours of my life back.
This thought comes to mind because there's a Peter Hammond gem on the back of Eagle vs. Shark, the movie I'm reviewing right now. Shockingly, it's not that bad of a movie.
Stupid Peter Hammond.
It's lunchtime and I'm on my hour unpaid break. Because lunches cost money (and the fact that I got in a car crash the last time I left here for lunch making me understandably reticent), I stay in for lunch. The midday meal usually consists of an apple, but today I had 3 banana walnut muffins I made and a cup of coffee I didn't. Which was nice.
I sit at my desk and play games on the internet for my lunch break, which is about the same thing I do while I'm on the phone. Just kidding. Customer Experience - Make It Count. That's the slogan we supposedly kicked off a few months ago to begin a year of even more intensely customer-centric behaviors. We had a (paid) hour long presentation on how we can all be more intentional about customers as we do our jobs. Corporate handed out little plastic rocks with the slogan on it and advised us to put them next to our phones or any other place we would see them and think about how we can make the experience of our customers that much better.
I put mine in my desk drawer and take it out only when some customer won't shut up. I then see how high I can flip it in the air without hitting the ceiling. It's more of a Nathaniel Experience and I'm certainly trying to make it count.
I'm going to play Bloons Tower Defense 2 now.
*Edit* 12:29pm - Now you can play Bloons Tower Defense 2 too. Do so.
It's Afternoon in America once again. After six months and six days, I have returned from my self-imposed blog exile. I have an internet connection and a head full of thoughts. So welcome.
