Zack Morris - Story of My Life

I decided to post a few quick maps of where I’ve been:

create your own personalized map of the USA
or write about it on the open travel guide

create your own visited country map
or write about it on the open travel guide

create your own personalized map of Canada
or write about it on the open travel guide

The most fun places by far were Idaho (home state), Illinois (college), and Costa Rica (visited my friend Zack). Most of my family on my mom’s side lives in Nebraska. California and New York were cool, but I didn’t get enough time there to form much of an impression. I was in DC pre-9/11 and remember an entirely different city than the militarized hell hole we know and love today. Costa Rica was a surreal happy place, like the US in the 60’s/70’s, before we lost our innocence to the robber barons and media. I have been in a balance of so called red states and blue states, and I have to say that the people in democratic strongholds seem to be much more spiritually enlightened than those in red states. Curiously, the land and environment are much better in republican strongholds. I think the people there take it for granted, which is why they devote so little attention to environmental or social causes. They have an abundance of resources that people in cities may never understand.

9x3 inch 300 dpi bumper sticker and banner ad sized images available here and here. If those don’t work, try here and here.

    It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. At least Cheney is not yet emperor. After thinking on the current state of affairs for a day, I have decided to revise my advice on what to do about Bush. Leaving the country is not an option, and neither is bankruptcy, I was just reaching for something quick to ease the pain, besides beer. No, we have to just be vigilent and stay the course. Thousand points of light. Maybe we need more mind numbing phrases like the Republican PR machine uses. I have begun plastering my car’s bumper with stickers for Kerry/Edwards and gems like “losing faith in humanity one person at a time”. Let’s come up with some bumper stickers for Bush.
    What do you think of my first attempt? Our mission is to discredit the robber barons anyway we can, like the political cartoons of the 19th century, showing big fat men in suits driving their trains over the backs of the working class. The body count in Iraq has now passed 100,000, but since they weren’t Americans, they evidently don’t matter to whoever elected Bush. Well, they matter to me. The political cartoons showing the situation in Iraq would be so distasteful today that we would all vomit and pass out. Perhaps making fun of the situation is not appropriate, but we can at least humiliate George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, John Asscroft, Condoleezza Rice, and unfortunately Colin Powell (hey, I liked that guy!!!) directly. I mean, come on guys, this is probably the easiest administration to spit on since Nixon. (more…)

    Well, I’m writing this before the election has officially been called, but it appears that John Kerry has lost (I even voted way out here in the republican stronghold of Idaho, to try to throw off the popular vote). I admit that I was pretty sure he would lose, because America has not woken up in the dozens of fundamental ways that would be required for the country to make such a large change in direction as to dump Bush. This was by far the worst campaign of smoke and mirrors and misdirection that I have ever seen (easily dwarfing the 2000 election which resulted in George W. Bush being elected merely because his name happened to be Bush). It’s amazing to think that Kerry could lose due to a few choice phrases from Karl Rove, namely flip flop and waffles. It’s amazing that Kerry’s 30 year old war and post war record (one of the most patriotic performances of the post Vietnam era) would be brought back to discredit him. It’s amazing that Bush won mainly because people were too afraid to dethrone a sitting president in wartime (never mind that Bush started the war with a sovereign country). I could continue for many pages, but that is not the point of this entry.
    No, what I would like to tell all of you is that it’s time to look on the bright side: Bush has to clean up the disaster of his first term. Kerry is off the hook, and we will have four more years of side splitting jokes at Bush’s expense. Maybe it is good that when the fall happens, democrats will not be responsible. We have facts staring us in the face that spin will not alleviate. No amount of military might can save Iraq. The deficit has now passed the point of no return, since republicans have never lowered it in my lifetime. The wealth imbalance has also passed critical mass, since the minimum wage is a joke at 1/3 the liveable wage, while CEOs are getting million dollar bonuses for bankrupting corporations. Baby boomers are reaching retirement age, and even republicans know that privatizing social security will not help the elderly. These are all catastrophic disasters, so sit back, enjoy the show, and maybe even toss in a few “I told you so”s now and then. (more…)

Here is my halloween costume for this year. If a flip flop can vote for Kerry, can’t you? (5 pictures total)

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After seeing P. Diddy’s mohawk and other oddities on the MTV Video Music Awards, I realized that I no longer want my MTV. Do you want it? If you know anyone that wants it, please notify them that the mohawk they are sporting is no longer (and never was) in style and to please not vote this November. I pity da foo.

9x3 inch 300 dpi bumper sticker and banner ad sized images available here and here. If those don’t work, try here and here.

Image from digibarn.com

    Ordinarily I love Google. It is the closest thing to an AI (artificial intelligence) that I have come across, and has made me 100 times more productive (ok and more lazy) than I was growing up. But that doesn’t mean that it is perfect. The good old boy mafia that runs our country is always trying to get a piece of the action, and they have done a brilliant job with Google. In order to prevent companies from becoming too powerful, there are rules that make a company publish its records to the SEC once it makes a certain amount of money. Ordinarily that is a very good thing, for scary companies like Microsoft or Enron. But Google is not a regular company. Google is a geek’s paradise, doing everything the “right way” and curiously making outrageous sums of money as it runs circles around the competition. My complaint is not so much with Google, but with the fat cats and market makers that understand human nature and how to exploit the poor.
    Google went public today at $85 per share. There has been discussion at slashdot about why this number is so important. In my humble opinion, this isn’t about market cap and valuation, this is about human nature. I would bet all of the money in the world, all of the money ever printed, that when a good company opens at $85, it will very quickly go over $100, due to psychology. That is precisely what happened. Now that in and of itself is no big deal, until you consider who makes the profit. (more…)

Well, the world has changed dramatically (for the worse) since I graduated from college in the late 90’s and it is time to get the word out. This blog will be arranged like a news source (like slashdot or to some degree igeek). I’m going to tell it how it is on everything from politics to science to geeking to dating. A few details about myself: I am 27, a recovering geek, I am an extreme moderate slightly to the left, I think very little happens by accident and see orchastrated mayhem in all aspects of american life. The current administration is made up of robber barons that work under the guise of idiots. I like to be awakened to the fact that I am wrong, so feel free to dish out criticism.