We’ll see just how smart the neo-cons are come election day.

History/Macro trends are on the side of the Democrats in this election.  The polls have them in the lead.  The Republicans just completely f%*ked up the last 8 years.  The Democrats would be hard pressed to lose this election, and the Republican party leadership knows that.

I am beginning to think the McCain/Palin ticket was never meant to be put to a vote.  She’s obviously in over her head.  She is not qualified to be vice president.  She governed a small town in Alaska and then has been state governor for a bit (without significant distinguishing successes).

That’s like me playing flag football on Saturdays poorly, and someone suddenly asking me to be starting quarterback for the Cowboys.  It just doesn’t make sense.  Add on top of that McCain’s age….statistically he stands a good chance of dying in office.  Then Palin is president.  Surely the Republicans can’t be serious?

I think they’re going to bring out a dark horse vice presidential candidate at the last second.  Palin will have to step away from the nomination for some reason, and they’ll put forward someone else.

The Republicans got a bounce in the polls when they nominated Palin (which is natural; its new, exciting, etc.)…and then when she was vetted the poll numbers dropped (since she is woefully unqualified).  If the neo-cons could put forward someone else, and not give voters time to vet him/her, the bounce might be enough to help McCain get elected.

How would that work logistically, you ask?  How would McCain have any credibility if he selected Palin, then unselected her?  Surely that wouldn’t work?  Well, I can think of one way:  McCain is billing himself (rightly or wrongly) as a maverick.  He is the anti-Republican Republican in a political/economic environment where being Republican isn’t that popular.

As a maverick he can say he was pressured to select Palin, and now he’s breaking free of that pressure to give America what it needs in this time of crisis.  And who will his new VP pick be?  I think the correct play would be a conservative Democrat (perhaps Joe Lieberman).  Democrats and Republicans together on the same ticket; the reform and bi-partisanship America needs.  Its not a bad idea.

Think a play like that is too bold/rash?  Perhaps, but the Republicans are very likely going to lose this election and they know it.  They’ve got little to lose by doing something different.  If Americans want to elect a Democrat…give them one…on the Republican ticket.

If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.

Just a thought.  If I can think of doing it…so can they.

I had a consulting gig for work recently and got to see some pretty amazing sports memorabilia at a certain large sports apparel company’s headquarters.  This covered the entire wall.

Bottom line:  I loved Jordan.  He made basketball look good.  He achieved a greatness we all aspire to yet never reach…it transcended sport even.  He was just fucking good….period.

See that look on his face.  It says, “Go home.  I’ve already won.”

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I think about that as I watched the Vice Presidential debates tonight.  Politicians just pander back and forth; you never really know if what they are saying is true.  They leave and go do whatever they were going to do in the first place, probably something that’s going to screw us and has exactly the opposite effect they claim it will have.

But Jordan….no need to talk.  No pandering.  The score speaks for itself.  RESULTS.  You can believe in that.  You know its real.  He just hit that shot over Craig Ehlo.  That…just…happened.

So many people have contacted me through Facebook lately.  Its strange to relive some of that; sometimes to be forced to.  Tessa wrote me recently.  I lived with her for a bit at Ein Gedi…in 1997 I think it was.

Here is what she said:

so i have been thnking a lot lately bout ein gedi etc, it was a long time ago now!! gemm has beautifaul photos of kids, have you children yet?? life in uk, ok, but not spent much of my “adult” life here. where are you now? how do you remember those days? take care tessaxx

My response:

Tessa,
Ha!  Feeling a little nostalgic lately?

Hmm…”How do I remember those days?”

I guess I don’t really for the most part (except when you send me an email and it makes me think about it).  Those years seem disconnected from my current life, like they don’t apply.  Its almost like I disappeared for 5 years or so….on another planet.

Every once in a while I’ll see something on TV, and think “I was there once; there is a great restaurant I ate at just around the corner”, but it seems very distant.

The memories are nice, but they are also hard to live with since life will never be as new and exciting as those years were.  You are only young and conquer the world once.  I’ve come to accept that.

I live in Atlanta, GA.  I play tennis.  I like to drink fancy beers.  I am an HR Consultant.  I own a house, and hang out with my friends.  I love my mom and my sister; don’t get along so well with my dad.  I complain and get sad sometimes, but I’m very fortunate.

That’s it.  The story there doesn’t really include “and for 5 years I hit 30+ countries, learned to speak another language, sailed the Mediterranean, saw the Taj Mahal, the Pyramids, Petra, Machu Picchu, trekked the Himalaya, rode camels in the Sahara, blah, blah, blah, etc.”  Those things are interesting bar stories and come up sometimes, but it just doesn’t apply to most things I do.

I love those years…in a crazy way.  Its something no one can take away and it will always make me a little special.  If I had worked those years like my friends, I would have a little more money now; I might be married, but I would never have ice climbed on a glacier in Patagonia.

And yes…Gemma’s kids are cute, and no, I don’t have any kids.  I’m not married.

Thanks for the nostalgia,

Elliott

Oh well.  I think I’ll go back to my wine and Monday nights on HDNet.

……………………….To understand me, you must understand this.

Tags: Israel, travel

The last month hasn’t been the best.  I’ve been working at least one day each weekend and 60+ hours each week; I’ve been back and forth to the West coast twice.  I have early morning calls with India and evening calls with the West coast.  I’m just tired.

I have work on my house I have to do, but I can’t get time.  I have to stain my deck, put up a light, pressure wash the side of my house, and paint my shutters.

I’ve talked about all this before; in fact…..the feeling that I go from one thing to the next, never resting….probably describes most of the US.  I should stop complaining.

Regardless, it is bad for your health.  Stress isn’t so bad, but long hours, a lack of exercise, and spotty sleep do take their toll…especially lack of exercise.  I don’t have time to play tennis; those two hours in the evening I used for exercise are now taken up by work or chores or whatever.

On another note, I went to see the Indigo Girls in concert last night.  They are really one of my favorite bands, and I’m happy to report they are simply awesome in concert….perfect.  Its amazing that so much sound can come from two guitars and two voices.  I loved it.

Hopefully in the next few weeks things will return to normal…whatever that is.

People have an amazing capacity to suspend logic while maintaining that life makes sense.

Sundays for instance.  All week everyone requires proof….receipts, contracts, documentation, follow ups, passwords, meetings, blah, blah, blah….but then on Sunday they go to Church and praise somebody that is plainly not there.  They sing songs about the justice, love, and compassion while ignoring the death, disease, war, destruction and plain bad luck that makes up most people’s lives.  I’m not saying they’re wrong on Sundays…..I’m just saying it doesn’t make sense.

Which brings me to my first point:  There is no superfood that will keep you young.   All these people are drinking 40 dollar concentrated acai juice, eating wild salmon for omega-3s, touting blueberries, and free-range beef or whatever.  It doesn’t help.  How do I know?

Japanese women are the longest lived group on the planet at slightly over 85 years.  Vilcabamba Valley in Ecuador is said to be the healthiest environment on the planet with people regularly living over 100.  Barbados (along with Japan) boasts the most Centenarians per capita.

What do these places have in common?  Honestly, other than perhaps generally healthy lifestyles and maybe a diet rich in seafood…..nothing.

The point isn’t that something isn’t making them live longer…its that Japanese women at 85 are not THAT much different than the USA at 77.

If there were some lifestyle/diet change that would make us live significantly longer, someone would’ve adopted it, and it would be so apparent that soon everyone would be doing it, and then we’d be back to the same situation:  Everyone living approximately the same life span.

In fact, there WERE lifestyle/diet changes that made people healthier and presumably live longer.  We are the descendants of those people.

In short, if you like the amazonian fruits, eat them.  But they aren’t going to make you live longer.  If they did, the jungle people eating them naturally would have abnormally long life spans.  They don’t.  They die sooner than we do.

Next point:  ESP.  It doesn’t exist.  Not in anyone.  You know why?  Easy.

It would be SO advantageous to be able to know other people’s thoughts or tell the future or any other ESP-like skill, that whoever had the skill would get so rich and bang so many women, that their descendents would soon outnumber everyone else…..then everyone would have ESP.  The fact that everyone doesn’t have ESP strongly suggests that it doesn’t exist.

So…go to church, drink Acai juice, and try to bend spoons….it can’t hurt.  You never know these days.

Tags: biology

I started writing something, but I lost patience to finish it.  Its filed with all my other unpublished posts that will likely never get done.

It was about routine.  Adutlhood is about routine.  It consumes my life.

It was about acceptance of average, simply because at any given moment you are likely to be doing something you commonly do.  In other words, your life, by statistical inevitability, is made up of average things.

It was about fear of the future and longing for the past, even though the past was not always that great, and the future is likely going to be better.

It was probably leading toward the sobering realization that no matter what you do, there you are.  I am by nature a cynic, overly nostalgic, temperamental, and hard to please.

This post seems also to be about all those things too, but in less detail….because I’m impatient….and tired.

This weekend my tennis team is playing in the ALTA city championships.  I’ve been runner up before, but never won.  We’ll see….not that it will give me any lasting pleasure if we win.

That’s what this whole post, and the one before it that I never finished, is about.

I know I haven’t written much lately…just don’t have that much to say lately.  I have a house, a job, and a girlfriend.  I have bills and keep busy with tennis.  Its a good routine, but its a routine.  Its not that I don’t have thoughts…its just that I ignore them and don’t take the time to sit down and write like I used to, just busier.

I just got back from a week of vacation at the beach.  That was good.   I haven’t been on a real vacation like that in years and years and years.  It was a normal beach week where you eat food, take naps, lay out at the pool or the beach, play cards and drink in the evening….basically hang out and do a lot of nothing.

I noticed just about at the end of the week that I was very relaxed.  I hadn’t been relaxed like that in years so it was an odd feeling.  It pointed out that I am generally stressed, since to be relaxed you must’ve been more tightly strung to begin with.

I certainly don’t feel stressed on a daily basis, because I’m accustomed to it.  If you are always slightly stressed, then you don’t recognize it.  It feels normal….or better said it IS normal.  Being relaxed then is abnormal.

Why can’t relaxed be the norm?  Well, I suppose it could, but no one ever promised us a stress free life.  In fact, I think the mere act of having to survive the day means that it is possible not to survive it….which is stressful.  Life is, by definition, somewhat stressful.

That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t enjoy a few weeks more vacation though.

This really is one of the most troubling things I’ve read in years.  It is so bizarre you think you’re reading Catch 22 or some Kafka novel.  It reminds you of the surreal, draconian stories of the police state of authoritarian regimes….but its in our own country.

It is frightening really.  You know it goes on I suppose, but to hear the story like that, with all its absurdity, reminds me that the difference between “us” and the “them” we are supposedly against….is very, very thin.

Thinking back to how exited I used to be about my life, I can only say that little has changed except my anticipation of what may come.

When you are young/er, you are never living your life, you are always living in anticipation of it, and so if it is good today, you are stealing a lick…since you are really preparing for tomorrow, and anything you may suffer today is in preparation for the great arrival that you will have later.

Anticipation is a great thing, since it is hard to be let down…you just imagine what you want, and try to move towards it, and as long as you are trying and making small progress, well…its out there to be had.  You are always moving forward towards some great unknown that will surely be more wonderful that what you have today.  If you take a step backwards…no biggie…its all still out there; you’ve just had a “learning experience”.

The rub is that you must one day LIVE your life, instead of live in anticpation of it.  That is something I have not learned well.  I always thought that living in the present is rather bunk.  The present is so blasse.  It is in quiet anticipation of the future and warm reminiscence of the past that you find great joys as well.

One day the present arrives though, and anticipation leaves you a bit cold….anticipate what?  Will it ever be the time now?  Anticipation is a youthful activity.  Adults cannot afford to anticipate….the must simply “cipate” or “pate” or whatever word you want to invent.

I think of this because I always hear “be in the present”, and you will be happy.  Well, the present for me is sometimes good, and sometimes bad.  The past can also be good or bad, depending on what you choose to remember; however, THE FUTURE….its always good.  You can anticipate whatever you like.

As an adult, being robbed of the eternal anticipation of my life is something I’ve never dealt with.

I have already professed my love for the iPhone.  Only cheap women and stiff drinks are better on a lonely night.

Even though I just recently plopped down $400+ for iPhone 1.0, I still thought I might upgrade.  I watched a gaunt Steve Jobs in his little black turtleneck deliver the keynote on the iPhone 2.0 with great anticipation.

Alas, it is not to be.

The iPhone 2.0 does have wireless high speed Internet, and true GPS positioning….but:

iPhone 1.0 will still connect to a wireless LAN at high speed if one is avlb.  The positioning function on the first iPhone is pretty darn adequate, and it was mentioned that 2.0 still doesn’t have turn-by-turn GPS, like the Garmins do.

There are other functions the new iPhone has too, and some that I’d like…..but they’re all software related. I can just wait for the new firmware to come out and I’ll have that functionality too…no need to upgrade.  That’s what’s so yummy about the iPhone compared to other phones:  it continues to get better even after you buy it.  As mentioned, its really a little computer, not a cell phone.

Here are features that I’ll get with the new firmware:  push email, search contacts, save photos from web, VPN, better support for viewing Office documents, and my favorite:  third party applications.

Here is what it doesn’t have…that I’d really like; however, these will be software upgrades not hardware, so I’d still not have to buy iPhone 2.0:  wireless modem capabilities (so I could use it as a mobile internet connection for a laptop), cut and paste, MMS instead of just SMS, iDisk (that’s my term, but I’d like to be able to use it to store files other than mp3s).

So what would make me upgrade?  A better camera (the camera is unchanged).  The camera on iPhone 1.0 is not bad under certain conditions, but its not ready to replace a stand-alone digital camera yet.  Its very convenient not to have to take a camera to a party or a gathering, but always have a good camera handy (because its your phone).  I would take more pictures under more candid conditions.  I’d be willing to pay for that.

At least iPhone 2.0 got rid of that stupid recessed headphone jack.  That’s the only thing I don’t like about it.