once again i rose to the occasion exactly one time on trivia night. this time the question was:

what is the only english word to end in ‘amt’?

for the past couple of weeks, i’ve been joining some friends at a pub for a weekly trivia night. anyone who knows me knows i have zero recall for trivia but last week i earned my keep by answering the following question.

on what american sitcom did darrin work for larry tate?

this latest noise on the campaign trail about elitism is complete crap. excuse me, president of the united states should be the most discriminating job in the world and any criteria that isn’t elite-ish shouldn’t be considered part of the equation for selecting president.

two elections in a row, blue collar, working class, rural voters have been hugely responsible for electing, without debate, the worse human on the planet for the job. even more insulting, mr. bush’s policies have been most damaging to those same people.

now with lemming like insight, these same enlightened voters are rallying around hillary clinton. if you weren’t convinced before that she is the wrong candidate for president this fact should be all the further evidence you need.

susan jacoby, author of “the age of american unreason” recently appeared on the colbert report and commented on how ridiculous it was for hillary clinton, a graduate of yale law school and barak obama, a former editor of the harvard law review to pretend they are not elite by bowling and drinking whisky shots with beer. she went on to impress me by claiming 2/3′s of americans under 25 can’t identify iraq on a map, a map with the names of the countries marked on it; the average american watches seven hours of television a day; and 50% of americans didn’t read a single book last year…

why are we catering down to these people? haven’t their electoral preferences proven catastrophic enough for the rest of us who can read books and identify where iraq is on a labeled map to make sure they don’t swing another election.

i think so and am disgusted we aren’t collectively demanding more.

i’m beginning to think parents encourage their kids to start families because its the only way they think to get even…

each survey participant has a unique username and password to ensure the anonymity and confidentiality of responses.

i wonder how exactly a unique username guarantees my anonymity? and only yesterday i was crying about the lack of quality in i.t. software and documentation…

dire tune of ethiopia won the women’s boston marathon race.

i can only assume that dire has loving parents and her name means something very different in ethiopian than it does in english.

i much prefer muddling through the obnoxious amounts of bad technology and poor writing researching topics for my job than hearing from my wife, as she studies for her job, how many children under the age of four died of the flu last year in the united states.

can it really be considered post season play when you let not just one, but two teams in with losing records? the league in question in case you are not aware is the nba…

almost without exception, the more words i put in to my daily post, the less i like it…

brought to you by the long post i had been writing until i couldn’t stand it any longer.

for the first time in seven months i made a purchase in the united states. a friend is getting married and i visited their online wedding registry to pick out an item. by the end of the transaction after tax, shipping and handling were added the cost of the item was 30% more than when i started. how totally annoying.

in new zealand everything costs what the price tag says it costs, even at a restaurant because there is no tipping.


recalling how obnoxious this all felt before, returning to it after this pleasant break is going to feel like a real step backwards…

since september last year we have been doing laundry without a dryer. i think i’ve mentioned it before, but it still surprises me that its true.

it wasn’t a problem all summer because it barely rained two hours in a row let alone two days in a row. but with the fall coming on we’ve had clothes hanging out in the rain for a few days now and i think the dryer free living is about at its end…

my kids aren’t even pre-teens yet, but this exchange in season 2, episode 3 of the sopranos struck me as a preview of the late nights i have to come…

carmela: there has to be consequences.
tony: and there will be. i hear ya, okay. let’s just not overplay our hand because if she finds out we’re powerless we’re fucked.