Can you tell the difference?

I saw an interview last week, and I thought it was a rerun, because it looked so familiar. Then today I put my finger on it. Can you tell the difference between these two interviews? I sure can't:

Welcome to entry #100!

So, I'm playing Dance Dance Revolution in my apartment, and it occurs to me the problem with my job: I can't be perfect at anything.

I'm playing the game at a very respectable level (difficulty 6), and even occasionally stumbling upon a level 7, and I'm actually doing really well. Not passing the levels, mind you, but keeping pace to be sure. Then I pop my knee which makes my leg a little sore doing the really tough ones, but I set a goal for myself (700 calories) and by God, I'm going to keep it, so I just do some easy levels. I figure, this will be a nice cool-off period before I call it a night.

Plus, I've never seen the screen when you get a perfect score. So, since I can easily keep up with level 6, I do a couple level 3 songs—ones so easy, they verge on boring. And you know what? Not once did I get a perfect score. I can hit a 100-combo on fast speed no sweat, but I do a comfortably-paced song with only 80 steps and I will screw one up, guaranteed.

This is the exact same thing that I keep getting in trouble for at work. I am "above expectations" in every single category except one: accuracy. In accuracy, I still do very well (92%), but according to the job detail, you have to be 100% accurate. You're allowed a 98% average every three months, to allow for the occasional slip (that comes out to 3/4 of an error per month). I have never hit 98%, let alone made the average.

I can't be perfect. I've never been perfect at anything. I've never sung a song and gotten every word, even if I'm reading the lyrics while I do it. I've never played a song without missing a note. I've never typed a letter without a typo or mistype (which I have to pick up with a proofread). The only true 100% grade I ever got in school was when I was taking the Social Studies GED, in my second year of college, and that was entirely by luck; on every other test, I missed exactly one question.

This isn't me complaining or self-deprecating. I'm very, very good at a lot of things. In fact, there are tons of things which I can do and only make one mistake every time. But I am never perfect.

This month at work, I've made special arrangements to game the system; i.e. get a "perfect" score, not by avoiding any mistakes, but by guiding QA to the ones without any mistakes in them. Now, you may ask, if I know what QA is going to look at, why don't I just fix the mistakes that they would have found before they see them? And if you ask that question, you obviously missed my point with this blog. 

Don't beat yourself up over it, though. We all make mistakes.

Wanna buy an insurance company?

AIG, the second largest public insurance company, is selling itself off for parts. The Feds bought 80% of their stocks for $85 billion, which AIG immediately lent to itself, giving it $170 billion to work with (I'm not really sure how that's not fraudulent), and are now paying something like 30% interest on the loan, so they said they need to sell off their services. So they've put up their aviation department, casualty insurance, life insurance, and property insurance departments up for sale, along with a few smaller business units, which they said they will sell for and "reasonable price." They're hoping to pull $150 billion dollars, use $85 billion (plus interest) to pay off their loans, buy back $48 billion worth of their stocks (80% of the remainder), and give back the other $12 to the shareholders, who just watched their stock drop from $62 in January down to about $2 and dropping by the minute.

I am tickled pink. I've thought the stock market was a ridiculous idea from the moment I learned about it in high school economics. I'm going to get hurt by this financial crisis, of course, but not NEARLY as much as the people who have bought into it. The only investment I have in the stock market is my 401 (k), which is worth about $1,500. Currency isn't an actual object; it's a unit of measurement, and comparably I'm getting wealthier and wealthier the longer this crisis continues.

Lunches

I tend to reminisce about lunch. If I had the means, I would love to go eat lunch at all of the following places:

• The lunchroom of my junior high
• The 2nd floor hallway of my high school in Idaho
• The lunchroom of my high school in Europe
• The dorm cafeteria of my college
• Old Chicago, my old stomping ground
• The kitchen of my quad apartment from my upperclassmen years
• The kitchen of my best friend's dad's old house
• Hot Cake House in Portland at 1 a.m.

Some of these are easy. Hot Cake House, for one. The "dorm cafeteria" doubles as a functioning restaurant, and I don't think it's changed all that much. If I went back to Europe for any significant amount of time, I'm sure it'd be easy to eat there as well.

I can't really go back to eating on the floor of my high school, and I think they'd frown on me hanging out at the Junior High. Obviously, my apartment and my friend's dad's house have been sold to other people; even if I randomly ended up eating at the new tenants' residence, it would be indistinguishable. Similarly, I actually tried going back to Old Chicago, but it was totally remodeled, and anyway, the whole appeal was being on a first name basis with literally the entire staff, all the way up to the owner (who has since sold the joint).

It seems like a silly thing to reminisce about, but I get all emotional just writing about it, and to this day I have dreams, where I walk down those gray stairs into the basement of my school, take a left into the little dining hall, and put my money down in that little window that goes to the kitchen, and they hand me my macaroni and half tea/half sugar, and I walk to the back table and pull out my math book and work on my homework.

Sounds like a dreadful thing to dream about, doesn't it? Well, it so happens that I got a bout of insomnia the last couple days, and you know how I fixed it? I laid in my bed, and pictured that little dining hall in my mind. Within half an hour, I was asleep and on my way there.

So I guess I can go back.

Those who support Palin

The following is an actual online conversation between me and someone online. This is in response to Charlie Gibson asking Palin about the Bush Doctrine, which Palin had never heard of. WARNING: Graphic language, read with care. I started this blog as a place to be as crude as possible, but even I find this content offensive.

Charles Gibson is the dumbass here she knows what the bush doctrine is she just told him

My response: the Bush Doctrine is an actual specific mandate, similar in procedure to the Emancipation Proclamation. It's a historical item. It's not Palin's opinion of what Bush does. Think of it this way: if you hit someone with a car, even as an accident, would you hire a lawyer who had never heard of vehicular manslaughter? If you are in a country which is at war, would you want a Vice President who has never heard of the statute we wrote as our reason to go to war?

Give it up. You have no dam idea what you are babbling about.

My response: Why would I give up if I could learn something from you? The Bush Doctrine (capital letters) has been in political conversations since 2003 referring to the official justification for the Iraq war, why a preemptive strike was justified. A doctrine (lower case) can refer to a general opinion, but Charlie Gibson here was clearly talking about The Bush Doctrine. Which part of that am I misunderstanding?

And he goes straight to this well-thought response:

You're a nigger faggot. Ever notice how it is the high school and coolege aged kids that hate on Palin? It is also the welfare niggers, gays/lesbians, neo/socialists, drug addicts. Thats the voting base Obama has.

This is the mindset we're up against, folks.

One thing I can say about Palin

She's getting people to care about politics. Especially women. Never mind all the polls, I'm talking about people I know in real life. People like the women in my family, friends at work, people who I know on a purely professional basis who are saying to me, "I know we're not supposed to discuss politics at work, but what's up with this Palin character?"

People whom I've never known to care about politics have suddenly grown a fire in them of sheer, unadulterated hatred. People who, even with Bush, have said "you know, I'd rather just not think about it." Suddenly I'm getting emails from aunts and distant friends, passing on things they've read about her, warnings and revealing facts about Palin's ruthless neo-con history. My lunch buddy getting all red in the face because his grandmother in Wisconsin is supporting the McCain-Palin ticket.

For several reasons, I believe the polls are wrong, and in some cases, intentionally misleading. A result of the pulls saying that the race is deadlocked is absolute panic and fear from people that McCain could be elected, and Palin with him. She is a true enemy. My father, a war veteran and himself an American politician, has started talking about leaving the country if they win. If those polls are true, and McCain somehow wins this one, people will not just be depressed for a couple weeks over the loss. There will be war, civil disobedience, people on the streets.

Joe Biden made a speech about the Republican promise to help kids with disabilities, yet they oppose stem cell research. The Republicans now say that Biden has reached "a new low" in politics by attacking Palin's child with Downs Syndrome.

Wait a fucking minute. Palin was the one who said in her speech that parents of children with disabilities will have "a friend in the White House." That's a campaign promise. And it's an out and out fucking lie. The single most effective way to treat disabilities is with stem cell research, which Biden, Obama, and McCain all support, which the conservative Supreme Court has allowed, and which Palin opposes without exception.

So the Republicans get to make these blanket statements promising the world, and if Democrats respond, even tacitly, they're sinking to a new low and using schoolyard bullying? What the fuck?

Just like Obama's statement about putting "lipstick on a pig," a saying that McCain has himself used, and which they immediately say is a sexist jab against Palin (even though he was talking about McCain). But it was Palin who used the lipstick line in her own acceptance speech. Once again, they can make statements that appeal to voters, but it's below the belt for Democrats to respond.

And just to top it off, they're boycotting any news station who challenges any of them on their records. An interviewer asked for examples of what executive decisions Palin has made as governor of Alaska, and McCain's campaign said they would no longer appear on that station because they were being prejudiced against small states. What!?!? Jesus Christ. Then they're blaming Obama for accusations (which are incidentally, true) against McCain and Palin made by nonpartisan political analysts. They're essentially claiming that intelligence as a whole has a liberal bias.

Well, at least they got that one thing right.

Muzak

Once a friend of mine pointed out a great injustice. We were in a department store, and elevator music was playing over the PA. He turned to me and said, "you know, they pick this music because they're trying to put in music that won't be offensive to anyone. Well, I find this music offensive. Music like this presumes that there is no value to actual feeling or purpose in music, that all people really want is someone blowing into a saxophone. I could understand if they just played some soft jazz, but this music has intentionally had all the emotion and feeling sterilized out of it, because they're afraid people will be uncomfortable if they are made aware of their soul."

Never more did this ring true to me than just now, as I was put on hold with a client, and their hold music was a watered-down version of a Sting song. They were actually afraid that someone would find Sting abrasive. Sure enough, I was offended; I would have found listening to Sting somewhat pleasant, even an instrumental version, but instead I was forced to listen to a droning sterilization of it, only provoking my emotions, knowing that they could be feeling something pleasant but were instead left with an empty void. Ironically, that provoked emotions of their own, none of them pleasant.

Okay, I'll say it out loud

Pretty much the only people who are saying this out loud are insensitive asshole intolerant pricks, but there's some genuine truth in it, some non-assholic truth. That is this: is it really heroic to get caught by the enemy? Nobody thought it was heroic when McCain was in the bottom 10% of his graduating class, but once he uses that (lack of) knowledge in the battle field and gets captured, did that suddenly make him Presidential material? Really?

 

Maybe the reason why our country is continuously dragged into unnecessary and unpopular wars is because we keep electing warmongers and military brutes as our commanders-in-chief. What if we elected a diplomatic genius instead, who saw standing down as a more powerful option than killing anyone who disagrees with us?