Thoughts for the day to make up for a lack of blog entries...

If you're too open-minded, your brains will fall out.

Age is a very high price to pay for maturity.

Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in his shoes. That way, if he gets angry, he'll be a mile way - and barefoot.

Going to church doesn't make you a holy person any more than going to a garage makes you a mechanic.

Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.

A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.

A closed mouth gathers no feet.

If you must choose between two evils, pick the one you've never tried before.

My idea of housework is to sweep the room with a glance.

Not one shred of evidence supports the notion that life is serious.

It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.

I have found at my age going bra-less pulls all the wrinkles out of my face.

For every action, there is an equal and opposite government program.

If you look like your passport picture, you probably need the trip.

Always yield to temptation, because it may not pass your way again.

A conscience is what hurts when all your other parts feel so good.

Eat well, stay fit, die anyway.

No husband has ever been shot while doing the dishes.

Men are from earth. Women are from earth. Deal with it.

It's amazing what you won't find if you don't look for it, especially if it's not there.

Soundoff on Impeachment!

If you're reading this (and I think this means you, Matt, as you're the only one who reads this regularly), you should sound off on The PI's editorial on impeachment. It's little less than a straw poll, but better than nothing:

http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/thebigblog/archives/126803.asp

Free Rice (for the world, not you!)

Though I have my doubts about the effectiveness of such a website, at least it makes me feel good and smart:

http://freerice.com

What's that? Cuba's in the news again!?!

Today's daily rant is about NPR's story on Cuban dissident Oscar Biscet who received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Bush. NPR claims that his views are "closely aligned with those of the president" but that's not a criteria for the award. Kind of like saying Halliburton's multi-billion dollar no-bid contracts are just "coincidence".

I consider myself an amateur Cuba-phile, have lived on the island, and barely heard of Biscet, so touting him as "Cuba's most high-profile dissident" doesn't mean much inside the country. Like Bush, though, he's at great odds with the rest of his own country. As an anti-abortion activist in a country that uses abortion as a primary means of birth control, a Christian in a country where few people wield that label (and fewer still who don't also infuse their Christian beliefs with a little Santeria) and a proponent of the Embargo.

Holy shit! This guy's in favor of the embargo? He's gotta be the only person inside Cuba who thinks the embargo is a good thing and working well. No wonder he's in prison.

I'm not an apologist for the Cuban government – they commit crimes just like any other government- but I do understand their line of thinking, which is "the US is waging a low-scale war against us, and we must respond in kind." The evidence of this war is hardly circumstantial, from the obvious (Bay of Pigs invasion, the bombing of a Cubana flight 455, and the 1999 hotel bombing in Havana); propaganda (Radio Martí,) antagonistic (Brothers to the Rescue fly-bys in the late 1990s); to instances that verge on paranoia if not for the hostility (a plague of insects that the Cuban government attributes to CIA clandestine warfare). Not to mention the unrelenting rhetoric from ten US presidents and counting calling for the downfall of Castro.

Any and all modern nations engaged in a war have clamped down on civil rights of their own population, for right or wrong, and the Cuban government is no difference. They think the US is at war with them, and we give them ample evidence to make such a conclusion.

Awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom to one of the most extreme, a pro-Bush dissidents in one of the biggest anti-Bush countries in the whole anti-Bush world is just one of GW's many ways of saying "fuck you" to the rest of us.

I can't admit which movie I'm reviewing in this blog, you'll have to guess

A non-stop commercial disguised as a "movie" has little evidence of the
latter (plot, dialogue, character development, humor, reason, point)
and ample evidence of the former (I stopped counting at 37 different
corporate brands, but I think 150 is a good guess, plus a full-blown
Applebee's commercial in the middle). Critique the movie, highlighting
the plot holes, or writing another word (even to commend Sascha Baron
Cohen as the movie's only redeeming quality) is a waste of time. Quite
possibly the worst movie I've ever seen in my life. (Ps, curse IMDb!
They want my comment to take more than 10 lines. No, I tell you! This
movie is not worth ten lines! Please don't see it! It's horrible! If
you think this is funny, you are 13 years old. If you're not 13 years
old, you may have serious emotional and intellectual development issues
and I suggest seeing a doctor. There, is that ten?)

cartoon character

There's a sub today for Ms. Rody's math class. I've seen him before, and I think if there could be a real life 50 year-old version of Charlie Brown, he'd be it. Though he's not as insightful or sympathetic, and he wears very heavy, large dark-rimmed glasses that do nothing to help his shakes. I walked into the room for five minutes -buzzing like a beehive, I was greeted by one exceptionally energetic seventh-grader with a "YELP!" and then he hid under his desk. I stormed over to me and towered like Judgment until he was on the verge of tears. That's what I hate about this job, chastizing the merely overly energetic and being overly mean. So I escaped -my day stresses me out as is, I don't need to overload it more.

$576, a crowned tooth, and the world

Good Morning World,

So much for a weekly update, but then I remember: the only thing worse than not blogging at all is blogging about how little one blogs. So having said that, I have a purpose for today's blog, a new travel challenge:

Where can you go for $576 and dental care?

I went to the dentist last week for the first time since 1999, and I remember why I go so infrequently. After a superficial cleaning, tinkering and x-raying my pearly whites, the dentist came in for his three minute appearance. "That tooth there," he said, motioning to a molar, "that's cracked. If it splits, it'll be a root canal. You oughta put a crown on that."

A few minutes later I was looking at the projected costs: $576 plus tax. Luckily, I have "great" dental insurance, otherwise I'd be paying twice that much. Alas, the job that includes "great" dental insurance doesn't provide so much in dispendable cash. It'd be several months of Top Raman for me to pay that off.

Then again, I like to travel and nowadays, as my summer showed, look for "reasons" to travel. And what better reason to travel than to get your teeth taken care of!

A few months ago, an adult student of mine who'd arrived only six months earlier from Russia told me about his dental visit. "A thousand dollars for a crown!" He said in complete disbelief. "For a thousand dollars, I can go back to Vladivostock and have a crown put in there!" (We thought it out a bit more, and concluded that it'd be tight, a thousand dollars was a bit optimistic to get Vladivostock.)

Thus, my first thoughts when receiving the bill: how much is it in Canada? I know there are doctors and dentists in Vancouver who specialize in treating foreigners, charging sums ($100? $200?) that Canadians think outrageous Yanks a good bet. Same with Tijuana, though I have friends I can visit in Mexico City and just flew back from there for $220 -a round trip could easily be less than $550. Or I could go back to Cuba, though I couldn't get there for $550 even by a long stretch of the definition of "$550". And too bad my insurance is so good, I'd love to go to Vladivostock, have my teeth crowned and Vitaly (Hey Vitaly, email me! I might be in town...)

Usually, I've heard about these cases involving stingy retirees with boatloads of money and time traveling the world to get their dentures cleaned, but why not a young bloke like me? Afterall, if I have to spend $576 to have my teeth drilled on, I might as well enjoy the locale.

So I think that'll be my next travel assignment: go somewhere to have my tooth crowned and spend less than $550 doing it (I know the projected cost here was $576, but I have to save some money doing it). It'll take me a couple months (it's not urgent and I do have to work) but if you have any information on such trips, be sure to help out!

Best Things I've Read This Year So Far

It's time for my first annual, completely-random selected day of Best Things I've Read This Year So Far. Few of these things were published this year, and a few I even started last year but haven't finished until now.

Mark Jenkins, "Ghost Road", Outside Magazine sometime in 2004, republished in Best American Travel Writing 2005: not just a hell-of-an adventurous account of sneaking into Burma, but also an epiphanic summarization of the conflicts of traveling "off the beaten track".

Poe Ballantine, "501 Minutes to Christ", from The Sun Magazine, sometime in 2005: "Tom Waits in book form" chronicles the random meanderings from one skid row to another. I think he just had a collection under the same name published; I just finished Things I like about America, which is pretty much the same (though 501 is better).

Christopher K. Miller, "Literary Mary": I found this on an online writer's forum, and it's one of the most riveting, captivating short-stories I've ever read. It makes me want to throw down my pen and go back to harvesting pumpkins. (Luckily, I write with a computer). I don't know much about Chris, except he's received hand-written, hate-filled rejection letters from Glimmertrain. You may have to sign up to read it: http://www.writingforums.com/writers-workshop/72802-literary-mary.html

Sherman Alexie, "Ghost Dance", McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales, March 2003, and not just because several scenes flash about Billings, MT. I've been meaning to ask if he's going to write a whole novel on this. Sherman, if you're reading this blog, can you finish this one book please? I liked it and it was a helluva lot better than Flight.

Finally, "Dating as a Jerry Bruckheimer Movie", though it's criminal to put it on this list as such blatant self-promotion. But hey, this IS my blog, afterall!

Waiting for the ferry outside of Clinton, WA.

Mark Jenkins wrote "Ghost Road" for Outside magazine in 2003, appearing later in the Best Travel Writing of 2004. I call it a pivotal piece in my writing development.

Poe Ballantine wrote "501 Minutes to Jesus" which appeared in the August 2005 edition of Sun Magazine. I'd also say that's a pivotal piece in my development as a wannabe writer. I'm now reading "Things I like About America", a collection of personal essays, and so far it's funny. I'm also reading "Cuba Diaries" and so far, I hate it. I can write a hundred antidotes to every anecdote conveyed in that piece. I think it's rather like "Before Night Falls": despite it's packaging as left-wing (with Cuba, everything is framed as either pro or contra revolution) packaging, it's really right-wing anti-revolution propaganda. A corresponding diary about living in the US with the same skewered point of view and "my experience reflects the absolute reality of the country" would never be published. But she's writing about Cuba, so it's gotta be true.

The line for the ferry is moving very, very slowly. Briana is driving. Trixie is navigating. I'm sitting in the back writing, noting how the stereo has blown out half of the back speakers as well as both up front. We need to get a new stereo and sell this one.

Now, back to that essay on Mexico.

Ideas to expound on, part 15

I had an idea or two about novelty books. One would read for a whole chapter:

But the book down.
Hey hey, PUT the BOOk DOWN.
Put the book down.
Hey hey
Put the book down!
Put! The! Book! Down!
Putthebookdown
Put the book down?
Put the book down;
Put the book "down"
"put" the book "down"
put the book down
hey hey, yeah baby, put the book down
repeat.

The book would be called something about self-deprecation and all that, how I'm humble but wanting to be a writer/artist, and how it calls me out to be things that I'm not, like egotistical and self-centered, etc etc. maybe. Maybe. Maybe.