(Cue Oasis' "Roll With It")

Yeah, so I'm sort of hung over this morning. I hate the feeling. Yesterday when I got home from work I turned on my new PC (the one whose first motherboard failed, causing me grief) and the damn thing wouldn't start up. AGAIN. sigh....

Of course, me being me, it really put a damper on my spirits (this is the diplomatic way of saying I shouted and cursed over it, hands shaking). I really don't want to have to re-build the damned thing but there isn't much choice. NewEgg is great about returns, and they are waiving a bunch of fees and shit so I don't go all Chernobyl 2.0.

So I went to my weekly Gordon's trip with Jerry, and had a nice mini-bender. I don't really do that anymore, but last night was a special occasion. I think I only spent $17 which is awesome. Sam Adams Winter Lager is great out of the tap. I managed to make it home okay. The Sabres lost in OT, but I was too busy talking to some Union employees about the County Executive race to pay much attention to the game.

By the way, the union folks I talked to were cool. They want me to vote for Keane, because, you know, he's a Democratic, and he's for the people. Democratic For The People. Hmm. I like that, a take on the REM album title. Anyway, I respect the proletariat, but they say that they "want to give up NOTHING" in negotiations, which is sort of not how negotiations work. There comes a time when you either have to be realistic, or you're all going to be out of a job (just ask Delphi).

I hate how politicians here frame things - they think of people and businesses strictly as tax revenue. Sam Hoyt does this often. How much can we squeeze out of them? You see, we have recently had NEGATIVE private sector growth, to go along with our brain drain and population loss, a slow bleed that is going to kill us. Of course, last year we have done better, with a private sector growth rate of 0.1 percent. Yes you are reading that correctly.

We all want great stable jobs with great benefits, but we don't want the business activity here to generate those things. Elect a Democratic to codify private sector fisting. Business is the devil. I guess that's fine, if you want to struggle for another 50 years, or if you have a cushy Public sector job and don't give a shit. I want Buffalo to flourish and prosper. I don't want another union crony. Don't get me wrong, Unions are important, businesses aren't always going to do the right thing on principle, but does anyone else see that Union people have a seriously vested interest in their company being healthy and successful? The message I receive is that they don't give a shit as long as they get their fat pay and benefits.

Sorry to be so long winded. I guess I don't care if it's a (D) or an (R) as long as we move past the cronyism and hand-wringing, and start to get serious about administering CPR to Erie County and Buffalo.

As for the hangover, I'll get over it. Adversity builds character, and I know I could use a good slap now and then. People, I <3 you all.

Bob Goulet, singing "Soliloquy" from Carousel. All I have to say is, WOW, what a voice. Incredible. Performers like this are becoming rarer and rarer these days. RIP!

As of a few weeks ago, after seeing the Republican forum moderated by that worm Chris Matthews, I think the best choice from the Republican side is Mitt Romney. He is so damned Presidential. Even hard core Libs I interact with begrudgingly give him respect. On the Democrat side, I like Biden the best. He is probably the most likely not to be confused for a European.

Of course, we also know that due to our culture of celebrity worship and absolution there is no chance in hell that the President won't be either Rudy or Hillary (puke).

How anyone can support Hillary and keep a straight face I have no idea. I don't think we want to trade a king for a queen, a liar for a liar, an imperial President for an imperial President. Some people hated it with Bush and love it with Hillary, betraying common sense and consistency. She freaked out the other day when Tim Russert actually called her on her usual double speak and insincerity. Imagine how she would react to any kind of non-compliant Press member at the White House? Yikes.

Rudy, well, he can't keep on living off of 9/11 and the Yankees forever. I like how he goes after Hillary, but Josh and I both agree that pimping 9/11 and the baseball analogies over and over and over are becoming very boring very quickly. He leads most polls but I think, like Hillary, he is one of the weaker candidates for his party. I liked him at first because he's a moderate, but it seems he is out of his league, and if he can't be bothered to talk about something else I can't be bothered either.

So I think for now, overall I am supporting Mitt, but I am not marrying myself (get it, polygamy, ehehe, ehehe. ehmmm). Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich are great in theory, but are both impish, leprechaunesque figures who don't quite have the cult hero, celebrity worship appeal that Rudy and Hillary have.

The election is still a year away....................anyone else think the election season is far too long?

A friend of mine recently got broken up with, for of all reasons, that she earns too much. She dated a regular joe, blue collar factory guy for 5 months, and never was there a problem really (besides the occasional out-of-your-element moments at the martini bar I suppose).

But to know what he said about himself, it is heart breaking. "I am only this. I am only that. Just a nobody factory worker. You deserve something so much more than me." Hearing that made me want to put my arm around the guy and ask "Hey man, why do you feel that way?"

Of course, I have not been a stranger to those kinds of sentiments, so I really do feel for the guy. He knows how he is going to be judged by many women, and the mistake he made was that he applied it to someone who already accepted him the way he is! Playing the percentages is for wimps.

In the end, his own low self esteem was his (and her) undoing, and so my friend threw her arms in the air because she didn't think that way about the guy at all. He made her happy, and when you tear down all of the attitudes, the bullshit, the expectations - that is what we all want the bottom line to reflect.

You see, guys want to be the hero, and we are conditioned to think that being the breadwinner is the way to achieve it. I think there are a million ways I can be a hero to someone, each having nothing to do with money. Seeing as more women than men are attending college nowadays, and the gap for grad school being even wider, I expect these kinds of problems to only become more plentiful.

If I were in that situation, I would just be really happy for her as long as she didn't hold it against me. She can buy all the diamonds and great clothes in the world, and I would love to see her in them, and I would be proud of her. I feel so damn bad for my friend. She did the best she could and still ended up getting the short end because of something that had nothing to do with her.

Do you see that we are always finding new reasons to reject people and push them away? One thing I'm learning is that when you push people away, sometimes you are really going to wish you hadn't.

Find a reason to pull people into your life instead.

......and not everyone is forgiving. See, sometimes even when you want to do the right thing, you will not earn a good result for yourself. Sometimes you make mistakes. Sometimes people are content to be bitter. Sometimes a heartfelt apology doesn't work. All you can do is try your best, and work on the damage control.

It made me think about whether or not it is better to just skip to the end and be a total jerk, because you will be treated like one anyway, made fun of, so on and so forth. It is really tempting to say all the nasty things you've always wanted to say, to hurt them, or at least to make yourself feel better for a while.

Or maybe it is better to just not give a damn what people say, because most of them are ignorant, full of shit to begin with, and have no impact on your life whatsoever. They will throw you under the bus. They are non-entities. Their opinion is worth as much as a rock's opinion. We all know who matters and who doesn't.

I don't think either approach will work. Being a jerk from the beginning means compromising your principles, and risking alienating the people who you care about, as well as potential new friends. Not giving a damn means closing off opportunities to have more people in your life who you care about. You can't just not care. It doesn't work that way.

Maybe the compromise is to just be ruthless with people when they really deserve it. Nobody ever got anywhere taking it on the chin all the time. Maybe, in some cases, Islamic justice goes along with human nature.

I'm reminded of what my uncle said to me one time when I wasn't doing so good. I'd link it but I don't remember what post it was I relayed the story. Anyhow, he asked me if I stepped on any ants when I walked outside. I said that I didn't know, that I had no idea if I stepped on any ants. He said I could relate that to my own circumstances, that I shouldn't be mad at God or the world, that sometimes people are in the wrong place at the wrong time, just like the ant I might have stepped on.

I'm in the wrong place at the wrong time. God help me. I hope everyone who is worried about their family finds the strength to cope. Lord knows, when you think you've got it bad, you are always shown someone has it worse than you.

Arrivaderci

My penchant for tinkering failed me this time. Buddhatron V2.0 won't be up until next week. It was fantastic while it was working, though!

Yes, it is time to upgrade, although I think spending lots of money on computer parts is going to become decreasingly feasible, especially if one day I have a family and whatnot. Anyhow, UPS should have everything to my door by tomorrow. Here's what I got (leaving out most of the detail):

nVidia GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB
500 GB SATA Hard Drive (For lots of HD media)
2 Gigs Corsair RAM
2.66Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo 6750

Hopefully, this will allow me to play HD media and the newest games for at least a few years, and will be upgradeable enough where I don't have to put out so much freaking money when I want new parts.

I can't believe that DT actually went through with it and posted the pics. How shocking. To me, the fact that she's a mother isn't exactly irrelevant, but it isn't the first thing that comes to mind as a reason to not do something like that.

It brings me back to a place I was in 2002, shortly after I learned I was being betrayed and lied to over and over again. It was right after the breakup. Living through my worst nightmare, not sleeping, not eating, not caring. We had made some, ahem, content, and the thought came to me to send a copy to the school she worked at, to ruin her reputation for good. Yes, what a way to get revenge. What a way to make her regret what she did.

It certainly would have done those things, but it also would have resulted in many other negative consequences. I would have ended up being a huge dickhead, embarrassed myself, alienated a lot of my friends, and possibly opened myself up to legal action.

Eventually it came to me, the anger, desperation and searing pain I felt subsided enough for me to see how wrong it was to do something like that to someone, regardless of the shit sandwich I was eating. None of it was really going to make me feel better about what happened or help the situation. No, doing something like that means moving in the wrong direction. That's when I just deleted the damn content, and I am extremely grateful for that bit of insight.

And...eventually it was revealed to me that she ended up really, really regretting what she had done anyway. Eventually she woke up too. I didn't need to do anything to make her feel like crap.

Guys, listen to me here, it is just a fact of life that when it comes to women you are going to just have to learn how to eat a shit sandwich and smile. If you go through life without having been betrayed, lied to, cheated on, you either have never dated or you have been extraordinarily lucky. It is what it is, and the scars are just the price of perhaps finding someone you can be with someday.

(Cue Kenny Rogers)

ON TO OTHER THINGS:

I ordered parts for a new PC. Finally, other than the $300 for my monitor, I've spent something on myself that has nothing to do with paying off debt or paying for my car to be fixed. I'm really excited about it. There goes my weekend!

After reading (e:James)' latest offering the wheels started turning. I don't 100% know the state of Buffalo schools, maybe he can elaborate on it a little, but from what I understand, our kids still do not all have updated books and access to technology. This to me is more important than teacher raises, although I do sympathize. They have what I feel is a very, very tough job, and they deserve all the credit in the world, and hopefully sometime down the road, the monetary compensation for it.

I agree that we don't want to take away from a school like OP to give to the poor kids in Buffalo (although I can't understand why they need a TV station). The only way that happens is for layers of government to be shed, for us to regionalize, and the suburbs have already categorically rejected that idea. It's a non-starter.

We also cannot continue to go through the cycle of depending on bloated home re-appraisals, and increasing taxes on a population that is poor and shrinking. Even though this is all true, if we wanted the government to allocate more of the pie to education, we would have to make tough choices, probably making a target of culture, arts and recreation, something we all find intolerable.

So what do you do? I think the answer is to make it really attractive for the suburbanites to come to the city and spend lots of money. Of course, this means I have to compromise a little on my gripe concerning the yuppie-ization of Elmwood, to some small extent, but if you guys will indulge me I will explain.

The best opportunity we have is for the players involved to stop bullshitting and get on with coming up with a really great idea for our waterfront. If done the right way, it could serve as a great way to generate tax revenues through creating more economic activity downtown.

I think it should be a multi-use area that people can go to every night of the week for most of the year. I want to see a lighted boardwalk and bike path, lined by different shops, outdoor wear, things like that, and food places (hot dog, pizza, ice cream, sub shop). Maybe a cool arcade, with skee ball and different other types of games and video games - an alternative to Dave and Buster's, but not quite that big.

How about a different area, a square park area, lots of green space, surrounded by different kinds of things, movie theater, book store/apple store, record store, upscale bar or two, patio restaurant or two, panini shop. Stuff like that. A boutique hotel maybe would also be an attractive thing. I have no idea what kind of space we would be working with, but I think you understand. We want to create a different area with a different atmosphere.

If you really want to be crazy, dedicate a part of it to create an Amphitheater. You could have plenty of great outdoor lectures, plays, pops concerts, and other musical acts staged downtown at a really great venue. We could move the Marina concert series down there. Why not? I bet people would love it.

Of course, I have to get back on track and get to the point. Something like this would be good for everyone. This is one way to get our hands on suburbanite dollars. It could be an uncovered treasure in WNY, and could allow us to generate some jobs and dollars to help our local government get out of the shit, although we still have serious corruption and patronage issues to deal with. We would have more money available for things like teacher raises and books, technology rooms, we can give kids many of the same tools the suburbanites have if we demand it is a priority.

I have other ideas, things that I can't even begin to get into now. Maybe later, but the bottom line is that we have to be proactive, and do something positive to solve this problem.