Category: Default

Despite the many hours of my life that have been spent in the gym, this is the first time I have ever attended a class. There was a spinning class, which I know now is a unnecessary alternative word for biking. As I have been biking regularly as part of my workouts I was looking forward to it. The regular instructor was out so there was a DVD instead.

It kicked my ass. I quit after twenty minutes. Wow. That was hard!

Along the way I learned the exact demographic this was designed for – 30 to 40 year old women who are neither attractive nor unattractive and can’t stop smiling vapid smiles.

Your viewpoint on the GOPs tactics depends less (or should depend less) on your feelings about the existential threat of Obamacare, and more on the precedent it sets. The precedent for using a non-partisan crisis as a hostage for partisan gains, and the precedent it sets for constitutional powers. This is a genuine constitutional crisis.

Jonathan Chait is easily my favorite writer on what is really going on. But the best context is from Abraham Lincoln. Yes, that Abraham Lincoln.

From the Cooper Union address of 1860.

Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is that you will destroy the Government, unless you be allowed to construe and enforce the Constitution as you please, on all points in dispute between you and us. You will rule or ruin in all events. This, plainly stated, is your language…

In that supposed event, you say, you will destroy the Union; and then, you say, the great crime of having destroyed it will be upon us! That is cool. A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth, “Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you will be a murderer!”

To be sure, what the robber demanded of me – my money – was my own; and I had a clear right to keep it; but it was no more my own than my vote is my own; and the threat of death to me, to extort my money, and the threat of destruction to the Union, to extort my vote, can scarcely be distinguished in principle….

Let us be diverted by none of those sophistical contrivances wherewith we are so industriously plied and belabored – contrivances such as groping for some middle ground between the right and the wrong…

I’ve been on a bit of a Rolling Stones kick lately. I’m most of the way through Crossfire Hurricane, a pretty great documentary. This live version of Tumbling Dice is incredible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiKdqJzMTtc

Wish the video was more interesting, but there you go.

Days without breaking our garage door: 1
Days without backing into a mailbox: 1

K.D. Lang covers Helpless by Neil Young

Thanks big bro!

Shawn Colvin’s cover of Crazy is fantastic.

Virgin O’ Riley – mashing together Like a Virgin with Baba O’Riley. I’m amazed at how much I liked it.

Awesome bachelor party prank, groom thinks he is bungee jumping blindfolded

Perspective

Incredible camouflage

Louisiana literacy test from the racist 1960s. You couldn’t pass it today.

Finding your meet cute

Should you eat that meat?

Car Pong

Marriage

Life after Harry Potter

It’s taken over five years for me to come to peace with it. The scars have healed. Tonight I watched a show about the Patriots loss to the Giants in the 2008 Superbowl. Stupid Giants.

I can melt into this one. I listen to it three or four times in a row. Thank you Jamie, for turning me on to Gillian Welch.

The live version is also very fine.

This is not my beautiful house.

This is not my beautiful wife.

As you were.

It’s a sad week for Celtics fans. We lost Doc, We lost Garnett, we’re tanking the 2014 season to get ready for the future. It all makes sense. The one that gets me is Paul Pierce. Pierce has spent his whole career with the Celtics, starting in 1998.

Most commentators have spoken about how Pierce led the Big Three era, nabbing one championship and almost another the next year. This is all true. But for me I associate him with all the years before that. For a decade, he was the only bright spot on a team of stinkers. Through ML Carr and Rick Pitino’s destruction of everything good about the most storied franchise in professional sports, Pierce was the only good thing.

My favorite memory isn’t the recent vintage. It’s the fourth quarter 21 point playoff comeback against the Nets in 2002. As was typical for those years, it was Pierce and Antoine Walker against the other guys. And quite often that was enough. I remember going crazy as we realized we were actually going to do it, erase a blowout and take the win.

I hope Pierce retires before he ever plays for the Nets. There aren’t many players so strongly associated with one team as he is with the Celtics, and I hope it stays that way.