brilliant ideas

Friday: Though no longer feeling sick, my voice is hoarse at the end of the summit, as I'm making my way to New York.
Great Idea: I should go to a party and yell all night, then get late-night pizza with Natalie and stay up until 4 in the morning!

Saturday: I am hoarse all day, but it starts to sound a lot better in the evening after dinner.
Great Idea: I should go out with a group to the neighborhood wine bar at midnight and get myself into heated politics and culture arguments, then go close out Southern Comfort down the street. And then we should all go back to Natalie's and yell about history and politics over more wine, and stay up until 6 in the morning!

So now my voice is really gone. Can't say I didn't ask for it.

i'm it.

Shonelle tagged my blog. Ordinarily I would ignore the blog-equivalent of a chain letter but she is nice and this doesn't seem so bad. Hers, at least, was very entertaining.

Eight Things You May Not Know About Me:

1. Language - I have massive language issues, which I like to blame on the fact that at 4 years old my parents resisted my switch to English by insisting that they would not speak any English in the house and that I have to only speak Hebrew. As a result I maintained my fluency in Hebrew and am physically incapable of switching languages halfway through a conversation, and have trouble switching accents to say words that don't translate from English.

2. Friends - I have trouble making friends in languages other than English. I feel like a little kid when I speak Hebrew because I basically only speak it with relatives. I feel like a hopelessly awkward, inarticulate foreigner when I speak French (because that is how the French treat you when you have an accent).

3. Dancing - I was on a dance team that competed when I was 11, but I've still never felt like a good dancer when dancing anything unchoreographed. This is because I am hopelessly awkward and don't know what to do with my hands. I made it onto the dance team in high school when I was 15, but quit after 2 months because I didn't like having to be out there with the cheerleaders during football season.

4. Punk Rock - Instead of going to football games in High School, I went to bad local punk rock shows with my friends Emily, Avi, or Paul, et al. Me and Emily had a college radio show on KSCU when we were 17 - we started out playing abrasive punk rock and oi, but by the end of the year we were playing a whole lot of emo and indie rock.

5. Guilt - 40% of my actions are determined by guilt. I like to pretend guilt helps makes me a better person. It accounts for why I work hard, exercise, don't own a car, don't spend a lot of money on luxury goods, and do things I don't want to do.

6. Head to Mouth Filter - I never know when this might work, and it usually doesn't. I try to make up for this by feeling bad and apologizing profusely.

7. Argument Style - I make big, sweeping statements that I don't actually know if I believe, and then argue for them until I make up my mind what I actually think. I'm really open to rethinking my positions, so I can usually be outargued unless I've been researching something for months.

8. Alcohol - I never drank, I mean never, until shortly before I turned 20, during the rise of Charles Shaw. That year I studied abroad in France and fell in love with 2-3 euro bottles of Cotes du Rhone. Alcohol has helped me discover new hobbies I never knew I had, such as meeting new people, dancing, speaking foreign languages, and talking to boys.

I am tagging Elaine because she hasn't blogged since January. Plus, she doesn't have that guilt thing I have, and doesn't do anything she doesn't want to do.

my entire life is just a series of awkward encounters and other disaster prevention. that's why I can't watch The (American) Office without feeling familiar, excruciating pain.
at least tonight was fun, at my favorite bars in the Mission, and a new love of a Taqueria.

how poorly run the ron paul campaign was

I got a text message at 9:30 am, an hour after voting, that said:

Ron Paul: the only Republican 4 low taxes, less spending, gun rights, no amnesty, and no UN. RonPaul2008.com Paid for by Ron Paul 2008, PCC, 2 STOP reply STOP

The problems with this:
Text message advertising is dumbed-down, annoying and ineffective
Ron Paul's platform is not compelling in dumbed-down bullet points, and his base is not well-reached in this way
My area code is in the Bay Area - it's unlikely that most of those factors are what would motivate me to vote for Ron Paul
As a working person, this came an hour after I already cast my vote
I'm not sure where they got my phone number, but if it was from a list of likely voters, a text message like this actually makes me view him less favorably

I tried to talk to her and come to the sort of agreement that people who need to coexist come to after an awkward exchange, where you put the harmless thing that happened aside, and even if you have to be the tiniest bit fake because you think you were in the right, it's what you have to do in order to continue to coexist. Because sticking it to the person gets you nowhere, and is just not worth it.

And we did. I apologized for my reaction and for what I said coming out the wrong way, and the little awkwardness that couldn't vanish right away was minimal. I know I have a lot to work on, and I Monday morning quarterback everything and overanalyze what I did wrong and how I should change. So I do what I can, I make amends and try to be better. She seemed to get where I was coming from. Even some mutual respect despite differences seemed to have been reached.

And then she added, "I was just taken aback, because you were so passionate, your eyes were all serious. I know politics and work shouldn't mix, and I just realized this is someone I shouldn't talk about politics with, from now on I should stick to the weather."

Ugh, sometimes I respond in the worst way possible to people with extreme personalities coming at me in an unorthodox way. It would seem like since I have an extreme personality that I would actually know how to handle this, but instead the worst things come out of my mouth.

"He's a Nazi."
"No he's not, that's total propaganda."
"But he took money from Nazis."
"He took money from everyone."
"And he doesn't believe health care is a right!"
"It's not that simple."
"Are you going to vote for him?"
"He's not going to win."
"Ew, you're going to vote for him?"
"Leave me alone, I know a lot more about this than you do..." (oops, where the hell did that come from) "Just kidding..."
"I'm not going to talk to you about this."
"I don't need to take shit for the fact that I think the government shouldn't be in the pocket of lobbyists."
"I'm not going to talk to you about this."
"I'm done talking."

It was all a joke but not a joke, and now I just feel awkward.

And of course now I'm mad at myself for not being able to act like it was a joke and calmly explain that I registered Republican to vote for Ron Paul in the primary to cast a vote against the war and for being fiscally responsible, because the country is on track to go bankrupt and then no one will have health care, social security, welfare or medicare.

But that I want Obama for president because he would take steps to reduce lobbyists' influence, and his health care plan has a more coherent understanding of how free markets actually work, and his voting record shows a more thoughtful, coherent, responsible leadership. And he could actually win. Plus, I drool over his speeches.

And I'm actually a really progressive moderate leaning towards extreme environmentalism, and not ideologically a libertarian at all, but I think package liberalism is really ignorant and dangerous, and a (impossible) Ron Paul presidency would mean cutting military spending and beginning to spend responsibly, and maybe even saving the dollar from catastrophic collapse, not the disappearance of all social services and public funding for education and parks.

This is why I didn't get into Speech and Debate in High School. I am like, the least articulate speaker ever when I'm on the defense.

los angeles

Driving around with my old roommate in LA is unexpectedly refreshing. I guess I just needed to leave the City for a few days. Hiking up at Runyon Canyon with the cast of The Biggest Loser behind us on one of the clearest days of the year, I started to feel better about life.