I had a cool coat in college. It had elbow patches, and I bought it at
H&M before H&M was cool, and also before elbow patches were cool.
Sometimes when I'd wear it, I'd be inspired to spontaneously compose
dub poetry about the grass, the sky, and justice, or I'd wonder what
it's like to be a grad student at Rouloff's on a Tuesday night.
Fast-forward 5 years, and looking at my work shirts, I seem to have an elbow problem:
When you have an asthma attack, you can't breathe. When you can't
breathe, you can hardly talk. To make a sentence all you get is the air in your
lungs. Which isn't much. Three to six words, if that. You learn the value of
words. You rummage through the jumble in your head. Choose the crucial ones -
those cost you too. Let healthy people toss out whatever comes to mind, the way
you throw out the garbage. When an asthmatic says 'I love you,' and when an
asthmatic says 'I love you madly,' there's a difference. The difference of a
word. A word's a lot. It could be stop, or
inhaler. It could even be ambulance.
I had the good fortune to spend a week in Guatemala with my friends, the Saravia family.
I usually give them the latest in Brazilian music, so I was excited to show them a new song which is in Spanish. It turns out that I'm behind the times and it originally came out in 1996, but this new recording sounds awesome with the Brazilian Axé beat. It doesn't hurt that Ivete Sangalo is super hot, although she makes Alejandro Sanz look like a midget
Am I the only person in my age group who likes John McCain? As a person and a leader I prefer him to Obama or Clinton, and I agree with his stands on Iraq, free trade, & immigration. Alarmists say that he'd be a war-mongering president, but he speaks like a man of compassion. He hasn't wavered on issues (except taxes), and hasn't sounded populist at all. Whereas Obama & Clinton said to the people in Ohio that they won't let jobs go to China or India, McCain told Detroit that the jobs aren't coming back, but that they can be retrained and get better jobs. That's the unfortunate truth! McCain lost Michigan, of course. If people want someone that leans more to the center, right now it looks like McCain. Obama has one of the most left-leaning voting records in the Senate, so it's tough to say if he would actually reach across the aisle. One danger is that McCain will be pressured by the conservatives to move right. But if Obama were to win the nomination soon, he'd have time to get closer to the center and appeal to independents like me.
McCain's biggest disadvantage? He's an old, white male. If he was 40 years younger and black, latino, or asian, he'd be set. Even if he's a maverick, he looks like the rest of the Republican party. Bush and him were enemies eight years ago, but from outward appearances people think that McCain would now simply be a continuation of Bush. That, and the NY Times apparently hates him despite an official endorsement.
Well.. and the Republican party kind of sucks. The primaries showed that the ultra-conservatives are out of fashion, even if they have some of the loudest mouths in politics. The Republicans are lucky that McCain won the nomination, since the rest of candidates were so right-leaning that they wouldn't have stood a chance. If Obama wins, I won't be too sad. I'd like to see Hugo Chavez call him a "yanqui". Even if I don't like Obama's politics, he would be the best face of the US to the rest of world. He symbolizes the melting pot. Lately his ideas sound very protectionist, although it might have just been him pandering to Ohio. Despite the shortcomings, is Obama "the idea" enough to merit voting for him? It's a tough call. Good thing the country has a few months to decide.
