Reminiscences of a drunked night

So how does someone like me end up playing online poker and blogging on a Friday night in the summer? Let me explain...

Went to dinner last night at Buddha Bar, right next door to Tony's place (and hell no i did not stop by, even to see Dan). For those of you that don't know me that well, I'm not a wine guy. I like the stuff fine, and a quiet evening splitting 2 btls btwn 2 people is always time well spent, but we often just don't get along the next day.

I thought Buddha Bar was nice enough, although it fit into that wide swath of restaurants that I enjoyed but is low on the list of places I am likely to become a return patron of. This may sound odd...but I found the menu confusing, had no idea what to order. I tend to be against the concept of family style anyways because I like to plan out my whole meal, and not be at the whims of others' non-Kashrut dining habits. But I digress...

As always at these events, start out with a few drinks at the bar, then had several bottles of an excellent red and white wine (of which I don't remember the latter label). One issue with having 2 bottles going at the same time is that if I am also involved, a pattern develops where I drink from one glass, leaving the second in easy reach of any wait-person desirous of refilling it. This continued for a significant period of time. And then the revelry began...

In list format, naming no names other than my own...

• The Louis XIII came out
• A glass of red was knocked across the table, covering my [new] light yellow shirt with a fine glaze
• Several members of our party starting trying to pick up this blond woman when her date would step away
• The Louis XIII came out, again
• We left the restaurant. We may have been kicked out, I just don't know...
• The text messaging feature of my phone stopped working...on a side note, if you sent me a text last night I didn't get it
• We headed towards the Hog Pit. Outside of the bar, I tried to take down a road sign with my bare hands; the bouncer suggested I not do so. Suprisingly, he still let me into his bar
• Several more beers were given to me. These really hurt...
• I head home in a semi-blacked out state, only to arrive at work 45 minutes late

Sometimes, I even inspire myself.

How is this not bigger news?

So, I've been trying to avoid the political arena here for a bit, but I just couldn't stop myself after seeing a summary of Alberto Gonzales's testimony in front of Specter, Leahy and the boys of the Justice Committee.

I know you are capable of reading the article yourselves, but there are a few points that I just can't avoid repeating. First, after receiving his subpoena to appear in front of the Committee, Albie managed to not submit his written statement on time. This isn't the HUAC we're talking about; where i'm from, a letter from the US Congress asking for your testimony to rationalize your clearly illegal activities should get your attention.

But the bigger point is that when the Office of Professional Responsibility was directed by Congress to investigate, they were unable to get started due to an inability to get security clearance; these clearances were personally denied by our President. It is exactly this type of abuse of power that calls for the immediate appointment of a Special Prosecutor, who then obviously has to be given the clearance to do their job. After a slightly encouraging possibility of the program at least being reviewed by FISA, it is now clear that this would be a paper review at best - which I guess we all should have known from the start. In fact I think the Wiretappers made a strategic flaw here...if you are going to be investigated, why not be investigated by FISA? They are almost certainly the court with the most expansive view of the power of the Executive.

Any concerns that a further review of the program would further declassify it are completely ridiculous; the existance of the thing is known to pretty much everybody right now, and knowing what safeguards (if any) are there to protect the rest of us is hardly going to make the thing less secret! The question I would like to ask is...where does it stop? Is there anything the Unitary Executive is NOT allowed to do?

My Recent Activities, but only the minutia

For those of you that are fortunate enough to not have the chance to spend time with me on a regular basis, I thought I'd fill everybody in on what is going on in my life...but only the highly trivial stuff. Enjoy, but don't look for any hidden meaning.

I was in Detroit for a long weekend for the 4th, and that means that we allegedly would cross the state line to Indiana, where we would allegedly purchase fireworks that would be "illegal" in Michigan, and then allegedly set them off over the lake while actually drinking tequila. Last year, we had a friendly fire incident due to which we made two important changes in the way the show is managed; first, spent fireworks were to be placed into the bonfire for disposal only on highly rare occasions and second, in perhaps the greatest piece of irony I have witnessed to date, my brother was named safety officer. This year's show had the biggest explosions we have had so far, but they seemed to go off a little close to the ground. It is a fact that a firework with a 50-foot explosive radius gets your attention when it goes off 10 feet above the ground.

Also in Detroit, I hit what I claim to be the greatest golf shot I have ever played. The setup - Lying 2, 195 yards out, 15 feet in the left rough on a par 5, with a tree between me and the green. Similar to a pitch over a trap to a narrow green, this is a shot i just don't have in my bag (the play that one with a 7-iron and some type of bump-and-run bc I can't hit a 60 degree). Anyway, I take a 5-iron, planning to close the face, knock it 100 yards up on to the fairway and have a good shot at the green in 4 (which isn't bad given my double bogey handicap). Needless to say, I catch all of it, and it's a seeing eye grounder around the tip of the tree branch, but with a slight draw that rolls 10 feet from the hole. And, contrary to popular belief, I am able to sink a tricky putt for birdie.

A lot of people wonder why Americans don't like soccer; for me it's all the diving. Now, you see some of it in the NBA too, but at least there you have a somewhat unwritten rule that if you dive you are 10% less likely to be on the right side of the charge/block equation. Maybe I just have an overly American sense of honour and justice, but when 12 guys per game get carried off in a stretcher, only to jump right off and back on the field, it slows down the game worse than a mid-inning lefty/righty pitching change, and just twists the blade a bit too. And the refs don't seem to care. I'd like to see the italian soccer team play a game of football or hockey just because i think they deserve to see what real contact sports are like. on another note, congratulations italian soccer fans - but remember that the US would have beaten the eventual world cup champions of Juventus hadn't paid off the refs.

Just finished reading Cobra II (an operational-level history of the planning and fighting of the Iraq War). As i'm sure you know, I have some issues with the ideology of some of the people in our government, but what really gets to me is the general incompetence. Just one point the book makes that I want to emphasize; when you use trumped up or carefully selected intelligence to sell a war to your public, that's partially the public's fault for being so gullible. But when you give that same faulty intelligence (flowers and candy?) to the troops on the ground, and some of them are KIA because of it, you have no right to be running a country. It's borderline criminal what happened - I recommend the book although it's a touch dry. In related news, at barnes and noble I saw a book approximately titled "has the israel lobby become too powerful"; interesting topic, but my answer is "well, that depends on who you consider to be the israel lobby". The most powerful group lobbying the current Waffen SS kommander is the evangelicals. My understanding of their theory (and please comment if I am wrong...) is something like "jews being in charge of the holy land is a prerequisite of the coming of the coming of the christian messiah. said event will lead to the brutal murder and eternal damnation of all jews, both the afformentioned ones running israel as well as the diaspora".

Personally, I don't consider anybody with this view to be part of the Israel lobby - the means DO NOT justify the ends.

[editor's note - these people don't know what the diaspora is, but i don't know what term they would use in its place]