Personal Dork Assistant

Hip To Be Square?

The thesis for a new era of Republican dominance seems to make a lot more sense than the idea of an emerging Democratic majority. If nothing else, a 200 million (and growing) dollar advantage in fund raising gives Republicans a big hammer to smack down any aspiring Demo upstarts. The extra money also pays for organizations at the grass-roots level, like direct mail campaigns and phone banks to get out the vote, as well as nurture conservative groups on campus which act as farm systems for future leaders. I mean, don't these guys just look like LEADERSHIP?

The Democrats do have outside groups like labor unions to help with local organization. But let's face it, unions are dying organizations. Send the jobs to other countries, crush the unions, and improve the bottom-line in one stroke. What's not to love? On the other side, you can't really send the fundamentalist Christians offshore, and do you really want to mess with the gun nuts?

The Emerging Democratic Majority argues that the coalition of racial minorities and high-tech professionals will be the tidal wave to carry Democrats to power. Doesn't seem to be working in Texas, where Republicans have managed to co-opt the Hispanic vote and forced the Democratic state legislators to escape to Oklahoma in order to avoid being steamrolled by a Republican plan to redraw voting districts to their benefit. Even in California, Bush attracted 28% of the Hispanic vote, although they might not do so well if the G.O.P. decides to run Pete Wilson against Barbara Boxer for Senate. There aren't quite enough Asians, which isn't even a homogenous group. Sure, Asians have more money than other minority groups, but does anyone want it? Their economic conservativism probably trumps any social liberalism anyway, give-or-take education. A good number of relatives are probably loving the new tax cut. Free-trade with China is good, and the H1B/L1 visas are great ways to pick up a green card. Blacks have tried to become politically relevant for almost 150 years, and they're not, taken as granted by one side and dismissed by the other.

As for those professional idea-workers, most of them turned out to be Rand-roids who seem to think that the world can't get by without them. The implicit assumption being that the labor market is efficient such that their continued employment is an accurate badge of their value, while the unemployed are merely incompetent or stupid. Of course, they don't need a college degree to tell them that they're much smarter than those Indian outsourcers and those H1B's. These guys sure as hell don't want any interference from Big Government. Heck, the economy isn't even that bad, and the tax cut sure will come in handy for upgrading the home theater.

I'm not saying that a Republican administration is all bad. I mean, I'm all for having a death camp handy for those annoying people, as long as I decide who to send there. You mean I don't? Screw that, then.

Saw plenty of Starbucks

Saw plenty of Starbucks and a Coffee Bean coffee shops in Taipei, which doesn't give one much hope for the quality of the coffee. Frankly, I'd rather have an sweet pseudo-coffee ice-blended drink on a summer day in Taiwan. Looks like there's still hope for the hard-core home-roaster (the only way to go, or so they say) on the island, though. Of course, it involves lots of spiff electronics:

Definitely a candidate in the Best Use of a Variac category.

The Electronic Entertainment Expo

The Electronic Entertainment Expo is over, and all the latest cats in gaming have been let out of the bag. Microsoft keeps pouring money down the Xbox hole, and Sony keeps on blowing everyone away with the Playstation 2. Nintendo continues to do its own thing, this year's schtick being connectivity between the GameCube and the GameBoy Advanced. The problem, unfortunately, is that the games all look Fucking Gay:

Let's face it, politically correct homos aside, that's going to be the reaction of your favorite "mature" gaming geek. The games are probably lots of fun, and I'll probably even plunk down the money for a good number of them. Unfortunately, there's nothing worse in America than being called "gay". Unless you're atually gay, of course. Heck, Will and Grace is just a PC way for the gay writers to show off their library of fag jokes. Just by taking it as an insult, though, one is being meta-homophobic, not quite outspokenly bigoted but close enough. Anyway, that won't help Nintendo catch up to Xbox sales in the US, but it should continue to let the Big N crush the already miniscule MS numbers in Japan, because the Japanese are a bunch of pussies.

Talk about wimpy girly-men, my right-front tire went flat of old age, and I called AAA to send someone out to change the tire. Thankfully it died quietly while asleep in the garage rather than blowing out on the highway. I figured it was faster to wait for the tow truck than figuring out how to jack up the car and put on the spare myself. Let the big man with the big tools do the jacking, I say. Drove gingerly on the spare tire down to the nearby Discount Tire Co. Ended up replacing all four tires since the OEM tires are getting old and crackly. The new set is probably overkill (as if I'm ever going to put 80K miles on them), but they were cheaper than OEM replacements and were on-sale, even. An easy coup for the sales dude, anyway.

Mile-High Humor

Is there anything more fun than watching New York fans when their teams lose? Watch the Game Chatter at Baseball Primer as the Mets rush out to a seven-run lead behind Tom Glavine (and his 3.21 ERA at Denver), before getting caught up in a Coors Field special.

This is a great night. I have a 40, a pack of M+Ms, and the Mets are killing the other team.

Hangovers are a bitch, aren't they?

Diseased Humor

Yeah, this is a great way to draw in customers

—Courtesty of Penny Arcade

Taiwan media blow everything out of proportion (that's what happens when you have 189310 different news outlets covering a small island), so I tended to ignore their SARS coverage. On the other hand, when the New York Times (terrible scandal aside) start covering the outbreak, one starts to think that maybe there's something to it, especially with the alarming rate of 25 deaths and 250 probable cases. You know it's serious when people are scared away from Sogo, which happens to be down the street from the grandparents' apartment. It's nothing that three solid days of disinfection and a 50%-off sale couldn't fix, though. Heck, I'm surprised that mom didn't rush back for the occasion.

In the "Now I've Seen Everything" department

Saw a Ford Focus with a fart-can muffler and no other visible mods. Now I know that there are some Focuses out there that are real pocket rockets, but this was a dusty, plain-jane model, except for a really annoying muffler. The anemic puffs made it sound more like a go-kart than a muscle car, no disrespect to the karts. There's a reason San Diego was the birthplace of The Rice-Boy Page.

Elvis Costello is getting engaged to... Diana Krall? Where did that come from? I guess it's kinda cool for a rock star to marry a musician who can play rings around him on the piano, instead of the supermodel bimbos they usually latch on to.

Woof, Part II

Cartoon Network finally finished rerunning their stock of Inu Yasha (犬夜叉) episodes. Unfortunately, they're restarting from the beginning again. I actually watched it all for the second time because I thought they were going to follow this cycle with new episodes, but I have plenty of Season Passes on the Tivo and I'll be damned if I watch cartoon reruns a third time. Of course, they cut off in the middle of a story mini-arc, at episode #41. They do have the rights up through episode 52, which makes the arbitrary cutoff even more aggravating. It's probably because Viz needs some time to catch up on the dubbing. They're releasing episodes on DVD at 3 episodes per month, and they're only through Volume 7 (i.e. episode 21). The TV publicity is what allows Viz the obscenely expensive (per episode) release schedule in the first place, so I'm sure they'll milk this as long as they can to suck in buyers. It's one thing to be patient and wait for three episodes a month for a 120+ episode show, it's another when each three-episode disc is $25 MSRP. For that price, I'll put up with the dub track and wait for Cartoon Network. At least it's not being flogged as bad as Cowboy Bebop. 26-episode shows just aren't meant to be run nightly. Talk about a dead horse.

Woof

Good News: Sam's new dog is adorable

Bad News: The dog chewed/clawed through the door the first time they left him alone in the bathroom

At least he didn't go and trash the rest of the place once he got out.

Hideki Matsui: Asian Hero

I knew there was a good reason we drafted him for the fantasy baseball team.

Indeed, his only eccentricity, if it can be called that, is his extensive private library of adult videos. His refreshing ability to laugh self-deprecatingly about his porno collection, reporters say, is one reason why fans and even nonfans have taken to him so much.

...He drives a Chevy. He eats steak, has an occasional beer and likes to shoot the breeze with the security guards and maintenance personnel. And, of course, he likes to watch his much vaunted porno collection, tapes that he often trades with Japanese reporters.

Very Fox Mulder. Well, unless he decides to send some Japanese porn my way, I guess the 22 RBIs will have to do.