Operation Coffee Cup was a campaign intended to organized opposition to “socialized medicine”, or Medicare. Regan cut a record for it.

On the recording Reagan states the following about Medicare –

…one of these days you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children, and our children’s children, what it once was like in America when men were free.

Medicare is socialist, and takes away the freedom of men.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Advisers to President-elect Barack Obama say one of his first duties in office will be to order the closing of the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay.

That executive order is expected during Obama’s first week on the job — and possibly on his first day, according to two transition team advisers. Both spoke Monday on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

So according to the AP, Obama is planning to order the closing of Guantánamo Bay within his first week in office. This is definitely good news, but therein lies the problem I’m having with the proto-administration.

For the last 8 years I’ve become exceedingly cynical regarding the government, and for good reason; some of the decisions made in Bush’s administration have been almost cartoonishly evil. Now that we’re faced with the prospect of an administration that doesn’t have its head up its ass, I find myself sort of… lost. What’s there to be cynical and sarcastic about? I don’t even know if I remember what a functioning government is like.

I think this is why Obama’s admittedly minor mistakes (e.g. Rick Warren at the inauguration) have gotten as much traction as they did. I need Obama to do something, anything, that can justify my cynical outer shell. Being able to shake my fist at the government had a nice constancy about it that I might not be ready to give up.

A friend sent me an e-card that sums things up quite nicely.

The exact length of Dr. Doom Fulminations as determined by Google. Important data that, finally, has been visualized. The jpg artifacts are a value-add.

Graph pulled from SA. I don’t recall who originally put it together.

I think I have a chronic problem when it comes to writing about myself as opposed to… things, I suppose. Every time I relaunch this son of a bitch I try to focus on writing for and/or by myself, but it never pans out. This is probably due to the fact that I’m self-critical as fuck, so you know what? Fuck it.

Here’s a pretty good visual metaphor for my stance re: personal blogging –

The world is on fire.

It was Sunday, when I was heading home after a few quick errands, that I first noticed the grey haze descending on Mira Mesa. I’ve been Southern California long enough to recognize it for what it was – fire. City officials had been warning people for a few weeks of the extreme fire hazard, but nobody pays attention. Cigarettes are thrown out of windows and camp-fires are lit with no planning, so the fire was no surprise. It wasn’t until I started checking the news feeds that the scale of the flames struck me.

Another goddamn firestorm.

One day later and I’m in North Park, where the air is clean, living out of a bag. There hasn’t been an evacuation of Mira Mesa, but the comunity is right on the edge of areas that have been cleared. I’ve no real worry about the house itself – if the fire manages to get to it, northern San Diego is lost.

The official county feeds are useless. They’re either overwhelmed or behind the news, with the occasional crashes being restored using day-old data. KPBS has been pretty good, but their main transmitter was slagged sometime this morning. 94.9 let KPBS use their frequency, though, so it’s still possible to keep tabs on everything.

It was mid-morning when we finally turned the key and pulled out of the driveway. The jeep was fully loaded, blocking rearward visibility with bags and bundles and a mini refrigerator, but we were able to make do with three sets of eyes. We were off! The plan was to make for Utah, cutting through the wastelands of California and Nevada as we drove onward to our first target, Cedar City. The Jeep, though old and crotchety, had been checked out and certified a few day before. The AC was recharged, leaks were sealed, and fluids were filled.

Two hours later we were forced to pull off of the 15 and into a Wendy’s parking lot. The engine had been trying to overheat, slowly creeping past 210, 220, inching ever closer to the 300s. We could have kept going, sure — with the windows down and the heater on to pull the excess from the engine, we probably could have made it into Nevada and Utah and Colorado. We weren’t looking forward to it, though. Having the seats drenched in sweat and the outside air more refreshing than the interior wasn’t attractive. Nobody was expecting the trip to be the height of comfort, but the heater on? In the summer? Through the high desert?

Hell no.

We ended up in Clairemont, Dan’s hometown. He never thought he’d be in there again, but circumstances had us driving by his old house, heading for a mechanic that had worked on the jeep before. After a bit of finagling and a few phone calls back and forth and back again, they took a look at the engine. Nothing was wrong, of course. The engine was just old, and had a tendency to work up a bit of a mechanical sweat when pushed. We were offered a new radiator, as large as could be fit inside, in the hope that it would be sufficient to draw away the large amounts of heat generated. So it was that we found ourselves, after having been picked up by one of Steve’s parents, at a nice two or three level home in Sierra Madre. The jeep was going to have the new radiator installed the next morning, after which we could be on our way only a day delayed. Not too bad, especially considering the muggy and uncomfortable alternative.

Then I received a phone call.

It was from a random customer at the store I work part-time at, asking whether or not their envelope to Bolivia was on its way. Being 150 miles away, I of course have no goddamn clue, and try to explain this to the crazy lady on the other end of the line. It turns out that somebody at the store thought it a good idea to just give out my private cell number and let me deal with it, as if I was on call or something. I’m still trying to find out who gave out my number, and my next time sheet is probably going to include some independently billed time.

I’m in Canada at the moment. Potent beer, quite a few occurences of “eh”, and a disturbing (for one born and raised in the desert of southern California) amount of greenery. Plants! Without having to steal water from other states. Imagine that.

As the amount of time spent listening to KROQ in Los Angeles approaches and exceeds n, where n represents any length of time in excess of 5 minutes, the probability of a crappy Linkin Park song being played approaches 1.

KROQ, all Linkin Park, all the time. Christ.

I have a second job now, which means I’m now working 6 days a week and still don’t have health insurance. I should be able to afford an independent plan, though – the second job is at a legal firm that specializes in immigration, and while I’m mostly taking care of file management and general office duties I’m still getting paid about 50% more than I am at the Shitty Retail Job. For all of the (mostly deserved) flack that office jobs get, it’s still nice to be working at one again. Not having to deal with the mouth-breathing public is nice, but knowing that I’m actually contributing to a greater whole is, thus far, the greater benefit. It’s amazing how much of a difference that one bit of knowledge can make when it comes to the day to day grind.

Of course, working office and retail jobs at the same time should provide a rather unique perspective on the two, although I’m fairly certain that the contrast is just going to make the Shitty Retail Job that much shittier.

We shall see.

Do you remember the random fact generators, particularly the Chuck Norris generator? The database was quickly overrun, the clever entries diluted into harmlessness by hundreds of “lol roundhouse” jokes, with the aftermath leaving Chuck Norris a regular commentator on World Net Daily. A few days ago e posted a tongue-in-cheek list of campaign promises if he were to be elected president.

This is how I discovered Norris to be a fascist.

That may be a bit harsh but the list of his “campaign promises” has, alongside the expected jokes about “the real WMDs – his fists and feet,” a promise to “deport all liberals (then force them to listen to Bill O’ Reilly every day for five years, at which point they may return).” Patriotic, isn’t it? There’s nothing more American than deporting all political opponents, forcing them to listen to your own point of view exclusively for years on end before they can return home.

I’m probably overreacting but the unthinkingly loyal and blind patriotism of Norris’ writing leaves me more than a little uncomfortable, memetic darling though he may be. At least he doesn’t have any real political aspirations. The way celebrity worship is in this country, he’d get elected with terrifyingly little difficulty.