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An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

Little League Time!

051On Saturday, we signed Isaac up for another season of Little League baseball and I agreed to coach again.  Last year it was non-competitive Tee Ball and it turned out to be a lot of fun, but this year we’ll be moving up to the Bantam level which is where things officially get competitive. Talking with the league commissioner yesterday, he equated dealing with some of the parents to having a conversation with someone who’d drank 20 beers and was feeling punchy, the kind of thing I was worried about happening last season but never did, and now I’m hooked so I’m not worrying about it too much. If anything, it’s more likely that I’d get into a fight with an opposing coach than one of my parents!

The main differences at the Bantam level, beyond there being winners and losers, is that coaches pitch to their teams instead of hitting off the tee and there’s only 12 kids on the field at a time. While the former will be challenging for most of the kids, the latter will be toughest part as it pretty much requires organizing a weekly practice in order to identify who’s best to play which positions and ensure they understand the various nuances involved in fielding those positions. I never really thought about how complicated the game is until I had to explain it to kids.

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An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

Random Thought on Race

Barack Obama is half black, half white and was raised mostly in Hawaii and Indonesia, but is considered by most to be the "black" candidate. I'm half Puerto Rican and, depending on who's telling the story, probably a quarter black and a quarter white, and was raised in and around New York City. If I ran for President, I wonder how they would label me, especially considering I don't speak Spanish?

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An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

Monday Mash-up, 2/4/08

1) While a couple of good things happened in January (most notably an unexpected promotion at work to Online Ad Sales Director for all of our properties!), overall it was as bad a start to 2008 as I could have imagined. Nothing major, but a lot of bumps in the road that tested my constitution and nearly shook my resolve. I’m very glad that it’s February.

New Fossil Bag2) I’m not a big shopper but I’m a complete sucker for a handful of things, including bags and electronic gadgets. While picking up a new wallet from Macy’s on Saturday (one of those slim, front pocket types that I’m still getting used to, frantically patting my back pocket every couple of hours) I saw this great Fossil messenger bag that kept screaming my name, no matter how many times I said it was too expensive. I make fun of Salomé all the time about the many, many, many bags she owns (rivaled only, perhaps, by her shoes) but I can appreciate a good bag and this is a nice step up from the cheaper, smaller bag I’ve had for the past year or so. It fits all of my gadgets comfortably plus has plenty of room for all of the books and papers I’m invariably carrying around, whether I need them or not. We also came close to buying an HD TV as Best Buy had a great deal on a 32″ Westinghouse but I still couldn’t quite bring myself to pull the trigger. Soon, though. Probably when we get the Wii.

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An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

Hope vs. Cynicism

I’m a pretty cynical person most days, but I have a couple of good friends who make me look like the love-child of Mother Theresa and Gandhi. One of them emailed me today asking me to convince him about Obama: “C’mon Guy, if anyone can sell me, it’s you….do your worse…..convince me why I’m not just settling for the candidate I dislike the least!”

What started out as a brief reply became a much longer one and I decided to post it here because I suspect there might be others who know my cynical side and are curious about how I fell for the “hope” candidate.

Short answer: Because cynicism enables the status quo.

Slightly longer answer with a dash of cynicism: To paraphrase John McCain’s take on global warming, “If we’re wrong, worst case scenario is we end the Clinton/Bush dynasty and still get a Democrat in the White House.”

Long answer, personal/persuasive essay style: For me, it’s not simply about how progressive Obama is or isn’t, because if it were about that, I’d still be in Kucinich’s corner, the only real progressive to run for President in the past 2-3 elections. Obama is a moderately progressive Democrat, but he doesn’t play the cynical us vs. them game which simply guarantees another 4-8 years of partisan gridlock, no matter which side wins.

What I like most about him is that he’s a realist — putting forth policy proposals that actually have a realistic chance of being passed instead of the pie in the sky shit everyone wants to hear but knows they’ll never see in their lifetime, ie: a Department of Peace —  but he has the heart of an idealist. Bill Clinton was right about the “roll of the dice” thing, but the gambler isn’t those voting for Obama it’s Obama himself, appealing to the idealist in all of us, daring people to not just hope for better but to get off their asses and help make things better; trusting that they are smart enough to look beyond the sound bites they hear on the evening news and look deeper themselves.

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An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

Theme Song

Every superhero needs a theme song, and now Obama has one... [youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHA_ZTvOgUM&NR=1] Yes We Can! (Via DipDive.com, with a hat tip to Andrew Sullivan. NOTE: YouTube link updated. Original link was taken down for some reason.) * Yes, that's Kate "Dr. Addison Montgomery-Shepherd" Walsh in there! :-)

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An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

McCain knocks out Giuliani AND Bloomberg!

John McCain apparently landed a devastating 1-2 punch with his victory in Florida Tuesday night, not only knocking the clueless Rudy Giuliani out of the race but also effectively knee-capping Michael Bloomberg’s oft-rumored, self-financed Independent run:

Senator Lieberman says the increasing likelihood that Senator McCain will win the Republican nomination could keep Mayor Bloomberg on the sidelines of the presidential race this fall.

“My feeling all along has been that if he ran, it would be because he had a real reason to run, and frankly, he and John McCain have a lot in common,” the Connecticut senator said in a telephone interview this afternoon. “So if John gets the nomination, I would guess it’s less likely the mayor will run for president.”

While I think there’s enough of a distinction between McCain and Bloomberg that a McCain/Clinton race would still make him a viable third candidate, I suspect the combination of [relative] moderates like Lieberman and Arnold Schwarzenegger endorsing McCain means he’d risk being cast as the Republican’s Ralph Nader and simply ensure an easier path to victory for Clinton. McCain/Obama would be even more problematic for him as Obama’s already secured the “change” mantle and offers a much starker contrast to the 71-year-old McCain than Bloomberg ever could.

Interestingly, one of the key figures behind the Draft Bloomberg effort here in NY, Karin Gallet (whom I interviewed for Spindle last year), has given up the cause:

“He’s not running. He’s convinced me… Even his good buddies are backing McCain. I think they would know if there was a reason to hold off on an endorsement. McCain is MB’s base, so the opportunity has faded. And besides, even with the best effort of the big bad unity 08 boys, we’ve not seen any significant pop support, none of that lefty groundswell ala Clark.”

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An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

International Delete Your Myspace Account Day

[via Bloggasm, with a hat tip to Nick Mamatas]  If you’re reading this and you’ve experienced any of the things on the list below, your account may be in need of deletion: 1. You rarely log in to Myspace except to delete spam friend requests from nude webcam girls. 2. You spend five minutes writing a wall post only to hit an error message when you try to post it because of all the website glitches. 3. You’re a girl who constantly gets marriage proposals from random men in the middle east. 4. You visit someone’s Myspace profile only to…

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