In the spirit, these are the things I am thankful for (in no particular order):

Manwich’s
My Wife
XBox
Effexor XR
Family members who finally have email
Good Friends
My long-lasting and dependable Hyundai Elantra
My ever-faithful dog
My new house

And probably a thousand other things both serious and silly.

Have a great Thanksgiving!

Much has been written of the dot-com boom. Financial-oriented ponderings have pointed to that period from about 1995-2000 as being the most amazing financial market in history. Socially conscious writers have pointed to it as a turning point in the modern labor dynamic. But no one seems to want to hear about it from the twenty-somethings who were there. That’s where my buddy Billy Hylton comes in. Over on his superb site, Public Realm, Billy is cataloging a number of personal reminiscences about that temultuous time. This collection is made all the more timely and moving now that Billy has just been laid off from his job.

I was a definite part of the boom. I worked with Billy at Host where we had a tinge of the dot-com feel, but I went from there to a startup, EzGov, doing what seemed like important work. Connecting people to their governments in a fast, web-enabled way. The company is still doing well, though I get the sense that the visionary, important feeling is gone and everyone realizes they are just selling software.

After that, I parlayed my dot-com “expertise” into a sweet job overseas. Switzerland, to be exact. The pay was great, the location was amazing, and the work was interesting. It was everything we thought we wanted in 1999. And then the market crashed. The capital dried up and I came back to the States, listless and confused.

So now, I am here in the marketing and advertising world, enjoying the diversity of the day-to-day. My skills are still growing and I am finding my niche in this “technology” society. More and more, though, I find myself concentrating on family and friends. Spending more time reading a book about India, than a technical specification for the next release.

I hope that’s what most of us will take away from that time. Maybe we will learn, like the Wall Streeters of the 80’s had to, that a job is just a job.

True friendship multiplies the good in life and divides its evils. Strive to have friends, for life without friends is like life on a desert island … to find one real friend in a lifetime is good fortune; to keep him is a blessing.

- Baltasar Gracian

Monks, I say there is no wicked deed that may not be committed by…the human being who has transgressed in one thing. What one thing? I mean, the intentional uttering of a falsehood.

-Itivuttaka

Dear Ted Turner,
Since it’s clear TNT is attempting to make its NBA halftime, pre-, and post-game reporting as offensive as possible, here are a few programming suggestions that’ll surely send your coverage to the ignorance pinnacle. Fire the well-spoken Ernie Johnson and Kenny Smith. Those two guys don’t shoot off enough boorish, racist comments. Then add Pat Robertson and Jesse Helms to the squad. Teaming those two with Charles Barkley will send your prejudice points off the chart.

Just imagine the loutish exchanges. The attention-craving Barkley can dribble onward with last night’s informative diatribe on Indian givers and the fighting ability of every Chinese person. Robertson could take the pass and dish the data on why Muslims are just like the Nazi’s. Then Helms could slam home the bigoted fast break with a dunk on the volatility of all Latinos.

But don’t stop there, because if you’re going in the game, you might as well play hard. Keep the fast-paced intolerance running with constant misogynistic, homophobic traveling. Use a soundtrack filled with international white power music. Make sure the show is broadcast on channel 88. And, instead of referring to players by their names, call each by some catchy racist slur. Considering the expanding diversity of the NBA, you could offend the whole world.

Or — and I know this is just crazy talk — you could admit that being part of a group traditionally oppressed on the basis of race, color, national origin, age, sex, sexual orientation, disability, veteran or marital status does not create some xenophobic freedom. A foul is a foul no matter who’s doing the hacking, Mr. Tomahawk Chop. It’s time to take off the blindfold and blow your whistle.

I was treated this afternoon with a nonstop airing of Paul McCartney’s new live CD. When I say treated, I mean physically abused in the ears. Since when does this washed up old man get along by playing sad semi-modernized covers of Beatles tunes? It seems that the Baby Boomers are so nostalgic for their lost youth that they will listen to any old vomit just to regain that sense that their lives still have meaning. While Paul caterwauls away on a funkified Sgt. Pepper, dried up SUV tank commanders scream like porn stars in the audience.

It was almost depressing hearing an audience sing-a-long of Hey Jude that went on 6 minutes too long. McCartney’s ability to entertain died along with the last animal he ate. The maharishi magic has been soaked back up by the Cosmos and handed over to someone a little less…British.

So, what does this have to do with world events? Why is this on the front page?

Simply put, music like this can help us win the pending war in Iraq. If we play this pig excrement at full volume as our helicopters fly into Baghdad a la Apocalypse Now, the people of Iraq will overthrow Saddam just to get Sir Paul lanced. If I was already shivering in my boots, up to my elbows in camel shit behind some sanddune, that screaming “blackbird” would be the end of me. I’d put down my rusty AK-47 and cry for Allah to send the 1.37 virgins to take me to Valhalla, or whatever.

I’m serious. You remember Panama. Take that level of psychological torture and kick it up a notch Emeril-style. We could load the guns with blanks and just make a lot of noise. Those mustachioed sumbitches would be paying us to surrender.

OR

We just subject Bush to it and take over the country while he stews in a Navy-run crazyhouse. That might be the better idea.

Normally, Oprah makes my stomach turn. Add to that the fact that her name was in the subject of the forwarded meail my mother sent and my eyes were rolling before I could click delete. But, owing to the fact that we all only have one mother, I read the email and was incensed with what I found. It was the story of Amina Lawal, a 30 year-old Muslim woman, who was sentenced to be stoned to death by a Shari’ah court at Bakori in Katsina State in northern Nigeria. She was being executed because she had a baby out of wedlock which apparently indicates, according to Shari’ah law, that she has committed adultery. The father of the child, who denies his involvement, has so far suffered no repercussions.

If the sentence is put into place, she will be buried up to her neck and stoned to death by the men of the town.

You can help by signing this petition that Amnesty International will use to leverage the sane position of commuting her sentence with the Ambassador of Nigeria.

The greater injustice of this is that the sentence will wait until Amina has finished nursing the child, meaning that she has already been relegated to nothing but a breeder body and soon will be disposed of.

National Geographic confirms, Generation Y is lacking in the area of smarts. Hell, they stole their name from us Generation Xers. They couldn’t even come up with a unique name! National Geographic is reporting that only 13% of American’s between the age of 18 and 24 could find Iraq or Iran on a map of the middle east. And this with Bush saying he’s ready to go to war with Iraq. It’s on the news every damn night.

And while 58 percent of that same age group knew that the Taliban and al Qaeda were based in Afghanistan, only 17 percent could find that country on a world map.

What’s this war for? Don’t ask 18-24 years olds. If they can’t find it on a map, then they surely don’t care or know what’s going on. I’m not sure if this is sad day for the political issues, or a sad day for our public school system.

“If our young people can’t find places on a map and lack awareness of current events, how can they understand the world’s cultural, economic and natural resource issues that confront us?” John Fahey, president of the National Geographic Society, said in a statement.

Among 18- to 24-year-old Americans given maps:
87 percent cannot find Iraq
83 percent cannot find Afghanistan
76 percent cannot find Saudi Arabia
70 percent cannot find New Jersey
49 percent cannot find New York
11 percent cannot find the United States

34% knew that the island used on last season’s “Survivor” show was located in the South Pacific, but only 30% could locate New Jersey on a map.

When show a map of the United States, only California and Texas could be located by a large majority (89%) of those surveyed. In this post September 11th world, only 51 percent could find New York.

29% of Americans couldn’t find the Pacific Ocean, the world’s largest body of water. Pssst… here’s a hint. If you’re looking at a globe, the Pacific is on the left. That is if you know which hand is your left, and assuming you know where the US is to begin with.

The Homeland Security Bill. Strangely, I don’t feel any safer. Honestly, I’ve been pretty much against this from the beginning. I feel that civil liberties are being violated, too much money is being spent, and no one is actually any safer.

As Jetteva pointed out in his post, there is a lot of pork in this bill. That’s not the major thing that bothers me. What really gets me is that no one in this country is any safer than before 9/11, or ever will be safer. The issue is that suicide terrorists simply cannot be stopped. If 20 people want to die in the course of committing a terrorist act, that force of will is too great to be squelched.

The reason that any crime is solved or deterred is because the criminal doesn’t want to be caught or killed in the committing of that crime. That matters not to these suicide terrorists. They fear nothing, so stopping them before the fact becomes impossible because they don’t have to salvage any sort of life for after the crime.

I see the Homeland Security Bill as a band-aid to pacify the American people. It’s a also a crutch for the Bush people to hang their hats on come election time. It is a political ploy and nothing more.

It goes against every Republican fiber of my being to create new departments in government. It increases the bureaucracy around making me more secur. It does nothing to address the nature of suicide terrorists. It will be all but forgotten until election time.

In short, they’re going to spend my money while providing me no protection violating the primary tenet of a government’s raison d’etre.

Let’s take another tack. Let’s like at this as if we were running a business. Not only do we have the monetary cost of actually integrating all these departments into one, but we also must include the monetary cost of all the politicians time, their assistants time, and the opportunity cost of the passage of other bills. So, we add all that together, plus the future cost of running this bureaucratic behemoth that is beholden only to the President, and the American people are faced with something like what the Social Security System has become.

We end up with an overwrought, overburdened, and unsuccessful enterprise whose noble beginnings have now become a crutch that no politician dare remove. We should not be locking ourselves into this permanent state of alert of terrorist acts. This level of security and alert existed before 9/11. Long before. Remember the Cold War?

So, for all the political reasons, monetary reasons, and social reasons, this Bill/Act seems nothing more than a knee-jerk reaction to a nonissue.

I’ll close with a quote I just read on another forum:
“hey united states, the 40’s called. they want their fascism back”

The Homeland Security Bill passed the Senate yesterday, it’s last hurdle to becoming law. Terrorism is the new mantra of a Republican Congress, but it’s politics as usual with the hidden benefits to Republican friends. The pharmaceutical industry, which donated $35 million to the last two political campaigns, will gain lawsuit protection over adverse side effects of vaccines. Conveniently, the protection is retroactive, ending all injury cases that are now in the courts.

Makers of faulty bomb detectors, gas masks or other anti-terrorism devices would be granted immunity from liability, even in cases of intentional wrongdoing.

Companies can cover up violations of the law by hiding behind new restrictions on access to government information.

A provision inserted by incoming House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R- Texas, would hand Texas A&M University the first department grant: a homeland-security research center. Hummm… I wonder why all that grant money is going to Texas A&M? Papa Bush’s Presidential Library is also located there.

Congress is now off for the rest of the year without delivering promised billions more for such programs as truck and nuclear-plant security, bioterrorism research and Customs operations.

Now before I get accused of Democratic propoganda, the bill passed 90-9. Thought the nine Senators who voted against the bill were all democrats: Ted Kennedy, D- Massachusetts; Paul Sarbanes, D- Maryland; Jim Jeffords, I-Vermont; Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii; Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii; Robert Byrd, D-West Virginia; Carl Levin, D-Michigan; Ernest “Fritz” Hollings, D-South Carolina; and Russ Feingold, D-Wisconsin.