A Random Sampling: Dawson, Dulcinea and Die Hard

This will be my surrender to the chaos. A series of randomness.

I've been hearing a bunch of ads for produce on the radio lately. This company's ad says that they "make" cantaloupes with ridges that change color so you know when they're ripe. In fact they refer to all of their produce as being made rather than grown. I find it not just a little odd, in fact, pretty disturbing. Of course, the company is called Dulcinea so it's actually kind of fitting I suppose.

I saw the new Pirates over the weekend. It was good, better than the second but not as good as the first. Really the only noticeable improvement from the first one is that Orlando Bloom is really pretty. In fact there's pretty much nothing in the world as pretty as Orlando Bloom in this movie. Even standing right next to Johnny Depp and Kiera Knightly he's still the prettiest thing on screen.

Pirates of the Caribbean has odd significance in my life, the first one I mean, because the day I saw it was the day I realized that I wasn't avoiding making choices in life. It turned out that I'd been making them without even realizing it for ages. It was really the day I realized that life is all about choices. Which may seem sort of obvious but there were always some things I just thought weren't choices. So, I keep expecting to have similar shocking realizations at the sequels but it keeps not happening. Really it's illogical. The epiphany I had at the first one had nothing to do with the movie. It had way more to do with what was going on in my life then and who I saw the movie with than the movie itself, but I have indelibly burned in my brain that I had a profound realization about my life at that movie.

Speaking of profound realizations, I've been watching Dawson's Creek. Non-sequitor you say? Not so. I've also been house sitting and house sitting at this place always gets the song Jack and Diane stuck in my head (no significance there, someone just made reference to the song and got it stuck in my head the week of Thanksgiving at which time I was also house sitting for these same friends) Anyhow the song (which tells you to "hold on to 16 as long as you can") and the Dawson's Creek are symptoms of my recent pre-occupation with high school these days (which has more to do with profound realizations than you might think).

I've led a pretty blessed life without much tragedy. However, the few close calls with exceptionally bad things that I have had all happened when I was in high school. I wanted to let go of 16 as fast as I could and leave it as far behind me as possible. Watching Dawson's Creek is a lot easier than reliving my own high school memories though remarkably similar.

In any event Dawson's Creek is a font of profundity, like this, "anyone who's never been hurt is either very lucky or very lonely", though watching it is mildly painful sometimes both because it's totally over the top and because, at the same time, it's so accurate. Seeing Joey Potter give up the chance to go to France for the summer because of a boy is painful. It gets better of course, two years later she jumps on a tiny sail boat to sail off for the summer with no particular itinerary...with a boy, but there's a difference. It's a different boy, but also it's a boy that challenges her rather than one who holds her back. Seeing all the angst is painful, the back and fourth pining is painful. I remember being in high school (and just after it) and being in love with my best friend and being terrified of telling him because I thought things would never be the same, that I might both be rejected and lose a friend. Luckily I've since learned that rejection isn't really that bad, and that friendship can endure through either rejection or a relationship (even a failed one), and I've learned to look for the people who challenge me, but thinking back on all that turmoil makes me squirm a little on the inside.

I have no appropriate segue but I suppose that fits the chaos theory I'm working off here. While in the DVD section at Barnes and Noble picking up season one of Dawson's Creek I noticed the following: Family Ties & Bosom Buddies, which I love, but I had to wonder, how is it those two shows made it to DVD and the Wonder Years hasn't and Everwood still has only one season out on DVD? The world doesn't make sense.

At least Live Free or Die Hard comes out next month.

Fun with the federal budget

The debate over the war funding bill has wrapped up and Democrats are on board despite the fact that the provision for setting a date to withdraw troops from Iraq was removed from the bill. On Wednesday, Nancy Pelosi was still adamant that she wouldn't vote for it without the troop withdrawal provisions, but it passed on Thursday with or without her.

As is the case with all legislation, a bunch of unrelated stuff got tacked on in the end, some in hopes of wooing votes, some in hopes of sneaking through legislation that might not pass if it weren't attached to something viewed as "must pass" legislation. One of the additions that brought Democrats across the aisle was the minimum wage increase (which was countered by tax breaks for businesses). Republicans criticized this addition as a sneaky way to get something past them as though both parties don't frequently tack on stuff they couldn't otherwise pass to bills they know the other side wants to get through. They didn't seem to have a problem with the tax breaks for businesses, in fact they were only willing to let the minimum wage increase go through because of the business tax breaks. That sort of makes sense to me, and it's kind of a wash tax wise, I mean if a whole bunch of people start making $2.10 more per hour than they used to, the tax revenue (from personal incomes) goes up which allows for giving tax breaks to businesses (which is good since they have to pay their employees more money now).

What I don't get is why the White House would oppose other domestic spending provisions, but according the NY Times they did and, "Republicans managed to remove some of them shortly before the bill reached the floor, including $660 million to stockpile medicine for a flu pandemic and $400 million for energy assistance for low-income families". Normally I'm what they call "fiscally conservative", i.e. the kind of person who sees the logic behind tax breaks for businesses as a counter balance to raising the minimum wage, but sometimes the things Republicans are and aren't willing to spend money on boggle my mind.

I've said before, and will probably say many more times, that I don't believe pulling out of Iraq is a responsible thing to do. I mean I'm all for having a plan for how, and maybe even a goal date for when, we will pull out, but the time isn't now and the plan can't just be that we'll be done with Iraq in 6 months or a year or on X date. However, the complete abandonment of any kind of domestic policy is also irresponsible. It shouldn't be an either or question. Either we fund our international policy issues or our domestic policy issues? I know it's a balancing act, budget wise, but no one ever said legislating was an easy job; they need to find a way to fund both international and domestic issues.

And the NY Times needs to find a way to use more elegant phrasing. May I suggest: $400 million IN energy assistance for low income families or, $400 million for energy assistance TO low income families. That's right I just started a sentence with a conjunction and went on to criticize the inelegant phrasing of another. I'm a rebel, and, as previously noted, hold myself to a lower standard than the Times.

Summer of love

This year is the 40th anniversary of the "summer of love". There's an exhibit commemorating it at the Whitney Museum of American Art and that exhibit was reviewed in today's NY Times (and so continues my on-going conversation with the Times).

The review was more of a comment on the time period than the art itself (as are most articles about anything to come out of that decade), saying that the show, titled "Summer of Love: Art of the Psychedelic Era", is missing some of the harder edge of the 60s, that it, "remembers a lot, but forgets much more, about what was happening 40 years ago, when America was losing its mind to save, some would say, its soul". I, clearly, haven't seen this art exhibit and wasn't around for the summer of love, but I'm not sure this reviewer has quite gotten the point. The reviewer goes on to say, "The decade was the furthest thing from laid back. It was wired, confused and confusing, with constant clashes around race, class, gender and politics, idealism and ideology" and continues describing in detail what a hard and trying time period in American (and world) history the 60's, or more precisely 1963-1972, were.

The article is a whole can of (contradictory) worms that I don't really want to get into but the gist (or one of the dueling gists) was that the summer of love vibe got, rightfully, beaten out of people, that, "we discover in 40-year retrospect, love was never all you needed". That sentiment is followed closely by, "Young people are by definition narcissistic, all clammy ego. They want what they want. There is no past that matters; the future isn't yet real", and ultimately that there should be another 60s show that "makes the 'Summer of Love' what it really was: a brief interlude in a decade-long winter of creative discontent". Not surprisingly, I don't really buy any of that. I mean I get that some hard and horrible things happened both domestically and internationally during the 60s that disillusioned a lot of people, but suppose more people had been able to hold on to the idea that "all you need is love", even when faced with the most horrible things the world has to offer (My Lai massacre to use an example from this article)? Would holding onto that feeling, that, summer of love, flower power feeling, be such a bad thing?

I wrote a couple days ago about not wanting to see images of war on the front page of the paper. The reason I don't want to see it is because, this reviewer is right, seeing horrible things makes it harder to hold onto the love (so to speak), but that's the test of the human experience isn't it, to hold on to the positive even when faced with overwhelming negativity? What I'm getting at here is faith really. When the world starts looking, just, evil do you give up on it? Or do you move forward? Maybe you have faith in God and when you reach your breaking point you pray and that faith, the belief that someone or something bigger is there, gets you through it. Maybe your faith is in yourself and your "prayers" are directed inward to let yourself know that you are strong enough to handle whatever you have to. Maybe you have faith in karma and believe that the evil in the world will get what's coming to it. Or Maybe, like Bono and the flower children of the 60s, you believe in love. So, I'm getting a wallow-in-the-horror-and-fear-and-discontent vibe from this article and I say, whatever it is that you have faith in, hold on to that and try to let go of the rest.

Next time I'll bring you fun with the federal budget: minimum wage increase and war funding.

Photo graphic evidence

In case you're wondering why my blogging volume has gone up exponentially in the last couple weeks, it's because I'm back home with not much to do because I'm done with school. So, I need a hobby and I've chosen blogging. Also, I've started getting the NY Times everyday again.

There was a really disturbing photo on the cover of the Times today (which isn't actually that unusual, but I never get used to it). It's a photo of a dead Lebanese soldier lying in the street in a pool of blood with two other soldiers nearby that seem to be clearly still embroiled in the conflict that killed their comrade.

I'm not going to talk about the desensitization to violence and suffering caused by over saturation of stories and images of war (a friend of mine addressed that issue, though in a very different context, if your interested you should check it out). My issue is what the purpose, or agenda, is behind putting a photo like that on the front page of the paper.

You hear a lot about the liberal bias in the media. Perhaps this is a liberal ploy to disturb the populace so much that they turn against the idea of war in general. Or maybe it's the opposite. Maybe it's a ploy to rally support for wars against Islamic militants. It could be less politically motivated. Maybe it's pure capitalism, maybe a photo like this sells more papers than something less grisly. Whatever the reason for printing the photo on the front page of the Times it disturbs me. It disturbs me that people are willing to risk their lives to take pictures like this. Of course, it also disturbs me that scenes like this one even exist to be photographed. I have trouble coming to terms with a world that's at war and the truth is that the world is almost always at war. I know that. I just don't want to see it on the front page of the NY Times.

Like a rolling stone

I'm about to graduate from university and I've been a college dropout for so long I don't really know how to deal with the world as a college graduate. I think even when I went back to school, even when I switched to part time work so I could go back to school full time, I still felt like a college dropout. I wonder if that feeling of deficiency will ever really go away. I mean, I'll always be a college dropout. Having gone back and ultimately gotten a degree doesn't change the fact that, originally, I dropped out. Not to mention which, the first time around I didn't do well in school because I didn't know what I wanted then, I was unfocused. I left school with a 2.71 GPA. Obviously, I've brought my average up considerably since then, but a decent GPA isn't enough to make me feel really successful.

What would make me feel really successful would be knowing what I want and going after it. My major was a default choice and my career options are based more on where I want to be than what I want to do. I'm applying for a job that would split my time between Oxford (where my best friend is moving next week) and Munich (where I just spent one of the best months of my life). It's a great job, that sounds interesting, and fun, and it's for a company that I would love to work for, plus I'd be great at it, but it's the business track. Definitely not the creative path. I have this dual nature, practical and logical on the one hand while creative on the other. It keeps me in a constant state of inner conflict which is why the title of this blog is "We'll die with our options open".

Am I ever going to figure out what I want out of life? Or is it more that I want it all, a career that will be reliable (read: make me a lot of money) and creatively fulfilling, but no one can really have it all? Of course, a friend told me recently, that, if I don't even try, I'll not only not have it all, I won't have anything. Or, in the immortal words of Mick Jagger and Kieth Richards, "You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need".

I needed to hear that. It's a good friend that will tell you to quit being such a coward and start living life. I'm lucky to have that.

Politics - Mrs. Obama

There was a front page article in today's NY Times about Michelle Obama (Barack's wife). There were a couple things about it that bothered me but first I have to address the "why do I care" issue. I'm trying to see why the spouses of presidential candidates warrant front page NY Times articles. I can't really understand why people care who, if anyone, their presidential candidates are married to. I mean, I can understand a mild interest, I suppose who someone marries reflects a little bit on them, on their judgement, but not so much as you'd think from the media attention.

So, two things bothered me about this article.

The first was when they referred to the competition and said that Elizabeth Edwards is "dealing with incurable cancer". Is that redundant or did I somehow miss the discovery of a cure for any type of cancer? I think that would have been front page news and, it's true, I wasn't getting the NY Times every day for the last two months, but I did come back to a job in the health care industry so I think I would have heard. All cancer is incurable. There is no cure for cancer. The phrasing here makes it pretty clear that they are trying to avoid calling Mrs. Edwards cancer "terminal", they feel the need to modify cancer with something but not that something. Maybe it's not terminal. I certainly hope it's not, as, I'm sure, do most people. If they need to modify cancer though, they can say breast cancer, or even recurrent cancer, or even recurrent breast cancer, all of which would be accurate descriptions of Mrs. Edwards condition, but incurable cancer, while accurate, is redundant and I expect more from the NY Times. After reading those last few sentences you may be silently, or not so silently, calling me a hypocrite, but I'm not, I just have a double standard. The Times is subject to a higher standard than I hold myself to.

The second thing that bothered me was the implication that Michelle Obama's life has been specifically orchestrated to better her husbands chances of becoming president. They mentioned Judith Steinberg Dean and Theresa Heinz Kerry and then said, "Faced with those discouraging precedents, Mrs. Obama, 43, is trying a fresh approach: running as everywoman, a wife, professional, mother, volunteer." It may be true that Michelle Obama's image better suits campaigning and is more attractive to the voting public, but is it really an approach she's using. She's an executive at a hospital making a mid six figure salary. She's also a wife, mother, and philanthropist. She can't have planned all that around the idea that her husband might one day run for president. I suppose Bill Clinton is trying out the new approach of being a man and former president to help with his wife's campaign?

Better Business

I normally don't find the Business section of the paper to be the most enthralling bit. In truth I often skip the Business section and go straight to the Arts section for the crossword puzzle. Today's Thursday though so I'm unlikely to be able to finish the crossword and thus the rest of the paper becomes much more interesting.

And today, the Business section was fascinating. Sony is hemorrhaging money, Amazon.com is going to start selling digital music (unprotected digital music), and there's a hospital in Pennsylvania that has a 90-day warranty on it's heart surgeries.

It's that last one that got me sucked into the Business section in the first place. It's kind of disconcerting to realize that there is actually financial disincentive for doctors to cure patients built into our health care system. Seriously, if a doctor screws up and you need a bunch of follow up care they make more money than if you're cured. Now, I don't imagine that doctors are out there plotting to screw up procedures just enough to require follow up treatment but not enough to kill people, but the fact is the experiment at this hospital in PA is decreasing the amount of complications.

Doctors, for the most part, work for clinics or hospitals that have policies dictating standards of care. What this hospital has done is have all it's cardiologists get together and develop a 40 point standard of pre-op cardiac care and put in place a policy that says if any one of the 40 points is skipped the surgery gets cancelled. That seems really simple, but this hospital has taken it one step further, they're saying they're so sure this 40 point standard of care will decrease complications that they're putting a 90-day warranty on surgeries. It's a revolutionary concept in health care. Standardization isn't new and it is widely recognised to reduce complications (and to ultimately save money in addition to saving lives), but offering a warranty is something previously confined to the makers of cars, and appliances, and electronics. It's kind of an exciting innovation in health care.

If you want to read more about it, check out this article in today's NY Times.

Misspent Youth

I hate to say this, and so before I do I have to qualify what I'm about to say by saying that I really like my job and the people I work with. I love my roommate (who also happens to be my brother). I love my family and friends and cats. I love how green everything is here. I love a lot of things about Seattle, and if you'd asked me six months ago I'd have said I couldn't really imagine living anywhere else, but I think it's kind of killing my spirit.

Maybe I'm just being petulant because I don't enjoy returning to my responsible adult life after having spent 7 weeks responsibility free (mostly). I don't like going to work, and remembering to feed the cats and clean the litter, and get my oil changed, and return overdue library books. Who does?

Maybe it's because my birthday is this week. Last year on my birthday someone told me I had two more years of misspent youth which, logically, means I have one more year of misspent youth now. The truth though, is that I haven't been misspending my youth for a while, maybe ever. Except for the last couple months in Europe. I've said before that I feel kind of stunted, like a 19-year-old in the body of...someone much older than that...and I feel even more like that now.

I'm just starting to wonder what I have to show for my responsibility, for having made it to age, almost, 29 without having ever played beer pong, or taken a cross country road trip, or even been unemployed for more than a few weeks in almost 10 years. Sure my excellent credit rating will come in handy when I want to buy a house someday and being fully vested in my retirement account makes me feel a bit less like the last 5 years have been wasted, but I'm missing a whole chunk of life experience.

Where did the responsible impulse even come from? I'd like to say, and sometimes do say, that there was a boy involved. I loved him and decided to have a nice, domestic, responsible life with him and, despite what I may have said when it all fell apart, I don't feel like all that time was wasted because of him. So, saying the boy was the reason actually makes it seems like less of a waste, but the truth is the responsible impulse pre-dates him (and seems to have outlasted him). What stopped me at age 18 from picking up and moving to LA to become a waitress...I mean statistic...I mean actress? Well, that's not a very reliable career choice, it wouldn't be the responsible thing to do.

What stops me now? Unfortunately now, in order to keep my excellent credit rating, I have to start paying back student loans in a few months so my cross country road trip may never happen. I suppose there's always beer pong if really want to misspend my youth before I run out of time.

It's not such a long story.

I have a really personal story to tell. It's not a ploy for sympathy. In fact I couldn't feel less bad about it. It's also not an effort to unburden my soul by getting this story I've been keeping to myself out there. I've told the story to a lot of people, to (almost) everyone who's asked. It's also not like this story defines me in some way. In all honesty, as big as it might seem, it was barely a blip in the grand scheme of my life. It happened a long time ago and was, ultimately, a good thing. Though, at the time, it seemed really bad.

So, here it is:

At the beginning of my senior year in high school I had a pregnancy scare. A little bit more than a scare actually. I had a miscarriage and spent an awful night in the emergency room.

So, why am I telling this story in such a ridiculously public way? If not for sympathy or to get it off my chest, then why? Am I just a verbal exhibitionist? Not exactly.

I just don't see the harm in revealing this story or anything else. I suppose this is the deepest, darkest skeleton in my closet and I can't imagine what bad could possibly come from people knowing about it. Am I going to lose friends? Or lose my job? Or get sick? Or die, if people know this embarrassing secret about me? I doubt it.

The real reason I'm telling the story though is that I think being an open person is a good thing. I think being open is one of my best qualities. When I start censoring myself I feel...off. Most of the time, when someone asks me something, I answer (I don't see any reason not to), but not always, and lately I've noticed that I have a tendency to leave things unsaid unless someone asks. Being a truly open person is more than just responding to whatever you're presented with, it's taking a leap of faith, putting yourself out there. So, I'm taking the skeleton out of the closet and putting it here for everyone to see mostly just to prove to myself that I can take that leap of faith.

Cosmo

I had my bi-annual urge to reassert my femininity by buying a copy of Cosmo today. This almost always turns out to be a complete waste of $5 as it consists almost entirely of articles about how men like sex. Shocking, I know, you'd never have guessed that men like sex. Thank God Cosmo is there to impart such important top secret information about the male psyche to us chicks. I suddenly feel like I understand men so much better. Just in time since I'll need all the insight I can get about men if I'm to take Cosmo's horoscope advice, "...Explore options with a younger man around the 12th. He's not that innocent..."

The eagle flies with the dove...

I went to a wedding this weekend and the groom said to me that he believed, now more than ever, that we all have a destiny and we have to go after it.

It occurs to me that some back story is probably required here. I met this guy, the groom from the wedding, about a month ago along with several other guys. All of us became very close very fast perhaps because of the combination of personalities or because we were spending all day together (in class) and then frequently going out together afterward or maybe because we were in a foreign country where we were only just learning to speak the language. Whatever the reason these guys that I've known for a matter of weeks are like family to me now. While we were all in Germany getting to know each other we had some pretty interesting conversations often times about love and commitment because we had the spectrum of relationships pretty well covered (from married to engaged to new relationships to long term relationships to single). One of the major conversations (that turned into a class project) was about commitment being a choice.

Those who know me are well aware that my view about commitment comes directly from the movie Keeping the Faith, or rather is identical to the view espoused in the movie that being: you can never really commit to anything (or anyone) unless you recognize and accept that it is a choice you are making. The way that view translates, for me, to romantic relationships is that you have to realize that there isn't some mythical "one" out there for you, that there are a lot of people you could be with (and be perfectly happy) and that it isn't just a choice you make once, say when you decide to get married to them, you're making that same choice in a thousand little ways every day that you are with that person. I'm not saying that you can choose who to love. You can't choose who you will fall in love with. In fact, that's kind of the point. There's no way you can be sure when you love someone and decide to commit to them that you won't fall in love with someone else later on down the road. The only thing you can be sure of is your own choices. It's not that I don't believe in destiny or fate (fate is more accurate I think), it's just that I believe that the choices we make today effect our fates.

So, my friend, the groom at this wedding, said to me that he believed more than ever that we each have a destiny (I think he meant with regard to love) and that we have to go after it. I agree with him (basically) and it was nice to see him so happy but I think he intended a message for me in addition. I think he was saying something to me about going out there, finding what (or who) I want, and making it happen like he did. I think he was saying that he wanted me to find someone and be as happy as he is with his new wife.

My problem is this: what if I know what I want but can't make it happen? If I can't be with the one I love should I love the one I'm with (so to speak)?

As American League as apple pie.

I'm not a huge baseball fan, I like it, and obviously I pay some attention to it or I wouldn't be writing this blog and wouldn't have been reading the article that prompted me to write this blog, but I don't follow it very closely.

So, I'm a little confused by this quote form Joe Torre (about his team's crushing defeat by the Mariners). According to ESPN.com he said, "Five in the first, unless you can shut the other team down, is obviously not enough in today's baseball. Thirty years ago or 25 years ago, it was probably a little different". My question is what was so different about baseball 30 years ago?

It seems to me to have some sort of doping implication. Presumably the ball gets hit further in today's baseball, as a result of the hitters having beefed up with the help of drugs, resulting in more runs scored. If that's true then it puts more focus on the pitching. The pitcher has to "shut the other team down". Which makes me wonder why this article focused so much on the hitting and the runs scored and so little on the pitching.

I had a conversation with someone recently about the DH rule (actually I've had several conversations with people about it recently, but one conversation was the genesis). My contention was that the DH rule makes for more exciting baseball because it results in better pitching where as, if a team has to pick its pitchers based on both their pitching and hitting ability then, the pitching suffers and as a result the game is less exciting. My National League loving friend disagreed and said that the absence of the DH makes for more strategic and therefore more interesting baseball.

As a lifelong Seattleite (and therefore Mariner fan), even if I saw the merit in that argument, I couldn't really endorse it 100% because I formed my attachment to the DH rule early in life, when Edgar Martinez was DH and Randy Johnson was pitching for the Mariners. In truth I do see the merits in the argument. The checkers versus chess analogy he gave is clever and appropriate. I still have trouble condemning the DH rule though because of my sentimental attachment to the Mariners (as my hometown team). The absence of the DH puts more emphasis on the manager (on line ups and strategy) and the current manager of the Mariners can barely handle the level of strategy in the checkers style baseball they're playing so I shudder to think what he'd be like with the National League's chess style baseball. That, by the way, is a view you'll find most Mariner fans in agreement with, they'll say, "yes, yes, no DH makes for more strategic baseball, but...but...Hargorve".

Mariner fans are itching to see the end of the Hargrove era of Mariner's baseball and for good reason I imagine. I, however, would like to add a completely frivolous reason. It's the metaphors. I can't stand his ridiculous use of metaphor. Here's two Hargrove quotes from ESPN.com (about yesterday's 15-11 Mariner victory over the Yankees):

"It was one of those nights. Some new phase of the moon,"

and

"When you score 15 runs, you don't expect the tying run to be at the plate in the ninth. It's like someone's sticking bamboo shoots under your fingernails"

Seriously? Phases of the moon and bamboo shoots under fingernails? Is his heart really in managing a major league baseball team or was that his fall back plan when his career as a lit professor didn't pan out?

Back to the DH rule and more exciting pitching. I found something odd about the recaps at ESPN.com that kind of goes against my more exciting pitching theory. The recap of the Braves/Dodgers game (a National League game and therefor not under the DH rule) was all about the pitching while the Mariners/Yankees recap (American League and subject to the DH rule) was all about the hitting. As much as I would have loved to see my home town team defeat the team I hate most in all of baseball I found myself more interested in the Braves/Dodgers recap (and wishing more that I'd been able to see that game than the Mariners/Yankees game). I may have to rethink my position.

The unexamined cliche

They say that the unexamined cliche is...I mean the unexamined life is...something bad, I think, so I'm going to do some examining (for a refreshing change of pace). I'm thinking about the old saying that it's better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.

The thing is that when I say "love" I often times, most times, mean something different than most people do, which is to say that I often don't mean anything sexual or romantic by it. I love a lot of people. I've often said that I love everyone. It's a little bit off the mark. I probably don't love everyone but I'd like it to be true. I'd like to love everyone I meet with my whole heart and I often do.

I've been travelling the past couple months and I've met a bunch of really great people. It hurt to leave them. I never expected it. Maybe I should have expected it. I don't know myself well but I know myself well enough to know that I form connections with people, intense ones, quickly. I know that. So, it shouldn't surprise me that I connected with these people, or that those connections were so strong, or that it hurt so bad to leave them, or that I miss them so much now. It does surprise me though. Every time. Every time I meet people and connect with them it surprises me. That capacity for love and the fact that I still think of it as a good thing is astounding to me. In the end it makes me very happy even though I miss them.

So, back to the cliches. It turns out they're all true.

Sports and Journalism - These are a few of my favorite things.

There was an article in this months Cycle Sport (I think the British version) about the demise of Jan Ulrich. It was one of the worst articles I've ever read. It was mean. I get it that Jan Ulrich has acted like a bit of an ass, he may have been a cheater, and that the German media and the media in general thought he was kind of lazy and childish but the article couched all its criticism by putting things all in third person terms. Perhaps it's all true that the German public put down Ulrich and that the German media were hard on him but the article doesn't take any responsibility for tearing him apart.

The mentions about Ulrich's dealings with the media make it pretty clear that the writer has an ax to grind. This writer is pissed that he couldn't get a better story because Ulrich won't really say anything to the media. Possibly he even tried to get some exclusive story and couldn't. Whatever the case the writer of this story has something personal against Ulrich and doesn't cover it well, or possibly doesn't even try to cover it. I don't have any reason to really support Ulrich. I've never been a fan of his and I'm perfectly willing to believe that he is childish, undisciplined and that his media statements are a joke, but if I did sign on to that theory I'd stand right up and say I believed it and stand by it.

I've never been a huge advocate of journalistic detachment either. I don't believe it's really possible for people to be completely objective and I think that the best journalism comes when people care about what they are writing about. So, it's not like I'm saying this guy should be totally and completely objective, not ever letting his bias show. I'm just saying that if he's got the bias he should at least acknowledge it and perhaps even explain it.