Poker with Dick Cheney

As far as I can tell, it's bad manners to repost another blogger's post in it's entirety, so the polite thing to do is to give a snippet of it, and a link to the whole thing. That way the originator gets the credit and hits.

Submitted for your approval: "Poker With Dick Cheney"

Transcript of The Editors' regular Saturday-night poker game with Dick Cheney, 6/19/04. Start tape at 12:32 AM.

The Editors: We'll take three cards.

Dick Cheney: Give me one.

Sounds of cards being placed down, dealt, retrieved, and rearranged in hand. Non-commital noises, puffing of cigars.

TE: Fifty bucks.

DC: I'm in. Show 'em.

TE: Two pair, sevens and fives.

DC: Not good enough.

TE: What do you have?

DC: Better than that, that's for sure. Pay up.

TE: Can you show us your cards?

DC: Sure. One of them's a six...

Link for Full Story

The Rance Phenomenon

For those of you who haven't heard yet, there's an anonymous blogger out there called RANCE who is causing a stir. He claims to be an A-List celebrity actor that has both won and lost on the major awards. Some people guess at his identity (George Clooney, Owen Wilson, etc.) or wonder if he's a fake. Frankly, I don't care. Either ha makes this stuff up or he doesn't, but he can rant like Denis Miller and Denis Leary on an all-night coffee bender, and he can tell stories better and funnier than... than... help me out here...

Anyway. Suffice it to say that he's good. And people flock to his site in droves to read. It's amazing, because his site is on Tripod.com, home of the most annoying advertising and pop-ups in the history of the internet. So one of the most visited personal sites on the internet is one of the least user-friendly. Says a lot about his content. Here's his latest entry.

If you’re like me, you're always hearing me how some guy saw one of those slasher movies, left the cinema and blew someone else away with an AK-47. You reply that no doubt if it weren’t for the movie, the guy would have gone home and read the bible, ignored all those smitings therein, and gone on to found an orphanage. Then you get a million statistics that not only prove you wrong, but implicate you by your professional association.

Well, here’s one attempt at refuting the correlation between movie-going and violence: The country of Moldova has one of the lowest rates of movie attendance in the world, yet the highest rate of death by powered lawnmower (.45 deaths per million people (Incidentally, those cinemaniacal Lithuanians place a distant second, with .27 deaths per million. The United States is a sorry ninth, with .09 deaths per million people.))

I know this isn’t the foundation for a argument that would be considered substantive, but I’ve yet to receive a decent rebuttal. Or maybe I should just take a hint.

Bush Slated to Cause Nationwide Depression

President Bush plans to unveil a new Drug Policy for school-age kids: They should all be ON them.

Bush established the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health in April 2002 to conduct a "comprehensive study of the United States mental health service delivery system."

The president's commission found that "despite their prevalence, mental disorders often go undiagnosed" and recommended comprehensive mental health screening for "consumers of all ages," including preschool children. According to the commission, "Each year, young children are expelled from preschools and childcare facilities for severely disruptive behaviours and emotional disorders." Schools, wrote the commission, are in a "key position" to screen the 52 million students and 6 million adults who work at the schools.

As with any sweeping reform by ANY presidency, you have to look at the fine print. The pilot program in Texas that found more kids needed anti-depressants was, not surprisingly, largely funded by pharmeceutical companies. The new initiative is expected to recommend the wide usage of a new patented drug.

Olanzapine (trade name Zyprexa), one of the atypical antipsychotic drugs recommended as a first line drug in the Texas algorithm, grossed $4.28bn (£2.35bn; 3.56bn) worldwide in 2003 and is Eli Lilly's top selling drug. A 2003 New York Times article by Gardiner Harris reported that 70% of olanzapine sales are paid for by government agencies, such as Medicare and Medicaid.

Eli Lilly, manufacturer of olanzapine, has multiple ties to the Bush administration. George Bush Sr was a member of Lilly's board of directors and Bush Jr appointed Lilly's chief executive officer, Sidney Taurel, to a seat on the Homeland Security Council. Lilly made $1.6m in political contributions in 2000—82% of which went to Bush and the Republican Party.

Jones points out that the companies that helped to start up the Texas project have been, and still are, big contributors to the election funds of George W Bush. In addition, some members of the New Freedom Commission have served on advisory boards for these same companies, while others have direct ties to the Texas Medication Algorithm Project

Link
Not surprisingly, news of this report will cause widespread depression, which will soon be diagnosed and treated with medication.

Escape from Alpharetta

I tried to catch a movie after work with some friends this week, and was reminded why I moved out of Alpharetta. Although I left at 6:00 and I only needed to drive two exits down, I almost missed a 7:00 movie because of the traffic.

I'm sure the city planners never imagined Alpharetta like it is now. Tracing back the history of the place 15 or years, it was probably a small, one-stoplight town with no ambitions to become a major draw. It was too far north of the city to be important, and it was only accessible by State Road 400, which is whittled down to just two lanes either way as it reaches Alpharetta city limits.

Then something went wrong.

Maybe a few owners decided to sell out their chicken farms and move to Utah to become Mormons. Some developers cleared out the land and built "Splendor Acres at the Glen - Luxury homes from the mid 500's" in their place. It was probably a hard sell, since the nearest gas station and grocery store was Sue Dean's KWik Fill, a good 10 miles away. So the developers decided that in order to sell these homes, they needed a strip mall with a Publix grocery store and a name-brand gas station. A few years later, this scheme panned out, and Splendor Acres was full of high-end yuppies, longing for a quiet retreat away from their jobs in Marietta.

Seeing how this first batch of developers made money hand-over-fist, the idea of upscale suburbs in Alpharetta catches like wildfire. Then came the clincher: The North Point Mall. Once an upscale mall with a food court is built, office buildings come springing up around it like hangers-on to new rap artist. Soon, everyone who's anyone in the technology world has a prominent office park in Alpharetta, and it became known as "The Technology Corridor."

There's just one problem. While Office Park developers kept the Parking Spaces-to-Square Footage ratio within reasonable limits, Civil Engineers failed to take into consideration what would happen when the residents of all these parking spaces tried to leave at the same time. Let's say for argument's sake, 5:00 PM on a weekday.

Now remember that the GA 400 "choke point", where becomes two lanes each way, is still at the south end of Alpharetta. However, the office parks have spread up to McFarland Rd, five exits north of that. Figure in that 3/4 of workers that commute to Alpharetta go south to get home, usually far enough that GA 400 is the most direct route, and you start to get the point. Every afternoon is another lesson in Physics that two bodies can't occupy the same physical space at the same time. And every afternoon, without fail, a few jerks still try to test that theory. Their failures make things even worse.

The streets in Alpharetta near the exits, as well as running parallel to 400, are effectively gridlocked from 3:30 until 7 every afternoon. City engineers have done their best to add lanes and tweak light timings, but it's all in vain without an expansion to 400, which the DOT swears will never happen.

Here's where I came in. When I got my first job out of college, my new wife and I signed a lease on an apartment just south of the company's new campus on Windward Parkway. "It's only two miles to work," I thought, "How convenient!" Little did I know that it would take me roughly an hour to traverse both of those miles.

The lengthy commute was caused by two factors: First, the only way home was by North Point Parkway, which is "The Strip" in Alpharetta. Two lanes each way, connecting the North Point Mall and all the outlying office parks to all five exits to 400 in the city. Add to that the fact that my secondary street is also a traffic bottleneck. This is because some brilliant civil engineer decided to put a school on EACH END of the road, and place five sprawling subdivisions, an apartment complex and one group of townhomes in the middle, with no other way in or out. I spent that hour each day, each way, praying for his untimely, and hopefully painful, demise.

It was two years before we were able to get the money together to buy our first house. When that happy day arrived, we started from my workplace in Alpharetta and drove outwards in search of something we could afford. We did quite a lot of driving. We kept going until we reached Flowery Branch, a small outlying town just short of Gainesville.

I have to add that last bit because everyone seems to squint thoughtfully when I say the name of my town. It's certainly an amusing name, second only to "Stump Sound, North Carolina" (bitrhplace of my mother-in-law) for sheer southern creativity. Short of being the home of the "Porterhouse" Steak, nothing good has ever come out of Flowery Branch.

I say this in full knowledge that the Atlanta Falcons training camp is just down the road.

Co-workers often ask me about living so far out, how I can live with the commute. Yes, it's 30 miles to the office now instead of two, but it only takes me 45 minutes to drive to work now, instead of an hour. It actually takes me less time to drive 30 miles across neglected 2-lane roads and over the Buford Dam to Flowery Branch, than it did to drive two miles within the city of Alpharetta.

Nothing lasts forever, though. Last year, a Publix shopping center was built on the corner, with a Blockbuster opening shortly after. This year, they're replacing the 4-way stop with an expanded intersection. We already have the Mall of Georgia a few exits down. Billboards off 985 now advertise new luxury subdivisions with names like "Apple Pie Ridge" and "Sterling on the Lake".

Improbable as it may seem, Flowery Branch looks to be on it's way to becoming another Alpharetta. Sounds silly, but so did another inaccessible city that was too far north of the metro area. I've learned my lesson, though. I'll be long gone by the time people start commuting TO Flowery Branch for work, instead of from it.

Sticker Shock

Driving home from work, I stopped at a red light behind a white pickup truck. Now for those of you who don't live in Georgia, it is state law that any non-commercial pickup truck registered in the state to have a sticker on the back window, depicting a boy urinating on some logo. The boy is a knock-off of a respectable comic strip called "Calvin and Hobbes", and the logo can be of anything from your least favorite NASCAR driver's number to your least favorite brand of truck. (Yes, Southerners are very brand-loyal when it comes to trucks, beer and firearms.) These stickers are intended to show your disdain for something without having to resort to slogans, or even words at all, those tricky things.

The truck in front of me had just such a sticker in his window, showing the boy urinating on the Ford logo. Not an unusual sight, like I said, but there was something else.

The truck in front of me, bearing this sticker, was a Ford truck.

Random Rants

In going through coverage of the G-8 summit at Sea Island, I read that protesters are upset that not enough money is being given to project development in Africa. The mood seemed to be that, while world leaders spent their time on inconsequential matters, the real issues are not being addressed. In what world are we supposed to pay attention to people who are getting handouts, but are upset that they're not getting enough? These are not loans. The G-8 are giving money to those who refused to listen to the wisdom of Sam Kinison when he yelled, "Move to where the FOOD IS!" Our leadership is being criticized for not giving away enough taxpayer money to people who have not earned it and will never be called upon to pay it back.

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I'm both amused and disturbed by the way the media has been covering the death and legacy of Ronald Wilson Reagan. Very suddenly, there has been a fresh outpouring of partisan folderol, claiming that his only legacy should be that of Iran-Contra. This is coming from people who objected to his policies ideologically at the time, but had no problem accepting the benefits that his policies created for them.

Reagan's policies may not have been the most popular. I'll give you that. Still, how often can anyone recall hearing of someone that they know sending additional money in to the IRS because they believe that taxes are low? Call it uncaring, if you will. The city of Boston had a little thing added onto a recent ballot initiative that allowed voters to elect to include additional taxes to be levied on them. In that wonderful, large, ideologically correct and progressive city, something like 65 voters elected to pay additional taxes.

Perhaps you don't recall what the country was like at the time that Reagan took office. Inflation and unemployment were out the roof. We lived in constant fear of nuclear war. Our military was stripped to the level that it did not instill any kind of confidence in our national defense. Our economy was keeping us afloat, but Japan was overshadowing us by miles. Military duty in Germany was considered to be hazardous duty, since everyone knew that Soviet tanks would come blasting through the Fulda Gap at any time. African nations were in constant upheaval, torn between self-determination and relying on the help of and subservience to Soviet masters. Fully half of Europe lived in slavery and fear.

Do none of you remember the feeling of a weight being gradually lifted from our nation's shoulders in the early 1980s? It was a tangible thing. Our economy improved at a rate that was astounding. The tax cuts that were instituted by President Reagan did NOT bankrupt the country. Instead, they did exactly what similar and previous tax cuts by FDR and JFK had done: they spurred investment and actually increased the amount of taxes that were taken in. Our military was increased in size, and more emphasis was put on training. Soon, the American military was again regarded as the best trained and most effective military force ever assembled. The shame of bad decisions in Vietnam and Desert One (Iran) behind us, the world again recognized that America was back. Relatively speaking, Africa was stabilized. Europe again gained confidence, including those parts behind the Iron Curtain. Inflation and unemployment dropped dramatically.

Finally, there was the "standoff" against the Soviet Union. It was no standoff. America had a leader who had the courage of his convictions and was determined to defeat what he believed to be the Evil Empire spoken of in the Bible. He drew all kinds of fire for these openly stated beliefs, but he accepted that as the price he had to pay for doing what he believed was right. What is seldom mentioned by the media today is that the country WAS WITH HIM. In retrospect, his ideas and beliefs seem to be too far to the right to have ever gained so much as a foothold. Instead, American citizens realized that this President was something that they had not seen in a long time. This was a man who would do what he said. He had drawn a line in the sand and would not back down. One need only look at the margins of victory over Carter and Anderson in 1980 and over Mondale in 1984 to realize that most of the population of our country found some inspiration in this man.

There were still wide political divides to be forded in the 1980s, as there are today. The difference then was that people recognized that some objections had to be overcome, rather than capitalized upon. People who had traditionally always voted Democrat voted for Reagan because they recognized that he had the leadership, drive and charisma that the nation needed. The people today hang onto their political differences as buoys, the only things to keep them from sinking eternally. In the 1980s, people realized that it was preferable to vote for someone with whom they had differences, but in whom they could believe. Not all agreed with President Reagan, but everyone came to find that they could count on the fact that he would do what he said he would do.

Today, the nation is one in which people seem to define themselves by the ways in which they differ with others in matters of politics, religion and personal freedoms. People are now so proud of their diversity that they fail to seek to find common ground with those whose ideas may differ from their own. People hold onto their beliefs like prayer beads, afraid to put them down and look at another point of view. How common is it, now, for us to hear of lifelong Republicans who are willing to consider gay marriage, or lifelong Democrats who are willing to admit that the tax rolls have been increased following President Bush's tax cuts? It doesn't happen. Those of us who share some ideologies with both sides find that we are the only ones who can see what's going on. The American people are afraid that, by admitting that the other side may have gotten a couple of things right, their entire point of view will be invalidated.

When President Reagan took office, the country was walking on legs like a newborn fawn, unsure of how well it could stand after taking its' next step. Eight years later, the country was sure enough in its' success that there was little mention of how things had used to be. I know. At the time that President Reagan took office in 1981, I was seven years old. I remember doing duck-and-cover drills in school, watching THE ATOMIC CAFE and seeing Todd Thaxton wearing a T-shirt that read "Kill a commie for mommy." At the time that Reagan left office, we had seen the rise of the yuppie, vast expansion of American business interests, dramatic decreases in both inflation and the unemployment rates, consumer confidence at an all-time high, a huge interest in home ownership, and a general improvement in the state of the nation as a whole.

How many Vietnam veterans had received a "Welcome Home" before Reagan took office and reminded us that military service is something that should be honored instead of scorned?

Please don't talk to me about the evils of the Presidency of Ronald Reagan. There were some, and I'll not attempt to refute that. In his case, though, the review of history will show that those eight years did far more good for the United States than they did harm.

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I'm having to sell my house soon. In the last six years, the Gwinnett County Tax Commissioner (now Katherine Sherrington) has seen fit to raise the appraised value of my house to almost double the price that I paid for it. They are either very optimistic, or they have never set eyes on the property. If I can't get the price that I want for it, I think I ought to make them responsible for selling it.

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This next bit will seem really odd to anyone who doesn't know me. I watched Red Dawn not too long ago. By and large, the cast of youngsters has done remarkably well. What on Earth happened to C. Thomas Howell?! It's not like he was horrible. Not great, you know, but I wouldn't say he's as bad as Jennifer Grey is. Did he just select the absolutely wrong agent, or is he just accepting every straight-to-video assignment that he can get?

I love Rowdy Roddy Piper. He's a great guy, a great wrestler and has a very nice daughter. Still, once you're in a movie with the guy, it's like the kiss of death.

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Eleven years ago - June 12, 1993 - I was very close to death. Rather than give in, I elected to live. Since then, living has become something of a habit. It's been a pretty boring habit, for the most part. I believe that I'm on this planet for a real reason, due in no small part to the fact that I'm still talking and breathing.

What are the rest of you still kicking about for? From what I've seen, most people never bother to look for a reason. They live because that's what they've been doing and that's what they think they're supposed to do. They live, they eat, they drink, they reproduce, they get old and they die. They never ask why they had to go through the whole thing.

Is is because they are able to find pleasure in the things that have always seemed mundane to me? Is it because they lack the imagination to truly look into their reason for being?

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My buddy Kemper had a birthday on June 12. I called to wish him a Happy Birthday and never heard back from him. Truth to tell, I haven't heard from him more than a couple of times since he was married a few years ago. It's not like I could be considered a bad influence. Why, then, do I never hear back? I'm just curious. I've reached the point where I don't need as many friends as I did when I was younger and I'm far less apt to put up with bullshit. I'm not horribly bothered by not hearing back from him, but I must admit that I'm intrigued. It would be a good thing to know.

Progress at the G8 Summit

The G8 Conference, held off the coast of Savannah this week, is producing very little in the way of results. This article, however shows that our leaders are making GREAT STRIDES.

Beach Strolls Thaw French, German Chill on U.S.
...Bush said he ate "superb" food when he went to France last weekend for Sunday's ceremonies marking the 60th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy during World War II.

"Over the last few days, this cuisine here in America was certainly on a par with French cuisine," Chirac responded manfully.

"He particularly liked the cheeseburger he had yesterday," said Bush. "It was excellent," agreed Chirac.

A senior U.S. official said after Bush's talks with Schroeder on Tuesday that it was "the most cordial meeting between the two since the beginning of the war in Iraq."

The official picture showed the two smiling, with Bush's dog Barney trotting alongside. According to Schroeder, Barney made them laugh.

Wow. We can't agree on anything real, but Bush and Chirac are cordial enough to pretend that the other countries' food is edible. That's a start. Plus they agree that dogs are funny. Good thing the Vietnamese aren't part of the G8 Summit, or else the Food and Dogs conversations would overlap a bit.

One more thing... is "manfully" a word? Even if it is, I don't see Chirac responding that way.

The Kerns get Published

This is the week that the name "Kern" becomes synonymous with excellent Journalism. (As opposed to the Dictionary definition, which means "A loutish person".)

Chris' UGA Article in the AJC (login required)

Melissa's Reports on the Mythic Journeys conference, on TheOneRing.net

Welcome

Greetings all and welcome to The Vent Collective.

Your first question may be "What the heck IS this?" Well, I have become a huge advocate of blogging in the past year. ("weBLogging" for those who don't know.) I've found it helps to vent your thoughts and get frustrations out on the keyboard. But more than just a personal journal, Blogs can be a great way to communicate ideas. A few bloggers have even gotten book deals out of successful blogs.

The idea for The Vent Collective is this: I have a bunch of friends that have opinions. Lots of opinions, on nearly every facet of life, both funny and thought-provoking. And I wanted to share the opinions with the rest of the bunch. So instead of just reposting these thoughts on my own blog, I thought I'd create a single community blog for us all to share our words.

But more than just lofty ideas and quips, this is a community VENT. It's right there in the title. More often, you'll not be inspired to write a bit of pithy prose, you'll be ticked off that the government did something, that your boss has the I.Q. of dish soap or that the Department of Transportation decided to remove a lane of busy highway in attempts to IMPROVE the flow of traffic. The Vent Collective is your outlet.

I'm always telling friends about this guy I met in London, this World War II History buff, the hairy Swede that I shared a room with in the dorms, the man we called "Gonad the Barbarian", my oh-so-opinionated wife, and many others. I'm always relaying funny or insightful things that they said. I thought it was time to cut out the middle man and let everybody read it for themselves, because frankly, I suck at re-telling stories.

Blogger.com has a pretty straightforward system. You log in to the web site, click "The Vent Collective", create a new post, and click "Publish." I'll do all the HTML and formatting, but I'm always open to suggestions. Give this a try for a few weeks and let's see what happens. Send off a few test rants. See how you like it.

Are you in?