The things we find nostalgic

Back in High School one of my classmates had this cartoon on his binder. It always made me laugh. It still does.

I want one

Okapi: the only living relative of the Giraffe

There's only one way to salvage this day

Reformatting

So as you probably noticed I did some reformatting this morning along with adding a new banner pic. I'm interested to hear what you think. Better? Worse? Let me know.

RIP Jack Horkheimer

I was at home last night watching a little Red Green Show. Now Red's on between 10 and 11 on channel 12 and after each episode they play the short "Jack Horkheimer: Star Gazer". I was shocked last night to see that it wasn't Jack! Jack passed away last month. This is a tragic loss to the astronomy community and to star gazers, young and old, around the country. The new guy just isn't the same but I'm hopeful that in time he will come to be. It's hard to best Jack though. So to Mr Horkheimer, I bid you farewell and wherever you are I'm sure that you'll "keep looking up".

In a perfect world

This would become a full length movie:

"Halcyon Digest" streaming on NPR

That's right people, the new Deerhunter can be streamed NOW! I'm very pleased so far. I've listened to it about three times and it's grown on me more with each go around. If you don't have time to listen to the whole thing this is my favorite track so far. That being said it really should be experienced as a whole.

I woke up too early and have nothing better to do than dress like your niece

Went to bed really early last night which has led to my being up really early this morning. At a loss for what to do with myself I decided to spend the morning with Radiohead in honor of their completing some new material. Here's a section of the playlist I've got going on.

One more for good measure.

"They got money for wars, but can't feed the poor"

Let's talk about poverty for a moment. There were two stories that came out today about the subject. The first saying that poverty on a global level is declining, albeit not everywhere, but still as a whole. The second is about poverty in the US specifically and how the rate is increasing substantially.

Now I'm all for a lower global poverty percentage, I think you all could have guessed that. However it begs the question, why are rates in the US increasing against the global trends? This isn't anything new though, it's been happening for years, as you can see in this chart found in a study by UCSC:

Now that only compares the top 20% with the lower 80% and even  there you can see that the rich are getting richer at the expense of the middle and lower classes. The Working Group on Extreme Inequality has compiled a plethora of graphs and chart showing the distribution of wealth in America, including this one:

As you can see the bottom 50% of American's control only 2.5% of the wealth. 2.5%!!! If you don't find this alarming, you should. As this gap between the wealth and the impoverished continues to grow we're going to to see more and more dire consequences.

Wikipedia sites Charles E Hurst's work Social Inequality: Forms, Causes, and Consequences when it states, "Currently, the richest 1% hold about 38% of all privately held wealth in the United States while the bottom 90% held 73% of all debt.^[10]" And we wonder how we ended up with a financial crisis that's been crippling our economic growth for three years so far.

Now there's a lot of people out there that are saying we shouldn't come down on the wealthy because they worked hard to earn what they have. That's simply not true. The system we have in place is set up to keep the rich rich and the poor poor. The Economic Mobility Project has found that, "More than 50 percent of
individuals who start in the bottom income quintile remain there 10 years later, and 70 percent remain below middleincome status. Despite notable changes in the U.S. economy, this immobility at the bottom has remained unchanged since the 1980s."

So where am I going with all of this? There are a couple of things happening in the political arena that apply directly to this problem.

The first I'll mention is Washington State Initiative 1098. The income tax initiative. Currently middle and lower class families are paying 11% of their earnings to state taxes while those with the highest incomes are averaging 3%. This has Washington ranking 50 of 50 in terms of tax fairness. We need to start addressing this problem locally and the first step is to vote YES ON I-1098!

The other thing that you can do is write you senators and congressman regarding the expiration of the Bush-era tax cuts. Everyone agrees that the middle and lower class tax cuts need to remain in place, the issue is over those earning more than $200,000 a year. Now upper class Americans never asked for these tax cuts when they were given and they don't need them.

Yes the economic situation has changed since they were implemented but we can't afford to extend them. Remember what happened when the real estate bubble burst? Imagine what'll be like when the government debt bubble burst. I for see it being much like what happened recently, the rich find more ways to get richer at the expense of others. I for one don't want to see that happen and hope that we can start doing more to deflate it before we're suffering from even worse problems than we have now.

The last thing that you can do has more to do is support education. Education is the best way of leveling the playing field in America. Now this could mean voting for school levies or taking an extra hour to help your own kids with their homework or volunteering to help tutor underprivileged children. All of these thing help children succeed. And for those living in the poorer parts of our country they're going to need every advantage they can get. But just because it's hard to move up doesn't mean it's impossible.

For those of you who don't know, the title of this post is taken from the 2pac song "Keep ya head up". He immediately follows up with the line, "Say there ain't no hope for the youth and the truth is there ain't no hope for the future". The unfortunate thing is that unless we start to address this problem plaguing America, he's right. And we need to start now. If we wait much longer we're going to see the death of the middle class and the "American Dream" in our lifetimes.

True love according to David Lynch

I'm going to tell you a story

It's the a story I like to call "My Saturday". 

I woke up pretty early for a weekend, 7:15am. Probably because I went to bed at 9 o'clock. I thought about going back to sleep, but decided it was best to just get going on the day. After watching C-SPAN for an hour I got myself ready to go apple picking. MNom got me involved with a local volunteer group that goes around picking fruit that would otherwise go to waste and then we donate it to local charities. The tree we were working with was giant!

The picture doesn't do it justice, but you get an idea

It was covered in fruit. The bad part was most of it being too far up for us to reach or not yet ripe. That being said we still harvested over 165 pounds! The plan is to go back on this coming Sunday to get a bunch more. 

After the picking we (NESF, MNom, EA and myself) went down to the Hi-Life for lunch. Good peoples, good times.

Next up was the Washington v Syracuse game. I swooped up PMRob and we watched the game at what used to be Goldie's on 45th, can't remember the name at the moment. Great game! I was more than a little disappointed with the loss to BYU and to be honest wasn't sure what to make of the season after that. The 41-20 victory was a much needed reassurance. 

After the game things were destine to get interesting. 

You see I graduated high school, ten years ago to be exact, and Saturday was our reunion. I'd been torn about going. Everyone from high school that I like I still talk to, so I didn't see much point in going. However when NESF told me that he was thinking about it I gave it some more thought and finally decided it'd be entertaining if nothing else. 

I have my dad's car while he's in San Diego so I offered to drive down to Des Moines, mostly for karma points since I'm never the DD I figured it's about time. No one was really sure how many people to expect. I'd imagined showing up and there'd be 10 other people, boy was I wrong. The place was packed. I've yet to hear an official number but I'd guess about 150 people. 

I chatted with a few people I knew marginally back in the day. The majority of my friends back then were either in a different class or the type of people that I wouldn't expect to see at a reunion, but I had some good conversations nonetheless. 

I actually really enjoyed watching everyone else get smashed. My whole plan was to get PMRob to make an ass of himself, which I think I accomplished in a small sense. The unexpected entertainment came from Raybies. He'd driven down, but after a couple of beer I told him that I'd drive him back to his car tomorrow if he wanted. Best decision of the night. 

Things started to wind down at the reunion but there was word of an after party happening at a Chinese bar around the block. We rolled down there and sure enough 20-30 of em were still going strong with the addition of Karaoke. All the songs selected were the type of music I'd expect from the crowd, "Friends in low places" and the like. Things got pretty sloppy all around at this point. One girl showed up, stumbled into herself and then promptly lied down and kissed the floor. You know, standard stuff in Des Moines. 

We finally got kicked out that place just before 2am. Then it was off to JITB! Oh late night Jack-in-the-Box, what would we do without you? There was a little musical cars in the drive thru and then we headed up to the school to eat our grease in the old parking lot. 

A new neon sign replaced the tattered old failed art project sign

In the last 10 years Mt Rainier has undergone massive changes. They demolished the old campus of haphazardly placed buildings and portables with a giant 2-story building that houses everything. We weren't able to go inside being it was the middle of the night on a Saturday, but we walked around the building reminiscing about old tales of debauchery. Next thing I knew it was 3:15 and time to call it a night. I was getting tired while Raybies and PMRob were getting hung over. 

In the end a good time was had. 

NPR, Hooligans and "False Priest"

I love NPR! Among so many other things they always seem to have the best music streaming before it comes out. I never used to understand why people would donate money to public media (PBS, NPR, etc). Now I've found myself doing it a few times and I'm sure will many more times in my life. I also understand why old people hate teenagers. Damn hooligans. Always out causing trouble and disrupting the peace. Like these kids on the bus today, all hooting and hollering, talking foul and making the scene generally unpleasant. I wish someone would've just shaken them until...But I digress.

Right now NPR is streaming the new of Montreal album "False Priest". I've long been a fan of their work. You may remember I wasn't a huge fan of their last one at first, that is not the case here. I'm loving everything about this right now and I've only listened to the first ten minute. I'm seriously about to start a one man dance party. As NPR said, "The latest release from of Montreal can be summed up in a word: Bonkers." And that's an understatement. Listen to it. Seriously.

False Priest Cover Art

I might have to live blog this one.

"You keep the sunshine, save me the rain"

Summer is officially over in Seattle and I love it. We're back in the mid-50s to mid-60s with a slight drizzle, just like it should be. In honor of this occassion I've broken out the Modest Mouse. It's bringing me great happiness...

So there's a lot of talk about this whole Quran burning in Florida. This one is a little touchy because they have every right to burn the Quran or any book they want. If we allow the burning of our own flag how could we deny someone the right to burn a book? With that being said, just because you can doesn't mean that you should. However I don't think it's going to be terribly effective to have members of the current administration demonize the act. In the end I think that's just going to make them want to do it even more...

My mom has been uploading a bunch of old pictures and amongst them there was a gem. This is me when I was little representing the "Revenge of the Jedi" shirt. I have an uncle who worked for ILM when they were doing Star Wars and had access to some pre-release merchandise before they finalized the name. Unfortunately I don't still have the outfit and if I did I don't think it would fit too well. At least I have the picture now.

Jedi Knight in training

I'm proud to say that I've never watched the Jersey Shore. Not even a clip or advertisement. In today's society I count that as a major win....

Seattle, oh, how I love you.

After 8 days away and a couple in hiding I'm back! The trip was great. Driving, or riding as it mostly was, became a little tiresome but there's no other way to see such a wide cross section of America. With the exception of a recap post I've completely the trip blog. You can also see all of my picture on my flickr account. I just want to say "THANK YOU!" one more time to my dad for making the whole thing possible...

There's a lot going on that I want to blog about, but not right now. After doing the last two posts about the trip I'm a little blogged out at the moment.