The Blarg

One of my favorite radio commentators is Larry Elder. As a black conservative he is able to share views that I can’t, and speak with an authority on Black America that I can’t. If you’re still deciding who you want to support, listen to the values Larry Elder talks about. When he talks about things like personal responsibility, that is what makes me a conservative. When he mentions Barack Obama’s plan to fix everything via government programs, that is why I am not a liberal.

Nothing too profound to say today, just a few random things I wanted to mention.

While I wait for book edits I’m busy formatting it for printing. There are two major print on demand book publishers, and I’m trying to decide which one to use. One is called Lulu. Something neat they offer is that you can get a real ISBN number for your book and have it available for distribution. It becomes available on online bookstores like Amazon, and brick and mortar stores can order. They won’t automatically, but it can be special ordered, and some people have had success convincing a brick and mortar to order some of their books to sell. The other major printer is called CreateSpace which is owned by Amazon. When you publish here your book is basically only available via Amazon. The other big difference is cost. From the way things look right now, it would basically cost about $20 after shipping from Lulu, but only $10 at Amazon (and it’s eligible for super saver shipping). I’m hoping you’ll all want to buy and read my book no matter what, but any opinions on price? Is a $20 paperback just way too expensive? (In terms of quality they’re somewhere in between the paperbacks you see at the market for cheap, and a good hardcover.)

I’d like to make another recommendation that you should all go listen to Anarbor. They’re so awesome. I still listen to their album over and over on repeat, and for only $6 it’s a total steal.

Nothing too political on my mind, but one thing I’ve observed. If a commercial has two people of different ethnic backgrounds, and one of them is either getting made fun of or doing something stupid, it tends to follow a pattern: the white person is always the loser. Now this isn’t scientific or absolute, but I can think of two examples. Right now there is an AT&T commercial with a guy sitting in front of a window and he thinks he’s watching an HDTV, and he’s a total idiot. His friend telling him what he’s doing is a very with it and together Asian guy. I can’t picture them showing the same commercial with the roles switched. A second example are the Washinton Mutual commercials that featured the black spokesperson and the old white stuffy bankers. The black guy was intelligent and well spoken, and the bankers were the butt of the joke.

I can’t even picture them making a commercial where an ethnic minority is the butt of the joke and a white person is the intelligent one. Same goes for gender. Usually it’s the husband in a commercial that does something stupid and it’s the wife that has to correct him and be the voice of reason. Any other examples you can think of?

To be clear, I don’t particularly care. I try to watch as few commercials as possible, but I think this is an interesting commentary on race and gender in our society. Maybe this is something Obama will address?

Now that I’m waiting on book edits I’ve turned into a lazy bum. I felt so much more productive when I was spending a couple hours a day working on it.

I’ve been playing a lot of Mario Kart on Wii. Too much. It’s addictive, and a ton of fun.

We finished watching all the TV shows we had recorded. I’ve been recording reruns of the Big Bang Theory, so we started watching that tonight. It’s super geeky and funny.

I watched the show “Wanna Bet?” and it was absolutely terrible, but Tom Green was on. It reminded me about his website, www.tomgreen.com, and when I went there I started to watch episodes of the Tom Green Show. I’ve only seen a handful of them, but they’re super funny. They’re totally stupid, but still very funny. After that it reminded me that I was going to buy The Jamie Kennedy Experiment on DVD, another funny show. Maybe with my DVD profits I can get those.

I saw The Dark Night on Monday with my brother and sister-in-law. Heath Ledger was super good. Even if he wasn’t dead people would be talking him up. The movie itself was entertaining, and without spoiling anything I think it just went a little long. The story got sidetracked and wasn’t as tight as Iron Man.

Another movie I saw a little while ago was Wall-E. Like all Pixar movies it was breathtaking and a technological marvel, but there was something that bugged me the entire movie. Without spoiling anything, the premise of the movie is that humans have ruined the earth with trash and are now living in a space “cruise” ship. I couldn’t help but feel like I was being slapped in the face the entire time. Humans are stupid and ruining the planet, and it’s all the fault of evil corporations. I understand we need to take care of the planet we call home, but the movie builds on the stupid belief that we’re years from all being dead, and we’re not. The anti-capitalist message is almost laughable considering Pixar is making tons of money because of capitalism.

As strange as it may sound, during Obama’s multi-country tour of the Middle East I’ve heard several journalists now talk about how he isn’t giving interviews. The entire trip is basically turning into an opportunity for him to get pictures taken in the Middle East. Foreign journalists are being snubbed completely. The German writer Christoph von Marschall remarks:

Surely a man who has said he would talk with U.S. adversaries such as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad can spend a few moments with journalists from friendlier countries.

Andrea Mitchell even says she doesn’t know what the heck is going on during the tour, because it’s all a PR stunt. Watch the video here. In fact, when I saw video of Barack shooting hoops in front of the troops, I couldn’t help but notice almost the entire crowd was black.

I think it’s funny that the latenight news runs clips like the above and does zero critical analysis. Clearly the people there wanted to be there, but it came across in the news that all of the military was excited for him to be there. Why can’t the news say “a majority of the attendees were black supporters”? Maybe he’s not giving interviews because they don’t have any teleprompters in the Middle East.

And to really hit you upside the head, CNN is posing the question Could an Obama Presidency Hurt Black Americans? Read the following:

Yet there are a few political commentators who warn African-Americans that an Obama victory could be twisted to suppress the push for racial equality.

So let me get this straight. If Obama became President, it would be bad because then blacks would think they are no longer held down by the white man? Obama can be President, just like Oprah, Tiger Woods, Larry Elder, and 50 Cent are all successful black people. How stupid do you have to be to realize the door is wide open for people of all colors? Even when those doors are thrown wide open with throngs of people passing through them, some people have the gall to say an Obama Presidency would convince people that Blacks have come all the way? No crap, because they have. If you can acheive the Presidency, WTF else do you want your ethnic group to achieve?

In just the last week or two Luke has started to laugh. Usually they are really short, but mommy got him going the other day and he let out cute little squeals for a whole minute. I thought I’d join Angelo and post a video of the boy. Click here to see it in HD.

Took me two weeks to finish my editing of the book. That’s spending 3-4 hours at the library almost everyday. I went to Kinkos and had two “books” printed to send to my editors, Kevin and Joanne. Once I get back their edits, and incorporate them, I can start working on putting it up for sale!

A friend of ours got me Mario Kart for the Wii, and it absolutely rocks. Today we played it for over five hours. The are a ton of online options, tons of characters, and it’s super fun. I have Kurtii on my friends list, but he’s never on, and Paddy hasn’t even registered me yet. Anyone else have Mario Kart for the Wii that wants to play online?

I’ve gone from 109 dvds for sale down to 20. Pretty darn good for only a week and a half.

Now that the book is mostly done it’s on to other summer projects. I need to edit lots of video, and I have a huge box of negatives from my parents house. I have hundreds of pictures to digitize, so I might start working on that…

…or I could go play more Mario Kart.

Edit: I forgot to include his four month stats! At the doctor he weighed in at 18 lbs and 2 ounces, and stretched just shy of 26″. That’s my big boy!

I know it’s been a while since I posted, and I hate to break it to you, but until the book is done it will stay slow. Hopefully the following will make up for it.

I have never been more proud of my son than during this photoshop moment. This is his after bath towel with a hood, and everytime we use it I call him my little Jedi. He’s the bomb.

Now for some boring non-Star Wars pictures.

This chair is much too big for him.

We’re very serious about our finger sucking. Three at a time!

Here’s non-photoshopped bath time. The wife looks especially hot in this one.

Luke got his four month old shots today. That’s his pediatrician Dr. Nation…the same guy that was taking care of me when I was four months old. Super cool.

Today was also first baby food day! On the menu was “butternut squash.” Mmmmm. We were amazed, the little piggy ate the whole jar! We’ve read that usually they don’t get much of it down the first few tries, but he took to it like a pro. Now cross your fingers baby food=10 hours of sleep.

If you hadn’t heard already, I am a huge fan of High-Definition video, and everyday my 480p resolution DVDs stare and taunt me with their low resolution!!!!

It’s not actually that bad, but I’m having a firesale. All the DVDs must go! I have this cabinet full of DVDs from when I used to actually buy them, but we never watch any of them. There are some movies that I actually want to own like Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and The Matrix, but by and large I don’t need movies like Weekend at Bernie, Outbreak, and Pee Wee’s Big Adventure.

I’ve put all 100 or so on Half.com, and already I’ve sold 12! Granted I priced them very competitively because I don’t want to still be selling these things 6 months from now. On average I should be able to get between $1-$3 for each of them, and then with that money I can buy some of the truly good movies in Blu-Ray!

In case you want to buy some of my DVDs, go visit The Blarg’s Store!