You Don't Know Richard Cheney

"If you want to see what children can do, you must stop giving them things." - Norman Douglas

Are you fucking kidding me? Lynne Cheney appeared on the Emmy and Peabody Award-winning Daily Show Wednesday night to promote her new book, Blue Skies, No Fences: A Memoir of Childhood and Family. I have to hand it to Lynne, that was classy and though I despise her husband and the administration, I have a new found respect for her. I probably still don't agree with a lot of what she stands for (did agree on her stance on gay marriage though), but wow, that is the type of candor and openness that I didn't expect. I will be honest, I don't know her well...I give her the usual respect I have for first lady Laura Bush and try not to hold her husband's politics and decisions against her since she herself is not a politician. She isn't a blank slate though, so it isn't like she is just some random woman, she is a very important woman who is married to a man that I have never felt has had America's (working class America) best interests at heart. And Jon Stewart, man my friend, I admire your interview and the respectful approach you took. You could of pulled a Bill'O and just be a jerk and attack her ranting and raving. Instead you did your best to be tactful and when Jon started to ask political questions about the war from one of the few people America has access to and someone who we feel might actually be honest with us, he backed off and remarked how she wasn't the person he should be asking to justify those decisions, it is her husband and the administration and it was just not fair. But that is not to say that he gave her a cake walk either and just ignored the elephant in the room. He was willing to ask some tough questions and there were some very good points made and it is definitely worth watching. Maybe I was more shocked because I didn't know it was coming, the skit before that "You Don't Know Richard Cheney" (Dick) was funny because of how unfunny it was, but my only thought at the time was, why is he being so nice, is it really that funny now that saying positive things about Dick is so ironic that it is inherently funny on its own. I tip my hat off to you Jon Stewart and to you Lynn....oh yeah Lynne, really the soldiers dying in Iraq (and all the innocent civilians), it is the result of the, at best, misguided judgment of the man you married (The case for malice is much stronger though). You can still love him, but your love doesn't make his actions less wrong. The Huffington Post had a good article on it.

Here is the interview for your viewing pleasure.

Part 2 of the Interview

I've been trying to incorporate more multimedia into my blog as of late mainly to learn how. I don't know if I will continue to do it, but sometimes embedding a video or picture is much better than linking to it. I'd really appreciate feedback on this. My guess is that I'll just go back to normal text because it takes work.

Thursday I got a car wash. My car has been so dirty and even though I'm about to make it really dirty on my trip home, I at least wanted to make that trip in peace knowing that I wasn't driving a car with caked on pollen and dirt. I'm not a messy car guy, ok, well maybe messy, but not dirty. It was a good use of my lunch break. There was a massouse there, but I just felt tacky getting a massage in a car wash and well pay day is still far away.


My life is like private practice. lol That is my saying recently, my life is like every show out there. I should really stop that. I'd like to say my life is like girls next door, now that would be something. So, I feel like I'm always living in some sort of spin off show. Maybe it has to do with all the moving. Let me note that the show hasn't been too good, but my dedication to Kate Walsh has kept me watching, and though I hated her character at the beginning of Grey's, she really won me over. Back to the spin off life self indulgence topic. So I keep moving to new places looking for some magic. Ironically, I always seem to find the magic in the place I left once I am gone. So I'm in Austin now, I do need some magic. What that magic is, I still don't know. There are moments when I feel like I may have found the magic, but then they just start to fade. The one thing I will say is that this is where I want to be right now and I do know that. I really do have this feeling that there is magic in San Diego, why do I think that? I really should go visit one day. Note: I wrote this during pp and it made sense if you watched the show, but reading it back now, man well it doesn't make as much sense as it did last night. Oh yeah, I was drinking too.

My sister told me a funny story about my nephew. He is 17 going on 18 and a senior in high school. Next year he will be starting college, I feel like I was just staring college yesterday. He is at least 6'3" 290lbs and looks more like a man than I'll ever look. Well he was feeling sick and had to do to the doctor, so my sister sent him to a pediatrican. The service was quick and very qualified and he got all the medications he needed, but he wasn't a big fan of having to blow air into happy feet. Well he will be an adult soon and have to wait 4 hours in the emergency room like everyone else. Ana tells the story better, but it made me laugh.

Wednesday I was watching tv and I saw an actress on a preview for a new series and these really random memories came to mind. I think it is inappropriate that I talk about this, but I've been in a really honest mood and it's on my mind. The actress is Angie Harmon from Law and Order fame I found out doing a quick internet search. That is her picture to the left. So, she reminds me of a girl I met in Florida, well at least this picture does. She wasn't anyone I dated or anything like that, actually she was a good friend of another friend of mine. She was down visiting from Boston and we all went out one night. She was engaged to her long time boyfriend to be married in a few months time. Well from what I know, they are married now. As a boy, you instantly know if you are attracted to a girl, but it is the learning more about who they are that determine if you fall for them or just find them attractive. I won't even get into the balancing act topic right now. Why am I even talking about this? So the point was that I was hanging out with her one night and we got to really talking. I'm a sucker for good conversation. I was kind of jealous for her boyfriend because she was a bit flirty and my Jessie's girl type of thinking was that, man if I was dating her or about to marry her I wouldn't want her to be flirting with anyone. It took a while to get past her snobby girl type defenses and actually have a real conversation with her. I didn't give her credit for being smart or thoughtful and just thought she was vain and superficial. That is what I do, assume things. Another friend that was with us, a bitch that really didn't like me (but I think she sure as hell respected me), had recently gotten breast implants and did all she could to show them off. She had a boyfriend too, but was talking and texting all kinds of guys that night. They were not very big, (the implants) but mainly due to the fact that she didn't have anything before. So pseudo Angie and I were talking about the implants and how it changed her life, and self confidence from before and after. I wondered if it was really better that now she was vain and stuck up instead of self conscious and quiet for being flat. I mean, why did she have to go to extremes, from shy to hey look at my breasts everyone as I look at you with disdain. I hate to repeat this, but they were still somewhat small, so stop imagining what you normally would think about breast implants. So back to pseudo Angie, well as she was laying out this argument, she explained how she could understand and identify how her friend felt because she had ears that popped outward when she was younger. I glanced over to look at her ears as she walked beside me, arm in arm, and they looked normal to me. She then preceded to tell me that she was made fun of growing up and that it really affected her self confidence. Then she decided to get surgery to get her ears pinned, I think that is what it is called, and that the transformation of how people treated her was dramatically different. She went from feeling odd and different to feeling attractive and garnering positive attention. My thoughts which I didn't share that night were that she probably only felt this way on the inside and that externally it probably wasn't too big of a different in how people actually treated her. This did bring her down to earth though in my interactions with her. I think when people share something personal with you, they let their guard down more. It at least seemed her her ugly duckling story instead didn't make her rude like it did to her friend, but then again I wasn't there and maybe that type of reaction wears off over time. We talked some more that night and I was good, and though I think every girl should like me (is that part of vanity?), I don't have any realistic clue what she thought about me other than that she enjoyed talking to me that night. Then I saw Angie Harmon on tv last night and that night came back to me. So why not share my thoughts on outward appearances and if they actually make a difference.

Thursday night Ericka returned to town from Dallas. Doesn't it seem like she is leaving and coming so often. I hope to see her tonight. Ericka and I are dating right now and I only have good things to say about her and the type of person she is, but a blog like this isn't the place to talk about those things since it is more important that I live my life rather than try to analyze it while it is happening. I'm sure it is clear that those thoughts are clearly missing from my almost daily recounts. There will be much time for that later and as you can tell I remember stuff going back really far.

way to be a man