Dear internet: Ron Paul is not the messiah, nor is he the great satan. I'm so sick of all the hyperbole surrounding this guy. I voted for Harry Browne in the general election of 2000, so I'm no stranger to Libertarian principles, but I really wish these guys would tone down their rhetoric a little bit if they're going to be running for President. I'm not asking Libertarian candidates to sell out or become moderates, but you can't go around preaching "deregulate EVERYTHING" and expect to get elected in this day and age. We already tried having zero regulations, and a percentage of children in this country were working 70-hour weeks in sweatshop-like conditions (yes, I'm making a 150-year-old reference). On the other side of the coin, if you profess to be "afraid" of what Ron Paul's more extreme viewpoints might do to this country, you have to realize that the President does not get whatever they want. Obama's presidency thus far has highlighted this point. If you want to do something that is considered extreme by mainstream America, congress will not pass it. It's that simple.

This guy should be celebrated for bringing a lot of formerly-unspoken issues to the foreground. He should be celebrated for having integrity and making every decision based upon principle, not funding or popularity or political expediency. I really like Ron Paul, but everyone needs to calm down. It's been obvious from the start that he is not electable. He makes Obama look moderate, for starters. His age is also a factor. If given the opportunity, I'm going to vote for him in the Virginia primaries, but not because I think he's going to save our country. It's because I want him to stick around and have his viewpoint heard in the debates. It's because I want to be one of the millions of people sending a message that political expediency does not help me the citizen, but only the politicians. The fact that the media has done their best to ignore Ron Paul--to sweep his candidacy under the rug--says to me that he's doing something right. The people don't want more of the same. In fact we are growing more tired of it every day. I may not agree with all of his viewpoints, but I celebrate the fact that someone truly different is able to make a splash.

(We now return to your regularly-scheduled program).

I'm pretty tired of everyone "villainizing" sports stars that don't deserve it. I understand that everything is supposed to be much more exciting with "good guys" and "bad guys," and I sort of agree with that. It's just that people are constantly barking up the wrong tree. I'm not a LeBron James fan, but I don't get why he has been so demonized. He took a pay cut to go to a team where he thought he could win championships. I thought this is what athletes were supposed to do--chase your legacy instead of a paycheck (I'm talking to you, Albert Pujols). And somehow, even after doing this, he still has the stigma of "Damn that LeBron just playing for money when everyone else is playing to save the dolphins." How did this happen?

That being said, I don't ever root for the Miami Heat, but it's not because of some hatred for LeBron James. It's because you're not supposed to root for teams that don't know what it is like to be the underdog. New York Yankees. New England Patriots. Roger Federer a couple years back.

Now the same thing is happening with Tim Tebow but for different reasons. In reference to Tebow's recent playoff win, Charles Barkley said, "the national nightmare continues." Can someone explain to me how this is a national nightmare? You've got a nice kid who displays more class than almost anyone in sports. All of the experts said he wasn't going to be able to compete at the professional level, and now he's having success against all odds. Isn't this the kind of story that makes sports great? This is like a sports movie with a happy ending.. only it's a true story! A national nightmare? Why don't people say that when Ray Lewis wins?

I could go on for quite a bit more with this theme, but I see no need to. I've made my point.

Checking back through this blog's archives, I see that Stephen slept through the night from the age of 3 or 4 months, with very few exceptions. Henry is now seven and a half months old, and he never sleeps through the night, with very few exceptions. He completely sucks at sleeping and napping. It's terrible. We sort of knew how spoiled we were with Stephen, but we couldn't really comprehend it because we had never experienced the other side of it for ourselves. Well, now we know what it's like to be the parent of a mortal, less-than-angelic child in regards to sleep. It's terrible. Who wants to wake up every single night for the better part of a year? What's the point of that? When does it stop?

In addition to that, Henry is generally terrible at napping. At Henry's current age, Stephen was sleeping ten hours a night and taking two naps a day totaling 3-5 hours. Henry maybe takes 2 hours of naps in a day. One positive is that I can synchronize Henry with Stephen's once-a-day nap schedule and get some time to myself in the middle of the day (12-2pm maybe). Recently I use this time to make an attempt at napping myself, which is completely wasteful and stupid of me.

Well, football is back, which means I have self-imposed sleep deprivation a couple nights a week. It also means I drink a lot more beer, like a good American. Stupid. I was doing so well, too.

I think I'm going to attempt to not drink any soda--diet or otherwise--for the entirety of 2012. Soda is about as useless as the NFL, so I don't know why this should be hard. I've done well with my 2011 goal, which was to not use any tobacco product of any kind. This included bumming single cigarettes off people or using Steve's snus. I've stuck to it 100%, so it will most likely become permanent. I remember my parents having a conversation with each other when I was younger that New Years resolutions are pointless because one can make positive changes to their lives any day of the year. I have often repeated this cynical notion for most of my life, but I eventually realized that it doesn't really make sense. You can buy your wife a dozen roses any day of the year too, but you do it on Valentine's Day because it is the day that you show your love for someone. There are certain days to do certain things; we can't all do everything on every day. Anything that prompts you to do something beneficial for yourself is, well, a good thing, obviously. I had a couple other ideas of things to do for 2012 but none come to mind at the moment. How about not impregnating my wife? We'll save that for 2013, hopefully. That's a good goal.

Recently I've come to see the importance of abstaining from things. I don't think we should have everything that we want simply because we can. It's important to have rules to live by--things to make us stop and think about the things that we are doing. I made a conscious effort to take six months off from making music in order to get my motivation back. I still have over two months left on that, and I've done somewhat well. I haven't opened Buzz (software) in any of this time. I've done some other things to ensure that I don't get completely out of practice. I used some stretching software to slow some earsauce songs down by a factor of 5-10 times. I took my favorites from that project and am putting together a sort of "aside" album of free music. I should be done with that this weekend.

Anyway, that's enough stream-of-conscious rambling for now. I just figured I needed some text on here to break up the constant barrage of pictures and videos.

I try not to live my life in fear. Different people would have you be afraid of different things. Nancy Grace wants you to be afraid of anyone who may ever come in contact with your children in any way. Dr. Oz wants you to be afraid of apple juice and energy drinks. Hank Williams Jr. wants you to be afraid of our democratically-elected president. Jenny McCarthy wants you to be afraid of vaccinations. Alex Jones wants you to be afraid of.... well, everything. That list could go on and on, as you well know. Some people literally think that everyone is trying to hack their Wi-Fi network, kidnap their children, and riddle any car with bullets as soon as someone shows disapproval of their driving. That's fine (I suppose), but it's also fine if I choose to ignore those people and live my life.

The problem is that this thinking affects me even if I choose not to buy into it. Being a thirty-something-white-male puts me in the category of "strangers that people avoid." For instance, I can't offer to help a middle school kid carry something heavy into their house. I can't offer to give a couple of women a jump if their car won't start unless there are 30 witnesses present. Women love to say that chivalry is dead, but what has really happened is that any man who offers to help a woman is "creepy" and any man who even speaks to a child he doesn't know is a "pervert." The result is that my only option is to sit by and let people suffer unless the person in need is a man similar to me in both age and stature.

But it's different when dealing with your children. Now I have to try to strike a balance between choosing not to live in fear and being a "bad parent." [If you ever wonder what it takes to be a bad parent, just think of all the things that made someone a good parent 30 years ago.] Even 15-20 years ago, most parents did not know where their kids were for a few hours a day. In the summer, I would get on my bike and I'd be gone. No cell phones. No GPS. No chip implanted in my skull. You can't do that anymore. There is a very specific chain of custody with your children that is arranged with cell phones, background checks, and bodyguards.

Clearly I jest... but to what extent? Bill Burr jokes that "anything they're doing to your dog now, they're going to be doing to you in ten years." This is a reference to the tracking microchip implanted in most dogs. Is too much safety really a bad thing? Is there such a thing as too much safety?

[Without getting too much into politics,] I for one would rather err on the side of freedom than on the side of safety. I don't fear terrorists as much as I fear having my phone tapped by my own government. I value the freedom I had as a child. I could venture deep into the woods across the street from my parents' house, far from the eyes of any authority. And what did I do with this freedom? I caught crayfish in the stream. I cleared out bike trails with a baseball bat and a rake. I climbed up the bank of the river, grabbing on to exposed roots, pretending it was a massive cliff.

This is why I'm looking for a house with a significant amount of land. I want my children to experience some of that freedom that is oh-so-hard to come by these days. I want to be able to send my kids outside to play without it being a death sentence of boredom and drudgery in a fenced-in area the size of a tennis court. Due to a nearly-collapsed housing market, it appears that my wife and I can afford our dream home at the age of thirty. For this we are grateful.

Maybe I'm projecting my desires onto my children. They will probably care little about how I grew up, just as when I was young I cared little about how my parents grew up. But it's worth a shot, and it's hard to have a love of the outdoors when you hardly have any room to breathe.

Life is good, and I have nothing but thanks for this opportunity. [I am, on the other hand, already upset by the rapid-fire emails from the realtor and my wife reading the stats out loud all night of every house within 100 miles.]

With the exception of a few daily tantrums, the "terrible twos" are not terrible at all. At least now Stephen knows how to be good. He is more helpful every day; he can put all the clean silverware in the dishwasher away by himself. He can go into the basement and get me more blankets for Henry. He uses the laptops in a nice way (for the most part). He can watch whatever YouTube videos he wants. He can make a video full screen, pause it, and do all of that stuff. On Jaime's laptop, he nicely types gibberish into her sticky notes program. He loves to hold down letters while he says what letter it is. EEEEEEEEEEEEE.

When you're having a child, everyone loves to warn you about all the perils. The same thing happens when you're having your second child. Horror stories about someone's child hating their new baby sibling are everywhere, and you suddenly find yourself unable to escape them. I will say that Stephen has been nothing but nice to Henry. He likes to sit with him and watch TV and wipe his drool with a blanket. He makes noises and faces at the baby to make him smile. He lays on the floor next to him and pushes me away if I try to join in.

Henry obviously needs a lot of attention, and most of the time I'm the only one around. Stephen has taken to going upstairs and playing/reading in his room by himself for about an hour every day. He "reads" his books one by one, page by page, and puts them in a neat stack on the floor. Then he puts all of the books back on the shelf. Sometimes I go up to check on him and ask if he wants me to read him any books. "No," he replies. On one hand I feel bad that he's not getting as much attention as he used to, but on the other hand, he is learning at a young age that the world does not in fact revolve around him. And he is dealing quite well with it.

This multiple children thing is going to be a lot more fun for everyone, I think. Stephen already has a new friend and I have someone else to entertain the baby. People that don't have children are worried that having a baby will ruin their lives. To that I say, yes, your old life goes bye-bye when you have a kid (and even more so when you have more than one kid), but it gets replaced by a new life that is much better. What was so great about my old life, anyway? I could go to bars and pretend I was still 22? I could waste endless amounts of time on the computer? When people talk about "how hard it is" to have kids, I think they are really talking about how hard it is for them to let go of their pre-baby life.

It's getting to the point where no matter what you believe, the arguments that support your ideals are based partly on lies. There is probably nothing wrong with your ideals, it's just that all of the typical arguments in favor of them have turned to sensationalism and laziness. Liberals were mad at G.W. Bush for driving up the national debt ($4.8 trillion) and starting wars. Conservatives are mad at Obama for driving up the national debt ($4 trillion in three years) and starting wars. It seems the only difference in the political parties is how exactly they choose to mismanage the taxpayers' money. One side spends it on entitlements, the other on unpaid-for tax cuts. There are very few differences in the parties' handling of 95% of the issues, yet they are somehow pitted against each other based on sensationalist arguments. Even if you are just a regular, rational conservative or liberal, the people on TV making the arguments in your defense are all crazy!

While G.W. Bush was in office, the debt ceiling was raised seven times. This prompted much anger from liberals, namely Senator Barack Obama.

The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the US Government can not pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our government's reckless fiscal policies. Increasing America's debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that, "the buck stops here.' Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.
-– Senator Barack H. Obama, March 2006

Ouch. The pot calling the kettle.... nevermind. So now that we have reached our debt ceiling (read: debt target) once again, Democrats act like it is a foregone conclusion, that raising the debt limit is no big deal, and that anyone who is upset about it simply doesn't understand macro economics. The Republicans, on the other hand, talk about the increases in spending under the Obama administration, while completely ignoring the fact that the government grew by leaps and bounds under G.W. Bush even as he actively lowered the government's revenue stream. I'm not against cutting taxes, but cutting taxes while raising spending is clearly a recipe for increasing the national debt. People always talk about the national debt placing a burden on future generations, but there are many current-day problems with getting the nation into debt. It is largely responsible for the devaluation of our currency because we are in essence printing more money to cover our debts.

Does it even matter who you vote for anymore?

The NFL network had a countdown of the "100 greatest NFL players of all time" last night. Jerry Rice took the #1 spot. I think this is a good choice. Jerry Rice led his team in catches even at age 40 (though he was playing for the lowly Raiders at that time).

Their list has Jim Brown at number two. I think Jim Brown is slightly overrated because his success had a lot of implications for race relations in America (his contributions off the field were also very important). For instance, Barry Sanders had comparable accomplishments, and they rate him #17 on the NFL list. Their careers were the same length and Barry Sanders had 3,000 more yards than Jim Brown with only 7 fewer touchdowns.

Anyway, here is the official list at NFL.com. Above the list, you can click FAN RANK and see how "the public" voted. The fan-voted version has Barry Sanders (my childhood athlete-hero) at #4.

I could write a very, very long post about yesterday, as it was a huge and memorable event. The national mall was completely full, shoulder-to-shoulder with people from the capitol building to the Washington Monument. There were enough people there (initial estimates are 215,000) to completely shut down all traffic on the roads during and after the rally. We were standing so close together that I couldn't use my camera, take off my jacket, or see my feet. There were about a dozen surprise musical guests. I got to see Cat Stevens sing my favorite song of his. But I'm more interested in briefly discussing the purpose of the rally, and why people were drawn to it.

In the small amount of news coverage leading up to this event, it was billed as a liberal rally hosted by Jon Stewart. It was announced in response to the tea party rally that occurred in September, but it was not a liberal rally. The tag line was "Take it down a notch... for America" and the intent was to tone down all of the extremist rhetoric that is present in typical rallies. If you think about it, most every rally/march in DC represents extremists in some way or another. Signs that say Bush is a Fascist (anti-war rally) or signs comparing Obama to Stalin (tea party rally). These viewpoints do not represent the whole of America. This was a rally for the rest of us... because, why not? Why should the crazies be the only ones to march in DC? This event instead promoted togetherness and cordiality, and I felt that everyone who attended did a very good job of representing that.

Signs were a big part of the event; people were encouraged to bring "signs that show your rationality and civility." Memorable signs included Agree to Disagree | Give Peas a Chance | I disagree with you, but I'm pretty sure you're not Hitler | No major complaints here! (thanks for reading) | DON'T SHOUT (it's bad for your throat) | Speak Softly and Carry a Big Schtick. <---my favorite

The message was not "apathy." People don't turn out in droves from across the country to demonstrate apathy. The message was that we're all trying to make our country better, and blaming the people you disagree with for "ruining the country" is not helping anything. This is something I can get behind, and yesterday I found out that there are many more people like me--too many for Washington DC to handle! When I was driving towards DC, I started seeing all of these cars with faraway license plates (Texas, Illinois, Deleware, Ohio, Iowa) just packed full of people. At this point, I started believing the hype about the rally. I had to skip the first couple of metro stations because there was no parking left and the traffic was backed up onto the interstate. By the time I got settled down about 1/3 towards the front at the national mall (an hour and a half later), I was surrounded by people from Florida, Mississippi, Texas, and Delaware. I couldn't believe it. It felt like we were sending a message that might actually have an impact on our culture. It wasn't a gathering of like-minded people; instead it was a gathering to show that we are all like-minded in all of the most important ways. We all love our country. We all agree on 95% of the issues... but the other 5% of issues are magnified until we can only see our differences.

When there is an event that is so large, there are bound to be a lot of negative aspects. It took me ten hours to attend a 3-hour event, and I was traveling alone! Even for DC, that is not typical at all. The metro was completely unprepared for the event, and riding it in either direction was more than a little bit scary. Every metro train that came by was already full, and people were getting frustrated and even angry. Some were trying to force their way on while others were forcing them back off and yelling at them ("There are kids in here and this is a very dangerous situation!"). After the rally ended, crowds started moving all in different directions. I headed up towards Pennsylvania Avenue and it took over two blocks before there was some breathing room in between people. This was a massive and diverse turnout. I still can't even believe it. A sea of people in every direction, and each and every person was my friend, if even for a moment.

Though we don't like to admit it, our lives are mostly shaped by accidents and not by our intentions. I was always surrounded by music, but I never had any interest in music until I was grounded (made to stay home and not allowed to use my own computer) for most of December 1996. (I'm not trying to paint a picture of abuse here; it was my fault). I downloaded a copy of Scream Tracker on my parents' computer (loophole) and spent most of the month writing my first song, which I still have. At the time I didn't play any instruments or understand anything about music. My father gave me a crash course in music theory--showing me the Cmaj key--on the piano at my request. Of course I didn't know at the time that it would change my life so drastically.

I never had any interest in taking photographs until I was about 21. My cousin gave me his Chameleon Largon Mega digital camera that came with his new dell. This was a completely trifling 1mp camera with fixed focal length and fixed focal distance. BUT, it was compact (smaller than a modern iPhone) and completely portable--great for a college student that used a bicycle to get around. I played with that camera for about four years, and I have only owned two cameras since then. Now I am fortunate enough to own "the super camera," and there are very few cameras on the market that I would rather own (with outlandish pricetags much higher than my Canon 40D).

Through a bizarre twist of fate and some longtime friendships of my Grandparents', I found out about an acquaintance of mine that was in need of a roommate where I was going to college. It turned out to be an excellent roommate situation, and our two years living together had a lasting, positive effect on both of us. We spent six months showing each other all of our favorite movies and music, but after that, our interests sort of merged into one. We both got heavily into American Folk Music and finding/collecting bizarre records. I taught him to use buzz and we collaborated on a lot of ambient music. That list could go on and on. We had no internet (not even dialup) and no tv (not even an antenna) for two years that we lived together, so we had very little outside influence.

I met my wife while playing L.O.R.D. via telnet in 2000. She was attending Virginia Tech at the time and I was living with my parents in Georgia. Our relationship slowly grew over AIM, until I was visiting her with more and more frequency and she moved in with me in Georgia for a year. This was all because I messaged her within L.O.R.D. and told her to stop killing my cousin, haha.

That rounds up a lot of the important things in my life, and they were all the result of accidents. My marriage and my son, however, were not the result of accidents =]

Sometime in the first half of April, I made the decision to stop eating beef and pork. More generally, I stopped eating mammals. I had been mulling over the idea for a few years ever since the first time I had heard of pesco-pollo vegetarianism from my highschool buddy Josh. Some of the rationale is that it's a healthier form of vegetarianism, but it still saves mammals, our closest relatives, from being raised purely for slaughter. So far I am enjoying it. It makes me feel like an adult, to be making my own decisions about the food that I eat. It makes me do a little bit of research about basic nutrition in order to find out ways to get the complete proteins I am missing. It only took one small step to start me thinking about the ingredients of everything that I eat, which was nearly unheard of before. That thought process was nonexistent for me.

Pescetarianism is sometimes an intentional stepping-stone to full vegetarianism or veganism, but I do not see myself taking those steps. We shall see. Soy bean and fish are a couple of easy ways to get complete proteins without eating mammals. Beyond that, it gets more complicated. So in response to that, I have been trying to acquire a taste for fish. I just ordered the tilapia and crab at Outback Steakhouse tonight, and it was very good. I got some frozen salmon burgers and breaded flounder today, too. Still waiting to try those out.

It is widely known that babies are extremely needy when they are first born. They have no desires of their own, only needs for survival. In other words, newborns do not want anything that they do not absolutely need. For Stephen, this is changing. He has been able to walk around and cause destruction for a little while now, and his curiosity has been piqued about every little thing.

More recently, however, his attitude has changed. He can finally hold a thought in his head for longer than ten seconds, so he is constantly thinking about what he'd rather be doing--that thing you just prevented him from doing 30 seconds ago. Overnight our house has been converted into tantrum city. With little to no provocation, the child just throws his head straight back into the floor (with a bit thud), starts kicking his legs and screaming until his whole head is red. Tonight he even screamed and threw a fit at the restaurant, which he has never ever done in public.

My wife and I just kind of looked at each other and said "Our time has finally come. We knew it couldn't last forever." We keep hoping it's a [short] phase and maybe he's unhappy about some teeth coming in, but it's probably a longer phase and due to the fact that our son is no longer an infant. Stephen was a really good newborn and infant because he was good at the things that a lot of babies have trouble with: eating and sleeping. But now we have moved on from those being the main issues. Now our child is old enough and willful enough to act completely bratty--and intentionally so.

The battle of wills has already begun. When I am trying to put him to bed, he goes through a couple of phases to try to get out of it. First, he just tries a brute force escape tactic while he's drinking his bottle. When that doesn't work, he turns to flattery. Oh, Dad. You are so funny that I can't help but laugh every time you look at me. (Try preventing a smile during that: not easy). Then, as he starts to wind down, he starts pulling my fingers off the bottle one at a time, as if he is going to be able to loosen my grip and get the bottle out of his mouth. Eventually I always win. Part of my job is to be stubborn, and I am overqualified in that area.