I have this weird habit of buying books I’ve already read.  Usually, I get a book for free from the library, read half of it, and decide whether I like it or not.  In a lot of cases, I want to highlight things for reference, just so I can come back to them later – but I can’t if it’s a library book.  So I go to the used book store to get a deal on a book that I’ve either half read or completely read.  Plus, it’s nice to have a visual reminder of what books I may have read in any given year.  Makes me feel smarter.

And for some reason, I just love used books stores – I can’t explain it, but I just like looking at books.  I look at the bindings on the shelves and try to think of how publishers try to get their authors to stand out on the shelves amongst thousands of other titles.  Then maybe if I ever get off my ass and write a book, I’ll know how it should look to trick people into buying it – as they sure as hell won’t be buying it because of what might be written in it.  I could probably bind each one of my books with a live $100 bill and still only sell about 18 of them.  I digress.

So last week I saw a book I wanted and bought it – and I’m really enjoying it quite a bit.  But as I got near the end, I realized there was a plane boarding ticket stub jammed in the back.  It’s from a flight from Chicago O’Hare to Tokyo in July of last year.  And it’s a “Premiere Executive” first class ticket, so I figured the woman whose name is on the ticket is kind of a bigshot.  So I admit, I Googled her, and as it turns out, she’s a high ranking executive at a major health care company.  So yeah, big-time.

And I can’t explain this in any rational way – but I kind of feel like I now have some odd connection to this woman.  Just months ago, she was holding this book and reading the same words on the same page that I was.  And since it’s such a good book, I kind of almost want to know what she thought of it.  We now have a shared experience, even though we’ll never meet each other in person.

So all day, it’s been kind of puzzling me why I feel like this woman and I are connected, and I came up with the following:  In the days of everything being on computers and virtually all of our interpersonal relationships taking place online, we have fewer chances to share experiences with our friends.  I can literally go through the entire day reading only the news I want, listening to the music I want, and e-mailing the people I feel like talking to.

As a result, few people I know are fluent in the exact set of things I like to talk about.  (This generally means I have different sets of friends for different topics – I have my lefty music friends and righty politics friends.  One night the two groups bumped into each other and I thought the earth was going to fall off its axis.)  But now here’s this woman who has read the very same book that I have – a book that I’ve found deeply interesting.

Of course, this is all psycho-jibberish.  If I called this woman and tried to explain this to her, I imagine the cops would be at my house before I could hang up.  But it’s really interesting to me to think about who might have owned a book before me.  It’s even weirder when you actually figure out who that person is.  Somewhere, the very words you’re reading on that page are floating around in the head of someone else, perhaps in an entirely different context.  The lesson that can be learned here is very important:  I need some better weed.

I love my job.  I get to write pretty much whatever I want, and I get paid for it.  (The fact that I get paid in McDonald\’s Monopoly game pieces doesn\’t bother me much.)

I have, however, found the greatest writing job ever.  I want to be the guy that writes the little show descriptions for TiVo.  Specifically, I want to be the guy that writes the little show descriptions for all the nudie movies for TiVo.

Here\’s how it works – if you have DirecTV or TiVo or whatever, you can click a button to get info on a show.  Generally, what follows is a little one sentence blurb that tells you what the movie is about.  For instance, \”Saving Private Ryan\” is on tonight, and the blurb is, \”A World War II captain (Tom Hanks) and his squad (Edward Burns, Tom Sizemore) risk all to locate and send home a soldier whose three brothers died in combat.\”  Simple, to the point.

But what I didn\’t realize is that the guy who writes these little summaries actually has to write them for all the sleazy adult films, too.  And while I don\’t actually get any of these channels (Playboy, Hustler, Juicy, Fresh, Sexx, etc.) I just realized that you can view the informational blurbs on the directory.  And I haven\’t laughed this hard in a long time.

Just keep in mind what someone has to do to write one of these summaries – you have to actually watch the movie, boil the plot down in one sentence (my guess is one sentence is giving these movies WAY too much credit), and write about it in a way that is completely distinct from all the other nudie movies on these channels.  Which has to be impossible, because they\’re all the same movie, presumably.

So, to get an idea of what I mean, here are a few of these Oscar winning movies showing tonight on these various channels, with their descriptions:

Show: M.I.L.F.s in Heat 2

Description: Undersexed soccer moms (Chelsea, Victoria) are filmed getting their sexual appetites sated.

Ed. note:  What is the big MILF attraction?  How do they prove these women are mothers?  Do they bring a copy of their kids\’ birth certificates to the set to really heat things up?  And what are the chances anyone who orders this movie has ever used the word \”sated\” in a sentence?

Show: Nurseholes 2

Description: Women in white prepare for stiff injections.

Ed. Note: Some guy went to college for four years to learn to write this stuff.

Show: International Slut Cravings 9

Description: European women with amazing carnal skills showcase sex too hot for American girls.

Ed. Note: Didn\’t they settle this conflict with Europe at the Yalta conference?

Show: All Girl MILF Munch

Description: Sexy suburban housewives become friendly with each other.

Ed. Note: Again with the MILFS.  How does it make it hotter that these women have been to a hospital and given birth?  Is there a niche for men who like women that have had appendectomies?

Show: Ebony Assets Redux

Description: Black beauties (Roxy Reynolds, Ruby, Mone Divine) prepare for hard-core gonzo action.

Ed. Note: Whatever step forward Barack Obama\’s election was for race relations, this film alone just erased it.

Show: Gang Bang 6

Description: Annette Schwarz, Bobbi Starr, Joe Blow.  Two daring sluts and 19 men gather for a raunchy good time.

Ed. Note: 19?  Are they sure?  Was someone keeping count?  Is some guy only going to tune in if there are more than 18?

Show: Asian Fever Tokyo Girls

Description: Young and curious, these exotic beauties want to show American tourists a good time.

Ed. Note: Do you even bother with the subtitles on something like this?

Show: Backside Bangin\’ 7

Description: It is booty vision for some slutty beauties with serious backside bouncing.

Ed. Note: Isn\’t this the seventh installment of Lord of the Rings?

And it goes on and on from there.  Most of the other descriptions and some of the titles I can\’t even write without breaking some kind of decency law (But be sure to catch \”Ghetto Hot Chocolate\” and \”Monstrous Black Meat 2\”).

UPDATE:  The full DirecTV schedule can be seen here.  Check out channels between 594 and 600.  And yes, I am 10 years old.

Pretty much every time I\’ve ventured into the dentist\’s office for the past 30 years or so, I\’ve gotten the same speech about brushing more.  But when I went in for my cleaning today, I got the exact opposite – the hygienist told me I\’ve actually been brushing too much.

After looking at my gums, she asked me if I was an \”aggressive brusher.\”  But she said it in a way that seemed as if there were a subtext to her accusation – as if brushing your teeth vigorously was a sign of latent anger issues.  She said that my gums were very irritated and starting to recede, although there wasn\’t any sign of any periodontal disease or anything – so once again, she sharply asked me if I was an aggressive brusher: as if I\’m an angry man who wakes up every morning intent on taking out my frustration with the world on my gums.  It seemed like I was being investigated for a murder or something, with the bright light shining in my face and all.  I\’m not sure if the Constitution guarantees me the right to an attorney when being grilled by a dental hygienist.

At this point, I kind of threw my wife under the bus.  I told the hygienist that I had a toothbrush with unusually hard bristles.  She asked where I bought it.  I couldn\’t tell her the truth – that I had bought it illegally on the \”hard bristled toothbrush\” black market along with a shipment of cop killer bullets, so I told her my wife bought it for me, and I didn\’t know where.  Fortunately, I didn\’t have my hand on the Bible when I said it.  Crisis averted.

Of course, it didn\’t end there.  She went and ratted me out to the dentist, who then had to come check it out for himself.  It\’s always concerning when a doctor looks at a part of your body and acts like he (or she) sees something they\’ve never seen before.  Then he asked \”are you an unusually aggressive brusher?\”  I told him I had a brush with really hard bristles.  He glanced over at the hygienist, who shrugged, as if to say, \”I couldn\’t break him, either.\”

Finally, they gave me a brush with soft bristles and sent me on my way – but not before I punched them both out.  Shows them for accusing me of being an angry brusher.

Remember how John McCain kept saying \”I know how to get Bin Laden?\”  Now that he\’s not President, is he going to hang on to that little bit of info for the next few years?

I\’m still a little groggy from last night, so I don\’t have any long, erudite observations.  In fact, I am of two minds about the elections, and both of them are hung over.

In 2006, sensing the Democratic wave that eventually hit, I wrote this to make everyone feel better.  In sum, it says we shouldn\’t let who happens to hold any office at any given time affect our happiness.  With Barack Obama as President, it\’s not going to keep me from the joy of driving down University Avenue in Madison on a warm spring day.  It\’s not going to make frozen custard any less delicious.  And having a Democratic Assembly isn\’t going to stop me from crying during every freaking episode of \”Friday Night Lights.\”

So congratulations to the Democrats – but remember things are cyclical.  Enjoy this historic moment.  (Incidentally, I know this election was \”historic\” because all the cable news stations were telling me OVER and OVER and OVER and OVER.  Has there been any presidential election that wasn\’t historic?  Are there textbooks that have holes in their timelines during the Chester A. Arthur years?)

Finally, here\’s my column offering suggestions on how to reform the Republican Party.  I think it\’s more relevant today than ever.

Today, I showed up at my usual polling place.  Same place I have voted in every election for the last seven years.  And when I mean every election, I mean every election.  As a former campaign manager, one of the first things we did to our opponents was to look them up and see how often they voted – if they never did, that was a good talking point against them.  So I was determined never to let that happen to me – I even voted in the September primary, when there was absolutely nothing on the ballot.

So imagine my surprise when I got to the table, only to find out my name was missing from the voter list.  I had been deleted.  And I admit, I was more than a little irritated.  The poor official there tried to explain to me how my name could go missing, but I wasn\’t getting any good answers.  But I had to go over to the new registrant table and re-register, as if I had never voted before.  So, along with my name, I am certain my voter history data is gone, too.  All those years of voting, wiped away.

Now, I don\’t know how this could have happened, or who is to blame.  But I have no problem putting it on the imbeciles at the Government Accountability Board, who have demonstrated their ineptitude at managing voter lists in a spectacular way.  Whatever list they set up for cross-checking municipal voter lists managed to weed out someone who has voted in every election from the same address for seven years.  So congrats to them.  As a taxpayer, I\’ve paid $22 million for them to remove me and all my data from the rolls.

As it turns out, re-registering ended up not being that big of a deal.  But I don\’t know when our state is going to wake up and realize that when it comes to voter lists, we\’re essentially a banana republic.

This weekend, one of my lefty Facebook friends posted the following status message:

(NAME) is starting \”Free Cindy McCain\” – there\’s no way John McC reserves his anger and contempt for outside the home.

That comment received an \”lol\” from a commenter.

So with a day left before the election, this is where we are – John McCain abuses his wife.  Something tells me if I had left a message insinuating Barack Obama beats his wife Michelle, it wouldn\’t have elicited an \”lol\” from any of my friends.

Last week, I issued an empassioned post about how you shouldn\’t judge things (like the Dave Matthews Band and Wal-Mart) by how obnoxious or undesirable their supporters are.  They can\’t really help who their fans are, and it shouldn\’t color how you feel about them personally.

In that vein, I have to say that I don\’t necessarily see the world coming to an end when Obama is elected tomorrow.  He is clearly smart, composed, and able to inspire people to do things greater than themselves.  It\’s just too bad he\’s liberal – although Bill Clinton was elected with a democratic Congress, and we\’re all still alive to speak about it, so I\’m marginally optimistic.  It appears America is going to elect Obama because we want \”change.\”  Over the weekend, Dallas Cowboys fans were calling for \”change,\” and they ended up with Brooks Bollinger at quarterback.  Congrats – you got your change.  (Tying Obama to Bollinger might be more effective than tying him to Reverend Wright, given the way he played this weekend.)

Also, I\’m not an idiot, so I obviously recognize the historic importance of what we\’re about to do.  Electing a half-African American man as President isn\’t something I ever thought I\’d see in my lifetime, and it signals a great deal of progress.  (In fact, conservatives have been arguing this progress has been going on for a long time – ironically, it will take electing a liberal for people to finally realize it.)  Ironically, Obama himself represents the kind of hard work and upward mobility he claims is currently impossible in America.

The main problem I have with Obama\’s ascendance is the effect it will have on his nutty supporters.  For the left wing fringe, Obama\’s election will suddenly seem like a validation of all their crazy theories.  Take, for example, author Naomi Wolf, who believes America is undergoing a \”fascist shift.\”  Or the people who think George Bush had a hand in planning the 9/11 attacks.  Or those crazy Code Pink ladies.  Or any of the cesspool of dirtbags who post on the Democratic Underground, DailyKos, or wherever.  All of a sudden, these people will think they matter – and that the American public is 100% on board with whatever semi-lucid conspiracy theories they trot out.

If the US Senate can stay filibusterable (new word) and if Republicans can somehow retain control of the Wisconsin Assembly, the safeguards will be in place for at least a modicum of balance in government.  But there will be no limits to the newfound resolve handed to the lunatic fringe, who will expect President Obama to turn back every Bush era accomplishment (and there are few.)  One hopes that if Obama governs from the center, it will be these groups that turn on him first.

SIDE NOTE:  If it sounds like I\’m predicting an Obama win, it\’s because I am.  And if Obama loses, your house will be on fire anyway, so you\’ll have more stuff to worry about than my crappy prediction.  Seek high ground immediately.

I really enjoyed the unusually warm weather over the weekend – especially on Friday, where it almost seemed like it was still late summer.

But of course, with such strange weather, there has to be a downside – as it appears there seemed to be a mass ladybug suicide outside my office door.  There were literally thousands of ladybugs dead on the ground, and a few ready to attack you as you walked out the door.  All day while sitting at my desk, I felt paranoid about a beetle crawling in my shirt.  Then again, that may have just been the meth.

Now, I realized Obama\’s election is Biblical and all – but did he have to send the locusts so soon?  Shouldn\’t he have waited at least until Wednesday?

State Representative Leah Vukmir has invited me to do some \”live blogging\” on her website on election night.  However, I plan on doing a great deal of \”live drinking,\” so I\’m not sure how great of an idea that is.

But, assuming I\’m coherent long enough, I will probably drop in from time to time, along with Owen Robinson, James Wigderson, and others.  There\’s also an even money chance I get myself banned from the internet forever.

For parents of young kids, there\’s only one thing more troubling than your kids being loud and obnoxious – your kids being really, really quiet.  It is during these quiet moments that they are plotting how best to tie you up while you sleep.

Today, I was watching football, and noticed that my kids (5 and 3) were out on the porch and not making a peep.  I went out to check on them, to see them with construction paper, scissors and markers making something.  When asking them what they were doing, I got this reply:

\”Since you won\’t let us have a puppy dog, we\’re making one ourselves.\”

As it turns out, they were creating a puppy out of an empty Diet Coke box.  Apparently, the sea monkeys we\’re growing aren\’t providing them with the companionship they crave.  They named the dog \”Sarah.\”  My daughter claims it\’s not named after Sarah Palin, but that would be awfully coincidental, since we had a prolonged discussion about Palin just hours before this new Frankenstein puppy was created.

So, as a public service, I bring you Sarah the Diet Coke Box Puppy (complete with leash, dog tag, and paper bones):

Today, my daughter had her last fall soccer game.  Her team played against a team comprised of kids that seemed a lot younger than her.  As a result, her team would just take the ball straight down the field and score every time.  And the first few goals her team scored, they either celebrated by crawling on all fours back to the middle of the field or by doing this airplane dance where they ran around with their arms out, like they were gliding.

After watching this after about five goals, I finally had to call her over and tell her to knock it off.  I\’ve played sports my whole life, and the last thing you want to do is to be a bad sport and embarrass the other team – especially when they\’re all four year olds.  At some point, some adult had to show them how to celebrate like they\’re playing for Brazil in the World Cup or something.  But, of course, I looked like the bad guy for trying to teach them how to win with class.  Just makes you wonder what ideas other adults are filling my kids\’ heads with.

For some reason, my son has been going up to everyone he sees, asking them if they want to see him hop on one leg.  He hasn\’t been turned down yet, and his one leg hopping is a real crowd pleaser.  It\’s nice to see that he has his college pickup lines already as part of his arsenal.  Think about it – go up to a girl in a bar and ask her if she would like to see you hop on one leg.  Who is going to turn you down?  I just wish I had my son\’s lines to use when I was a single guy.  But if I had lines that potent, he\’d have a few more unwelcome brothers and sisters.

It still amazes me how SHOCKED people are when they see negative ads on TV or in their mailbox.  It\’s as if two years ago never even existed.  I actually chuckle when people mention how negative this presidential campaign has been – actually, I\’d argue to the death that the Bush/Kerry election of \’04 was infinitely more toxic than this one.  That may have been simply because each candidate was far more polarizing than McCain or Obama.

In any event, my little exercise of a couple days ago was intended to show how little these negative ads actually adhere to facts.  Jim Doyle proposes increasing a drug copay from $1 to $3, a Republican goes along with it in a budget of 1,000 other items, and it turns into \”so-and-so voted to triple health care costs for working families.\”  The lesson here for candidates is simple – they\’re going to go negative on you for something.  It\’s just a matter of what they pick.

This got me thinking – maybe it\’s time to re-evaluate my life based on what someone could say about me in a negative political ad.  This might be a good time to take stock of your relative strengths and weaknesses.  Let\’s say, for the purpose of argument only, that I decided to run against Russ Feingold in 2010.  (This would never happen, as I would be assassinated on the campaign trail – by my wife.)  What skeletons do I have that he could pull out of my closet?  So, as an exercise, I tried to come up with some sample ads that Feingold could run against me – despite my never having cast a vote for anything in my life.

So, here are some negative ads that I think would be pretty effective against me:

\”Christian Schneider sided with George Bush over 90% of the time.\”

I actually get a lot of mileage out of telling my friends that I voted against Bush in 2000.  I was one of maybe 4 people in Madison Ward 60 who voted for Alan Keyes, which might actually be more embarrassing than voting for Bush, in retrospect.  Actually, I doubt Bush will be much of a factor in the elections of 2010, as we\’ll all be busy fighting the machines then, anyway.

Also, I admit that I voted for Feingold in 1992 – mostly because I was high a lot then.  Somehow, I don\’t think this fact would be an effective counter-argument against Feingold on either count.

\”Christian Schneider is anti-environment\”

Not true – I have led the way in reforming how long receipts should be – there\’s absolutely no reason I need a three foot receipt when I go to Best Buy.  This could be the environmental issue of our lifetimes.  Furthermore, as my wife will gladly point out, I generally wait waaaaaaaay too long to mow the lawn.  But I\’m merely thinking globally and acting lazily.  Don\’t say I\’m not willing to go green – I recycle jokes all the time.  Wah-wah.

I suppose out there somewhere is a picture of me drinking water out of a water bottle, something the environmentalists in Madison are trying to ban.  But rest assured – it was most likely a gin and tonic.  The earth is still safe.

\”Christian Schneider is against equal pay for equal work for women.\”

At a bachelor party once (a very, very long time ago, honey,) I paid $30 for a lap dance.  Think I\’d be able to get that kind of money for dancing on a table nude?  I rest my case.

\”Christian Schneider thinks big oil should get big tax breaks.\”

Is it somehow still debateable that the more you tax something, the more expensive it gets?  People still actually have to defend this in public?  Yes – I would like cheaper gas, so I think we shouldn\’t tax it as much. I also support big tax breaks for waffle houses because, boy, do I enjoy a good pancake.

Christian Schneider once had so many parking tickets in college, he had to sign the title to his car over to the parking police, since the value of his tickets was more than the value of his car:

True.  Although the car had a bumper sticker that said \”A Grouchy German is a Sour Kraut,\” which raised its humor value by at least 30 cents.

\”Christian Schneider once had credit so poor, no bank would even give him a checking account.\”

Also true.  As a freshman in college, I pretty much set fire to my credit rating by writing bad checks.  But this turned out to be a blessing because it: A) Allowed me to eat, and B) Guaranteed I wouldn\’t be able to get a credit card during college.  Which was great, because I graduated credit card debt-free, by necessity.

I would recommend this strategy to anyone entering college.  And by the way, writing bad checks would make me an ideal member of Congress.  Get my seat ready now.

\”Christian Schneider Once Flunked a Political Science Course in College.\”

Okay, this one hurts – but like Obama\’s cocaine use, I have to get this one out now, so nobody cares in two years.  (By the way, given Obama\’s popularity, I should probably manufacture some evidence that I actually snorted coke with him – it can only help.)  First of all, that class was way too early in the morning.  Secondly, there was a rule that you can have it stricken from your GPA, so I just stopped going after a few classes.  Thirdly, at that point, I had yet to sample the wonders of womanhood – so do you really think I was concentrating on stupid government stuff?  I rest my case, your honor.

\”Christian Schneider once broke up with a girl because she kept grabbing his remote control and changing the TV to \”Party of Five.\”

True.

\”Christian Schneider\’s acquaintances are lowlifes and scumbags.\”

This is mostly true.  But at least they\’re entertainingly so.  And as bad as they are, they\’ve likely got a higher public favorability rating than Feingold\’s associates –  in the U.S. Senate.  OH SNAP!

\”Christian Schneider once walked right past a blind date, pretended he didn\’t see her, and ran for his car.\”

The fact that she mentioned on the phone that she was her high school\’s shot put record holder should have been a clue, in retrospect.

\”Christian Schneider once went on statewide TV looking like this:\”

AHA!  It\’s trap! Sorry, Russ – you are now facing a furious backlash.  I just picked up every vote north of Beaver Dam.  Also, the mere sight of my virile mustache impregnated a good portion of the female electorate.  I\’ll have to raise Obama-type money just to pay off my child support.

\”What is Christian Schneider hiding?\”

Fat.  That\’s why I wear sweater vests.

Finally, I think it goes without saying that all my past blogging would be a gold mine in negative info about me.  Trust me, it makes me cringe to go back and read a lot of it, too.  Although buried in that blog is a lot of breaking news about Senator Feingold, too.  So he better watch his back.

In any event, this goes to show that literally any ad can be run against any candidate – whether it\’s true or not.  Just be ready to go on offense yourself.  But this was cathartic.  Now I think I can take on anything coming my way.  I will just be prepared to answer any charge with a promise of free pancakes.

Last night, I just happened to flip by \”HDNet,\” which I believe is a network only available on DirecTV.  Needless to say, I don\’t watch it very often.  But it just happened to be showing a concert by the now-nearly-forgotten Dave Matthews, along with his sidekick Tim Reynolds.

It\’s easy to forget this, but a decade ago, the Dave Matthews Band was the singular biggest force in music.  People will likely look back at the late \’90s as the Dave Matthews Era, much as they consider the early \’80s the \”Michael Jackson era\” or the early \’90s as the \”grunge era.\” (The late \’90s also featured a resurgence of boy bands like N\’Sync and the Backstreet Boys, which will also be a large footnote to the era.)  At a time when the internet was fracturing musical tastes into neat little categories, Dave Matthews seemed to be the one act that could still sell out stadiums across the U.S.

Yet despite all of Matthews\’ success, he actually had a big problem: he was too successful.  To the music cognoscenti, he committed the mortal sin of having the wrong kind of fans.  While he made damn good music and was a stellar guitar player, he attracted frat guys with carefully ripped hats and beaded necklaces.  He sold thousands of tickets to high school girls in halter tops and birkenstocks.  Many of these kids needed a band to follow around and smoke pot to after the demise of the Grateful Dead and Phish.

But many \”cultured\” music fans led the backlash against Matthews, charging he made music for dopey frat kids.  Again, this criticism stems not from the actual music Matthews made, but more towards the people who enjoyed it.  Had Dave Matthews never emerged from the Virginia club scene, music critics would have been falling over themselves to praise what an original, quirky band they were.  But once they started selling out venues, the criticisms became inevitable.

And now, those kids have grown up – as was evident from the concert that was on last night (which, I presume was filmed fairly recently.)  Yes, it appears that most of these people are still dopes.  I\’m not sure I could sit through a show where two balding guys high-five each other and hug every time a song they recognize starts.  Most crowd shots displayed women in their mid-20\’s screaming the lyrics at the top of their lungs while in some kind of transcendent musical coma.  But to these people, the music really means something.  And that can\’t be discounted.

As I thought more about it, music really isn\’t the only place where we judge entities based on their clientele.  Take Wal-Mart for example.  If you told the mayor of a squalor-ridden inner city that you were going to drop a store in the heart of downtown that employed hundreds of people and sold goods to poor people for really cheap prices, he\’d probably propose to you.  Yet many (mostly wealthy, white) people fight Wal-Mart with all their being.  Why?  For the same reason the \”smart\” people don\’t like Dave Matthews – they don\’t like their customers.

Despite all the drummed-up rhetoric about Wal-Mart paying their employees nothing and working them to death, the fact remains that these people continue to work there.  This argument is simply a chimera, meant to mask the real reason suburbanites don\’t like Wal-Mart: they don\’t want Wal-Mart\’s customers in their neighborhoods.  Walk into any Wal-Mart one of these days, and you see people taking advantage of low prices.  And you know who these people are?  Here\’s a hint: they\’re not wealthy white people.  Many of them are blacks and Latinos of modest means – translation: not the kind of people most suburbanites want to attract.

So while Wal-Mart should be commended for ensuring people on the lower end of the economic scale can have access to the diapers and medicine they need, they are generally reviled.  Not because of the store itself, but because of who shops there.  As such, Wal-Mart is the victim of the Dave Matthews Effect.

In fairness, I have to admit when I\’m guilty of such snobbery.  I still have yet to see the appeal of NASCAR and modern country music.  But that\’s not so much because of the people that enjoy it than it is because, in order: 1.  Watching cars take a left turn for two hours is boring, and 2.  The music is generally legitimately terrible.

SIDE NOTE:  Back to Wal-Mart:  Think about Barack Obama\’s tax plan: he plans on giving tax credits to \”95% of working people.\”  Actually, he\’s just handing out checks to the 40% of Americans who don\’t make enough money to pay taxes.  But here, in Wal-Mart, you actually have a business providing actual relief to these same people, through lower prices.  In practice, Wal-Mart is the same type of tax relief Obama\’s looking for.  But, apparently, in order for a tax benefit to be considered legitimate, it has to come out of the hide of someone else.

Also, I took my kids to the cheap theater to see WALL-E this weekend.  The message of the movie is clear: if stores like Wal-Mart are allowed to multiply, the world will be unliveable, forcing humans into space, where they will all be fat, lazy, and incapable of original thought.  It\’s ironic, since I\’ve actually been thinking a lot lately that that\’s exactly where our government is headed – government health care removes any responsibility for humans to take control of their own health.  Excessive government regulation eliminates the incentive for innovation and individuality.  Basically, the larger government grows, the more incapable citizens will be of fully developing their full senses of self.  If you accept that the nightmare scenario envisioned by WALL-E is going to come true, it will be excessive government regulation that makes us all infants, not bargain hunting.

There are plenty of reasons I should just be done with Facebook – not the least of which is the fact that I have succumbed to its time wasting gravitational pull.  By the time I\’m done playing Facebook poker, checking up on how fat my friends from high school are, and combing through the pithy status messages, full hours of my life can vanish, never to return.

So it seems somewhat strange that such a little thing soured me on Facebook so quickly tonight.  I have a \”friend\” on here that I actually don\’t really know that well.  But among the dozens of new \”updates\” I get from people I know, this little tidbit was tucked in there: her relationship with her boyfriend has just ended.  And how do I know?  I saw this:

And there it is.  It\’s just over.

It just seems so impersonal, so cold.  Relationships are complicated things – sometimes we can\’t believe how in love we are, and sometimes staying together seems less plausible than pulling a train car with your teeth.  But the gut-wrenching end of a relationship is now represented by a few pixels on my computer screen in the form of a broken heart.  Is this really how we express our feelings now?  This is what we\’ve become?

I tried to think of hypothetical scenarios in this relationship that probably occurred.  There was probably the time where they drank and laughed together at the UW Union, when they both knew that they were meant for each other.  But then there was the visit from her old high school boyfriend that caused them to argue.  But then they probably went to her friend\’s wedding, soaked in the spirit of couplehood, and everything was forgiven.

But there it is – the broken heart icon.  And now it\’s all gone.  Because Facebook tells me so.  And just like that, it\’s time to move on.  A clean break has been made.  All the good times, all the bad times – boiled down to an icon, buried in a hundred news feed articles about how crazy it was that girls used so much hairspray in high school.

Pretty soon, you\’ll see Facebook news articles like this:

Christian Schneider just found out he has three weeks to live!

Christian Schneider just found out the U.S. is under nuclear attack from Iran!