34 years today, I sprung forth from my mother\’s womb to unleash my dazzling array of sweater vests on the world. Unfortunately, as the saying goes, \”old age only brings more things to shave.\”

34 isn\’t that old in the grand scheme of life, but it can be said that I\’m now \”middle age.\” I enjoy how we refer to 60 year olds as \”middle age.\” Do you know anyone that\’s 120? Any non-turtles, that is?

Today gives me the chance to think back and reflect on my birth. Knowing the hurt and pain that today\’s world offers, I may have decided to stay in the womb for a more extended period of time. I mean, who is some \”doctor\” to serve me with an eviction notice? On the other hand, I really like waffles, and those are difficult to get in utero. So maybe I made the right decision.

Actually, I got lucky – I narrowly missed being a female by one measly chromosome. There\’s nothing wrong with being a girl, but it would cause problems for me – as I would sit at home all day looking at myself in the mirror without clothes. To hell with a job.

Early in life, there are all sorts of age milestones to look forward to. At 16, you can drive. At 21, you can drink. At 18, you can vote. At 23, you get to see your first naked woman. (Wait…that\’s not the law?) And from what I have learned, at 35 you can legally drive without wearing any pants. So attention Wendy\’s drive-through workers: consider yourself warned. 365 days.

Maybe I shouldn\’t feel so bad about being old. As they say in Hollywood, 34 is now the new 33. Plus, I\’d be the oldest living male in inner city Milwaukee, so there\’s that. And I\’ve managed to father two beautiful children who, in the event of my death, would immediately spend their inheritance on hypnosis to forget that I ever existed.

But let\’s be serious here – my life has passed me by, and I\’m pretty much just running out the clock at this point. I may just quit my job, sit home, and wait to die.

Today, Charlie Sykes cites a USA Today article about helicopter parents choosing professions for their children:

As Generation Y enters the job force, parents of new hires are calling employers to negotiate salary and benefits, and some are even showing up at job fairs.

Here\’s my question:

I would imagine the children of Generation Y will be Generation Z. Once we get past that, do we go all the way back to Generation A? Or do we start doubling up, and make it Generation AA? And if that\’s the case, won\’t there eventually be a Generation XXX? Because that sounds like something I would want to be a part of.

Twice a week, I play basketball before work with a bunch of guys that I\’ve known for a while. Seeing as we\’re mostly old guys, some of us pull a hamstring if we even imagine running faster than a jog.

Two weeks ago, we had a guy fall to the floor and start grabbing his ankle. After about two minutes of staring at each other in silence, someone finally asked him, \”Uhhh… you all right?\”

Fast forward to last week, when we were joined by the girl that sometimes shows up to play. Without getting myself into trouble, I can diplomatically say that she\’s better to look at than any of us old fat guys. Anyway, halfway through one of the games, she sprains her ankle and drops to the ground. And seriously – you would have thought it was the Kennedy assassination.

Immediately, there were four guys helping her up and encouraging her. Guys were sprinting to the locker room to be the first one to get her ice. Backrubs were offered. Grown men wept openly.

I am 100% certain that if I injured myself, the priest would be in the gym delivering my last rites before anyone even noticed I was laying on the ground. Totally unfair – someone pass a law.

Went to see Ted Leo and the Pharmacists at Union South last night. I won\’t bore people with details, but the show was great. Surprising that he\’d be playing such a small venue – I would think he could easily fill the Annex or High Noon. If he were in Chicago, he\’d probably be playing the Metro or somewhere big. I\’m anxiously awaiting my next milestone, when I go from only being twice as old as everyone else at these shows to being three times as old.

Anyway, if there\’s one good reason to support the war in Iraq, it\’s so it compels Ted Leo to write more really good anti-war albums. It seems to get his creative dander up. That\’s what was so disappointing about the last R.E.M. album – you think the starts would have all been aligned, with the U.S. being at war. It should have been right in Michael Stipe\’s wheelhouse, and he totally whiffed.

On the way to the concert, I seriously missed being hit by a car by inches while crossing Regent Street. After the show, my buddy Barrett and I discussed whether it would be better to be run over by a car going really fast or really slow. Think about it – if the car was going fast, the tires would hit you from the front more quickly, but there\’s a chance that the initial blow might pop the car into the air a little – and the car would actually be on to of you for less time. With the slow car, the actual hit wouldn\’t be as bad, but the tires would be on top of you crushing your ribs for a longer period of time.

Personal preference, I guess.

Watch a live solo performance of \”Bottle of Buckie\” here.

At this time, I would now like to announce my official retirement from watching \”24.\” It\’s just too much. I can\’t take it anymore. I would rather watch Sanjaya as a new panelist on \”The View\” than watch another evil foreigner just slip through the grasp of CTU. Tonight, I was praying that Jack\’s C4 explosives would go off, blowing up both he and Audrey. I mean, come on. Nothing even makes sense anymore. I\’m hoping that Fayed really isn\’t dead and that he sneaks into CTU and pummels Morris, Milo, Chloe, and every other of those whiny bastards. Apparently Chad Lowe gets to escape the death penalty for trying to blow up the president because he had some information… that everyone knew already? So the Department of Justice, in order to look good politically, cuts a deal with a guy that just tried to kill the president? I\’m so angry, I can\’t even break my rant up into paragraphs. So there you have it. I\’ll finish out this season, then I\’ll have my papers on your desk immediately.

When Todd Rosiak reported tonight that Marquette\’s Dominic James was leaning towards declaring himself eligible for the draft, I wondered what draft he was talking about. The Turkish professional league, maybe?

Actually, I hear short, athletic point guards that can\’t shoot or pass are a hot commodity in the NBA now. What team wouldn\’t want someone capable of a 6 for 24 shooting clinic on any given night?

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For those of you wondering why the Bucks tanked the last 20 games of the season, here\’s why:

And with the third pick in the 2007 NBA Draft, the Milwaukee Bucks select…

Schneider\’s kid!

I have to admit, I was a little surprised during American Idol last night when Chris Richardson offered his condolences to the students at Virginia Tech and Simon Cowell rolled his eyes. Clearly, Simon thought Richardson was trying to deflect his criticism and I\’m certain Cowell wasn\’t making light of the whole situation.

However, Richardson is from Virginia, and I\’m certain he has plenty of friends at Tech. It is a big state school. Plus, the whole discussion regarding his nasally singing had concluded and they were about to move on. The fact that Simon would be flippant about a contestant offering condolences to his friends after a tragedy is a little disappointing. It wasn\’t nearly as bad as Phil Stacey (A.K.A. \”Nosferatu\”) saying his three month old kid named a toy cow \”Simon Cow.\”

In the end, of course, it doesn\’t mean a damn thing. And I think Cowell realized his mistake by offering his own condolences later in the show.

Winner: Richardson

This morning, 15 Virginia Tech students walked into a German class in Norris Hall, not realizing that for some of them, they would never walk out. They didn’t know at the time that they would soon become subjects of the most deadly shooting spree in American history – an event so horrific, that the nation would have to stop and catch its breath to understand what happened.

Undeterred by the gravity of the event, liberal columnist John Nichols of The Nation had it all figured out within hours. At 5:35, he had already written a blog post pre-emptively criticizing the National Rifle Association for their “rapid response,” which has yet to materialize. In his post, replete with misspellings and grammatical errors, Nichols decries “one dimensional explanations” of the violence today, then immediately offers… an explanation that can barely be ascribed one dimension.

Nichols goes on to blame corporate gun companies, the NRA, and anyone that supports owning “deadly weapons” for our “culture of violence.” (Incidentally, if you purchase a gun, and it’s not “deadly,” then you got ripped off.) He says:

Do not doubt that the National Rifle Association is preparing its \”this-had-nothing-to-do-with-guns\” press release. The group has no compunctions about living up to its reputation for being beyond shame — or education — when it comes to peddling its spin on days when it would be better to simply remain silent.

Of course, criticizing imaginary press releases from the NRA certainly doesn’t smack of “peddling spin.” John Nichols is clearly above offering his boiler-plate opinions on days “when it would be better to simply remain silent.” Perhaps Nichols should move to downtown Detroit, where nobody is an NRA member, and therefore completely free from the threat of gun violence.

Yet lo, before the blood had even dried on the Norris Hall floor, Nichols had the answer to reverse this trend of violence: Everyone should be forced to watch Bowling For Columbine, Michael Moore’s anti-gun screed where he ridicules people with Alzheimer’s. If only the young man who shot 32 others on the Virginia Tech campus today had seen that movie, they’d all be alive today. Michael Moore has the cure for all jilted lovers who feel like they have no more reason to live. Even better, maybe we should make everyone watch \”March of the Penguins,\” to teach people about the value of life. Seems about as plausible.

Even more incredibly, Nichols writes:

Moore certainly does not let apologists for the gun industry off the hook. But he does not stop there. \”Bowling for Columbine\” explores the role that America\’s mad foreign policies and obscene expenditures on weapons of mass destruction might play in fostering a culture of violence.

There you have it – it’s American foreign policy that caused the massacre today. Silly of you to think George W. Bush didn\’t play a role in this. Clearly this young man was a student of foreign relations and had tired of the United States exerting its will on the rest of the world, which is why he decided to start shooting up a university campus. Things like this never happened when America was respected in the world under the Clinton administration. Oh, except for Columbine.

Nichols and his ilk will likely ignore an inconvenient fact: Virginia actually has a “concealed carry\” law. Yet there was no gun anywhere on campus to stop this shooter. Does anyone honestly believe that an event like today\’s is any less likely to happen at the University of Wisconsin because we ban concealed weapons? I thought that if we allowed people to carry firearms, everyone would be packing heat and our campuses would be the Wild West revisited? In fact, only one person on the Virginia Tech campus was aware of our “culture of violence,” and he was the one pulling the trigger.

It’s good to know liberals have lunatics like Nichols on-call to destroy good taste within hours, if necessary. Somebody get his beeper number so we can call him to blame Bush for the next time a baby falls down a well. One thing is clear – Nichols had this blog post written long ago, whether he actually had typed it out or not. I’m just happy the 33 corpses that turned up today gave him an excuse to write it.

UPDATE: The NRA did put out a written statement. It simply says: \”Our thoughts and prayers are with the families. We will not have further comment until all the facts are known.\”

As some of you may remember, I actually went to Virginia Tech – so today\’s shootings still have me shaken up a little bit. I lived in Pritchard Hall, which is the all-male dorm right next to Ambler-Johnston, where the early morning shootings took place. I only remember being in that dorm once, to pick up notes from this girl for biology class.

Obviously, I haven\’t been on campus there for 14 years, so I don\’t really have any personal connection to what happened today. I don\’t think I know anyone still there, but my heart goes out to the students and faculty. Otherwise, I\’m just like everyone else, trying to figure out how a shooting takes place in a dorm early in the morning, then the same shooter opens fire in a different building two and a half hours later. Details are still trickling in, but that\’s the thing that\’s going to have to be explained to me.

I tried watching a little of CNN\’s coverage this afternoon, but I couldn\’t take it anymore. They essentially were just letting random Tech students call in and talk about how they felt, while replaying the cell phone captured-video of the shootings. It was all just time filler.

I\’m sure there will be plenty of debate in the next few days about gun control and all the societal issues that this event presents. But for now, I\’m just going to sit here and be numb for a little while.

UPDATE: Here\’s a map of the Tech campus – you can see Pritchard Hall (where I lived) in relation to Ambler-Johnston (where the first shootings occurred). On the other side is Cochrane Hall, which was the dorm where all the athletes lived (I think I remember them doing away with the whole idea of a \”jock dorm,\” but I\’m not sure.) That\’s likely where Antonio Freeman lived while we were both there.

Deaths up to 32 now, according to reports.

UPDATE: Just talked to my former roommate, and he said he had talked to a friend whose dad is a Dean at Tech. The theory going around down there is that the kid shot his girlfriend and the RA in Ambler-Johnston and then went over and hid in Norris until classes started and then unloaded on all of them. That makes sense, given the press accounts to this point.

Still curious why classes were held and the buildings kept open with the knowledge that there was a shooter running free on campus.