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!

This week, my daughter has been picked as \”Kid of the Week\” at her preschool, which confers on her the right to choose her class\’ activities for the next few days.  My wife and I thought it would be fun to set up a mini-polling booth for the class, where they could cast ballots for their favorite apple – red or yellow.  Never too early to learn a little civic duty.  We (\”we\” = \”my wife\”) built a little ballot box, and let our daughter design and color the ballots.

When it came time to vote, I was surprised that yellow apple actually won.  Who likes yellow apples?  Then, it occurred to me that ACORN bused in a bunch of kids from a day care in Illinois to stuff the ballot box.  Just a week ago, the polls had red apple up six points – but then yellow apple began running TV ads linking him to William Pears.

(Pause for groan.)

Oddly – and this actually happened – when the kids who voted for yellow apple found out they had won, they began taunting the red apple kids.  So the teacher told me she rigged some system by which both apples won.  Now, I can understand how unpleasant it must be to have to spend the remainder of the afternoon with a bunch of surly kids who feel like losers, but this is actually the most important lesson of democracy.  Candidates win and candidates lose – you have to get over it and move on.  Otherwise, you get bitter and do loony things like trying to im-peach the apple.  (Get it?  Im-peach?  No?)

When reached for comment, yellow apple vowed that in the next election, he\’s going to exploit red apple\’s position on apple stem cell research.

I got back from being on the road for four days on Sunday, and began combing through the week\’s news to see what I had missed.  Naturally, the big story in Wisconsin was Milwaukee talk show host and blogger James T. Harris\’ admonition to John McCain to \”take it to\” Barack Obama – which made national news.

Now, I recognize that this story has pretty much run its course, as it is five days old now.  Stories in campaign season have the shelf life of mayonnaise in the sun – I might as well be writing about how the Bee Gees are bringing back the urban beard.  But there is one aspect of this story that remains interesting to me.

As I scanned the web, I noticed this account of Harris\’ confrontation with McCain as reported by the Washington Post:

\”It is absolutely vital that you take it to Obama, that you hit him where it hits, there\’s a soft spot,\” said James T. Harris, a local radio talk show host, who urged the Republican nominee to use Barack Obama\’s controversial former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., and others against him.

\”We have the good Reverend Wright. We have [the Rev. Michael L.] Pfleger. We have all of these shady characters that have surrounded him,\” Harris bellowed. \”We have corruption here in Wisconsin and voting across the nation. I am begging you, sir. I am begging you. Take it to him.\”

Is anything missing in that account?  Maybe, maybe not.  On this, I am torn.

You see, as Milwaukeeans know, James T. Harris is black.  (Or, as he prefers, he is an \”American of African descent.\”)  But the article doesn\’t mention that fact.  Should it have?

On the one hand, I think that in most cases the race of people identified in news articles is irrelevant.  One of the first steps we can take to de-emphaisizing race in America is to wean ourselves off of constant racial identification.

On the other hand, race is often relevant to the crux of the story.  This is especially true when crime suspects are still at large, and a description is needed.  That\’s why they provide a racial description in police reports – so when a gangland-style murder occurs at 27th and North in Milwaukee, the cops aren\’t wasting their time chasing down the Osmond family.  (Although it could be argued that the Osmonds have murdered good taste for a good 30 years now.)

But in this case, it would seem that Harris\’ race was relevant.  Clearly, the article was written to give the impression that this was an angry mob of Republicans, who tend to be white and older.  Did they leave Harris\’ race out of the story because that may have conflicted with the story they were trying to tell?  Were they afraid of portraying an African-American as angry and bitter?  Or were they purposely witholding a description of Harris because they didn\’t want to send a message than an African-American could actually oppose Barack Obama?

So in some instances, I think it\’s admirable for newspapers to move to less racial identification of the people they identify.  As more and more members of diverse races procreate together, tagging an ethnic classification based on sight is likely getting to be more of a challenge anyway.  But in the case of James T. Harris, it seems as though there was a systematic decision to withold a fact that would have added more complexity and depth to the story.  And I guess we\’ll never know why.

November 19, 2011: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel – SAGE Program Isn\’t Paying Off

October 21, 2011: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel – Illinois: The Way Not to Fix a Budget

April 23, 2011: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel – See Past the Scare Tactics and Deception

March 12, 2011: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel – New Budget a Change for the Better

February 16, 2011: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel – State\’s Battle Lines: Are State Union Workers Beyond Belief?

January 16, 2010: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel – MPS Needs a Mulligan

May 16, 2009: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel – Employees\’ Share? Yet it\’s Borne by Taxpayers

March 14, 2009: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel – Guess Who\’s Recession-Proof?

September 25, 2008: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel – Government Retiree Benefits Could Hit Area Taxpayers Hard

August 2, 2008: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel – Can the Brewers\’ Unusual Diversity Unite Milwaukee?

July 23, 2008: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel – Minimum Markup Law Adds 8 Cents to Gallon of Gas, Study Says

May 30, 2008: Wisconsin State Journal Editorial – Giving Credit Where It\’s Due

\’Tis the season for mailboxes across America to be filling up with mail pieces from campaigns and interest groups. This one from the AFL-CIO looks like something you\’d expect to get from them – a picture of a concerned looking union member and some predictable class envy whining about how rich Republicans hate working families.

But one line in here absolutely astounded me:

\”McCain\’s practically had free health care his whole life.\” – Dave Fecke, Union Worker

Wow. The Viet Cong gave U.S. Navy Lt. Commander John McCain free health care alright, if you consider five and half years of daily beatings and solitary confinement in the Hanoi Hilton to be free health care!

Mr. Fecke goes on to say, \”The difference between me and McCain? McCain\’s rich.\”

I have another difference between you and McCain, Mr. Fecke. You\’re an ass.

Now, I readily concede that I\’m close to the upper age limit for Facebook. Anyone older than me, and it gets pretty creepy. But I have to say, Facebook is kind of freaking me out.

You see, more and more of my classmates are coming online and adding me as a Facebook friend. And in a lot of cases, I have no recollection of who these people are. When I do remember them, there\’s generally a reason I haven\’t spoken to them in 17 years. Although admittedly, in a lot of cases, it\’s neat to find out what some people are up to.

But it is strange – there\’s a reason I wanted to get out of high school so badly. I hated it with every molecule of my being. (Stuff white people like #83: Having Bad Memories of High School. #106: Facebook.) Now that I\’m being reunited with all these high school people, I\’m having flashbacks of all the stuff I abhorred. I was completely content to live the rest of my life not worrying about what certain people from high school thought about me. Now, all those problems are coming back, just fatter.

Anyway, when I see some people online, I admit I have to look them up in my yearbook. And as I was leafing through my senior class today, I was noticing all the horribly awkward senior quotes people had next to their pictures. Here\’s a sample – and I swear, these are all actual quotes meant to inspire my classmates:

\”The uncertainties of the present always give way to the enchanted possibilities of the future.\”

\”Today my world it smiles. Your hand in mine we walk the miles. Thanks to you it will be done. For you to me are the only one.\” – Led Zeppelin

\”I\’m on a mission from God\”

\”There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.\”

\”I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues.\”

\”I can accompish anything as long as I put my heart and mind into it.\”

\”Always give a hundred percent in the things you do, because everything you do depends on your future.\”

\”It\’s not what life gives you, it\’s how you use it. Don\’t hold back.\”

\”Let us die young or let us live forever.\” – DM

\”Peace and chicken grease, cuz homey don\’t play that!!!\”

\”An eye for an eye only leads to blindness.\”

\”I am a traveller of both time and space.\”

\”The pesimist (sic) only sees the red light, the optimist the green, the true wise are color blind.\”

\”Two paths diverged into the woods I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.\”

\”Left a smoking crater on my mind I\’d like to blow away, Heat came round and busted me for smiling on a cloudy day…\” Grateful Dead

\”He who lives in the future, pasts the past, but doesn\’t past the future, then has to futurely live in the present…\”

\”Don\’t be yourself if you\’re a nobody.\”

\”The paths of glory lead but to the grave.\”

\”Homework is simply mind over matter; if I don\’t mind, it doesn\’t matter.\” (ed. note – every yearbook in America contains this quote somewhere.)

\”I have my ship, and all her flags are flying. She is all that I have left, and music is her name.\” – Stephen Stills

\”Take your passion, and make it happen\” – Irene Cara

\”It takes both rain and sun to make a rainbow.\”

\”I SEE SAID THE BLIND MAN\”

\”We don\’t need to education, we don\’t need no thought control!\” – Roger Waters

\”Together we stand… Divided we fall.\” – Pink Floyd

\”I have two major weaknesses: tall black men and food, but not necessarily in that order.\”

\”Live alone and Free, like a tree, but in the Brotherhood of the Forest.\”

\”I see said the blind man.\” (ed. note – a popular one, apparently)

\”No hero in your tragedy, no daring in your escape, no salutes for your surrender, nothing noble in your fate. Christ, what have you done?\” – N.P.

You get the idea. And it goes on and on with quotes that you just know these guys thought were some totally deep stuff at the time. You always hear teenagers complaining about how adults don\’t take them seriously – and about how they deserve to be heard. But looking back, given our infinitesimal frame of reference, if teenagers ran things, there\’s no doubt the world would be a horrible, horrible place.

And mine?

\”You can only be young once, but you can be immature forever.\”

(My apologies up front to the commenter who doesn\’t like pictures of me in my posts.)

It was five years ago this week that my daughter was born. In the hospital, holding her for the first time, it was impossible to comprehend the fact that childbirth occurs all the time. It was such a wonderful, unique experience, I was convinced that the little girl in my arms was the first child ever born.

I didn\’t really have the same experience until this afternoon, when the Brewers clinched their first playoff berth in 26 years. It was so unique, so wonderful, it\’s hard to comprehend that teams actually win wild card berths all the time. Granted, they don\’t often win them in the fashion the Brewers did – on the last day in their last at bat and with a superhuman pitching effort. But the sight of Brewers drenching themselves in alcoholic beverages after the game was so alien, I half expected to see a sasquatch pouring champagne on a unicorn in the background of the Brewers\’ clubhouse during the celebration. (Apologies to John Jaha, who drenched himself in alcohol after every game – usually before getting behind the wheel of his car.)

When the Brewers last made the playoffs, I was nine years old. The sounds of Michael Jackson\’s Thriller wafted through our home, and I was convinced I was related to John Schneider of the Dukes of Hazzard. I began to discover the wonders of the female form by watching the 20 Minute Workout.* My dad bought me a Robin Yount jersey for $16, on the condition I pay him back by earning money through chores. I got a quarter for every time I did the dishes – only later was I able to calculate that the old man got 64 nights of dishes out of me to pay for that crummy jersey. He\’s lucky kids can\’t unionize.

Little did I know at the time that I would be 35 years old before I got to see the Brewers in the playoffs again. For the past quarter century, Milwaukee has been known more to the baseball world for our racing sausages and the availablity of our 15-year old girls than the actual baseball our team played. Ironically, Robin Yount is still in the dugout wearing his #19 jersey. That\’s why, after Ryan Braun\’s 8th inning 2-run homer, I suddenly felt tears in my eyes. All at once, I felt 26 years of decompression. At that moment, every burden of the last quarter century was lifted off my back: Every time Geoff Jenkins swung and missed at a curveball by two feet; every news story about how the Seligs were using tax money to pad their wallets instead of fielding a competitive team; every time Derrick Turnbow came in to throw gasoline on the fire, and Ned Yost condescendingly telling the fans we weren\’t seeing what we were clearly seeing – all lifted.

This was in stark contrast to Saturday, when I sat with my head in my hands for the entire game, watching it all slip away. For Saturday and through seven innings on Sunday, I felt like I was cooking in my skin. I actually had to take some ice packs out of the freezer and apply them to my head and shoulders. I\’m not sure if it\’s physically possible to give yourself a fever, but I felt like you could fry an egg on my head. Brewer Fever, indeed. I caught it.

(Speaking of sicknesses, has anybody checked to see if Corey Hart has rubella? A tapeworm, perhaps? If so, can we get the tapeworm to pinch hit for him? How many rallies is he going to be allowed to murder in broad daylight? Is he using a bat made of balsa wood?)

And now, the Brewers are headed for October baseball. I honestly don\’t know how I\’ll react when the first pitch is made on Wednesday. I certainly don\’t expect the Brewers to win, given how they played in Philadelphia just a couple weeks ago – but somehow, I don\’t think having low expectations is going to make me feel any better if they eventually lose. I mean, as poorly as they played at the beginning of September, this team did win 90 games. It\’s not like they\’re incapable of winning.

Sadly, I was notified by the Brewers that I was not chosen to have the opportunity to buy playoff tickets via their lottery. So if they\’re looking to hire someone to sell hot dogs, pretzels, or give Bob Uecker footrubs during the game, count me in.

The Mets-Marlins game ended at about 4:00, just as my daughter\’s soccer game was beginning. So I ran over there after the game had already started. As I got to the sideline, my daughter ran off the field and said \”did the Brewers win?\” Hopefully, in 26 years, her kids will be asking her the same thing.

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*- One day around that time, I went over to a friend\’s house, and had to use the bathroom. While looking through the bathroom magazine rack, I found this mysterious magazine called \”Playboy.\” It featured a picture of a woman riding a bike wearing nothing but shoes. I immediately ran home and told my mom, asking her \”why would anyone ride a bike without clothes on? THAT\’S CRAZY!\”)

Again, sorry for the lack of blogging – work has taken up my time, as we will have a big project going public tomorrow with which I will likely bug you then. I have also spent much of my day burning all my Clay Aiken t-shirts and CDs. I\’m still numb from the shock.

In the meantime, I wanted to relay this story:

Yesterday, I found out that the wife of my best friend growing up (and namesake of the Dennis York blog and best man at my wedding), Dennis, gave birth. I had no idea she was even pregnant.

What followed was this e-mail exchange:

ME: \”You have a kid?\”

DENNIS: \”Yeah, turns out she wasn\’t just packing on a couple extra pounds – there was a kid in there.\”

ME: \”Cool.\”

And we\’ll probably go another month without talking about it.

Needless to say, my wife will be beside herself when she finds out I didn\’t even know my best friend\’s wife was pregnant. In my defense, they do live in Washington D.C.

Contrast this with what my wife likely will do when her best friends get pregnant. (We received news that one of my wife\’s friends and her husband have recently \”pulled the goalie,\” in pregnancy parlance – meaning they are trying to conceive.) My wife will provide them with weekly Excel graphs and spreadsheets on the stages of pregnancy, and various gestation timelines. She\’ll give them our \”What to Expect When You\’re Expecting\” books, and if they don\’t have time to read them, she\’ll read them to them over the phone. And if my wife\’s friend doesn\’t feel like having the kid at all, my wife will likely offer to carry the child to full term for them.

Next time Dennis and I talk will probably be when his wife has another kid. Or, more importantly, the next time my Packers play his Redskins.

From a local company, no less.