My cousin recently wrote a blog post about how he believes the honesty of students is decreasing. He’s a teacher in the Midwest. He sees firsthand how the kids these days will not hesitate to cheat or lie to make their lives easier. And while I don’t disagree with this, I don’t really think it’s anything new. I made some pretty good money in my 2-year stint as a term paper writer in the early 2000s. But that’s neither here nor there.

Chuck Klosterman has a theory that Generation X became a generation of lazy, pessimistic slackers because the first movie we were old enough to understand was The Empire Strikes Back. I you remember that movie, you remember it ended with Han Solo being captured by Boba Fett and frozen in carbonite. It was also the episode where Luke learned that his father was Darth Vader and Leah was his sister. It was a prequel to Jerry Springer. So Klosterman’s theory is that because this was really our first memorable taste of culture, us Generation Xers grew up with a darker view of the world around us.

Let’s look at the generation going through high school right now. For some, their first cognizant memory is 9-11. They may have been alive during America’s prosperous years but they weren’t old enough to recognize it. Some of them might not even have been old enough to understand what was going on, but certainly absorbed some of the tension their parents carried around.

Enter George W. Bush.

You can say all you want about Barack Obama, but the one quality he has that George Bush lacked is the ability to think things through and not jump at the country’s whims.

So with Bush chomping at the bit to get revenge and appease the cries of the angry American mob, the leader of the free world, the most powerful person in the world, fed us a lie. Weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). Then add to that the Patriot Act and numerous other infractions against the Constitution and you’ve got yourself a guy who will put his integrity aside to further his own agenda. I mean, just look what came from it. Halliburton. Blackwater. All of the administration’s cronies were getting in on the action and getting rich off the lies of the President of the United States of America.

So why then would kids who were 10 years old at the time and have grown up seeing their President lie, cheat, and steal his way into infamy think it’s wrong to do any different? I mean, if he can do it, why can’t they? He didn’t talk like an educated man. In fact most of what came out of him mouth was unintelligible. Why would they value an education? George W. Bush didn’t put any effort into finding a middle ground with anyone else in the world. He didn’t respect other cultures. Why would the kids think they should respect anyone around them? Why wouldn’t they think that it’s ok to do whatever you want in the name of self-serving purpose.

If you think about it, it all makes sense.

Or am I way off base here. Please weigh in.

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We’ve hit that time of year. You know what I’m talking about. The time of year when you drive to work in the morning in the dark and the sun drops from the sky without warning in the afternoon. This is the time of year that I stop caring about things. I abandon MSNBC for HBO and Showtime. I avoid conversation by plugging into my iPod. I put the kids to bed early and hit the sack by 9:00. Oh motivation, you mischievous badger, why must you hibernate through the winter when I need you most?

I don’t watch a lot of network TV. I pretty much just watch The Daily Show and The Colbert Report and then move outside basic cable for the good stuff. With Nurse Jackie and Weeds on hiatus, I’ve been turning to a couple of other old standbys—Californication and Curb Your Enthusiasm.

With the exception of the introduction of Sue Colini, this season of Californication has been a disappointment. I get it. David Duchovny has a sex addiction problem. I thought this was about Hank Moody? What happened to the story?

Curb Your Enthusiasm this season has been great with the addition of the cast of Seinfeld. Hollee thinks I am Larry David incarnate. I don’t know that I necessarily agree with that. But her point is duly noted.

This season also brought a new show to HBO, Bored to Death. This season has already come to an end and I really loved it. Hollee didn’t care much for this show. For some reason, I just really like Jason Schwartzman. I think the timing of his dry humor is perfect. Teamed up with Ted Danson in the role of his career makes it that much better.

Well, folks, there you have it. My take on my favorite television shows currently on the air. Maybe tomorrow I’ll thrill you with a breakdown of my top five favorite foods. Or maybe my all time favorite quotes. Oh oh oh, or maybe I’ll breakdown the elements of a great ballad (which must include a killer guitar solo and a tear).

But more than likely I’ll just be writing about how idiotic conservatives are who criticize Obama for showing respect to other cultures. In the meantime, check out these shows. They are way better than How I Met your Mother or House.

Until next time, peace out playas!

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When the drummer banged the drum, we all started marching. Left. Right. Left. When the trumpets started blaring, we all did our best to focus. To concentrate. Left. Right. To avoid mistakes. Left.

Somewhere in the distance, I can hear the waves crashing on the rocks. Left. And singing. Right. Or crying. Left.

When I was a child, I was told I could be anything. Go anywhere. Left. Right. Left. When I was a child, I believed it. Left.

I can smell the ocean air now. Right. I can feel sand on my feet. Left.

When the drummer banged the drum, we all started marching. One by one. Left. Right. Left.

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The recent tragedy that occurred in Fort Hood, Texas is a devastating example of what I was talking about here. George W. Bush (our former fearless leader) marched our troops into Afghanistan and Iraq to make America a safer place. And many Americans bought it. And many Americans think it was the right thing to do.

Here’s the problem with that. It’s a lie .

The wars in the Middle East have nothing to do with terrorism and the protection of American lives. They do have to do with oil and the desire to control the pot o’ gold.

Meanwhile, the war against terror isn’t really happening. Because if it were, they would be focusing on protecting us at home. They are so focused with fighting for control of oil, that they are neglecting the war on terror. Neglecting the war on terror means American blood is spilled on American soil.

I’m not optimistic or naïve enough to think the war for oil will come to an end in my lifetime. I’m just asking that it be called what it is. By misleading the American people that we are over there fighting a war on terror, we slip into a false sense of security at home.

You want to fight terror? Focus on defense. Notice the warning signs within our own borders. But I don’t expect most of you to get this. You don’t care that 44,000 of your neighbors die each year without health insurance. What’s another dozen or so here and there?

I never really feel like I fit in. I never have. For some reason, wherever I am, I just don’t feel like I belong. (I take that back. The only place I’ve ever felt like I belonged was wandering anonymously through the streets of Paris with my wife. But other than those 2 days, I typically feel like a square peg.) I’m not sure what the problem is. I just have this strange inability to form a bond with my environment.

It goes way back. Through my life, I’ve had very few friends. I just don’t have the social grace necessary to keep a stable of acquaintances in my back pocket. This isn’t because I lack the ability to like people. I actually like quite a few people, and in certain settings will refer to them as friends. But would I help them move? Probably not. Nor would I ask them to help me move. So I guess it all evens out.

Having just an intimate collection of friends and not spending too much time hobnobbing through various social scenes, I am deficient in the ability to fake comfort in crowds. Or more accurately, I don’t do well in crowds of people I know. I function just fine surrounded by strangers. Perhaps this is because the pressure to mingle isn’t there. Perhaps I just do better as a random face in the crowd. I’m not sure.

All of that being said, I have friends that I have not seen in years. Friends from elementary school, high school, and college. Friends that I have not seen in 3, 5, or 25 years. And when we get together, be it over beers in a bar or through e-mail on Facebook or showing up to hear him play drums in front of the City/County Building surrounded by polygamists, we always pick up right where we left off. As if time and distance and life didn’t exist. Those are real friends. They are with you always. And you recognize this in each other when you occupy the same space.

What exactly am I getting at? I don’t know. I guess I’m just feeling nostalgic today.

And I’m wishing there was a way that everybody could see me in the same light as my close friends. Because that person is funny and smart and likable. Because who I am on the outside isn’t necessarily who I really am. I’m not quiet and shy and withdrawn. I’m not. Despite what my third grade teacher would have you believe.

Anyway, just a moment of contemplation. Carry on.

We are cockroaches. None of this matters.

Don’t believe me? See if you can find just one person at the grocery store to move their goddamn cart out of the way when you are trying to get to the milk. Just one.

I hate Utah. Not for the reasons you probably think. I mean, the religious right that dominate the politics of the state and the general attitude of the holier-than-thou faction is extremely annoying but one learns to adjust and live with it. What I can’t seem to get used to, however, is the weather. And lately, it seems, we are given no warning. The typical four seasons that used to make the state somewhat bearable have dwindled to two. Hot and cold. And yesterday we made the switch.

The weather changes, the air turns cold, and my atoms slow to barely an idle. My body moves in slow motion. Life sits frozen, waiting for June.

This is when depression sets in. It’s not anything that a prescription can solve. It’s a depression that results from loss of daylight and restrictions on fresh air. We have battened down the hatches, winterized the yard, and pulled out the winter coats. We’ve abandoned the air conditioner for the heater. We’ve added chili and beef stew to the menu. We’ve done our best to prepare. But a nip of cold on the nose and the sight of bare trees reminds us that we have been wrongly imprisoned by the elements. We are innocent victims of winter. The Judas sun has betrayed us.

Like all winters, I realize it will pass. And I also realize that I have the option of moving to a place with a warmer year-round climate. And believe me, I’m considering it. But for the time being, looking out my window at the steam rising from roofs and a sky as gray as cats, I am stuck in the moment. Sinking in the tar pit. Trudging through the dismal abyss that is the absence of a Utah autumn.

Oh winter, you are a miserable bastard. And I will never forgive you for your tyranny against the sun.

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My opinions of Obama have just stepped off a rollercoaster. Their feet are firmly back on the platform and they are trying to decide if they should climb back on. But after a ride or two, I’ve come to my current position. President Barack Obama is a brilliant man.

And here’s why.

Unlike your typical American, the guy has patience.

So what does this mean? Well, it means that he is able to let a problem ride out its course without making any rash decisions based on emotion. He is able to make the most rational decision because he makes his choices without clouded eyes.

Look back to the election. When it looked like other candidates were going to take off with the votes, he kept his cool and just kept on course. When Hillary came out punching and tried to fluster him, he kept his cool and just kept on course. When McCain looked like he might be gaining ground, he kept his cool and just kept on course. The result, as we all know, was his victory.

The same goes with health care. For the past few months, we’ve seen how emotional the right can become. They’ve been taking over town hall meetings and coming out in droves with stupid signs and ridiculous claims. And what has Obama done? He’s kept his cool while they got it out of their system. Meanwhile, those of us on the left have been screaming at our televisions begging him to do something. We thought all was lost. Here we are today, the emotions have cooled. People have had the opportunity to get the real facts, and it looks like we might be on track for real health care reform. He just knows what he’s doing. Because of this patience, he allows the American people to siphon their emotions through a strainer of rationality. What we have left, is a creamy soup of progress.

The same thing goes for Afghanistan. Right now, people are critical of Obama’s seemingly inability to make a decision. But what he is really doing is letting the emotion drain from the situation so the right decision can be made.

Look at how we got into this mess in the first place. A group of terrorists (mostly from Saudi Arabia) flew a couple of planes into the World Trade Center and killed 2,000 people. We, the American people, wanted blood. We demanded it. And rather than waiting for the dust to settle and emotion to dissipate, George W. Bush, marched our troops into Afghanistan. Being Americans, we wanted instant gratification. We didn’t get Osama bin Laden. So we let emotion back in and demanded action. Bush took us into Iraq, where we were promised an easy victory. We all watched the televised attack on Baghdad and thought we would have our quick revenge. We didn’t. By not thinking through the situation and acting on pure emotion, we’ve been stuck in an 8-year clusterfuck.

America, with George W. Bush as President, was the world’s OJ Simpson. We couldn’t stand the thought of our wife with another man and killed them both. We thought we got away with it for a while, but in the end, just like everybody knows that OJ is guilty, the world watches us with astonishment as we barge into hotel rooms with guns demanding our memorabilia back.

Let me ask this. What if Timothy McVeigh didn’t blow up the Federal Building in Oklahoma City? What if instead, he drove his Ryder van to the coast, put it aboard a boat, and unloaded in the Persian Gulf. What if he then drove that van to Baghdad and parked it in front of one of their buildings and killed 2,000 Iraqis. Would you agree that Saddam Hussein would have had the right to attack us and kill hundreds of thousands of U.S. civilians in retaliation? I know it’s not the same thing because Al Qaeda wasn’t in Iraq until we got there, but for the purposes of discussion, would Saddam Hussein been in the right?

No. Of course not. But because we like to take rationality out of the equation and only operate from emotion in this country, we think that we have the right to do whatever we want while the rest of the world bows to us.

Unfortunately for us, the self-righteous usually fall.

Fortunately, we now have a President who allows emotion to play itself out before making a decision. It just might be our only hope at survival. This is why people like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh are up in arms. They make a living feeding off of and into people’s emotions. A President who refuses to do the same is not something they can comprehend.

I guess in the end, time will tell. I just think it’s time for Americans to let go of their demands for instant gratification and learn a thing or two from a man who understands that evolution is a slow, methodical process. Progress has never happened overnight. The fall of Rome might happened overnight. But it sure as hell wasn’t built in a day.

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So they arrested Tarek Mehanna. Congratulations are in order and lives probably saved. But what this mostly serves to illustrate is that we are fighting pointless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The War on Terror™ isn’t something that you fight with old-school mentality. This guy was from Somalia. Fighting wars against countries isn’t going to have any impact on the reduction of terrorism. So let’s call the wars in the Middle East what they really are. Wars for oil and regional control. And that’s fine. Let’s just call a spade a spade. I mean, if we were going to go to war against governing bodies who have allowed terrorists to reside without any interference, we should go to war against Montana or Kansas or Arizona.

If we are going to fight the War on Terror™, we need to do just like we did with Tarek Mehanna. We need to flush them out of wherever they are. Be it just north of Boston or be it the hills of Afghanistan. What that means is diplomatic relations with these Middle East countries to get them to allow us access to track down the real “evil doers.” Not bombing the shit out of a country. That’s no way to get other countries on your side.

And if you say that we don’t need other countries on our side, I will know that you don’t know what you are talking about.

Terrorists aren’t just hanging out in the streets of Kabul. They are everywhere. With the money we’ve thrown away into the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we could have done some incredible things to fortify our own borders and make our own nation a stronger, safer place. These terrorist cells need to be picked off one by one wherever they are in the world. If they know we are going to attack Afghanistan, they will just go to Pakistan. Wait, too late. If they know we will follow them wherever they go, they might actually start to worry.

In other news, the oniomaniac is extremely upset in this current culture. Where else is he/she supposed to buy rat cheese if all the rat cheese stores are closing? The Internet? And be scammed? I think not!

One year ago today, Hollee and I got married in the San Diego County Courthouse right after a middle-aged gay couple and right before a young, hip lesbian couple. We were right where we wanted to be. Happily in love in a gay sandwich. It’s a shame what happened with Prop 8, but that’s another post for another time.

After we got married, we went had the most wonderful meal I’ve ever eaten at George’s at the Cove in La Jolla. We spent the next couple days wandering around San Diego and finished off the trip seeing Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band at SOMA and getting an incredible tarot reading by some lady and a serenade by an armless guitar player at Balboa Park.

A year later, our lives have changed a little. Paige and Ian have come to live with us, along with their disgustingly fat and smelly geriatric dachshund, Milo. We’ve done some remodeling, we’ve been to Europe, we’ve considered moving, and we’ve been on some pretty wild road trips. It’s been a journey unlike anything I could have ever imagined in my youth.

I’m not going to lie and say every day is peaches. We’re both passionate people and when we disagree, we argue with panache. But I will tell you this—and I mean no disrespect to any kind of love that you think you might have or have had or could ever hope to have—our love is not like anything you will ever experience in this lifetime. Unless you are a vampire. I understand that their love unparalleled. I might put our love up against vampire love but I’m not entirely confident that we’d walk away the victors.

Hollee, you are my nemesis, my alter ego, and my best friend. Thank you for letting me come crashing into you life. And thank you for jumping on board and hurtling through space with me. And thank you for showing me that it really is possible for me to love and be loved. You are an amazing person and I am the luckiest man alive.