Why I hate Ron Paul supporters??

Why I hate Ron Paul supporters. They are making me less apathetic towards politics. I didn't want this. I just wanted to continue to believe that the people we call "politicians" would always work for the public interest. I envisioned the perfect life of being a lemming led to whatever end by “the guiding hand”. But now, I’m afraid this utopian dream is fading like a good pair of blue jeans. Actually – you know – after I think about it a little bit more I like a good pair of faded blue jeans.

You may ask me why I am supporting Ron Paul. Is it because I ‘m jumping on the “bandwagon”? Well yes and no. Let me explain. The bandwagon that you speak of is part of the reason I support Ron Paul. Without said bandwagon, the apathy of stale politics would probably continue. He is one of the only candidates who seems to not be put on layaway by Corporate interest groups. He is for limiting government and increasing the freedoms that exist. Also, he wants to cut away at bad governmental spending that has expanded under the Bush presidency.

However, I am not jumping on this bandwagon without researching what defines Ron Paul. I don’t like his isolationist stance on foreign policy. I think that his programs for border security and immigration are definitely hard-line. I think his stance on abortion might be a little too black and white. But I do think that he would be a president that would listen to the pros and cons before jumping headlong into any decision. Hell, if I had to align my views with a particular presidential candidate, it would be Kucinich. It seems, however, that Kucinich is a side-note in the democratic presidential primary.

If you think what I am saying might make some sense, research Ron Paul and see if he makes sense for you. If you think as I think and feel as I feel, see if you can change your political affiliation to vote for him in the primary. Act quickly though, the deadline for changing your party affiliation for Nevada is December 19^th and many other states are (have) coming upon deadlines as well.

An American that wants to see change,

Jon Losey

Raison D'etre

As it seems I am needing more of something nowadays, a life of change seems to be my raison d'etre. I am really enjoying life, but I still feel like I am missing something. Part of me wants to think it's the absence of good friends in Las Vegas, but I have been less sure of this lately. This appears to be the tried and true subject of my bloggings, but it is also seems to hint at being a pivotal subject in my life. In other words, a point at which changes occur that will shape the entirety of my life. However, whatever this feeling is, I'm sure everything will work out in the end.

To further describe my raison d'etre, I have recently moved in with my good friend Libby. Thus far, this arrangement is so much better then the previous living situation (if not a large amount more stressful). Things were just not working out with my girl roommates from my old place. I didn't get along with them as well as I wanted to and they were definitely not as hospitable as I wanted them to be. They ended up treating my other male roommate and his friends poorly and they would not consult us regarding house matters. They threw a couple of large parties at our place and had the cops called on them 3 times. I had to learn from my male roommate and not from the female roommates that if that happened again, we would be evicted by our landlord. Long story short, I wanted to get out of there and Libby wanted to move up to the city so we found a place together.

Only problem is that I had to give a 30-day notice before I was out of the contract. Because Libby and I had found the place in mid-November and we had to move in almost immediately to take it up, we both are probably going to have to end up paying for a month of rent where we are not living in our old places of residence. I told my female roommates not to worry and that I would pay my rent up to the 15th of December (30 days after I told them I was moving). The kicker being that my old female roommates will most likely be breaking their lease on the 15th of December. They have not looked for a new roommate to fill my empty spot and I will have to pay for the first 15 days of December in rent. When I moved out I thought that paying all the way to the 15th was a slim possibility, but it seems that the possibility gained a little bit of weight. Actually, I'm sorry that last one wasn't the kicker. Hypocrisy rules the day and my old female roommates just told my male roommate that they would probably be breaking the lease with about 15 days notice (once again the contract we signed was for 30 days). So they are screwing him up in their "bad decision" as well. He is such a great guy that he just wants to get it over with and move on from it, but if I were him I would've had a fit.

Lesson learned:

Some people need to live with their parents until they are responsible enough to be respectful and caring members of society.

Luck Is Not A Lady Tonight

What happened to probability? Statisticians are playing a game with my head. I thought that my theorem below held true and not false.

if(and(SFGay%Pop>LVGay%Pop,(SFGay%Pop-LVGay%Prop)/LVGay%Prop>(SFLesbian%Prop-LVLesbian%Prop)/LVLesbian%Prop),"Ladies Love Cool Jon","Ladies Want To Be Friends with Cool Jon")

I would assume here that I would be a marketable commodity if above theorem held true. However, it seems that ladies merely "like spending time with [me]" on a friendship level and they think that "[I'm] so cool". I have not met one person here who seemed like they were genuinely interested in me on something more than a friendship basis.

On the plus side, at least most people don't think of me as a schmuck (I hope).

Flap Your Wings and Say Yeah!

Time is a miraculous thing. So poetic, yet so cliche. When I had a stint at trying to write my own music, my lyrics always seemed to revolve around time (like a clock maybe? D'oh!). Plus if you are going to make a rhyme using the word rhyme, why would you not use time as the couplet?

But I digress, the purpose of this written word can be traced to my want, nay my duty, to inform. I want to inform you what has happened in my life for the last couple of weeks. Welcome and please make yourself at home in my thoughts. I apologize in advance for the mess.

*REWIND*
Oh! I am really sorry. Errr... Embarrassed. You weren't supposed to see that!

*REWIND*
Today I went to get my FAVORITE coffee ever at the Bittersweet Cafe on Fremont and California. I was looking backward to reading my book that I have previously mentioned in the future of this blog. For future reference, it is entitled The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. I have really only read the introduction and the first portion of the 1st Chapter, but it seems to be a "fair and balanced" book (not to be confused with certain organizations that share the same tag line). The implications with what I have read thus far, suggest that the war in Iraq would not have been a war at all without the pressure of the "Israel Lobby". While this is a bold statement, it does seem plausible. Unfortunately for me the coffee place closed at 8pm.

*REWIND*
Work has been a bit more stressful lately. There has been a deluge of assignments that has bogged me down and made me less efficient than I wish to be. I will not underestimate my workload anymore.

*REWIND*
It was great seeing all my friends in Las Vegas last weekend. I had breakfast and played card games (sans Jay) with my family on Sunday. Saturday was a party at Tony's place and Friday was a Love Pentagon/JASL show followed (preceded) by drinkage at The Griffin (who would've thunk?).

*REWIND*
As I feel that my blogs might carry on in length, I shall skip over some of the more minute activities (like discussing gardening techniques with Ghandi or like winning Mr. Universe only to have the title revoked because of some scandalous pictures of me sucking down some yay in the nude) and go to the prior weekend. Saturday evening was spent in glorious conversation with my new friend Janelle. I had spent the previous 8 hours with her and a bunch of new acquaintances/friends on the beach drinking wine and socializing. Friday night was EPIC. The "cosby sweater" party started out innocent enough, but soon conversation started. Enough said. (To get the real story, please see my autobiography on page 4 ((a little further down right after Middle School)) there you go!)

*RECORD*
Recent Lessons Learned:

The Darjeeling Limited taught me that life can be a bit more exciting with a little bit of awkardness.

Life can still be glorious without a symbiotic male-female relationship.

Things you hold constant in your life can change in the blink of an eye. The universe is a rugby game in a kiddie pool.

And finally, a 50-minute commute can help you to put your thoughts in order. I'll file this thought under "D" for Donut.

America: The Land of the Blind

Indignation. Consternation. In this nation it is so easy to get lost in our daily lives. It is so easy to be lost in selfish pursuit. How many nations in this world are having problems tantamount to human rights violations? How many nations carry on with tendency towards genocide or overt political corruption? I read every other day about problems that exist in other countries. I read about problems that incense me to no end. I want to get up out of my executive thatched high-back chair, put down my Peet's Cafe Americano, and quit my life of being an American Lemming. I am a 2-dimensional American. I am the building block to continued isolationist behaviors. How easy it is for me to plan out my life and rely on the stability that I take for granted. I am Jack's ranting hypocrisy.

Maybe some day I will look left or right and see that there is more to this 2-dimensional life. But for now, I am going to continue putting money into my 401k and continue forgetting about Burma, Cuba, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Chechnya, Tibet, Belarus, China, Cote d'Ivoire, Equitorial Guinea, Eritrea, Laos, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Zimbabwe, Timor-Leste, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tanzania, Yemen, Burundi, Afghanistan, Guinea-Bissau, Niger, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Madagascar, Zambia, Burkina Faso, Mali, Mozambique, the Central African Republic, Chad, Angola, Benin, Senegal, Iran, Nepal, Vietnam, Iraq, Uzbekistan, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Maldives, Tunisia, and of course we should not forget Oceania.

The Economist

In my weekend of delight, I had a lot of interesting experiences. I had pasta with friends, got plastered in the mission, went skydiving at an altitude of between 0 feet to upwards of 15 feet (indoor skydiving), watched 3:10 to Yuma and realized that Westerns really are dead (nobody can compete with Tombstone it seems), went to my company BBQ at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom and won a PS3 in a company raffle, and had a tremendous family-style meal with some friends on Sunday night to top it off. However, those experiences play no large part in this post. Rather, as the title suggests, this post is about economics. WAIT! Before you stop reading this post, let me be frank. This is not about traditional economics.

In walking around on Sunday night, a friend and I were on a mission. A mission of grave importance. We were trying to find the oldest bar in San Francisco. While I was skeptical about whether or not this was the oldest bar in San Francisco, in doing research on the Internet, most people seem to suggest that The Saloon in North Beach is the oldest.

While sipping on my traditional gin and tonic, I realized that there was a ten-dollar bill laying on the floor of the bar. Right above the ten-dollar bill, there sat an old-grizzled man whose pockets seemed to be at the right angle to present the possibility that money could separate itself from his pocket. I debated for a split-second. The greed that I felt ebbed in my blood. The decision was quick. There was only one thing to do.

I picked up the money and tapped the old man on the shoulder. He turned to me and the smell of alcohol and cigarettes hit me like cold fog rolling over San Francisco. I explained to him that I had found this money under his chair and that he should take it. He said something briefly, but it was barely intelligible over the drunken slur that he called speech. You could tell that this man was accustomed to the drink. You could tell that he was a consistent consumer to this bar. After receiving the money, he stumbled out of the bar and he put a dollar bill on the ground. I assumed that this was some kind of tithe that he felt obligated to give. It was exactly 10% of the original gift that he had received. A monument to religious taxation of yore. A small testament to what little luck this man has had in his long life.

At this point he came up to me and made me a bet. He slurred that the dollar would be picked up in a minute and a half. Being the consummate carouser, his bet amounted to a beer. I accepted the wager and the sociological experiment began. I was deeply intrigued by both his actions and the current entertainment that was afoot. As San Francisco is notoriously windy, the dollar would not stay in place. So a member of the crowd outside that I will mention as the outside smokers, attempted to add his own legacy to this game. With gum in hand he stuck the dollar back down to the ground and with a triumphant grin, walked back to the group that was now gathered to watch. We soon realized that a group of people intently watching a dollar bill on the ground provided very little encouragement for a bystander to pick up said dollar. The drunken old man even tried his own brand of encouragement by pointing at the dollar like an accuser of a murderer in a line-up. The church finally came for its tithe in the form of a bum. The flood gates have now opened. It was like a horse race with one horse. Or possibly a governmental executive decision. I laughed to myself deeply and while it had certainly been more than a minute and a half, I bought the leathered drunk his fix and my friend and I left with alcohol in our stomachs and a grin on our faces.

Cheers to the Economist. For he, my friends, is still sitting on that same stool at The Saloon.

What is the delta in your life?

When did change suddenly become a prerequisite for happiness? Is life really that boring? I say absolutely not. Life is merely what you make of it. Have you ever seen a small child find the greatest amusement in the simplest thing?

For that same reason:

Shouldn't I be happy that I can open and close my hand?
Shouldn't I be happy that I can afford to feed myself?
Shouldn't I be happy that I have friends and family that love me?

Why shouldn't these things make me satisfied and appreciative of my life? Everyone doesn't have these "gifts" in life. And yet I take these things for granted constantly.

I get depressed because every girl doesn't think I am attractive.
I get unpatient and unhappy when things don't fall into place exactly as I hoped they would.

To get back the title of this blog, I need to learn to be able to be happy in the small deltas that occur in my life. I need to open my eyes to the perspective of a child and realize that going to get an ice cream cone truly is an exceptional and amazing thing. I should take pride in where I am in life and learn to see the bigger picture when it comes to my happiness.

Jon expressing his thoughts is like Ann Coulter and Al Franken having a sword battle in the nude.

I feel like there has been an absence in my life ever since I moved to San Francisco a month ago. Of course that can be explained by the fact that I am starting over with friends again, but it still feels very strange. In that I know other friends are blogging and that I have no real outlet for some of my more abstract and/or deeper thoughts, I think that a blog would be a great thing for me to start.

One of my biggest problems here is not finding things to do, it is having a friend that I know I can consistently count on. Between the people I know in the city and my roommates, I have been able to keep a busy schedule. There is still an occasional table for one, but I feel that I am past the point of not having something to do or someone to hang out with. I think that a huge part of that comes from the large amount of things going on in the bay area. Having friends that I can count on is an obstacle that has proven to be a little bit more difficult. I know that truly great friends don't grow in trees, but my truly great friends should know that my impatience helps in prodding myself into feeling this unease. It can probably be summed up by the feeling as if I am an outsider looking into my own life.

That thought is not to say that I am unhappy. I think I can be more happy in San Francisco than I ever could in Las Vegas. What that does say is that leaving Las Vegas was one of the best things for me to do. However, leaving my friends is one of the worst things I could have done. In Las Vegas, I was at a loss for thread, but it now becomes clear that my friends were the fabric of my life. You just can't make a warm quilt without fabric.