moral bankruptcy.

i'm still trying to shake off the effects of jay's bachelor party weekend. I really need to sit down and have a long talk with my body, apologize for all the awful things i did to it this weekend.

if you ever decide that you want to see detroit, mi, i suggest you go to windsor, on and look across the river. detroit is not a nice place. why do people still live there? I don't understand it.

i've got to get some work done so i can go home and sleep more.

oh, and i read 120 pages of Kundera's "the unbearable lightness of being" and it has been incredible so far. i strongly recommend it. hopefully i will want to recommend it as strongly after i actually finish it.

After hitting the snooze button for the 4th time this morning, I decided that I wanted to design a new alarm clock that had both a programmable snooze and multiple snooze buttons. The piece of crap alarm clock that I have now allows me to sleep for 7 minutes when I hit the snooze button. Why seven you ask? Why seven? I ask as well. This morning, I wanted more than 7 minutes – 28 minutes to be exact. But I had to wake up 4 times to get 28 more minutes of sleep. I want to be able to set my snooze button to allow me to get 28 minutes and wake up only once. Even better would be one snooze button that gives me a 10 minute snooze and another that give me a 30 minute snooze period. Is that much to ask? I think not.

Maybe I should become an alarm clock programmer. I'm sure I'd be better than the guy who decided 7 minutes is a proper snooze time.

So yesterday was St. Patrick’s day and despite the fact that I’m not Catholic or Irish and that I should have been at work, I was with Pete and Dave drinking Guinness. We started at the Burren in Davis Sq. then headed to the Field in central.

At the field, we met two older men, Jay and george, who had also cut out of work and were getting drunk to commemorate whatever it was that Patrick did (converted celtic druids to Christianity or something. I’ve heard something about chasing snakes off the island as well, but I think I believe the former more than the latter). We had a pretty wide ranging conversation and at one point we started talking about that jackass in west Virginia that won the largest lottery payout ever and keeps f’in up. Jay asked the table what they would do with the money.

ME: The payout is $180 million. I said I’d take $25 Mil and invest it and live off the interest. Then I’d help out family and friends and figured that would generously cost another $10 - $15 mil, so that leaves me with $140 million dollars. With that I’d set up some sort of foundation and give money away to non-profits and other organizations that I thought were worthy.

They laughed at me. They were nice, but basically said “stupid hippie” and then talked about all the whores they’d frequent in Southeast Asia. And alimony payments to future ex-wives. And that $180 million wouldn’t go as far as I think it would. I’m not kidding. They thought I was the stupid one.

But really, why wouldn’t you do this. Seriously. First of all, this money was just given to me, I didn’t work for it, it’s just dumb luck I’m now a hundred millionaire. Secondly, if I were that rich, I’d still want a job of some sort or I’d eventually get really bored. What could be better than a job where you just give people money? Just sit around, read grant proposals, and if they sound awesome, you just drop a few million on them. At least the money would be put to good use in the hands of people who were actually talented and would make difference, instead of whiny relatives that want a bigger pool or southeast asian whores.

Surprisingly, jay and george are Republicans.

This past weekend was the 5 year anniversary of being matched with my little brother Dario. To celebrate, I took him, his mom, his foster brother, cousin, best friend, bob and bethany to King Fung Garden in Chinatown. If you live in Boston or travel to the Boston area and you want great chinese food, I strongly suggest you go there. Call a day ahead and order the Peking Duck. They serve it to you in three courses and they are all great. The waitstaff is great as well. 7 1/2 year old Phillip was our waiter on this evening. He did a great job until he found out that Jerrica had Yu-Gi-Oh trading cards. After that, he was a bit distracted. He was definitely the most entertaining waiter I've ever had. You can see philip and the rest of the dinner party here.

I'm bored. i wish someone would email me or something.

Today I was walking to work and I noticed a sam adam's beer truck that had "god bless our troops" on the back of it. forked thoughts split through my little mind.

tine one: what happens when we find out that there isn't a "god" or he doesn't wish to "bless us." wow! that's a lot of empty gestures. how many times have you said or heard some one say "god bless..." it must have been said billions or trillions of times now and then we find out that they don't mean anything. weird.

tine two: i really dislike the idea of saying "god bless our troops" as it implies that this god condones our actions or that we are doing these deeds in his name and he's going to protect our troops but not theirs. garbage.

tine three: w. can't be that religious of a man to start the war that he did in iraq. from what i know about the god that he professes to worship would never condone a war for material goods. i doubt he would condone a preemptive war. an eye for the possibility that it's possible at some time in the future this other guy is going to gouge your eye. actually w's now saying it's an eye for "weapons of mass destruction-related program activities." he's garbage. anyone but w in '04.

n.b. I fully support our troops. I just don't agree with why they are there. I especially disagree with the people responsible for putting them there.