I drank 763 beers last year. how many did you drink?

As 2009 came to a close, out of nowhere, I had this thought: “I wonder how much beer I drank this year?” Too many, probably, I guessed. A day or two after I had that thought, I happened upon this article detailing how heavy drinkers, as well as just moderate drinkers of beer, have significantly higher risks of developing multiple cancers, such as esophageal, stomach, colon, liver, pancreatic and lung. Sobering, to say the absolute least:

“In general, the odds increased in tandem with the men's lifetime alcohol intake…with several cancers, men who drank at least one beer per day tended to have higher risks than those who drank on a regular, but less-than-daily, basis….when it came to esophageal cancer, for instance, men who drank one to six times per week had an 83 percent higher risk than teetotalers and less-frequent drinkers, while daily drinkers had a three-fold higher risk.”

Just one beer per day? A six-pack per week? Whoa. It’s not like I want to live forever, but I’d prefer to maximize the one life I have on this planet (if it’s not too much effort), and spend my old and alone years suffering in as little pain as possible.

“So,” I thought, “It’s simple: I’ll cut down in 2010, keep track of how much beer I actually drink, and then at the end of the year, I’ll take stock. If need be, I’ll cut down even more, in 2011.”

The very next thought I had was, “I need an easy way to keep track of every beer I drink in 2010. Perhaps there’s an app for this?” Sure enough, there was. Took me 4 seconds to find it. It’s called “Beer Counter.” Brilliant!


So in the first several minutes of 2010, with the press of a finger, I tapped on miPhone, entering the first beer I drank that year. Then another. And another.

I kept track of every single beer I drank last year, whether I was at home, out for dinner, at a rock show, a sports event, out of town, or hanging at a friend’s house. Every single one.

I finished my 763rd beer, as the clock struck midnight, ringing in 2011. That’s an average of 2 beers a day; 15 beers a week; or 64 beers a month. It’s roughly 32 cases a year. I also took pictures of every case of beer I bought. Here are just a few:




A few days into this year, I decided it would be awesome if I could decrease my beer intake from last year, by around 25%. This seemed like a do-able goal, I thought, and I’d be building on the previous year’s decrease.

Well, I’m just finishing my 47th beer right now, 31 days in. That’s just 1.5 beers a day – right on target!

I’ll check in with y’all this time next year for an update…

The A-word

It's starting to look a lot like an apocalypse.
By David Sirota

Mar. 07, 2009 |

Any serious scribe will tell you that writing is, at its heart, the maddening struggle to find exactly the right words. Should the overcast sky be called "gray," or "beige"? Is Rush Limbaugh best described as "an enraged Jabba the Hut," or "a deranged Stay Puft Marshmallow Man"? Are we living through a "recession" or a "depression"?

Recently, I've been groping for the precise word to characterize the zeitgeist of this (unfortunately) historic moment. I know it's not merely "demoralized." It's something far more dread-laden -- a word I finally found during a visit last week to central Mexico.

Sitting atop the famed Pyramid of the Sun, I took in Teotihuacan -- the ancient metropolis outside Mexico City. Its weathered bricks and mortar look like many great archaeological wonders, except its annals include a harrowing asterisk: When the Aztecs discovered the site, it was abandoned, and nobody knows what happened to its inhabitants. The ruins thus feel like monuments to an apocalypse.

That's the term that popped into my mind as I baked in the Mexican sun -- "apocalypse": a phenomenon whose signs are everywhere these days.

Iraq bleeds from unending strife, while Israelis and Palestinians appear intent on annihilating each other. Pakistan just released A.Q. Khan, the scientist who delivered nuclear secrets to North Korea -- the country that's again threatening long-range missile tests. Colombia’s civil war rages, and the "great news" in Mexico is President Felipe Calderon's announcement that drug cartels haven't totally taken over the country.

In America, our apocalyptic symbols are usually subtler -- the birth of octuplets or a restaurant chain's Chicago Seven pizza, which consumerizes a renowned court case into a fast-food dish. But Wall Street and Washington exhibit a more overt Sodom and Gomorrah quality of late, to the point where even business magazines like Portfolio are invoking the A-word.

It's not just the economic turbulence or the corruption that evokes this new darkness -- both have been around for a while. It's the “I feel fine” obliviousness of R.E.M.’s cataclysmic ballad -- the aggressively defiant, adamantly proud ignorance that marks history’s end times.

As wages stagnate in a nation whose median household income is $50,000 a year, one financial executive tells reporters that bankers "can't live on $150,000 to $180,000." Another bemoans efforts to restrict CEO pay by saying that "$500,000 is not a lot of money" -- and the New York Times chimes in by insisting that it’s true: "Half a million a year can go very fast."

Similarly, as lawmakers hand banks trillions of taxpayer dollars, Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., complains that Congress has gotten "very little done to help the financial sector," and Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., says America should be most worried that "we're running out of rich people." Meanwhile, reporter Rick Santelli is billed as a populist hero for standing amid wealthy commodities traders and telling CNBC’s viewers that the people being thrown out of their homes are "losers."

Hollywood, our cultural mirror, reflects this back as a simultaneous mix of hedonism and fatalism, an MTV beach party at the end of the world. During this economic crisis, we're given "Confessions of a Shopaholic," a comedy film that glorifies overborrowing and overspending. We'll soon be fed the final season of "Lost," a television show whose Benetton models stumble onto a mystery that might destroy the planet. And then it's on to a film version of "The Road," Cormac McCarthy's fable about cannibalism at the end of humanity.

Apocalypse ... it seems so biblical, but suddenly feels so now. And if we don't quickly wake up and turn things around, we will be left to mutter Col. Kurtz's despondent whisper: "The horror ... the horror."

How Did You Die?

this is one of my all-time favorite poems - sj

How Did You Die?
By Edmund Vance Cook – 1866-1932

Did you tackle that trouble that came your way
With a resolute heart and cheerful?
Or hide your face from the light of day
With a craven soul and fearful?
Oh, a trouble’s a ton, or a trouble’s an ounce,
Or a trouble is what you make it.
And it isn’t the fact that you’re hurt that counts,
But only how did you take it?

You are beaten to earth? Well, well, what’s that?
Come up with a smiling face.
It’s nothing against you to fall down flat,
But to lie there – that’s disgrace.
The harder you’re thrown, why the higher you bounce;
Be proud of your blackened eye!
It isn’t the fact that you’re licked that counts;
It’s how did you fight and why?

And though you be done to death, what then?
If you battled the best you could;
If you played your part in the world of men,
Why, the Critic will call it good.
Death comes with a crawl, or comes with a pounce,
And whether he’s slow or spry,
It isn’t the fact that you’re dead that counts,
But only, how did you die?

Turn out the lights. The party's over.

Well, now that that's done...we can start cleaning up the mess.

As of about 5PM Eastern Standard Time, GWB's tenure effectively ended. Yeah, he's still the Preznit until Tuesday at noon, but for all intents and purposes "don't let the door hit ya in the ass..."

Friday at 5 is when most places empty out (and the happy hour bars get rollin'). Monday is a federal holiday, so as far as the US Gumint is concerned
"It's Change, Baby!"

no inauguration for spacejace...

Dear Mr. spacejace,

Thank you again for contacting my office in regards to Inauguration Tickets. The upcoming Inauguration Ceremony for President-elect Barack Obama is expected to bring many hundreds of thousands of people to the greater Washington, DC area to enjoy this historic event.

My office received over 4,000 requests for tickets for the Inauguration Ceremony, but unfortunately, the allocation we will receive is for less than 200 tickets. To fairly share this limited number of tickets, we have used a lottery to distribute the tickets randomly to constituents. Unfortunately, your name was not one of the randomly-selected winners.

I would have liked to be able to invite each and every constituent to Washington, DC to view the event live, but obviously I could not do so. Regardless, I hope that everyone will be able to participate in the Inaugural Ceremony in their homes, somewhere in Washington, DC, or at other events that may take place throughout the local area.

Thank you for thinking of me and my office when you reach out for help, as I will continue to address your concerns. I look forward to serving you and our district this coming Congressional term.

Congressman Joe Sestak
Pennsylvania's 7th District

Giant Misunderstanding

by Lee Russakof

After playing their two best games in back-to-back must-wins, the Eagles’ bandwagon is filling up and the calls for Andy Reid’s head have been silenced.

Call me crazy, but I’m going against the tide (shocker) and saying this: The last two games shouldn’t save Reid’s job—they should be the final nails in his coffin.

The 7-5-1 Birds went up to New York and manhandled the best team in football. They treated the Giants like the Giants have treated the rest of the league.

The Eagles pounded the ball over and over again into the Giants’ line. They controlled the clock, kept third downs manageable, and tired out the G-Men’s defense. In short, they looked like the Giants.

It was everything every fan and writer in Philly has been asking Reid to do for 11 weeks—a grind ’em out, dominate-the-trenches-on-both-sides-of-the-ball strategy.

And it is inexcusable it took Reid this long to do it.

In a year as wide open as this one, any team that makes the playoffs has a legitimate shot at winning it all (aside from the Cardinals).

Sure, the elite teams—the Giants, Titans, and Steelers—are all very good. But they aren’t unbeatable. It’s not as if any of them has an exorbitant edge in talent. After all, the Eagles have already beaten two of the three.

What separates the three from the rest of the NFL is their coaches’ commitment to physicality. When you play any of those three teams, you know you are going to be sore Monday morning.

The Steelers proved that that’s how you win in the NFL back in ’06 when they won it all. The Giants reinforced it during last year’s run. Even the Colts, who won in ’07, did so behind 190 yards in the Super Bowl from Dominic Rhodes and Joseph Addai.

So why does it take Andy until December to realize the error of his pass-happy ways?

Better yet, why does it take him until December every year to figure it out?

During the last two games, the Eagles ran the ball more than they passed. They won both.

Last year, when the Eagles focused on a run-pass balance, they took the eventual-champion Giants to the wire and finished with three straight wins.

Two years ago, it took a Donovan McNabb injury to force Andy to even out his offense. That balance led to a five-game winning streak and a Jeff Garcia-led playoff berth.

How many times do we have to watch the same script play out?

Every time the Eagles dedicate themselves to running the football, they go on a run. And yet, it still seems the players have to
convince Andy Reid to pound the ball.

“The coaches stuck with it,” Tra Thomas said. “They didn’t get discouraged when there was a two-yard run.”

“Coach stayed with it,” Brian Westbrook added. “He was very committed to it. I give a lot of credit to him because usually we’re not that committed to it. But he saw we were getting it done.”

Daily News writer Les Bowen asked Andy Reid about why he was committed to running the ball Sunday despite only five yards on the first nine carries. Reid didn’t say, “Because I wanted to win,” or “Because I wanted to control the ball.”

He said, “the weather conditions were the biggest factor.”

Bowen quipped, “Do fans who want to see you run the ball more hope for really high winds the rest of the season?”

And yet Andy seemed to miss the joke. “I think the fans just want to win. They don’t care if we run it or pass it.”

That’s true Andy…we just want to win. But you win by running the football. Why is it you seem to be the only one in this city who still can’t see that?

Albert Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Over the past few years, Andy Reid has proven he falls under that
definition.

The sad thing is, those of us who keep expecting Andy to finally “get it,” are just as insane.

"Fuck You Cardinal James Francis!"

...and people question me as to why I'm so concerned about church/state separation issues! People LISTEN to "leaders" like this - that's why! I'm not speaking of the 54% of catholics who voted for Obama and put their principles, common sense and love of country ahead of this anti-American's verbal diarrhea and core beliefs; but there are millions of others out there who really listen and BELIEVE this crap!!! It's rhetoric like this causing the catholic church to become more and more irrelevant, fractured and useless, as the years progress (of course, the almost 10,000 reported cases and/or investigations into rape and abuse of young male clergy by catholic church "leaders" sure doesn't help! Those despicable and unfortunate events have a way of cutting into your 'base,' and forcing even the staunchest of followers to start re-evaluating exactly who it is - and what it is - they're following)...

Read a few of Cardinal James Francis's thoughts and quotes from his speeches below. This insufferable old man is lucky he doesn't live on my block. I tell you true!


Cardinal Stafford criticizes Obama as ‘aggressive, disruptive and apocalyptic’

Washington DC, Nov 17, 2008 / 02:27 pm (CNA).- Cardinal James Francis Stafford, head of the Apostolic Penitentiary of the Holy See, delivered a lecture on Thursday saying that the future under President-elect Obama will echo Jesus’ agony in Gethsemane. Criticizing Obama as “aggressive, disruptive and apocalyptic,” he went on to speak about a decline in respect for human life and the need for Catholics to return to the values of marriage and human dignity.

Delivered at the Catholic University of America, the cardinal’s lecture was titled “Pope Paul VI and Pope John Paul II: Being True in Body and Soul,” the student university paper The Tower reports. Hosted by the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family, his words focused upon Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae, whose fortieth anniversary is marked this year.

Commenting on the results of the recent presidential election, Cardinal Stafford said on Election Day “America suffered a cultural earthquake.” The cardinal argued that President-elect Obama had campaigned on an “extremist anti-life platform” and predicted that the near future would be a time of trial.

“If 1968 was the year of America’s ‘suicide attempt,’ 2008 is the year of America’s exhaustion,” he said, contrasting the year of Humane Vitae’s promulgation with this election year.

“For the next few years, Gethsemane will not be marginal. We will know that garden,” Cardinal Stafford told his audience. Catholics who weep the “hot, angry tears of betrayal” should try to identify with Jesus, who during his agony in the garden was “sick because of love.”

The cardinal attributed America’s decline to the Supreme Court’s decisions such as the 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade, which imposed permissive abortion laws nationwide.

“Its scrupulous meanness has had catastrophic effects upon the unity and integrity of the American republic,” Cardinal Stafford commented, according to The Tower.

His theological remarks centered upon man’s relationship with God and man’s place in society.

“Man is a sacred element of secular life,” he said, arguing that therefore “man should not be held to a supreme power of state, and a person’s life cannot ultimately be controlled by government.”

Cardinal Stafford also touched on the state of the family, saying that the truest reflection of the relationship between the believer and God is the relationship between husband and wife, and that contraceptive use does not fit within that relationship.

Ulcer Alert #9

Why It’s Still a Race

Wednesday, October 29, 2008 8:45 AM
By Howard Fineman

Here’s all you need to know about Sen. Barack Obama and his campaign. He taped his half-hour TV special, which airs across your dial at 8 p.m. Eastern tonight, last week.

Now, a week is a year and a year is a lifetime in presidential campaigns. But it is characteristic of Obama to plan ahead in the heat of the battle. The cool, collected senator has known from the start (nearly two years ago) pretty much what he has wanted to say. He kept his eyes on the prize. The small stuff didn’t distract him.

That is why his campaign and its staff, which I have checked in with twice in the last week here in Chicago, remain relatively calm as they head into the final lap of a national NASCAR race that has not quite turned into the rout that history and other factors would lead you to predict.


By all accounts and by all odds, Obama is fairly comfortably ahead in the Electoral College—which, as Al Gore will tell you, is what matters.

On TV Wednesday night, Obama will give what one aide described to me as a “meaty” discourse on his basic tax and health-care proposals. No high-flown rhetoric, but rather a briefing paper for wary undecided swing voters---most of whom, the campaign thinks, are “soft Republicans” who kind of want to vote for Obama but need reassurance.

And yet, in the meantime, Sen. John McCain has not quite disappeared in the rear-view mirror.

I find that astonishing. And, if you are in the Obama campaign, you have to find that at the very least a teeny bit troubling in these last days.

Let me repeat the following litany, just for the sake of wonder if nothing else:

Consumer confidence is at an all-time low. The job performance rating of the outgoing Republican president is at Nixon-Carter levels. Nine out of ten voters think the country is off on the wrong track. The Democrats lead in the generic congressional preference vote by a double-digit margin.

Obama has outspent McCain on TV advertising three or four to one (though McCain is matching him in some key states here at the end). Obama has four thousand paid organizers in key states, an unheard of number. Most voters think that McCain’s running mate is not qualified to be president. Many people wonder aloud if McCain is in fact too old (72) to be president. Much of the media coverage of Obama has been fawning to say the least, and with good reason. He is one of the most winsome, charismatic candidates to have appeared on the scene in decades.

Still, in today’s “traditional Gallup” Daily Tracking Poll (the one that screens likely voters most rigorously, based on past votes), Obama leads McCain by only two percentage points, 49 to 47 percent.

Here in Chicago, they say that they expected a close race at the end, as one staffer put it. They are steady as she goes on ad spending, and they are fighting the end game on Red State turf, which is what the frontrunner does. They scoff at the idea that McCain could win Pennsylvania, and they are almost certainly right about that.

It’s hard to make the Electoral College numbers add up for McCain. He has to win all of the current tossup states (Montana, North Dakota, Missouri, Indiana, North Carolina and Florida), plus Ohio and Virginia and one of the following three: New Hampshire, Colorado or New Mexico. That isn’t just drawing one inside straight; that’s
drawing a whole casino’s worth of them.

Why hasn’t Obama run away with this?

Because the country remains culturally divided. Because the more it looks like Democrats will score huge gains in Congress, the more worried “soft Republican” voters get. Because McCain has succeeded, in the minds of some of those voters, in raising the hoary specter of “tax-and-spend” liberals. Because Obama hails from a place (South Side Chicago) and background (the son of professional academics) more reminiscent of Democratic losers like Michael Dukakis, Al Gore and John Kerry than winners like LBJ, Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton. Because some voters remember the hate-filled sound bites of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

And, to a degree we cannot measure and may never fully know, because Obama is an African-American---and one with a Swahili name at that.

There is nothing that the staffers here in Chicago can do about any of that at this point. Up on the 11th floor of the office building here, staffers are hard at work. They aren’t thinking about those things. Their campaign manager, David Plouffe, won’t let them. “We expected this to tighten,” one of them said to me a few hours ago.

And so, it seems, it has.