You know, “Drill, drill, drill!” is not only my policy on meeting short term energy needs. It’s also my policy on education reform.
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Tags: educationreform, gas prices, drill drill drill, energy
Joe’s Patriotic Things to Do for the Fourth of July, 2008. Friday, Jul 4 2008
Uncategorized 9:38 am
Now, this is extremely important, so I want you to pay attention. If you do ANY of the below things, I will officially not question your patriotism ever again. You know that I do it all the time, right? You meet me, and you say something stupid about the neocons, or the war, or our government, or the pernicious influence of Alexander Hamilton and/or Abraham Lincoln, and my brain just goes… pfft. Unpatriotic! It’s totally wrong of me. And yet, I can’t help myself. It’s like a reflex. Just like your reflexive lack of patriotism!
Sorry, sorry. See how that happens?
There’s hope, though. Fake it till you make it, as they say. Let’s get started.
First patriotic thing to do for the Fourth of July, 2008.
1. Join With Me in Catching the Falling Knife that is VTI.
In case you don’t know, VTI is the ticker symbol for a exchange-traded fund called the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index. An exchange-traded fund is like a basket of stocks that you can buy all at once, and VTI basically holds every single stock that there is. Every single AMERICAN stock there is. Because it mindlessly buys everything, Vanguard’s cut of your money is practically a rounding error. And right now, it’s down about nineteen percent. I’m hurtin’ — whoops, I mean, AMERICA is hurtin’ — on this one. So, America needs you to start propping this puppy up.
Now, I’ve done my part. Normally, I invest about fifty dollars a month in VTI through my Sharebuilder account, for my son Max’s education. In June, as the market was diving, I invested a total of about two hundred dollars, as the stock went on sale. And, of course, the stock has just kept going down, and I’m going to keep buying until it stops… probably another sixty or seventy bucks this month and next month, as soon as my (very patriotic) trip to Detroit and Peoria is over and done with. Then, when it goes up, I’ll look like a genius. That’s how the stock market works, you see. Buy low, sell high, and give some love to all our fine value-producing publically traded companies. They need it right now.
Now, how do you do this? Well, there’s many fine brokerage houses, but I like ING Sharebuilder. With Sharebuilder, you can buy fractional shares of an ETF, so it’s almost like buying a mutual fund for four bucks a trade. With the tiny amount of money I have, I can buy pretty strategically that way.
So, once you’ve build up a position of a thousand bucks or so, you can say, “Well, I’ve bought a thousand bucks worth of VTI, but I’m still voting for Obama because those d**n Hamiltonian neo-cons need to get what’s coming to them!”, and I won’t question your patriotism. I may ask skeptically if you’re still building your position in VTI, but that’s it.
2. Give money to politicians.
Won’t someone think of the politicians?
I mean, I suppose you can vote, but that’s the easy part. You need to go all-in in supporting the major parties’ ability to speak without the filter of our idiotic media on all the time.
You see, if you DON’T give money to politicians, they’d need to pander to gigantic media conglomerates to get their message out. If you DO give money to politicians, then they need to pander to you to try and get more money. That’s infinitely better.
McCain never liked raising money, for instance, so he panders to the media instead. Reagan was a money machine, baby. He worked the rubber-chicken circuit for basically his entire life, and thus could say anything he felt like.
Other politicians are like that too. Ron Paul. Barack Obama. Mitt Romney. If they didn’t have money, people would just laugh at them. I mean, they’d laugh at them harder than they already do, and then ignore them. And the country is better off because they have money.
So, I repeat, giving money to politicians is even better — nay, more patriotic — than voting.
3. Stop saying you’re “a Registered Independent”
Who do you think you’re kidding, anyway?
Most people basically vote for one party or the other. In fact, unless you’ve cast a perfectly even number of votes, half of which have gone to one party, and half of which have gone to the other party, you prefer one party over the other. So, stop kidding yourself, and join up with one party or the other.
You know what? Joining a political party is a completely cost-free action. You don’t have to vote for the people in the party you belong to, do you? You can switch at any time, right? So why be independent? Because you dislike both parties? Well, unless you don’t vote, you vote for people who are loyal members of a political party, so you obviously don’t consider it to be a disqualifying personality flaw.
You can even join a third party if you want to. As long as it isn’t one of the socialist cultist ones. Just stop with the independent thing, because you aren’t. You don’t know better than everyone else.
And if you think you do, you’re totally unpatriotic.
–
Okay, that’s enough for now. Now go open your account with Sharebuilder! Happy Fourth!
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Tags: stock, VTI, patriotism, fourth of july, political parties, sharebuilder, neoconservatism
Um… Thursday, Jun 19 2008
Uncategorized 6:53 pm
I saw this AdWord recently.
Democratic Convention – Denver.org – Join the largest event in Denver’s history this August 25th-28th.
Really, the largest event? Is it gonna beat this?
Finally, I have something off-topic to say! Monday, Jun 9 2008
Uncategorized 9:22 pm
But, unfortunately, it’s brief.
1 part Smirnoff Citron, 5 parts Welch’s White Grape Cherry Juice.
I’ll come up with a name for it later, but it’s tasty.
UPDATE! My wife just informed me that she diluted the juice for the kiddies. So, make that 1 part Smirnoff, 2 parts water, 2 parts juice.
And my wife ish the aweshomest wife EVER. Whoo!
Goldberg Purgatory, Day 33. Monday, Jun 2 2008
Uncategorized 10:53 pm
I think my hands have recovered from a marathon practice on Friday by now.
I went to a friend’s wedding shower on Saturday. The host had a Kawai baby grand in the sunroom of their house, overlooking a medium-sized pond with a fountain. I wound up sitting there and trying to remember how to play the piano for what seemed like an hour.
It’s always good to be reminded how different playing on a grand is. The feel on a grand piano is very weird; it takes a lot more force to get those keys down, so if you’re nervous, your hands tend to rebel and say, “Never mind. We ain’t moving!”
Also, considering where I am in my piano skills, I didn’t feel like I deserved to be playing in such a beautiful space. A part of me felt like I needed to be back in the basement of my alma mater, and that I should stay there until the Goldbergs are memorized.
Still, a great time.
Goldberg Purgatory: Day 31 Saturday, May 31 2008
Goldberg 7:33 am
Note to self: create Google Spreadsheet that will keep track of how many days I’ve been working on this thing.
Got a lot of work done last night on the first half of Variation 3, which is actually not too hard at the right tempo… and is insanely difficult at my current skill level if I take it at the Gouldian “Hey! I’m a Virtuoso Pianist!” tempo. The piece overall make take 100 minutes instead of 80, I’m thinking. The audience is gonna love me. My vendors will be serving Claritin-D washed down with Red Bull at the intermission. If you come, you may want to bring crayons and Cheerios to keep yourself quiet.
Tell you what. I’ll follow up the Goldbergs with Messiaen’s Vingt Regards sur L’Enfant-Jesus (total performance time: two hours, ten minutes), and then end short and sweet with Ives’ Concord sonata (45 minutes). Peter Jackson will come, and he’ll be saying, “Joe, I think you need to make some cuts”. Bill Clinton will say, “Wow, maybe people DON’T want to listen to one guy for four hours.”
Okay, Enough schtick for now. It’s going to be a “lecture-recital”, so I have to save some for the big show…
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Goldberg Purgatory: Day 26 Monday, May 26 2008
Uncategorized 8:54 am
Well, I might as well say it.
90 percent of the time, practicing a passage “hands separate” is pointless.
Yes, it’s important to phrase each melodic line, and yes, occasionally you need to get the musculature going correctly. But otherwise, if I’m having trouble with a passage, I just practice the passage a measure or a beat at a time — and I always get it finished faster, with less effort expended.
I mean, do saxaphonists practice one hand at a time? Do runners practice one foot at a time? You are doing one thing when you play piano, not one thing with one hand and another thing with another hand…
I’ve been playing piano for twenty-three years now. I admit I have my weaknesses. My lines aren’t always perfectly phrased. I get pieces up to 80%, and often lose interest from there. I’m intellectually excited by the process of learning, but not so much by the process of perfecting. And practicing hands separate is certainly a part of perfecting a piece. It gets the line in your head. It gives you a track to run on.
But it also makes you have to go back and learn it hands together… all over again.
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Golberg Purgatory: Day 24. Saturday, May 24 2008
Goldberg 2:22 pm
Okay, done with Variation 2. On to variation three, the Canon at the Unison.
Now, the Canons present a particular difficulty. Here’s why: a canon is like a round. You have a basically identical melody in several voices, and the harmony works throughout.
However, unlike a round, with a canon, the composer can flip the melody, do it backwards, start it in different places, transpose it, or any combination of the above.
The difficulty is this. Instead of practicing, you try and “solve” the canon until your brain hurts, instead of going to Wikipedia like a normal person. Because it’s a way of avoiding practicing.
I need a nap.
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Goldberg Purgatory, Day 21 Wednesday, May 21 2008
Uncategorized 10:32 pm
Another day, another four measures or so.
Note well, pianists around the world: the shorter the section you’re practicing, the faster it goes. Particularly with baroque music, you take the smallest gestures — a measure, two measures — and you chain them together.
If you can’t tell, I find the work to be immensely satisfying, physically and intellectually. Unlike when I was in school, and stressed out about it all the time. I’m twenty-seven now; I have my bearings a bit more, and I’m willing to take it slow enough to get it right.
Well, almost right. Right enough.
Goldberg purgatory: day 17 Saturday, May 17 2008
Goldberg 10:54 pm
I’m starting to pick up speed now.
Saturday’s a good day to practice, actually. I drop my wife off at her meeting, I drive home, put the kids to bed, take a quick nap (natch), and I’m ready to go. Knocked out the first sixteen bars of the second variation today, and I’m ready to keep going.
What I’m concerned about is not mechanics though. It’s dynamics, and touch.
First of all, the Goldbergs really were written for harpsichord, and I’m not playing them on a harpsichord. Harpsichords have tiny, tiny keys for one thing, and I don’t have tiny, tiny hands. Plus, I don’t have a harpsichord. Heck, the piano isn’t even in the apartment. I’m practicing on a fine electronic keyboard. It’s actually quite nice, serves me well. Good dynamic range.
Still, I don’t quite know how to play these so they sound good yet. I can play them so that it sounds like I’m having a good time. But I keep playing them differently. As I said before, I keep it pretty detached… but then, I find that a more legato line in the eighth notes in the left hand brings out the 2:1 counterpoint… but it sounds too precious when the eighth notes are in the right hand. Then I start thinking, maybe Glenn Gould was on to something when he banged out the first variation at forte, and I’m totally wrong to build slowly, since the second and third variation are pretty quiet and bubbly. I’m going to be putting my friends to sleep with this eighty-minute monstrosity if I play it politely.
And so on, and so forth. What I try to remember is that… I’m not unmusical. Really. It’ll come.
Maybe if I play it on organ instead…
