What is an "efficiency apartment"?

I've started early on my apartment hunting for November. And it's taken me five years of apartment living to finally google "efficiency apartment".

When you see the words "efficiency", it resembles the same feeling you get when you read the word "charming" or "cute" in an apartment ad. It means SMALL.

But according to the all knowing web:

An efficiency apartment is like a studio, except that is usually a little bigger and sometimes the bedroom is not part of the living room, it has it's own room.

So, eh, wouldn't that be considered a 1 Bedroom apartment (or 1BR in craigslist lingo)?

Well, yeah that's why they came up with a creative word for it "efficiency". AKA, really, really small one bedroom apartment or a big no-bedroom apartment.

So there you have it.

How are Democrats Going to Select a Nominee?

During most election cycles the above question is a no brainer. Candidates campaign around, someone becomes the clear favorite, and by the time the convention rolls around we have a nominee. However, this year is different. With Senators Obama and Clinton running a tight race, and the chance of no clear Democratic nominee by the time the convention rolls around, how is the donkey going to make their pick. Howard Dean has an idea:

WASHINGTON (AP) - Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean urged Florida and Michigan party officials to come up with plans to repeat their presidential nominating contests so that their delegates can be counted.

"All they have to do is come before us with rules that fit into what they agreed to a year and a half ago, and then they'll be seated," Dean said during a round of interviews Thursday on network and cable TV news programs.

The two state parties will have to find the funds to pay for new contests without help from the national party, Dean said.

"We can't afford to do that. That's not our problem. We need our money to win the presidential race," he said.

Officials in Michigan and Florida are showing renewed interest in holding repeat presidential nominating contests so that their votes will count in the epic Democratic campaign.

The Michigan governor, top officials in Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign, and Florida's state party chair all are now saying they would consider holding a sort of do-over contest by June. That's a change from the previous insistence from officials in both states that the primaries they held in January should determine how their delegates are allocated.

Clinton campaign communications director Howard Wolfson said in a conference call with reporters Thursday that it's hard to envision a scenario where the Florida and Michigan delegations are not seated at the conventions.

That would send a "very unsettling signal to the people of those states," Wolfson said.

Florida and Michigan screwed themselves out of delegates because they moved their state contests up months before they used to be held. This was done because normally a clear favorite emerges early, and thus having your primary early is, at the very least, a way to make your state relevant for a short period of time (Looking at your Iowa). In response to moving up their primaries, the DNC took away the delegates which more or less made the whole thing useless. Little did anyone know that the race for the Democratic nomination would take more than a week or two to figure out, and now the states that blew their load way too early are interested in a second chance.

Normally, I would argue that when you screw yourself you screw yourself, but the determining who wins the nomination is no small matter. Democrats in Florida and Michigan have a right to have their votes count, and now more than ever it appears that their votes will in fact matter.

The Democrats, on the federal, state, and local level, need to find a way for Michigan and Florida to hold primary contests again, so that whomever is the Democratic nominee will have done so in the fairest manner possible.

That said, me thinks that Hillary Clinton would win Florida and Michigan, so clearly this will benefit her more. It will be interesting to see if Obama is more interested in making sure the votes of the Democrats in the states of Florida and Michigan are more important to him (they should be) than the nomination, as I find it hard to believe Obama can make an argument against Florida and Michigan holding their primaries and not take a hit in the polls.

R

Do Video Games Make People Violent?

There was an interesting piece of news that came out of Hawaii recently involving violence and video games:

An auto-theft suspect who was no stranger to police as a juvenile offender is now in trouble as an adult.

Police today arrested the man, 18, on suspicion of auto theft in Halawa with a big assist from the department's helicopter.

According to police, the youth has ties going back five years to the notorious auto-theft group known as GTAG or Grand Theft Auto Gang which has been stealing autos in 'Aiea, Halawa and Pearl City for years, mostly to play out the video game in real life.

In today's case, police dispatch received a call about a hazardous driver on the H-3 Freeway. A check of the license number called in showed the car was reported stolen. Patrol units and HPD's helicopter located the vehicle on the freeway and tracked it.

The helicopter followed as the driver headed onto Moanalua Freeway, where he eventually collided with a guardrail. The driver fled on foot but was found by police hiding in bushes off Moanalua Freeway westbound at the stadium offramp in Halawa at 4 p.m.

Guy's like Jack Thompson love this stuff, but I still fail to see how video games cause violence. I have been an avid video game player my entire life, as have most of my friends, and none of us have been arrested or even suspected in a crime of any type, let alone a violent offense. Why? Because we use our brains.

The people who commit crimes like the one above make the conscious decision to do so. Because people have the freedom to make their own decisions, fault should lie on the decision makers only. To blame Grand Theft Auto, or any game, for the actions of a human being is beyond short sighted in my opinion.

Violence is a part of the culture. We have had violent movies for decades now and society has not crumbled. We have had music that celebrates the war for centuries and society has not crumbled. So why should we consider limiting the expression of our artists, and limit the public's access to their art, when it is the acts of individuals that are in fact the crimes?

This country was founded on the concept of freedom and that includes freedom of expression. The only necessary limitations on art are already in place. In the meantime, rather than simply point at a disc and name it the root of all evil, people should start to take a look at the other reasons people commit crimes, including the very real fact that some people are just plain fucking stupid.

Video games don't make people violent. Stupid people sometimes make decisions that result in violence.

Who Sucks the Most Today? 02-28-2008

Greetings friends. I figured I would start a new semi-frequent contribution called, Who Sucks the Most Today? Taking a look at the news we can tell that so many people suck, do deciding who sucks the most can be challenging. Fortunately, I am up to the task. For our first edition we look to the New York Times for some insight:

Jonathan McCullum was in excellent health at 155 pounds when he left last summer to spend the school year as an exchange student in Egypt.

But when he returned home to Maine just four months later, the 5-foot-9 teenager weighed a mere 97 pounds and was so weak that he struggled to carry his baggage or climb a flight of stairs. Doctors said he was at risk of a heart attack.

McCullum says he was denied sufficient food while staying with a family of Coptic Christians, who fast for more than 200 days a year, a regimen unmatched by other Christians.

But he does not view the experience as a culture clash. Rather, he said, it reflected mean and stingy treatment by his host family and a language barrier that made it difficult to communicate.

Wow, that really really sucks. Whose to blame?

After returning to the United States, he was hospitalized for nearly two weeks. The 17-year-old has regained about 20 pounds, but his parents say he's not the same boy he was when he left under the auspices of AFS Intercultural Programs.

"He was outgoing, a straight-A student, very athletic," said his mother, Elizabeth McCullum, who was shocked when she met her son at the airport on Jan. 9 and saw he had lost one-third his weight. "Now, he's less spontaneous and more subdued."

Jonathan McCullum's parents said the exchange program should have warned them that students placed with Coptic families would be subject to dietary restrictions.

Marlene Baker, communications director at AFS headquarters in New York, declined to discuss McCullum's experience.

She referred calls to the program's lawyer in Portland, Patricia Peard, who said she could not comment on McCullum's case because of the potential for a lawsuit.

Potential for a lawsuit? No offense Patricia but I think the word you were looking for was imminent, not potential. I also love that we live in a country where rather than admit fault, we say no comment and leave our lawyers to solve problems.

So, after combing through the news of the morning, I have decided that nobody sucks more than the AFS. These people are trusted with the safety of our children and rather than meet that challenge with honesty they lie by omission. To not tell the families of the children the conditions that their children will be living in must be considered negligence. Perhaps rather than wasting time investigating what asshole athlete decided to forgo a long life by juicing up our government should spend some time investigating student exchange programs. My guess is that McCullum's case is not unique and I just hope that it does not take some young American student dying while on an exchange trip before we do anything about this.

What are the Best Romantic Songs?

I'll make this one sort of a poll and I hope people speak up. Comment with your own favorites! I'll add them to the player as they come up :)

These happen to be my favorite lovey-dovey songs of all time. Some of them might be depressing. I dedicate these all to you (tracklist below):

1. Author - Karima Francis (missing track, listen to it here)
2. Luckiest - Ben Folds
3. I'll Wait for You - Connie Francis
4. Sampson - Regina Spektor
5. Night is the Day Turned Inside Out - Beulah (missing track, listen to it here)
6. Amber - 311
7. Strange and Beautiful - Aqualung
8. Life, In a Nutshell - Barenaked Ladies (missing track, listen to it here)
9. It Had to Be You - Frank Sinatra
10. The Blowers Daughter - Damien Rice
11. We Belong Together - Gavin DeGraw
12. Oh, It is Love - HelloGoodbye
13. I'm Yours - Jason Mraz
14. Save Room - John Legend
15. Comfortable - John Mayer
16. The Nicest Thing - Kate Nash
17. If You Only Knew - Maroon 5 (missing track, listen to it here)
18. Nothing Better - The Postal Service
19. You Could be Happy - Snow Patrol

Added via comments (and to playlist):

1. El Scorcho - Weezer
2. When you Say Nothing At all - Allison Krauss
3. Chasing Cars - Snow Patrol
4. Making Love out of Nothing at All - Air Supply
5. Something in the way she moves - The Beatles
6. Tiny Dancer- Elton John
7. It must be love - Madness
8. Alive with the glory of love - Say Anything
9. Walk with You - Dispatch (forgot i LOVE this one.. but it's a missing track so listen here)
10. You and Me - Lifehouse
11. L.O.V.E. - Frank Sinatra
12. Hands Open - Snow Patrol
13. "baby it's fact"--hellogoodbye
14. "someone, somewhere"--jason reeves
15. "no air"--jordin sparks
16. "this is for real"--motion city soundtrack
17. "Sweetest Thing"--U2
18. "Wonderful Tonight"--Eric Clapton
19. "The Way you Look Tonight"--Elton John
20. "Breath me"--Sia
21. Add yours
    

Happy Valentines Day everyone. <3

Why Do I Heart Hillary Clinton?

I know I'm asking for a comment-bashing on this one, but I know people love to hate, so have at it. Anyhow, I've been trying to look up as much as I can about Hillary to see if I do in fact agree with her on everything, and it seems like, yeah, I do.

Hillary Clinton <3's:

<3's Stem Cell Research (and always has)
<3's the Gays (and always has)
<3's Reducing the need for foreign oil (but not drilling in Alaska)
<3's Universal Health Care (and always has)
<3's slowly but supportingly withdrawing troops from Iraq, and supports alliances instead of isolation
<3's providing funding for Middle Eastern muslim schools to be taught with new textbooks instead of current ones ridden with hate and slander
<3's homeland security (which i agree with, because if you ask me, if you're not doing something wrong, then why should you care? get over it.)
<3's gun control
<3's abortion. just kidding, she is pro-choice.
<3's drug rehabilitation rather than prison for drug addicts
<3's Global Warming reduction

Hillary Clinton </3's:

</3's decriminalization of marijuana (this doesn't phase me because, let's face it, it's not going to happen anyhow)
</3's when kids have sex with hookers in grand theft auto (whatever, I'm not under 18 and if I had kids, at least it keeps me from being the bad guy if there is an age restriction)
</3's that the rich get tax cuts, and thinks that their cuts should instead go back into the system to get the economy back on track and only the lower and middle class should benefit from tax cuts
</3's taking shit. She's the most likely to get shit done and not take shit.

(add or edit this list through my lens at squidoo)

People who decide not to vote for Hillary because "she's a fascist" or they "don't like her" kind of scare me, and I hope they don't vote. That is a seriously an "i - base - my - vote - on - 5 - minutes - of - fox - news - and - what - my - friends - tell - me - to - think" kind of comment. You don't "like her"? I'm sorry... did you plan on being BFF? Will you be sharing a fucking time-share this summer?? Who the shit cares if you like her? It's not what she brought to the block party, it's about what she will be able to do as president. Of our country.

It's like they say about doctors.. the best ones are the ones that focus on their work... and they are also the ones who typically have the worst bedside manner. Because, well, they're focused on keeping you alive, not whether their hands are too cold before you turn your head and cough. And since you're not going to be taking her out for drinks at Friday's anytime soon, WHO THE HELL CARES?

People can call her a shrew and decide that they don't like her personality or whatever, but that has nothing to do with the job that she has proven she can do, and the other candidates (in comparison) have not. The progress she HAS made, instead of the progress others PROMISE make.

The thing is... All of the things that America appears to be looking for, Hillary not only supports, but she has demonstrated her support of these things FOREVER. It's not a matter of whether she will follow through, like it is for the other candidates, because she's ALREADY out there doing these things. She does not support things based on what the people want RIGHT NOW because she has ALWAYS supported these things, even before they were "cool" like gay rights, stem cell research, and universal health care.

So yeah, I could care less if we have a woman president, I just happen to think she'll do the best job at following through on the issues that she believes in, which also happen to be the same ones that I do. Which makes her the right candidate for me.

I honestly don't believe that anyone else will do a better job than her, I honestly don't believe that anyone else will do a better job than Bush. And I personally think that that is too low of a standard.