A selfish letter to John Kerry

Dear John,

I’m just going to come out with it: I need you to run for president again…not necessarily win, just run.
I never thought I would actually be writing a “Dear John” letter…especially one that encourages you to run for office again…but then again I doubt Sylvester Stalone ever thought he would do another Rocky movie at the age of 92 or whatever he is now.

I saw that New York Times article, the one where they outlined how your political career is in the tank, how you blew your chance at running for the 08 election with your politically incorrect joke about the dumb troops and how you nondescriptly dash around Capitol Hill like a loner (yea, they actually used the word loner, can you believe that?). But despite all this adversity, I STILL think you should run (I’ll explain why later).

I remember the “Vote or DIE” campaign that was going on when you were in ‘04 race. Scaring smart mouthed youth into voting seems to be an interesting approach to the youth election apathy issue. You actually had us believing if we didn’t vote on Election Day we would just implode in our beds the next morning.
If you do another youth targeted campaign in ‘08 we’d prefer you use Jay Z as the spokesperson instead of Diddy. I’m sure your aids have briefed you on the fact that Diddy is rapidly losing his street cred. Perhaps it’s the fact that he keeps changing his name, or that horrible choreography he recently did in a music video with that Pussy Cat Doll, either way, you don’t want to be associated with a losing ticket.

About that whole swift boat thing. I hate to bring it up but we’ve got to talk about it sometime. I mean I don’t know much about “boating” but I do get the general gist of what happened from John Stewart…AND the the papers (ah, you stereotyped me for a split second didn’t you? Thought I was one of those people that only got my news from satirical shows on Comedy Central?)

Correct any problems with the story: Basically you said you were a hero and saved someone, and then all your old Swift boat comrades got mad at you for lying, they called you a lily-livered peanut (oh, maybe I made that part up?) and then you said you weren’t lily-livered, but you do like peanuts, and blah blah blah…it gets a little fuzzy after that. What I do know for sure is that your popularity declined rather swiftly (sorry too soon?) after that incident.

But I’m sure we can get you back on track… Your book is doing well, that’s a great start. So, just talk more about how you hate the war, try to be “obliviously” caught at a Sufjan Stevens concert (Sufjan: so hot right now), partner with Wendy’s to give out free vanilla frosty's (yea, they do exist, can you believe that?) and you’ll have the youth back in your corner.

Now, why I am trying to convince you to run? Because you are a political revolutionary, a leader, a man of the people that inspires loyalty and has the capability to clean up Washington! Ha—kidding (I was laying it on a little thick huh?)

Here’s the straight dope: I recently sent a short humor story to a travel publication; the story was about running into you while you were on the 04-campaign trail during a family vacation in Boston. The editor contacted me and told me he was seriously considering publishing it in one of their travel books. I think they’re on the fence about it because of the relevancy issue…people are kind of forgetting about you…which makes my story inconsequential to them.

So if you were to jump on the presidency bandwagon again: Voila! Instant press for you and immediate currency for my story! I get published and you are back in the limelight again (common you know you love it).

So get out there and make Hillary sweat…which will be tough (the woman didn’t even glisten publicly when she found out about Bill’s affair), challenge Obama to a rousing game of pinky wrestling, and try not to let Giuliani get away with playing the “America will be blown up by terrorists if I’m not elected for president” card.

You don’t even have to win (seriously, don't), just create some sort presidential buzz. Your book sales would shoot up and Sean (my editor) would publish my story…see how everyone wins with this idea?

If there is anything I can do to help you campaign: hand out miniature John Kerry flip flops, distribute little blue Swift boats, give out complimentary Botox shots, don’t hesitate to let me know. I would love to help…your success is my success.

Yours hopefully,

sb

photo credits:

http://liveshot.cc/images/John%20Kerry%20Wind%20Surfing.jpg

Monday April 16th.

I usually write humor pieces but there are times when you can’t laugh.
As a Virginia Tech Graduate, last week was one of them. Here are some thoughts.

In the sports world, Virginia Tech is known as a formidable opponent.
We are an established football school, an emerging basketball powerhouse, and we frequently top the polls for most obnoxious college fans.
In Blacksburg, Virginia, we take school spirit very seriously.
This is why our rivalries with other schools are colossal, passionate, and consuming.


It is no secret that you don’t mess with Virginia Tech in Lane Stadium or Cassell Coliseum (our basketball arena)…we are a difficult home opponent.
No one wants to play Virginia Tech on our turf because there is the legitimate fear that they will lose.

This is why we were shocked when the ultimate loss took place on our soil: the bloodshed of our students and faculty.
We feel a plethora of emotions.
We feel disbelief at the magnitude and horrific nature of the crime.
We feel heartache at the lives that were viciously stolen.
And we feel sadness for those who witnessed something that they aren’t likely to forget.
Something was stripped away and taken from our dear school…and it feels like it was the soul of our campus.

When friends from Blacksburg come to visit me (I live outside of Washington, D.C.), they tend to leave their car unlocked. I give them a big lecture about how we are in the city now and they sheepishly smile at me and mumble something about a force of habit. That is the kind of town Blacksburg is: a place where you can leave your car unlocked and pop into the grocery store and come back and drive away without a care in the world.
It is also a place that becomes a depressed ghost town anytime we lose a home football game.
Imagine what it is like now.

Students, family, and alumni currently have a love/hate relationship with the media. We can’t stop watching the news channel on our TVs, refreshing our Internet pages for tidbits of fresh news, letting CNN stream through our headphones at work, and keeping radio dials glued to NPR.

But the same media that nourishes us, angers us. We are mad at them for trampling our picturesque campus with their cameras and vans, for interviewing our traumatized survivors, for unintentionally feeding us inaccurate information, and most of all, for that gleam we see in their eyes when they have secured a tidbit or interview that they are confident will boost their ratings.

One of my friends is a classroom survivor. He wasn’t a close friend but he was a friend, and in times like this even strangers become your family. He is a talented musician and had dreams of getting his band signed to a label. Now he will get the fame he wanted…but not the kind he was looking for. Chances are he will be paraded on morning shows, pushed around the nightly news circuits, and with every step of the way our hearts will break for him because this is not what he desired. He has seen horrible things he will never forget and we want to erase these experiences for him, but we can’t.

As for those alumni physically unaffected by this tragedy, we are angry and sad.
Just like those who went to New York were anxious to help clear the rubble, we yearn to go to our home base and do the same. But where is our equivalent of the rubble to shovel? We want to feel, touch, rescue, and heal, but we can only do this emotionally, not physically and this frustrates us.

Like I said before, we are known for our rivalries. But this week our rivalries have dissipated and our rivals have joined us. Colleges like University of Virginia, Miami and even Georgia Tech have reached out to us. They have become our brothers, our family, and for this we are grateful.

This is the first battle on Virginia Tech turf that we couldn’t prepare for.
We were attacked by an opponent we never saw coming.
We are reeling from our wounds and floundering from our losses.
But any Virginia Tech sports fan will tell you that we have been down before and rebounded.
While sports cannot even compare to the magnitude of this type of event, we can tell you that the school spirit we use in our recreational games spreads to other areas of our lives. We have been terrorized, victimized, and injured… but we will recover from this.

In time we will move forward, but never forget. We will pray and never give up. We will grieve, but not be destroyed. We will overcome like we always do.

And the world will see Virginia Tech come together as a team and bounce back because we are Hokies…and that is what we do.

Photo credit: Andy Witt

www.andywittonline.com

Online Mating

Online dating is sort of like nose picking: A lot of people do it, but they don’t want to admit it. You know they do it because you see them doing it—in their cars, on the subway, in restaurants, at their cubicles…people always seem to be digging for gold.

Online dating is similar…you are certain people do it because big online dating companies confidently declare, “Over 4 million people are doing it!” but then you start to wonder: over 4 million? Who are these people? Where are they? Are they lurking among us? And then one day you wake up and discover your friends are the ones doing it…

Once upon a time (probably like 6 years ago) people got gussied up and went out and met dates only in person. Perhaps at a political fundraiser, a classy dinner party, a swanky gallery opening, a yearly pig roast, or during a night out on the town…but now with the success of online match making organizations, a person can meet another with curlers in their hair, a mug of murky coffee in their hand and yesterday’s socks on their feet (providing they own a computer and have Internet connection).

Online dating is where the money seems to be. Even Dr. Phil sold out.
When you really think about this you realize he sold out a while ago (somewhere between fixing Oprah’s problems and getting his own show), however it became extremely obvious when he appeared in Match.com ads. But really who can blame him? It must be oppressive to attend dinner parties at Oprah’s gold house and sit on those gold chairs and eat gold plated rack of lamb …your mind must start wonder what it’s like to get your hands on some of that—back to the point.

Today if you sit with a group of attractive, relatively successful women, the chances that one of them is dating online is pretty high. Online dating used to have a stigma in society; it was deemed as a move made only by the desperate, but now people are slowly changing their paradigm towards it. It’s not completely embraced yet though; you sense the ongoing fight against the stigma in little ways...like Match.com’s chipper and encouraging catch phrase: “It’s okay to look!” Dr. Neil Warren, the founder of eHarmony and a relationship expert (what does it take to qualify as relationship expert anyway? One intense night of speed dating?) confidently states: “90 eHarmony members get married every single day.”
Sounds idyllic. That’s at least 16,425 marriages a year thanks to eHarmony. But how many of these weddings end in a quick divorce? Was the research study mindful of this variable? Or did the researchers just call the whole thing off with some caviar and champagne and celebrate with the e-Harmony marketing department after they came across that statistic?

Back to stigmas. Online dating has been traditionally viewed as desperate, odd, anti-social, and a haven for predators. Singles claim that they do it because it’s a) uncomplicated, b) it’s conducive to their busy lifestyle, c) they get to pick out the specs for the type of mate they want d) everything else is digital…why shouldn’t dating be?

The last two reasons are interesting. People seem to think if they get to pick out their ideal mates’ qualities, they’ll arrive at the perfect person for them. Research contradicts this though. In Blink, a book by Malcolm Gladwell on instantaneous subconscious decision-making, Gladwell talks about a speed dating experiment run by Dr. Sheena Iyengar and Dr. Raymond Fisman. These two Columbia professors made their speed dating subjects fill out questionnaires; the data they collected indicated, “What people said they wanted in an ideal mate did not match their unconscious preferences”.

Online dating sites claim they are successful because they give users the power to choose their ideal mate based on their written preferences. However, research states that people aren’t necessarily attracted to suitors with the traits they write down…this makes the model used by online dating companies appear slightly ineffective.

“Everything is digital why shouldn’t dating be?”
Excellent point. Is online dating comparable to the advent of the airplane? Everyone laughed at the impossibility of flying contraptions but years later we are shocked that some people haven’t ridden in one. Maybe the pioneers of online dating (it’s rumored to have started at Harvard…of course it would have…it’s doubtful those students get out other than to go to class, the library and to update their coke bottle glasses to more contemporary coke bottle glasses) can be classified as early adopters. They were ahead of the curve…possibly years from now we will look back and laugh at the idea of not online dating.

For the more traditional, online dating is filled with too many unknowns: not knowing if your 27-year-old pro surfer is really a 48-year-old fry cook, wondering if your interested party is actually married, or just simply feeling uncertain as to whether you’ve set up a date with an ax murderer. For those out there fighting the online world of dating…hats off to you…the era of us mocking you is slowly fading…but until it completely disappears, the rest of us will live vicariously through your valiant tales of online dating woes and triumphs.-SB

Photo credits belong to Aminesh Ray
He’s a rock star; check him out at:
http://www.trekearth.com/gallery/Europe/Slovakia/photo263611.htm

*Sources:
Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Caldwell
Wikipedia
Match.com
Eharmony.com
Friends