‘Difficult’ does not mean ‘not pleasurable’ when it comes to literature.
Monday Morning Staff Meeting – The Trouble With Tribbles
Poker
There’s no point to this post. It’s just a simple bit of remembrance of something stupid.
For a time in the mid-2000s, I lived in an apartment on the beach and spent a significant portion of my time at a bar that was technically called Yabba Dew’s Beach Bar. An insanely stupid name, I agree. Really stupid. Can’t wipe its own arse stupid. But it was the bar closest by and whenever my roommate and I would go to the ones a little further down (I think their names were Paddy’s and On the Rocks), we were always disappointed in the number of irritating kids from nearby Stetson University. We wanted to drink around grown ups. We might have stayed if every Stetson girl we met were not supremely annoying. I mean, when you’re single and live within staggering distance of a bar that serves significant quantities of co-eds, you first thought is, “jackpot!” But oh my god, it was not possible to talk to them. We were in our late twenties (and I might have turned thirty during that time of my life, but I would have denied it), which probably part of the problem in trying to talk to 21-24 year olds (assuming none of them were using a fake ID which, let’s be honest, we shouldn’t assume). Long story short, there are better ways of getting laid.
So. Yabba Dews.
We drank Michelob Ultra because draft beer in Florida sucks. No craft beer in walking distance of the apartment. Mich Ultra wasn’t so bad and it’s a union beer (never drink Coors). I regularly ate salads there and french fries slathered with tabasco sauce (I have mixed feelings about ketchup).
At this time in American history, we had collectively decided that watching people play poker on television was something we wanted.
ESPN and ESPN2 showed nothing but poker tournaments all day and all night, so you sit there at the bar, numbly drinking your watered down piss until something like a buzz comes on and watching people play cards. I credit Obama for the end of non-stop poker on television.
There was a crazy sculpture named Fishbone who claimed he designed and made the metal logos for the Bonefish Grill chain. He looked sort of like an oversized hobbit. A server who had crush of me and was quite upfront with her willingness to sleep with me, but she was nineteen and had some terrible stories about bad family life at home and it just seemed wrong, except when I was drunk enough and fortunately, I was never quite agile enough to call the phone number she had given me.
I went to the library almost every day and browsed through a magazine or two or read the paper. Cool Beanz had mediocre coffee, but a nice patio. These were my alternatives to poker, but the dark draw of the bar was impossible to resist for a full twenty-four hours, so inevitably, there I was, a glass of almost totally transparent beer and plate of fries and a bottle of hot sauce.
Weekend Reading – Naturally, Florida Gets Namechecked In Any Article About Terrible Trends
The Sunday Paper – I Don’t Have To Prove Anything To You
Peter, I Believe You
Peter Schorsch, when you say, No, I did not play the Florida GOP to write that memo ‘warning’ the nat’l media about my blog, I believe you.
But you’re wrong when you say attacking you will have no effect, that this sort of thing is not done, etc.
The FLGOP will actually have some trouble attacking Crist, because the media will always be inclined latch onto the angle of ‘Crist just goes wherever the popular wind is blowing.’ Why? Because that’s always been the knock on Crist. And the media tends to play into accepted tropes.
Rick Scott’s problem is that, well, Crist has 100% percent name recognition and is generally liked by Floridians. And they like him, despite already fully believing that he just follows prevailing trends, regardless of how many zig zags occur.
That’s the problem: they know this and they like him anyway.
So they are trying to subtly push the media into buying into the idea that Crist’s supposed lack of an internal rudder leads him into dealings with people who have… well, unsavory legal/criminal problems.
The fact that Crist used Peter for something will be used to show a pattern – first Jim Greer and now Peter Schorsch.
They believe that people will stop being okay with Crist’s zig zagging if they also believe that is judgement is flawed. You don’t mind him flip flopping if that takes him to the right place for Florida. But what if he doesn’t?
If this stratagem works, the conversation will shift to Crist’s judgement. Did he show good judgement by hiring Schorsch after those… kerfuflles he had over Jamie Bennett and Earnest Williams’ campaigns and the Tarpon Dems and the legal issues and criminal accusations… well, you get the picture. Other names will be inserted, culminating in tying Greer around his neck.
Peter’s just a small link in a chain they’ll be building over the next year.
Though, I’m not convinced it’ll work. Florida just likes the guy. Always have. And they can’t stand Rick Scott.
Weekend Reading – Not The Same Thing At All
Clay Shaw Has Died
Who is Clay Shaw?
Clay Shaw was the incumbent Congressman who defeated my candidate in my first, professional political campaign. This was in 2000, when all hell broke loose. When I got stuck working on the recounts for little or no pay at worst and never being sure where my pay was going to come from at best.
Shaw wasn’t a bad guy. Just wrong. And by today’s standards, a downright liberal Republican. If he hadn’t lost in the Democratic wave of 2006 to Ron Klein, he probably would have been defeated in a primary by a Tea Party candidate.
Perhaps I owe him some thanks for the learning experience? Or at least a brief mention in my prayers? I hated him for making that first election so hard, so painful, so sorrowful. But that was foolish. I was rightfully happy when someone better took his place and I was sad when that person was replaced by a bitter, joke of a Congressman (Allen West) and a little relieved when someone else replaced that bitter joke (Patrick Murphy). But I’m sorry he’s gone for good for now.
Is Florida Over Rick Scott?
I was reading about a poll that had Rick Scott losing to any Democrat with a pulse.
Personally, I think Scott is a sleazy scam artist who picked a politically lucky year to buy himself a state with a personal fortune partly accrued by defrauding taxpayers. But I don’t think that most folks feel quite so vehemently about him.
Yet his numbers are consistently in the toilet. It’s a boost for him when his approval numbers creep into the 40s and when his disapproval numbers are only a little bit above 50.
My suspicion is that he’s suffering from the same malaise that struck former New Jersey governor, Jon Corzine. I was working on some races in South Jersey in 2009, when he lost to Chris Christie and got a pretty good feel for what happened.
The best way I found to explain what happened is that the people of New Jersey were ‘over’ Corzine. They didn’t hate him. Didn’t think he was bad guy. Or even necessarily a bad governor. But they were over him. And that’s why nothing Corzine did could move his numbers into a place where he could win. Jersey voters had moved on.
Arnold Schwarzenegger (speaking of him as a movie star, not a politician) was the biggest star in the world for a while. His movies were sure fire hits. Then, that stopped. Sure, doing another Terminator movie could always bring ’em in, but the days when whatever he did was a hit were over. Moviegoers hadn’t started disliking him. But in their hearts, they’d already moved on.
If that’s what has happened to Scott, his options are narrow and, no matter how much he spends (or how much companies and groups with Tallahassee interests spend), he could find it impossible to get above 45-47%.
This doesn’t change what we already know: that Floridians are not fans of Scott the Governor and that Scott and his allies will focus all their fire on trying to render his opponent so repellent that he squeaks by in a low turnout election (which will be harder than you might think if the opponent is Charlie Crist; yes, Crist has baggage, but Florida knows Crist; all the stuff he’ll be blasted with – flip flopper, etc. – won’t be news to voters; they know it, they’ve already heard it, and they’ve already decided that the still find him to be an okay guy; that’s the problem with figures with such wide name recognition: they’re already defined in the public’s eye before the ad men have had a chance to do it for them).
Inkwood Books Sold!?!
The Tampa Bay area’s best indie bookstore, Inkwood Books, was sold!
Apparently, a long time customer bought the store. Hopefully, she’ll keep it well stocked with good books and keep the local flavor.
the coffee philosopher 