Then last week everything crystallized. Team Robobank pulled their own competitor, who was leading and likely to win the Tour de France. He was not kicked off for testing positive for doping, but for "unexplained absences" and missing two drug tests. His suspicious behavior was enough that he was no longer eligible to win. This of course came shortly after another player, Alexandre Vinokourov, was kicked off the Tour for actually failing his blood test.

In the Tour de France, a team is willing to send its own lead player home for impropriety, sacrificing victory for honor. But in America we don't even regularly test our players for drug use. The need for the Tour to be won legitimately is paramount, above the desire to break records. Lance Armstrong, when repeatedly accused of doping to reach his record-setting 7 straight titles, once described himself as the world's most tested athlete.

We may not have hard proof that Barry Bonds cheated, but his inevitable record is already tainted beyond repair. Yankee-haters are united in the hope that A-Rod can get there soon and we can forget about this unfortunate moment in Baseball. But sadly, the tarnish here is not simply on Bonds or his record. It is on the failure of leadership throughout Baseball.

From the Commissioner to the owners and managers of each team, no leader has taken the steps to ensure that their players are beyond reproach. Fearful of speaking out against the sport's "look the other way" culture, worried that fewer home runs would lead to diminished attendance, none will take the stand to ensure that the sport itself maintains a clean reputation.

Baseball can learn a lesson from the Tour de France. While home run record races may have enthused audiences in recent years, the long-term damage to the reputation of the sport is a greater threat to ticket sales than a lack of long balls.

I for one will not be celebrating when Barry Bonds hits his 755th and 756th home runs. I will be waiting, not for A-Rod, but for a season of accountability, when honesty is as important as ratings. That's the American Pastime I can be proud of.

Ban on Gay Marriage Defeated 151-45

I have decided that the safest thing to do is to ride out the crisis, barricading ourselves in the apartment until the zombies leave or help arrives (which it always does in the movies, be it a day or a month later). Sure, there's the urge to get out of the city, head somewhere safe, but that always leads to many of the supporting cast being killed or zombie-fied. Plus, my apartment is one of the easier places in Boston I know to secure.

Fortunately for this scenario (and unfortunately if there were a fire), we're on the 3rd floor with only one entrance to the apartment. So keeping the zombies out would be relatively simple. No need to worry about protecting the windows, as it's a pretty steep climb and I've yet to see any flying zombie movies.

The biggest challenge would be sustenance. It would require quickly stockpiling as much water as possible, to prepare for the inevitable shutting down of utilities. Fill the bathtub, sinks, and as many containers as possible with clean water and then ration it and food. (Note to self: stock up on canned goods.)

After that, it's just a matter of waiting it out. Stay away from the windows, no lights at night, do nothing to draw attention to ourselves and hope that the cavalry arrives soon.

This plan would also work for any mass hysteria event, biological (non-airborne) outbreak, or particularly rambunctious block party. Sadly, I don't think it's applicable in any other situations.

And now? Now they can't even come up with a plot line that lasts an entire season, the bad guys have to have "my heart is breaking" monologues, and Bauer has been proven time and again to be so much of a bad-ass that we're no longer surprised when he does something cool. In fact, we're just depressed that he can't always be a bad-ass. We're addicted to Bauer breaking the rules, but unfortunately that can't quite fill 18 hours of programming.

And that's why 24 now sucks.

Of course, it also looks frighteningly intimidating, as I've forgotten how to use all of the old functions, much less the new ones.

But no more! For you see, Alanis (Yes, Alastair?) Morrisette has redeemed us from Fergatory.

If you don't then I'm going to end up spending the weekend surrounded by people whose names I don't remember but who were once in that class that I took to fulfill a requirement one semester and who talked too much and asked dumb questions just to hear the sound of their own voice. Yeah, them. Our class had more than its fair share of them.

So that's my plea. I've already offered my guest room to out-of-towners for the weekend, but there's plenty of floor space here too if that's what it's going to take to get people here. Just let me know.

This past weekend was spent in Vegas and LA celebrating Afsheen's becoming a man remaining months of freedom. After excessive amounts of poker and a good bit of drinking, I'm pleased to say that the event was a success. Of course, after three days of heavy travel and little sleep, getting up at 7 this morning for work was a little difficult, but I managed to caffeinate myself enough to get through the day.

One thing I learned was that I'm not quite as bad at poker as I had previously thought. I still need to learn some patience, but when I remind myself that no, 8-5 off suit is not worth seeing to the flop, I play decently. Still not great, mind you, but decently.

Now, of course, I'm addicted to the game. I know that I have friends here who do a semi-regular poker night, but I haven't been able to attend in the past because of work.

Anyway, back to the weekend...

I also got to spend a night in LA and see some friends (and cats) while I was there. It was definitely good to get to see people, especially since I don't know when I'll be able to get back there to visit again. Now that I have a regular job, I don't get quite as many opportunities to take a week to fly across the country. (And I'm already devoting some of my opportunities for time-off to this year's batch of weddings.)

So in conclusion, it was a great weekend. Still kind of tired, time to get some sleep.

1 - The guy is a really good natural speaker.
2 - He needs better speech writers.
3 - His foreign policy positions are incredibly simplistic. Apparently everything in the middle east will be hunky dory if the US pulls its troops out of Iraq and if all of the middle east countries, including Syria and Iran, have a conference and talk.
4 - He's at his best talking about social and economic development in New Mexico.

As the campaigns develop, Richardson could end up offering an appealing alternative to some of the more "polished" candidates like Clinton, Obama, and Edwards. But I'm eagerly awaiting some more nuance in both his speeches and his foreign policy positions.

How come politics doesn't have an awards show? Think about it... the Oscars, Obies, Tonys, Grammys, Emmys, Annies, Cable Ace, Kids' Choice, Peoples' Choice, SAG, etc. Yet nothing for best campaign commercial, nothing for best slogan, best stump speech, best GOTV effort, best bill, best filibuster, best budget amendment...

I think politicians need to get together and put together an awards ceremony. They could nominate themselves for the awards and then everyone would get a ballot with the "candidates" and "vote" on who wins. Then everyone could go home and wait for CNN to predict the results.

Just an idea.

I haven't gone through the entire process yet, but since my taxes for last year should be a breeze (for the first full year since college, I wasn't a freelance employee), I have no problem saving $50 on the filing process.

Even 25 and 26 are still miles away from 30.

But 27... boy. In 3 years I'll be 30. I don't think I ever thought about 30 before. It always seemed very vague and distant. 30 is when people have spouses and real jobs. 30 is when people have children! 30 is when people know what they're doing with the rest of their lives.

Somehow most of those things seem to be farther than 3 years away.

But aside from all that, 27 is good so far. Aliza and I went to New York last weekend and this weekend I'll be getting together with some friends to eat, drink, and wallow over how old we are. (It'll probably be more fun than I made it sound just now.)

I have a pretty good sense about 2007/27. I think it's going to be a good year for me. Time will tell.

Many legislators who have been around for a while re-file a lot of bills. They take bills that didn't get made into law last time around for whatever reason and put them back through the ringer in the hopes that things will work out better this time around. (I have no idea how often re-files actually get passed on subsequent filings... that would be interesting to find out.) Because my boss was a firrst-term legislator last session he didn't have a lot of re-files. One, to be exact. So that meant that all of his bills had to be researched and drafted. When he reviewed the list of possible bills in November with his interns and at-the-time aide, he was able to pare down his list of 40 ideas to 12 or so workable bills.

Then I took over the aide job and have since been making sure that the bills got written. Some were drafted by outside forces but many were done in-house, largely by me subject to boss review. And of course the 12 that were decided on grew a little bit until, in the end, we filed 17 bills. (My boss was also involved heavily with 2 others that different legislators filed and listed him as a co-lead sponsor.)

And that's the civics lesson for today, kids. On our next episode we'll discuss committee assignments and all the ways bills die before their time.