A Cat Named Steve

This morning I awoke to an email from my dad to all of his children.  He emailed us about some of his concerns, and then attached the following letter that he sent to congress.  Those of you that know me already know that my dad is my hero.  This letter just confirmed further that I’m proud to be his son.  I found these words deeply inspiring, and thought that I should share due their strong relevance to the current situation of our country…

Congressman Gerald Connolly

U. S. House of Representatives

327 Cannon House Office Building

Washington, DC 20515

Dear Congressman Connolly,

In all of my 70 years I have never been as fearful for the fate of our nation as I have this past week after witnessing your action in Congress with the passage of the health care law and its sweeping destruction of our constitutionally protected liberties and way of life.

Both the content of the law and the manner in which it was passed fall far short of the intentions of the framers of our constitution for a limited federal government with the preservation of individual freedom and responsibility.  Just a few of many examples follow:

• The unprecedented mandate that an individual must buy a product (health insurance), the failure of which triggers federal income tax penalties amounting to as much as 2 % of income enforced by the hiring of 16,000 new IRS agents.
• By a vast new bureaucracy that will prescribe what insurance must cover and not cover, you will ironically allow my tax dollars to be used to take life at its beginning (abortion), and restrict funds for the extension of life at its end.
• Intrusion on the doctor/patient relationship by penalizing doctors who refer too many patients to specialists by reducing the doctor’s Medicare reimbursement.
• Reducing Medicare reimbursements immediately to physicians by 21 % — squeezed doctors will have to choose volume over quality of care.
• Limitations imposed on HSA’s, Flexible Spending Accounts and Medicare Advantage will work against encouraging individuals to take responsibility for their health spending.
• Increasing and expanding the Medicare payroll tax to investment and capital gains income, not something a payroll tax was ever intended to do.  This will hurt the very people Medicare was intended to cover – the retired and elderly.
• The representation that the law will reduce the budget with the gimmick of counting 10 years of new taxes against only 5 years of benefits is an obvious fraud.  Any business person making similar representations would be prosecuted by the SEC and hauled before congress, but you and the President are immune from such accountability.
• The hypocrisy of exempting yourself and your staff from the law’s requirements.
• Buying votes through special deals and exemptions for senators and congressmen from Nebraska, Louisiana, Michigan, Connecticut, the Longshoreman’s Union, to name only a few.  Pressuring Democratic Congressmen to vote against their consciences and the will of the people they represent with threats, pork and empty promises, which the Senate Majority Leader characterizes as just normal operating procedure.
• The federal takeover of student loans.  What do student loans have to do with health care?  Another federal takeover sneaked into the final law?

There are many less onerous and intrusive alternatives to improve the quality, coverage and cost of health care that could have been adopted instead of this law — unless the agenda is for the federal government to control our life and liberty and undertake a huge socialized transfer of wealth.

James Madison at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia said, “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined.  Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.”

How far you have strayed from the intention of our founding fathers in this health care law!  How far you have strayed in your takeovers, bailouts and stimulus that have run up deficits never before seen!

I am not a radical person.  I worked my way through night law school, worked in private industry for 38 years, volunteered my time for a non-profit organization for another 9 years and have always paid my taxes, donated to numerous charities and paid my way.  I am mainstream America.  I have never attended a political rally, but I will now.  I have never displayed a political bumper sticker, but I will now.   I will stand up to your war on prosperity and freedom in America!

Respectfully,

J. William Dalgetty

Anybody who knows me can vouch for the fact that I am not one of those people to get all up in your face with my political views.  I have strong personal political opinions, but I don’t often use them as point to argue.  There’s nothing that bugs me more than a useless argument that accomplishes nothing other than two people pissed off at each other, wondering why the other can’t understand their own point of view that seems clear as day to understand.  This comes down to a fundamental problem that is at the core of political differences: different ideologies cannot reconcile political issues if they do not first reconcile the foundation of the ideologies themselves.

However, today is a special day where I actually just don’t care if I come across as combative.  Today I am angry for the following reasons and I use free right to vent to you:

1. The Federal Government is the largest, inefficient, and wasteful organization in the United States of America.  There is no other organization in our country that we invest more into and get fewer results.  If they were a stock nobody would buy it because ever quarter they would announce disappointing results.  I’m glad they defend our borders, but they are no Google when it comes to business sense.  I sold software to them for three years and have seen this first hand from a business perspective.  I also live in Washington DC where I know quite a few government employees that can attest to this fact.
2. With my first point established, I do not see the Federal Government as a suitable response to ANY broken industry in America.  I have no problem with fixing broken or corrupt industries, but this is not Uncle Sam’s responsibility.   Giving it to the government is like being in school and handing all the work over to the stupidest/laziest person for a group project, and then wondering why you got a D on the project.  If you want affordable health care, then pass laws to end the monopolies.  Healthcare is like the cable industry.  They setup territories and don’t compete with one another and the prices stay high.  Get rid of the territories (state lines) and the prices go down.  What happens when two gas stations operate across the street from one another?  They have cheaper prices!   Why do we continue to look for the government to fix things when they have the WORST track record ever for fixing anything?
3. Small Businesses everywhere lose money from this package.  When small businesses lose money the economy loses too.
4. This hits my family personally.  I work for an incredible small business that pays 100% health insurance coverage for all full time families.  Under the new law my company will be forced to also pay insurance for non-full time employees and pay higher taxes as well.  This means that my absolutely awesome plan is going to disappear because it will no longer be a feasible financial benefit that they can offer my family.  Do you expect me to feel happy that un-insured Joe is now covered with health insurance and not be annoyed that I have to pay for it?  That’s kind of like knocking on my door and saying that it’s not fair I have two bedrooms in my apartment when I only sleep in one, and therefore I need to open up my 2^nd room to a homeless person to solve the homeless problem.  Call me an indecent person if you want, but I’m not opening my already over-priced apartment to a homeless person.

I’m going on a hot date tonight!  The Mrs. and I are stoked to be heading to watch Martin Scorsese’s  latest, Shutter Island.  We’ve been hesitating on this date since the movie came out a few weeks ago because we were scared that it would scare us.  Sad, right?  Here’s the thing: I don’t do scary movies.  Other people find them enjoyable.  Not me.  I curl up into the fetal position, close my eyes, and try to think happy thoughts.  This has been the case ever since I was spending the night at my good friend Will Bruno’s house when I was 14.  At about 2am I put on the 1996 teen horror sensation, Scream, and watched the whole movie by myself in a dark basement, sitting three feet from the television.  Ever since then I just don’t get along with horror movies.  After that movie I checked my closet every night for a couple months to make sure there wasn’t a masked killer waiting inside.  I don’t know why I checked since it seems if there was a masked killer, looking for him would have not increased my odds of survival.

You’re probably thinking, Scream wasn’t even that scary!  To that I say, dude wearing freaky mask, stabbing people for no damn reason with creepy music in the background is scary!  It’s just a fact.  However, you might be right in thinking I’m kind of pathetic with such low scary movie tolerance.  A few months ago I watched Disturbia, starring Shia LaBeouf, and even that freaked me out.  A Shia LaBeouf movie freaked me out!  After watching The Ring I laid in bed, staring at my TV for a good three hours, waiting for it to turn on and see that little girl with the long black hair climb out of it and come after me.

The good news is that the polls are in from an abundance of credible sources, and Shutter Island is not going to freak the living crap out of me.  It’s going to be awesome!

Have a wonderful and pleasant Tuesday.

Yesterday I took a poll to see what you, our lovely readers, want to see improved upon here at ACNS.  I’ve decided that the best thing I can do is make everyone happy in this very post.

Five of you have requested that we add more writers.  I took the liberty to add legendary Teddy Bort to the lineup.  He signed a two minute writers contract, and although I can’t promise we’ll ever hear from him again, here’s what he had to say to the world:

“Go to http://thedaylights.com. Download the free single Rogue Machine. This band is friends with both Jon Foreman of Switchfoot and Chuck Bartowski. Pretty sweet.”  If you don’t do what Teddy just said, I WILL find you, so download it!

Six of you want to pick the topics that we write about.  What do you think this is… your blog?!  Ok, well you want it, so I’m going to go out on a whim and assume that you want us to write about lasers because that’s what you’re searching for these days as Lucas so eloquently pointed out.  Lasers are freakn’ rad!  Everybody around the world agrees.  They’re up there with other cool things such as ninjas, world peace, and Lamborghini’s.  The very fact that such a high standard of coolness is being associated with our blog screams to the heavens that we have made it to the big time, and that you are coming here to find out cool things.  Do you even know what a laser is?  I do.  I just wikipedia’d it.  A laser is a mechanism for emitting electromagnetic radiation, typically light or visible light, via the process of stimulated emission.  I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty sure that lasers would not be as cool if everyone called them stimulated emissions.

Next on the improvement to do list: the majority of you would like us to start conducting some interviews.  First on the list is the up and coming software developer from the magical land of Singapore, David Norton.  You may have heard of him because he’s kind of a big deal.

ACNS: David, would you rather fight Chuck Norris, Jack Bauer, James Bond, or Mickey Mouse?

David: Oh man.  That’s not even fair.  All of them.

ACNS: You’d fight all of them?

David: I guess I didn’t really answer the question.  If I had to fight one of them, I’d fight James Bond.

ACNS: I’m glad you didn’t underestimate Mickey.  Cartoons can do some crazy $h*%.

ACNS: What does Apple’s new iPad make you think of?

David: No comment.  Just kidding.  It makes me think of all the skits SNL could run about the name.  It also makes me think of the iPod and how many people hated the name when it first came out.

ACNS: Do you feel that Lucas is balding at a faster rate than he’s able to grow a sweet beard?

David: Yes, but so am I…and I’m not balding.

ACNS: Would you rather ride a llama to work every day or a Toyota Prius that might not ever stop accelerating?

David: No offense, Toyota (and by that I mean “I’m going to say something mean but if I say ‘No Offense’ you can’t get mad.”), but I would rather ride a llama (as long as it was not bred by Toyota).  I don’t want to get caught in a loofy-goofy hybrid anyways.

ACNS: Any other last loofy-goofy thoughts you’d like to share?

David: Yes.  Let’s talk about Rhode Island.  Neither a road, nor an island.  What’s up with that?

ACNS: That was not super original, but thank you for joining us, David.

David: Anytime! I’m looking forward to a long a beautiful relationship with ACNS.

ACNS:  First of all, Steve is a dude, so that’s kind of gay, and secondly, Steve is a cat.  Kind of messed up.

On to the next item of improvement.  Serious things!  This was the minority of you, but I respect that, and this is my serious thought of the day for you:  There is nothing that makes me cringe internally and become more uncomfortable than to listen to other people talk about Abortion as anything other than evil.  I’m a tolerant person and can talk to just about anyone even if I blatantly disagree with them.  However, when it comes to the topic of abortion I experience something that is a combination of deep anger and depression which makes me completely shut down and have to leave.  I could never be a sidewalk councilor, and I’m thankful there are people blessed to be able to stand up and fight back with words.  I will always have to be on the prayer side of that fight because the dis-acknowledgement of human life disgusts me to the point of paralysis.

Some of you wanted us to write about other things.  Way to be specific!  I have never written about Andy Samberg before.  He’s one of the stars on SNL and is notorious for writing random funny songs.  Prior to being on SNL he made the equivalent of well produced home videos with two other guys on www.thelonelyisland.com.  Check it out if you’ve never seen the old stuff like Awesometown!

Finally, five of you said that we should keep doing what we’re doing because you like us just the way we are.  I’m pretty sure I just did with my entire post so that takes care of that.  I hope you all feel a little bit more satisfied.

It’s survey day!  It’s not too often we do this, but today we actually care about what you think, and we want to hear about it.  Please respond to the surveys below to give us some better direction on how to serve you, our readers.  We’re guessing we shouldn’t move the blog to a new domain because that didn’t work too well the last time we tried it.  We’re also guessing you Facebookers and Tweeters aren’t going to bother clicking on this link: ACATNAMEDSTEVE.com to come here and fill out these surveys because you’re lazy.  However, for everyone else, today is your day to talk back!

For comedic purposes:

For serious purposes:

Today would be a particularly craptastic excuse for a day at work with little but nothing to do, and the minutes dragging by slower than watching NASCAR.  Luckily, I’m not in sales anymore and I’m not expected to be glued to a phone from 8 to 5.  This means that I get to experience something spectacular that I’ve only heard tales of before:  Listening to music while I work!

All of you reading this with your white iPod headphones, giving your cartilage a musical rug burn, sipping your Starbucks latte, and giving me that disdainful look that says you’re so much cooler and years beyond me… let me stop you right there.  You’re not.  Sometimes I come late to the game, but it doesn’t mean I can’t jump in head first and bring it!  I’m here to amend for years of lost time where my ears have grown lazy and my soul bored with the sounds of telephones and office gossip.  No more!  Today I pledge to all of you in the ACNS community and to all the world that I am a changed man.  Today and every day hence forth I come prepared with an abundant plethora of sensational songs via iTunes, Pandora, and MySpace ready to deliver a constant flow of soul rocking melodies.

Huzzah!!!

Now let’s go build ghetto boom boxes like in the picture above and spread the word.

I found myself in quite a predicament today at the office for lunch.  I brought some tasty leftovers of chicken and pasta, and was looking forward to a high quality meal.  As the microwave counted down I realized that our small office kitchen was out of forks!  I proceeded to eat my entire lunch of chicken and pasta with nothing but a plastic knife.  The knife worked in a similar fashion to a fork and was able to effectively stab the chicken.  I was also able to the best of my ability twirl the pasta and carefully eat that as well.  We are so spoiled with these forks and spoons when all you need is a knife.  Thank you, Alanis Morissette.

For the last two nights in a row I’ve been having epic action movie dreams.  I rarely remember my dreams, or have anything to recall that makes logical sense.  However, this weekend came along and the subconscious writers went off strike and back to work.   It was glorious, and I wish I could take a nap right now to keep it going.

On Saturday night it all started when my good friend Bryan shot and killed two people at his job, working with a team of lawyers on a big criminal case in a courthouse.  It may have been an accident or self defense, but whatever happened, Bryan went on the run like Harrison Ford from Tommy Lee Jones back in 1993.  It wasn’t long before the city streets were filled with cops trying to chase down my friend.  It was a story of friendship and loyalty, and I joined a team of four other people that set out to stall and confuse law enforcement and give Bryan a chance at escaping.  Apparently there’s no such thing as accessory to murder in my dreams, so nobody really tried to stop us…yet.  We continued to foil the cops’ efforts, but as they got closer we decided to flee the country to Mexico.  Once there, we enlisted the help of our newly-wed friends Jose and Anita who were on their honeymoon in Mexico.  However the story turned tragic when the local law enforcement discovered us.  We all split in different directions to make a run for it and things were looking good for me when I spotted my wife (also part of the Help Bryan Escape Team) get tackled by the Mexican cop who had a mean looking stache.  I ran to her aid and pried her free to escape, but he then grabbed on to me and I was trapped.  My wife screamed NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, and I yelled back, “just run!  I’ll be ok.”  She turned to run and I was filled with sadness that I might never see her again.  As she ran out of site my alarm went off and I awoke to a relaxing Sunday morning.

Last night the entertainment in my sleep state continued as I was approached by a secret agent that threatened to harm my wife if I didn’t con my friend, Jim Wockenfuss, into revealing the secret location of some “things” they wanted.  Jim had a secret key to a secret room, and I needed to get him to take me there.  After gaining his trust Jim brought myself and a few other friends to a large office complex to show us the secret room.  Just as we were to the door a team of highly skilled assassins came in to kill us all.  It turned out the secret agent that approached me was the leader of this group, and I had taken my friends right into a horrible trap.  In an act of cowardice I gave up my own friends to get out of the situation.  This back fired and I was then being hunted down by a team of skilled assassins and the Jim Wockenfuss gang.  I’m not sure how this one ended, but maybe I’ll find out tonight.  The ending of it had a striking similarity to a 24 episode cliff hanger.  I could practically see the digital seconds blinking towards the hour’s end.

HOW AWESOME IS THAT?!  I would watch this stuff on television.  Seriously, put it in my Netflix Queue!  There was drama, death, friendship, betrayal, sacrifice, romance… these are the things stories are made of.

I live in the 2^nd to worst traffic congested area in the United States of America.  Las Angeles continues to dominate the #1 spot, but DC continues to rock the silver medal, and it doesn’t appear we’re going to give it up any time soon.  As an alternative to sitting in your car without moving for long durations of your life, there is the option to sit on the Metro (Washington DC subway system).  This replaces the comfort of your car with the option to sit much too close to complete strangers and conform to an entire sub-culture of society.

To characterize this sub-culture I have created a list of the three rules to follow should you find yourself on the DC Metro so that you will fit right in.

1. Look depressed.  DO NOT SMILE.  Emotion is forbidden.
2. Do not converse.  Strangers when you get on.  Strangers when you get off.
3. Look annoyed at “outsiders” (aka teenagers, tourists, or other people who have the nerve to talk in loud voices)

I had the occasion on Monday to travel into DC to work with one of my clients, and found myself conforming to the three rules.  I was sitting there longing for personal space, refusing to acknowledge there was a human being sitting right next to me, and looking angrily at the group of young professional women who were talking loudly about their political jobs and thinking they were very important.   As I exited the train, this self realization hit me.  I had transformed into just another cow on the cattle car.  Moo.

Life is all about patterns and cycles.  We get trapped in them, we do something out of the ordinary to break free of the norm, and then we slowly work our way back into another pattern.  One pattern that I have a love/hate relationship with is a routine normal life.  I love my life and most of the things that come with it, but routine erodes at the very fabric of creativity with time.  A little over one week ago I was presented with an opportunity.  My flight to San Diego was cancelled and I was offered the chance to drive 45 straight hours from DC to southern California, and I said yes to that chance.  It was one of the best decisions I’ve made in months!

It’s crazy what happens when we open the door to spontaneity in our lives.  It instantly kicks the cogs of creativity into high gear and the world permeates with vibrant color.   For me this was as simple as spending two full days in an uncomfortable minivan with little sleep and a few good friends.  The simple result was that I felt in-love to be alive.

Does this mean we should all go rent a van and drive as far as we possibly can when we get home from work tonight?  Probably not.  Does this mean we should challenge ourselves to break free of comfort and live a little more every day?  I say yes.