What you owe to yourself.

Plus Mexican restaurant endorsements.

Ten years ago, when I lived in Scotts Valley, there were really no good Mexican food places in town. For a guy who grew up on Mexican food, that’s some serious withdrawal I had to go through. I just had to live through it. (Taco Bell, by the way, is not a substitute. Confusing Taco Bell with Mexican food is like confusing McDonald’s with barbecue.)

So when I moved back to Scotts Valley a year and a half ago, I still had that attitude of “There are no good Mexican places in Scotts Valley.” It didn't help after going to Tucson Taqueria. Their slogan is “Mexican food made by real Mexicans.” That’s not a good sign. Real Mexicans cook at Café Bethany but they still can't make proper Mexican food. I suspect it's ’cause they learned to cook from culinary school, not mamá. Anyway, after eating there, I didn’t want to eat at any other Mexican places in town for a while. I'd eat in Felton, which has even more honkies per capita than Scotts Valley, before I’d eat here.

Last year I discovered El Faro Taqueria, which is located dangerously close to Taco Bell, but is an excellent restaurant. It had taken me a while to try it because I mentioned the place to H, and he said, “Oh, I’ve been there; I didn't like it.” So I stayed away. And that was actually pretty stupid of me, because I’ve since discovered that H has absolutely no taste in food. The man’s favorite restaurant is Scotts Valley Diner, for crying out loud. (SV Diner used to be a Denny’s, but went independent. Now, most of the time I’ve found when a chain restaurant goes independent, it's ’cause the owners want to do a better job than the chain will let them… but in the case of SV Diner, the food’s actually become worse, and Denny’s is pretty abysmal to begin with. Yet H still chooses to eat there. I actually had to talk him into eating at Quizno’s once… But I gotta cut it out with these tangents.) Long story short: H has no taste, El Faro is great, and go eat there. Seriously. 243 Mt. Hermon Road #A, Scotts Valley. Okay. NOW to my point.

So this evening I was on my way to the library, and I was trying to determine where to eat dinner, and now that I’m willing to try other local Mexican restaurants I considered eating at Taqueria Los Gallos. I hadn’t been there before; I figured I’d give it a shot. “After all,” I told myself, “you owe it to yourself to try all the Mexican places in town, just to see if they’re any good.”

Then the other part of my brain said, “Owe it to yourself? Owe what to yourself?”

What do I owe to myself? This is a saying that our culture uses all the time, but honestly, what does it mean? I owe myself what? What, exactly, did I deprive myself of that I deserve to get back? I don’t feel deprived. I certainly don’t deprive myself of Mexican food. If anything, I am deprived of the money I would save by not going to a restaurant.

But do I really “owe it to myself” to have a lot of money in my bank account? I don't owe myself any money. I owe my mother several hundred dollars; I owe Citibank several thousand dollars; and in two weeks I will owe my landlords some more rent. I don't owe myself anything; and if I deprive myself of anything, it's because I need to deprive myself of things. I’ve been depriving myself of Cheez-its for the past two months because I’m trying to eliminate trans fats from my diet; it sucks but I don’t want to have a heart attack in my thirties. (Thank God for goldfish crackers.) Plus the bloody things are $3 a box. So it’s for budgetary and health reasons, and I don’t “owe it to myself” to violate those reasons.

Yet that's a phrase that’s thrown around all the time, especially in advertising and psychology. “You owe it to yourself to…” and fill in the appropriate commodity. Psychology uses it more legitimately than advertising, but from what I’ve experienced in my own therapy sessions, not by much.

I owe myself nothing. I have two jobs I enjoy, an income I can live on, and I drink all the decaf I want. I went to Taqueria Los Gallos and ate two very good fish tacos, and I’ll likely eat there again. Not because I owe it to myself. Because I can afford to.

(And you should eat there too, because the tacos are great. 18 Victor Square #A, Scotts Valley. Compared to them, eating at Taco Bell is like eating out of a wet diaper.)

Enormous penis.

Yeah, I knew that title would get your attention.

There’s something just bizarre about the spam I’ve been getting lately. Usually they fall into the following categories:

• Requests to refinance a mortgage I don’t have.
• Invitations to join their multi-level marketing scheme.
• Invitations to get a free tchotchke, like a video iPod or PSP, if I just complete five offers, which combined will cost me more than the tchotchke.
• Offers for discount, possibly pirated, software.
• Offers for cheap Canadian pharmaceuticals.
• Offers to enlarge my penis.

Most of the offers are, in fact, to enlarge my penis. I don’t see any reason to do so. But every time I see the badly-misspelled headers for penis enlargement (misspelled so that they can get past my spam filter, which catches them anyway) I’m reminded of Eric Idle’s joke about it. He once said he answered “yes” to every one he got, and now he has a nine-foot penis.

I began to get tired of the spam, so instead of simply going to my spam folder and deleting them, I began to send email back to them. Something simple: “Stop sending me spam.” Some of the time it gets back; most of the time the spam’s address is some undeliverable emailbox that’s only used for flinging their crap like so many monkeys.

The down side to this tactic is that I have to open the message to send the reply, and I’ve been noticing something odd about the sort of spam I get. A lot of it (if it’s not in Chinese) consists of unintelligible English sentences. Below is the text of one of them that I’ve received today. I kid you not.

find you anybody steps embarrass drew? steps light gym am few he. again gym miserable corner? leader wife promised across turning, embarrass here friends how? appearance music nothing? reference mentioned shining night. sandwich social taught. fascinate teach development reading, fire profession how already. benefit am reply my is.

And there’s no link to click so that anyone can buy their penis-enlargement stuff; it’s just gobbledygook. It's not haiku. It might be code to their Communist operatives in America; I have no idea. Why, if they’re going to all the trouble of sending me penis-enlargement spam, are they sending me this?

It’s not even purposeful crap; it’s just completely useless. At least with penis-enlargement spam, I can laugh at all the sad losers who are gonna buy the stuff and then (if it actually works) they’re gonna discover that they’re never gonna find a pair of undershorts that fit, and that using a toilet is going to become horrifically unsanitary. (If you don’t know what I mean, think about it. Or don’t, if you’d rather not be put off your lunch.)

Ah well, since I’ve been writing about penises so much I may as well end this post with a link to the song “Enormous Penis” by Da Vinci’s Notebook. Enjoy.

St. Patrick’s Day inconsistencies.

I ranted once before about St. Patrick’s Day—how St. Patrick did not bring Christianity to Ireland so that a bunch of stupid Americans can get falling-down-drunk on his feast day.

There was some additional foolishness this year, as St. Patrick’s Day fell on a Friday during Lent. Observers are supposed to not eat meat on Fridays during Lent, but a lot of Irish people are going to insist on corned beef and cabbage for St. Patrick’s Day, and so we have to decide what’s more important: A fast honoring Christ Jesus, or a day honoring one of his disciples.

I remind everyone that Lent is also not mandatory. If you’re going to practice it, you get to choose how to practice it. In my case I simply give up something; I don’t include the meatless Fridays because I didn’t give up meat this year. I also understand that fish is meat, and everyone who says fish is an exception is a hypocrite; if you’re giving up meat, then you’re giving up meat. I don’t care what the bishops say.

It is in that spirit that I object to the several local bishops who decided to give everyone a free pass to violate it for St. Patrick’s Day. I found this article particularly disturbing, mainly because of the sloppy theology throughout.

Bishops claim they can give dispensations so the church can lift Lent’s “rules.” I remind you if it really is a rule, handed down by God, no human-produced dispensation can lift jack squat. You can’t get a dispensation to blaspheme, worship idols, murder, adulter, and refuse to love others. Any bishop who says otherwise should be defrocked.

Lent is voluntary. It is a tradition, handed down by the church. As such, we can practice it, or not. God didn’t say the church as a whole has to practice it. God might order individuals to fast, or give up things; but he never ordered his people as a whole to fast every year at any other time than the High Holy Days—which Christians violate all the time.

Bishops can order their congregations to fast for Lent, but the people have the freedom to ignore them if they don’t feel their consciences are violated by ignoring. Bishops can also determine the rules for their versions of Lent, and the congregations can agree, or not. But if they didn’t order the practice, they have no business ordering a change in its rules.

The practice of Lent is between the worshiper and God, and no bishop should get in the way of that unless God orders an intervention. And I hardly think that God would make a special exception for corned beef.

Amusing comic strip: Our spiritual age.

Calvin and Hobbes, by Bill Watterson, 3/16/1995.

What are you, franking nuts?

Incumbents sure do like to abuse their perqs in their re-election.

The governor’s race has begun already. I’ve seen my first commercial for state treasurer Phil Angelides, who’s running for governor against Arnold Schwarzenegger. Check out Angelides’s biography page on the treasurer’s website, which, in the section under “What Others Are Saying About State Treasurer Phil Angelides,” is one of the most wholly inappropriate misuses of a government-funded website. It’s almost as bad as the franking privilege abuses we see from Congress every year.

For those outside the United States, I’ll explain. To “frank” is to send things through the Postal Service for free. Only members of Congress get to do it. Everyone else, including the president, has to pay for postage. (They made an exception for Martha Washington once, which is the only exception I know of.)

Franking is supposed to be used for official government business only. But every election year, I get something from my local congressman explaining all the wonderful things he’s done over the past year, and inviting me to these “town hall” meetings in which he wants to talk about all the wonderful things he still wants to do. Once he’s re-elected.

This is a campaign ad, of course. But it’s disguised as a newsletter from my congressman. So he can argue it’s not really a campaign ad, but the only reason he’s sending it out (and having my tax dollars pay for it) is to get me to vote for him again. Which I’ll only do if he doesn’t suck worse than his opponent. But he already sucks, because he’s misusing his privilege for personal gain, and making me pay for it.

Angelides is doing the same bloody thing with his state treasurer’s website, and it’s all been part of his plan to eventually run for governor. He’s made no secret of this; he’s run before, and usually lost in the primaries to someone who’s better connected.

I don’t want to vote for Schwarzenegger, but I really don’t want to vote for Angelides. The guy’s campaign tactics have in the past been vicious, petty, and insulting to the public’s intelligence. I expect to see more of the same in the upcoming primary election. Visionary though he may be at times, I still expect politicians to treat their opponents with decency even when they disagree with them, and I won’t vote for someone who can’t do that. Unless he shapes up in this election… nah, it won’t happen.

Comparisons to Hitler.

I’ve been reading a bit about Jay Bennish, a Colorado history teacher who got into trouble for bashing George W. Bush. One of his students recorded his classes, and the recording got into the hands of talk radio hosts, and now Bennish is on administrative leave while administrators try to figure out how to not fire him but make it look like they’ve showed due concern.

’Cause that's all they can really do. You can’t fire a teacher for speaking his mind. You can try, but every civil liberties lawyer in the country will come after you, and you can’t win in the courts. The only way to fire a teacher these days is to catch him doing something illegal, and it’s not against the law to compare Bush to Adolf Hitler.

That’s the part that I find particularly stupid. Bennish compared the president to Hitler. Nothing makes people insane faster than when you refer to Hitler. You could compare the president to Satan and not get so strong a reaction.

But what’s so wrong with comparing people to Hitler? I could compare anyone to Hitler. I could compare Jesus to Hitler. Jesus loves the Jews; Hitler not so much. See? That’s a comparison.

But all someone now has to do is take it out of context, say, “Did you hear that Kent compared Jesus to Hitler?”, hand it off to talk radio, and get me excommunicated.

Bennish’s comparison was a valid one, in fact. Hitler believed he was right and everyone else was wrong, and that he should spread the German style of government everywhere. Bush believes likewise. I could find other things to compare: Hitler was against abortion; so is Bush. Hitler’s government built internment camps to house undesirables, and refused to put them on trial; so did Bush. Hitler’s troops tortured prisoners; so has Bush’s. There are lots of ways in which Hitler and Bush are unalike, but it’s the similarities that most of us find disturbing.

The reason people get so riled up about criticisms of Bush is that ultimately politics is their religion, Bush is their messiah, and criticism of him is blasphemy. Even totally valid criticisms, and totally valid comparisons with Hitler.

Coffeepot in the office.

It’s awfully nice to have a coffeepot in the office.

I stole one out of the Vickery Center on Friday. There were three coffeepots in there; the one I used regularly, and two others that I used whenever someone else was using the one I used regularly.

Yes, someone else in the center occasionally made coffee. I could have drank it, but I don’t trust it. I drink decaf, and I insist on it being made with good beans and filtered water. Most office coffees are made with Kirkland (a cheap coffee brand found at Costco) and with Scotts Valley tap water (which tastes like it was squeezed through an armpit). So I bought a filter for the office, and until recently I was drinking Safeway Select beans.

One Monday I discovered that one of the weekend classes had used all my beans. They probably didn’t care for the Kirkland stuff either. I don’t blame them, but I did find it annoying that I had to drink Kirkland decaf that day. I took a great deal of comfort in the fact that my unlabeled bag of coffee beans was decaf, and that they likely didn’t know that, and suffered from it. Serves ’em right.

Since I was out of coffee, I just grabbed my 26-ounce can of Trader Joe’s French Roast from home… and realized Saturday morning that I had no more than two espressos’ worth of coffee beans at home. All my coffee was at the office.

And that’s usually the sign that I need to go to the grocery store. I don’t go when I’m out of milk; I don’t go when I’m low on vegetables; I go when I’m out of coffee. Until then, I slowly empty my pantry and think to myself, “Well, at least I have coffee.” But now I can’t think that. Must get more.

I do not have an addiction.