Jim Gilchrist is running for Congress for District 48 in Orange County, California. This is where I live and includes Irvine, CA.

He bugs me because his entire platform is based on a negative outlook on the present and future expressed through organizing volunteer border patrols. He must not be riding the bus around Orange County at 5 am or he'd see all the Mexicans going to their jobs cleaning up Orange County's trash, mowing our lawns and delivering our goods. We might need Mexican labor, as much as they need a place to earn a living. Anyway, I rant...

Of course the reason I'm blogging is much closer to home. He has some robot calling program that calls my cell phone, uses my minutes and my bandwidth to tell me about how he is keeping the Mexicans out of California and darn it isn't that good enough for my vote. Although I've asked his campaign to remove me from his list, I keep getting his calls. I guess he can't figure out how to find people who can run a database as easily as he can find people who will capture poor people in their spare time.

And just so that I have something to offer rather than just criticisms, I endorse a much better candidate, Bea Tiritilli. A well-spoken, apparently well-educated mom.

Here is the text of an email exchange that I traded with "Eldon" of the Gilchrist campaign. This was the second time I requested to be removed from their calling list:

I have received two telephone calls on my mobile phone from a Jim Gilchrist recording robot. Please stop calling me. My number is XXX-XXX-XXXX.

Thanks
Don

Dear Dr. Patterson,

I have removed your name and phone number from the file we used last night for the auto dial message from Jim Gilchrist. The number was generated from the voter files of registered voters from the OC Registrar of Voters. You may want to re-register to vote and not fill in a telephone number to avoid this in the future.

Thanks
Eldon

So the only reason why I'm asked for my phone number on the voter registration card is so that I can get automatic dialer messages from any candidate who can afford the list?

Well see what they say next....

A hilarious, if slightly crude, article from Esquire (Smartmoney.com: Print: My Outsourced Life) suggests that we outsource the details of our personal lives. I'm not sure if he actually did the outsourcing that he suggests, but if it were to work as well as he describes, it would be tempting to try it.

Choice Quote:

It began a month ago. I was midway through "The World Is Flat," the bestseller by Tom Friedman. I like Friedman, despite his puzzling decision to wear a mustache. His book is all about how outsourcing to India and China is not just for tech support and carmakers but is poised to transform every industry in America, from law to banking to accounting. CEOs are chopping up projects and sending the lower-end tasks to strangers in cubicles ten time zones away. And it's only going to snowball; America has not yet begun to outsource.

I don't have a corporation; I don't even have an up-to-date business card. I'm a writer and editor working from home, usually in my boxer shorts or, if I'm feeling formal, my penguin-themed pajama bottoms. Then again, I think, why should Fortune 500 firms have all the fun? Why can't I join in on the biggest business trend of the new century? Why can't I outsource my low-end tasks? Why can't I outsource my life?

The LA Times has this excellent lengthy article about the world of "cool-hunting." (Fads are so yesterday - Los Angeles Times archive) Cool-hunters are the people who tap into emerging youth culture and sell their predictions to companies who then productize the trend and then wait for the cash to come rolling in.

The article makes lots of insightful comments about our consumer culture and how there is no lifestyle we can discover which doesn't have a line of products helping you to live it. At the same time many people just try and demonstrate that they know the breadth of lifestyles available by purchasing key knock-offs of cornerstone elements of a particular lifestyle (a copied hand-bag, a particular style of retro T-shirt, etc.)

Culture mining, cool-hunting, trend-spotting are all fascinating to me because they are intertwined with the world of technology, which is where I make my living.

Choice quote:

At the same time, Popcorn's mind is constantly tuned into the tantalizing "what ifs" of tomorrow. Her 2001 book, "Dictionary of the Future," predicts the proliferation of a "cosmetic underclass" who can't afford to erase their age, a parent education movement that issues permits and product discounts to well-trained parents, and "personal archivists" who organize the e-mails, digital images and other data that help document our existence.
When asked about today's obsession with cool, even Popcorn sounds peeved. She moans: "It's like everybody's hip now. It's exhausting. There's no discovery. It's not original."

More from the RedBlue project. Part of the reason why I think the tactic of rejecting extremes and finding a third way is so great is because it was a strategy that Jesus used. When asked whether or not his disciples should pay taxes by the religious leaders around him, Jesus was pushed into a situation of either saying "no" and alienating the Romans, or "yes" and alienating the Jews who felt that the Romans were occupiers and exploiters. Either answer would have caused him the wrong kind of trouble at the wrong time. Instead Jesus pointed out Caesar's image on the local coin and responded "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's." In one short phrase he exposed the motives of the religious leaders, condemned them and showed the people around him how to worship. Brilliant.

So today I highlight RedBlue Project's spot on gay marriage.

Choice quotes:

"We'll shut the straight people out and we can really get this party started."
"I believe all the gay people should be loaded up and shipped off to France...You know it says that in the Bible.

This is so great. It is a website and maybe eventually an organization that is working to find a third way between the ridiculously extreme positions that politicians feel they must take on a variety of issues. Extremes which no one agrees with, which force everyone to take sides they don't strictly believe are correct, and then alienate the other people who were forced into taking the other side.

So today I highlight their spot on abortion. No one wants more abortions. Instead of working to reduce teen poverty, improve health education and encourage adoption reform, we yell about killing babies or women with coat hangers, depending on your side. Once the election is over we forget that we were yelling and do nothing meaningful to change the situation. We are a nation of short-attention span, passionate fools.

Choice quotes:

"Women need to be home making babies"
"If there is a way to destroy life, I'm all over it"

CNN has an article today about Seattle-based Jones Soda Company. This holiday season they are introducing salmon flavored soda in addition to turkey and gravy, corn on the cob, broccoli casserole and pecan pie flavors. Creativity abounds. Innovation abounds. Sales plummet.

Sony commissioned a commercial for its new line of mumble-mumble-color-LCD-mumble-TV-mumble-displays that involved dropping 10,000 bouncy balls out of a window onto the top of a hill in San Fransisco. It's pretty cool looking. See it here.