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Key members of congress unveiled their newest piece of legislation today, pledging to bring more transparency and accountability to the Christmas season.

The Kringle Compatibility and Accountability Bill, expected to pass both the house and the senate this week, is a sweeping piece of bipartisan legislation aimed at making the gift receiving process more transparent, while at the same time building accountability into a system that has historically been known as mainly arbitrary in nature.

“Too many young Americans spend the last month of the year in an overly anxious state,” said Rep.  John Boehner, R-OH, “they clean their rooms over and over, they do extra chores, they go above and beyond.  And for what?  To get themselves on the right list?  That’s absurd.”

Key provisions in the bill will create a Claus oversight committee charged with monitoring all changes made to the Nice list, as well as the Naughty list.  Before a child can be added to either list, the bill will require a comprehensive three step approval process, fully documented, with ample opportunity for appeal if a favorable outcome for all is not reached.

Additionally, the bill will require both lists to be hosted on the Internet for the entire length of the year and be available for mailing if necessary.

“This is a great victory for all Americans,” said Anthony Romero, Executive Director of the A.C.L.U., which recently filed a F.O.I.A. suit against Santa Claus Inc. to bring both the Naughty and Nice lists into the realm of the public.  “This bill will take what was a murky shadow organization riddled with dirty deals and cronyism and turn it into the paragon that we all want it to be.”

Claus himself could not be reached for comment, but an attorney for S. Claus LLC, the conglomerate in charge of Santa Claus Inc. stated that they are confident that the bill will be proven unconstitutional in the Supreme Court, and thus plans to challenge the bill as soon as it is signed into law.

On my way back from Chihuahua-sitting today I stopped by the Strand to buys me some readin materials. Seeing that they were all out of de Tocqueville, or maybe they just had it in another gawddamn section (I hate the Strand), but unable to leave a bookstore emptyhanded, I picked up a copy of The Iraq Study Group Report. I’ve been hearing so much about it in the news, I wanted to know what all the fuss was about. Also, I’ve found that a sustained and overwhelming assault of facts and quotes from recognizable sources that I know they’ve heard of and have opinions on, but have never bothered to read is really the only way I can overcome the once-you-understand-how-the-world-really-works-you’ll-be-as-closed-
minded-as-the-rest-of-us-smarties attitute that I get from some members of my extended family around the holidays. Yeah, I’m a little bit confrontational…

So, anyway, I was getting my bag back from the bag-check and was stuffing the book into one of the pockets when the bag-check guy (college kid looking) asked me what the book was. I looked at him and blinked. “Um, it’s The Iraq Study Group Report” I said, pointing to the cover, where the title appeared in big block letters. “What’s that about?” He answered. Again, it took a little time to react. Yes, this is the bag-check guy, but he’s in the friggin’ Strand. These are the people who try to make you feel dumb no matter what book you’re asking them to find. So to find a guy working in the Strand (again, to be fair, bag checking may be contracted out) who not only doesn’t know about the existance of the Iraq report on a table a meer five feet from his position, but also apparently hasn’t looked at a tabloid cover or watched the Daily Show in the past week, was simply astounding.

That having passed through my brain in a split second, I proceded to give him a brief assessment of the contents of the book. “It’s about the situation in Iraq and what we have to do to ensure that both American and regional interestests are protected.” Simple enough explanation of a 142 page gut-punch to the current administration, I thought… But his response to that was something that I was wholly unprepared for.

“So, what, is that monthly?”

I wish, buddy. I wish…

Quarts: 9
Quart breakdown:

• 1 Stewarts brand
• 1 Horizon Organic brand
• 1 Southern Comfort brand (no hooch in it, they make you buy that crap separately)
• 1 Hood brand
• 2 quarts (half gallon) Hannaford brand
• 2 quarts (half gallon) Turkey Hill brand (my favorite!)
• 1 quart of Organic Valley Eggnog (which a co-worker raised on a farm laughed at)

Also, I have in my possession Doom the book. That’s right, all the rip-roaring action that made the Doom movie such a rousing success is now compressed into 304 pulse-pounding pages.

For those of you playing the doylebrau home game, that’s a book, based on a movie, based on a video game.

IMG_2124.JPGOriginally uploaded by doylebrau.

I’m trying to figure out why this is far and away my most viewed photo on flickr. I mean, I’ve got much better photos on there, technically and thematically.

Maybe there is a society of people devoted to images of Rt. 28 in upstate NY, and they’ve been passing this thing around like a bottle of moonshine. Or maybe there is this perspectives group that meets in dark hallways and looks into the distance, and they found my picture and now they’re on their way up to Old Forge to sit in the middle of the road and hold up a picture frame in front of them.

Or maybe I’m reading too much into this.
I don’t know… I guess this is kind of like Arlo Guthrie and The Motorcycle Song. I once heard a live CD where Arlo had gotten through almost the entire show when some guy from the back shouted out “I DON’T WANT A PICKLE!” And Arlo replied “I DON’T want a pickle.” He then launched into a good-natured rant about how he’s written so many wonderful songs over his long career, accomplished so much, done things he’s never dreamed he’d have the opportunity to do, but when he dies he’ll be standing there in front of heaven and St. Peter will look at him, cock his head to one side, and say, “Hey, I know you, you wrote The Motorcycle Song!”

Not that I’m Arlo Guthrie, but you get my point.

I met a friend of mine’s father once back in college. My friend and I had had a sleepover the night before and to make the evening extra hokey, I work my cow pajamas. (Yes, I own a set of black and white printed moo-cow pjs.) And I happened to be wearing the pajamas when I met her father, who arrived early the next morning. He had his 6 year old daughter with him, and she took a shine to me and my fashion sense, as did he. Long story short, my friend got married last year and at the wedding, her father introduced me to all his buddies as “The Cow Guy.”

I don’t know exactly where I’m going here, maybe that you can’t choose what you’re known for. Or maybe the age-old adage, “You can pick your friends and you can pick your nose, but you can’t pick your friend’s nose.”

But seriously, how can that photo have three times as many views as this one?

New York recently decided to ban trans fats from restaurants almost entirely (the exception being prepackaged foods sold in said restaurants). Now this news is meeting mixed reviews: Doctors are extatic, restauranteers not so much… Personally, I’ll be mourning the loss of Crisco, simply for the comedic value alone.

So what exactly are trans fats? I can’t exactly tell you, but I think I know someone who can… Personally, though still in the dark about what they are, I’ve been lucky enough to have known
about the evils of trans fats for about four or five years now. Way
back when–while I was in college–my mother was investigating the
whole trans fats issue. One winter break she cornered me after dinner
and started telling me all about the wonders of Omega 3, good
cholesterol, and healthy fat. Though I thought what she was telling me was
true, I was young and stuck in my own world of health-free living and
sucking down eggnog by the quart.  Ahh memories…  But fortunately for me, the lesson stuck.  And I made a point to think about avoiding trans fats from then on.
Back to this issue at hand. This has got to make you think: If New York bans trans fats, that’s about 10 million people (8.2 million residents, plus about 2 million visitors/workers present and eating at any given time), or approximately 1/30th of the country that will be off trans fats in restaurants. Plus, Chicago is thinking of following suit, as are a few other undisclosed cities. This could mean nation-wide changes for the restaurant industry.

Nation-wide?  Let me explain.

California has 33.8 million people, but their low emissions programs have sparked some car makers to dramatically change the emissions levels of their entire fleet of cars in recent years. Both the Honda Civic and Accord are LEV certified (Civic is actually ULEV), most BMWs up to the 750Li are ULEV, every new Land Rover is SULEV, almost every Lincoln is at least ULEV, a surprising amount of big GM trucks are ULEV, nearly every Toyata is ULEV until you get to the LEV big trucks, the list goes on and on. Check out your car if you want. Now, these cars are available everywhere, but even though only California standards are much stricter than the rest of the country’s, car makers know it’s cheaper to make one kind of engine and exhaust system, despite the fact that the super-strict regulations only exist in a handful of states. So even though they have to bite the bullet and spring for some engineers to get their cars and trucks down to ULEV status, they do it because it doesn’t make fiscal sense to make a car that they can’t sell to almost 34 million customers. And it make even less sense to offer one kind of car to California and one to the rest of the country. So the answer is quite clear: change with the times.

And that’s what I hope happens to the restaurant industry. If enough cities decide to ban trans fats, the McDonald’s and Chili’s and Pizza Huts of the world will have a difficult choice to make. They can produce two different kinds of french fries for two different markets.  Or bite the bullet and change over the entire system now, on their own terms, before federal regulations catch up and mandate a change.

I guess we’ll all see how this works out. And who knows, this might be the start of a health back-lash that ends up getting this nation out of the portly stupor it has been stuck in for most of my recent memory.

Once, when I was a young buck working fast food, I was working the drive-thru window one afternon when a rather irate man pulled around to the window and demanded to know the total for his order. Now, to avoid confusion, you, the reader, should know that the place I worked at had one of the few face-to-face drive-thru set-ups still alive in the greater Capital District area. So you can imagine my surprise when I opened the door to greet the man and was immediatly accosted about my communication skills and lack of knowledge of the total of his order.

Irate Man: My number sevens, I had two number sevens.

Me: You did, sir? I can put those in for you now if you’d like.

Irate Man: I already gave my order, I got two number sevens, what’s my total?

Me: Sir, I didn’t take your order yet, can you tell me what you want to drink with those?

Irate Man: Well I guess you don’t know that your speaker’s broken then, cause I gave my order back around the corner!

Me: Sir, you couldn’t have given your order to our speaker.

Irate Man: And why not! (Aside: he was really pissed at this point)

Me: Because you were talking to a newspaper machine.

Irate Man: …

He drove off after that. And I treated myself to a small cup of neopolitan milkshake.

Staying in my apartment for long enough to get hungry in it is getting to be a bad idea.  My roommate, Lissa, has made a habit of cooking delicious pastries.  Currently, there is a batch of brownies on the kitchen table (real brownies, I might add), and a half finished two-thirds finished key lime pie in the fridge.  And this isn’t out of the ordinary.  Her mother baked cakes professionally for years.  Don’t get me wrong, this is my own personal dessert heaven.  The problem is the heavy drinking cold weather.  I’ve been sitting around the apartment not wanting to go outside today while sucking down fabulous sugary treats all afternoon.  Sure, I did my laundry, but all told, that’s like ten minutes total walking time.

I’m such a slug…

IMG_3756.JPG

Originally uploaded by doylebrau.

This is the first of hopefully many Lens Baby shots. The Lens Baby is a lens that gives me a sweet spot in the middle of the image. Let’s see how good I can get at this…

I have a history of having crappy birthdays.  Well, I’ve had a few excellent ones, but for the most part they’re usually blah.  When I was a kid I actually had a string of three years when I ran a fever from Nov. 29 to Dec. 1.   This year was no different, the actual day itself was crappy (had an emergency trip to Jersey for work), and on the sage advice of my hairdresser, I’ve decided that I’m no longer working on my birthday.  In her words: How can you have a good birthday if you’re working?  I agree.

Which is why I’m happy that I had so much fun at my birthday party last night.  This year I did the actual celebrating on the 1st with a party at Ace Bar in the EV.  I got to see a lot of people that I hadn’t seen in a while, and I got a steady stream in and out until I was all partied out later in the evening.  I only made it to about 1 am, but you must understand, this day coincided with a rare beer-supplied party at work, so I was drinking from about 3 pm on.  I’ve got pictures up on my flickr site, but please understand, Megan (in the blue shirt with the fabulous hair [we ran into each other at Whistle earlier that day]) asked for the camera and all of these pictures were taken in about two minutes.  Lots of fun, though.  I always forget to bust out the camera at parties, maybe that’s a good thing…

I did come to a sad conclusion last night, though.  I don’t think I can drink exclusively Guinness any more.  After about three the effort required to down more beers increases exponentially with each pint.  And I discovered last night that five pints won’t get me drunk any more (unless I start chugging them, but that creates another problem entirely).  I’ve recently been getting into Martinis, but I need to start ordering more liquor earlier on.  Maybe whiskey, I think that’s Irish enough…

Recalling my birthday last night makes me think of the other fun birthdays I’ve had over the years.  When I was a sophomore in college, my mother actually mailed a package of pins that she’d found in the attic to one of my best friends.  The pins, which were made circa my actual birth, said: Patrick Doyle,  9 lbs. 5 oz.,  November 30th, 1980.  At first, I didn’t really notice.  One of my residents walked by my door and said, “Hey Patrick Doyle!”  I went to class and my professor called me Patrick Doyle when I walked in.  It wasn’t until later in the day that I noticed the little blue pins stuck to people’s shirts and jackets.  And, like that arrow in the fedex logo, once you notice something, that’s all you see.  Those little pins showed up everywhere.  My friend managed to find nearly everyone I would interact with that day and give them a pin.  The worst part is it took me the longest time to figure out how she obtained the pins for distribution in the first place.  Using my detective skills, I found a tell-tale package addressed from my parent’s house sitting on the floor of her room a day after the fact.  The pins kept turning up in odd places over the next few weeks: taped to my door, on the uniforms of university police, stuck to the wall in the dining hall.  I think I’ve still got one around here somewhere.