It’s my favorite Jimmy Eat World song and the year we are now embarking on as a species, and we have a lot on our plate. There is a line in the song that brings me back to my secular-humanist core, “I won’t always love what I’ll never have,
I won’t always live in my regrets.” I’ll never accumulate massive wealth with what I do, and I believe the lottery is something of a minor crime put upon the desperate. So for the first part, I’ll never love the money I’ll never have, only appreciate the wonderful things that I do without dwelling on regrets.

I don’t make resolutions, because I think it is disengenuous to pick a day of the year to do so, and not try to improve oneself on a daily basis. “Be the change you want to see in the world.” I won’t attribute it to anyone because it appears to be disputed, but what a beautiful sentiment. 2023 has a chance to be the best year of mine in a long time, despite the Buckeyes losing in heartbreaking fashion last night, I met my best friend’s new girlfriend and we had a great time. I have a good feeling about it, and I have recently started a relationship myself, so I have hope.

23 is going to see the Republicans taking over the house and Marjorie Taylor Greene getting a lot more publicity for most likely investigating Hunter Biden’s laptop to no avail. There is progress to be made still, and I will hold back my vitriol for a post that isn’t on the first of the year. That ‘best friend’s new girlfriend’ is a liberal, so this is going to get interesting, and I can’t wait for it. The thought of owning the right wing isn’t an ideal I live for, but it will be great to have another voice of reason in his life.

Manchester United may have new ownership, the best news for the club since Marcus Rashford emerged as their number 10. The Cleveland Browns won’t make the playoffs this year, but there is reason to believe that success is possible next season beyond the normal irrational, ‘Super Bowl Year X’ hysteria normally found within the fanbase in the offseason. The Columbus Crew have a new coach and a great roster to send FC Cincinnati back to Appalachian hell in style this year and as ever, glory to Columbus!

I have always found this to be the most contradictory lyric in Jimmy Eat World’s catalog: “It’s just not me to wear it on my sleeve, count on that for sure.” Lead singer Jim Adkins wears every emotion on his sleeve, and with every one of the nearing double digit live shows I’ve attended, that is the way to be. I am going to wear 2023 on my sleeve, and make the absolute most of it, down to the marrow. One of the more prompting lyrics of the song is what I will leave you with, “You’ll sit alone forever
If you wait for the right time.” The right time is now.

I have always been on the Ronaldo side of the, ‘Messi vs. Ronaldo’ debate, but after this World Cup my mind has reluctantly changed. Lionel Messi’s stratospheric performance in this World Cup has changed my mind, and has also provided for some of the best entertainment of the year. The United States played well, and we have a great young team poised to compete at home in the next World Cup, but this wasn’t about them.

I want to start at the beginning, with how none of this should have ever happened. Qatar should have never hosted this tournament, FIFA is the second most corrupt organization behind the American Republican Party, and despite that soccer prevailed. Qatar paid off three members of FIFA a million dollars each to get the World Cup, and even in their proposal deceived the organization with fraudulent cooling technology proposals and slave labor to build the stadiums. But enough about Qatar, this is the World Cup.

The highlight game before the final was Argentina vs Netherlands in the quarter-finals. It was a war. Fourteen yellow cards and a relentless comeback by the Dutch, excellent tactical changes by the manager Van Gaal to put them into position to push wave after wave of attacks to their towering striker subs that culminated in a goal to even the score in the eleventh minute of stoppage time. I was rooting for the Netherlands, and though they lost on penalties, I would have been satisfied with this World Cup after this match.

Back to Qatar, despite making a deal with FIFA and sponsors to serve alcohol, they went back on the deal at the last minute. Then, the reports started coming out about the dress codes for the stadiums, with many being stopped by security for their clothing choice. Dear Qatar, you welcomed the world to your country, you didn’t have to show us that you still are an archaic society that openly oppresses women and LGBTQ individuals. However, since you did, I hope your sandcastle falls into the ocean.

The World Cup final was one of the best matches I have seen in my lifetime. It’s up there with the Liverpool comeback against Milan in the Champions League final in 2005. It’s up there with watching the Netherlands in the final against Spain in 2010, which I watched on a beach in the Netherlands. This was everything that a fan of the sport could hope for, and for evangelists of the game, this is one to point to for non-believers.

Everyone got to see Messi put the final feather in his godlike cap, and the future of the game Mbappe score a hat trick. This final started out looking like a rout by Argentina, but as if to show how exciting this game can be, two quick French goals in the second half extended it. After trading goals in extra time and Argentina prevailing on penalties this was a thriller. Catch your breath world, the United States Women’s National Team will see you in seven months.

Since I’m now an elder statesman at thirty-five years of age I wanted to make a public service announcement to anyone who may be voting for the first time, or anyone who might be thinking about sitting this one out. Democratic representation started with the ancient Greeks and is the foundation of this country that should never be underestimated in terms of its importance to our society. This is something that I never thought would be a point of contention, regardless of how extreme the Republicans get.

People all around the world celebrate our elections as a high standard to strive toward in their own counties and if you neglect to participate in that process, you are passively slapping them in the face, as well as living irresponsibly. The reason that I say this now is because the very Democratic process that has given us hundreds of years of prosperity is now under siege. It may have started with voter ID, and getting minorities kicked off the voter rolls, but now the Republicans have decided to not recognize a legal voting process unless they win.

Here in Ohio we have a chance to elect Tim Ryan to the senate, a centrist who as a candidate is nothing to get excited about. What makes this election important is that Ohio, now considered a safe red state, has a contested election for senate that is within the margin of error because of Trump supported candidate JD Vance. In their assumption that any right wing candidate will do in Ohio, they selected a man who suggested people stay in violent marriages and will not support abortion with any exceptions.

These two points are so out of the mainstream opinion, even in Ohio, that a Democratic candidate actually has a chance. I would encourage you to vote for Tim Ryan on Election Day, especially if you are a woman, but also if you are an aware human being. JD Vance called Trump, ‘America’s Hitler’ and is now accepting his endorsement and money. This country may not get to vote within a decade if we elect people like him.

I have always welcomed the argument with fellow Americans who I disagree with, because that discourse is important. I have frequently listened to media outlets that do not represent my beliefs to get a perspective, and to reaffirm my stance. Like the tea party in 2010, there are a vocally ignorant, completely unqualified swath of candidates who reject the 2020 election result running for office. I strongly believe that Republicans should be able to vote for their candidates like I vote for mine, but that isn’t what they are talking about.

This election is about putting people in charge who believe in the voting process, not an unhinged pack of cultists of Donald Trump. I sincerely hope that you feel the same way about Democracy that I do, and have the courage to vote for candidates based in reality this Election Day. No matter how much money the super PACs put in, there is nothing currently that can equal one person, one vote. Make your voice heard while you still can.

I wanted to let this ferment a little bit before I weighed in on it, but I can’t wait any longer. LIV golf is an abomination. I haven’t watched a single frame of the actual golf, but I have paid attention as a story, and it’s a horrible one.

I never thought there would be a group of professional athletes that would give investment bankers a run for their money in the category of moral bankruptcy, but here I am surprised. When we used to see pay-for-play scandals with college athletes in the pre-NIL world, one always wanted to the side with the kid, ‘getting the bag’ this is the exact opposite.

This was an occurrence of already wealthy people shamelessly taking massive amounts of money from a country that murdered a journalist and funded and carried out the attack on 9/11. If we as a country were not so dependent on them for oil, they would be speaking English by now, and their women would have rights.

One other person I don’t want to let off the hook here is John Daly, I have always been a fan. That is, until he went on Piers Morgan and explained that he begged Greg Norman to let him join the LIV tour, and said of the crown prince, ‘The Prince of Saudi Arabia is a great guy and he’s given so much money to golfers that deserve it.’

No John, he’s not a great guy, you know who is though? Tiger. Fucking. Woods. He reportedly turned down close to eight-hundred-million dollars to join the retirement from relevance tour. Hopefully he will get a lucrative new endorsement with Suave, because he doesn’t need to participate in sports-washing, he just uses soap like the rest of us.

In the wake of Joe Manchin’s back stabbing of his fellow Democrats this week, an attempt to keep West Virginia comfortably in the Nineteenth Century, I felt the need to offer a realistic approach for the environmental cause going forward. In short, we need to move forward aggressively in the nuclear energy sector soon if we have any hope of staving off climate change.

Unfortunately like almost everything in the world of public policy, this point of view is not perfect, but is a lesser evil much in the way that Hillary was in 2016. If that didn’t rattle the cages of the ideological purists who squeamishly voted for Gary Johnson or Jill Stein, enjoy your Supreme Court Justices for the next thirty years you bunch of simpletons.

The United States currently has fifty-five nuclear power plants with an average age of around forty years old, the most recent came online in twenty-sixteen. The fact is that nuclear power can provide a clean, stable source of energy for all the time that the sun isn’t shining on solar panels or wind isn’t propelling turbines.

Nuclear is the answer to how we power all the electric vehicles in the future, and move away from the most environmentally catastrophic sources of energy like coal, oil and natural gas. All of those batteries aren’t going to charge themselves, and a well regulated nuclear industry can be the bridge to our energy future as well as lower dependence on foreign sources.

Back to the purists, nuclear energy is not risk free, but significant progress has been made. Let’s take a look at three of the most commonly cited nuclear disasters: Chernobyl, Fukushima, and Three Mile Island. The Chernobyl disaster was a result primarily of misplaced Soviet bravado, and extremely short sighted cost cutting measures in the construction and composition of the plant that compromised safety. In addition there was a near complete lack of damage mitigation structure around the reactor.

With Fukushima, simply put, Japan never should have been in the nuclear business. The risk factors of being located on a major fault line that has repeatedly experienced major earthquakes, and susceptibility to tsunamis on the coast which ultimately caused the plant to fail and melt down should have been foreseen long before construction.

Three Mile Island was not as significant of a disaster as the aforementioned, but was in the United States. Though a relief valve failed and caused a partial meltdown of the reactor core, the concrete protective structure around the core prevented a much more serious radioactive event from taking place. Better regulation and safety procedures may have prevented the event, but the worst was avoided.

Building well regulated, modern nuclear facilities in areas statistically safe from natural disasters could prove to be a palatable comprise between the fossil fuel addicted right and the green obsessed left. I would even suggest using eminent domain to build facilities in areas that fit that criteria, here’s looking at you Dakotas.

That bumper sticker, and the dozens of memes and references I’ve seen since have never ceased to make me crack a wide, devious, and undeniably smug smile. Sometime this year, when I saw the sticker actually on the back of another Prius, I realized the world had come full circle and my grin was ear to ear. Please allow me take you through my last five commutes to work:

My Commute according to Google Maps is 24.3 miles, a combination of highway and city streets, and I averaged 52.88 miles per gallon over 5 trips. I was a History major, but I thought it would be important to include some of my mathematical insights as I did finish at the top of my only math class; MATH 1180 Math For Liberal Arts (Yes, it was actually called that).

This particular tank was filled at $4.99 a gallon, and for the purposes of not straining my little snowflake brain, I’m going to call it $5.00. So this is a sizable commute, from Northwest Columbus to the East side, and with these numbers, I was paying less than $5.00 a day there and back. Can somebody, anybody, give me a, “Let’s Go Brandon?!”

In 2015, the year I bought my 2012 Prius C, the average fuel economy for new cars in the United States soared to 24.8 miles per gallon. (Citation Below) I did pay more to buy a hybrid back then than I would have paid for an average car, but let’s put that into a little 2022 perspective. I paid $12,500 for my Prius in 2015, and have been averaging around 50 miles per gallon or more combined since then.

United States Average Gas Prices By Year 2015-Present:

2015: $2.45, 2016: $2.14, 2017: $2.42, 2018: $2.72, 2019: $2.60, 2020: $2.17 2021: $3.01 2022: $4.90

Cost of My Current Commute By Year, Average 2015 Vehicle Vs. 2012 Prius C

4 in office days a week, 8 trips a week, 24.3 miles, 50 weeks a year. (8×24.3×50=9,720)

Average Car 2015, 25 MPG = 388.8 Gallons/Year:

2015: $952.56 2016: $832.03 2017: $940.89 2018: $1,057.53 2019: $1,010.88 2020: $843.69 2021: $1,170.29 2022: $1,905.12

7 Year Total: $8,712.90

Prius C 2012, 50 MPG = 194.4 Gallons/Year:

2015: $476.28 2016: $416.02 2017: $470.45 2018: $528.77 2019: $505.44 2020: $421.85 2021: $585.15 2022: $952.56

7 Year Total: $4,356.52

My decision was based on both my environmentalist beliefs and personal economics, two things that are only mutually exclusive if you are a moron, or have consistent proximity to truck nuts. In short, you can irrationally blame gas prices on Biden, but you should have gotten smart long before a 2020 decision was in your care.

Toyota has been selling the Prius in the United States since 2000, and many other auto makers have followed in the hybrid market since then. What I’m trying to say is that if you haven’t made a smarter decision on your vehicle by now, I have no sympathy for you. You don’t have to buy a Tesla to make a difference, willful ignorance however is inexcusable.

I’ll leave you with another quote to ponder, and know that it’s never too late to go green, but you might have to remove the fake testicles from your vehicle first. “God has a special providence for fools, drunkards, and the United States of America.” – Otto Von Bismarck

https://www.titlemax.com/discovery-center/planes-trains-and-automobiles/average-gas-prices-through-history/

It wasn’t my first time seeing palm trees, it wasn’t my first time west of the Mississippi, but it was my first time in the Republic of California. That Eagles lyric, ‘You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave’ needs to be updated to; ‘If you can afford it, you will never leave.’ I can’t find another way to describe it: paradise.

Spending the better part of a week there was magical. The only regret I had was not making it two weeks. I started planning the trip wanting to play Torrey Pines Golf Course, but after a few youtube videos I realized that was totally out of my league. My best friend and I did still make the trip up to Torrey Pines and it was the most beautiful golf course I have ever seen.

Despite a water crisis the course looked great, if my handicap dramatically improves I will be taking another swing at this one. I did fulfill the golf requirement of the trip however, as the next day we headed to Mission Bay Golf Course. The course was fantastic and the weather couldn’t have been better, we played a 4 ball scramble and started out -2 on the front but ended +2.

We continued on the following day to Los Angeles, and I have to say even though we encountered a limited amount of traffic during the time we were there, I understand the nightmare. Coming from San Diego on the 5 freeway we got a great view of the skyline, and made our way to the L.A. Galaxy stadium we were looking for.

The stadium was great, and we weaseled our way into getting this photo by persistence and friendliness with the front desk staff, almost as if Ted Lasso was with us. My friend has a bucket list to visit every MLS stadium, so one more down and I collect jerseys so I got their June pride jersey. Honestly how could I escape Los Angeles in June without something colorful?

We continued on to the tourist trap of the Hollywood sign, not my first choice, but my friend is never going back to California. It was worth it since we were there, and the Hollywood sign park is definitely the place to go if you need the picture.

From the Hollywood sign we moved on to Pasadena and the Rose Bowl. I don’t know a bigger Ohio State fan than my best friend, so this was like seeing Mecca. I have no idea what will become of The Rose Bowl now that USC and UCLA will be joining the Big Ten, but seeing it even from the outside was a religious experience.

‘The Big Lebowski’ is my favorite movie, and I studied film extensively in college, so this trip to California was a long time coming. I’ve been to Europe and I knew that would be the only comparison I could make as I reside in Ohio.

California did not disappoint. If you are looking for a vacation with perfect weather and don’t have a passport, Southern California is the answer. We stayed in La Jolla, and I can’t say anything negative about it. Europe has a leg up for historical significance on almost any western destination, but Southern California is where I want my ashes spread.

After these last couple weeks I’ve come to find that the US Constitution is very similar to the bible, in that, if you want to be a hateful, vitriolic dipshit, it can be interpreted to prove whatever perverse conclusion you want. While this is nothing new, and was most notably exercised to justify slavery in this country, the christian rights’ insistence on pushing their values on others is no less infuriating.

Even though the first amendment begins with, ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion’ it is very clear that the current Supreme Court will be ruling as a fundamentalist christian entity. The decision on Roe appears to be only the first target in its crosshairs, and represents a landmark decision in that it takes away rights from millions of people rather than advancing them.

With that being established now, their final day of rulings had to include an attack on the environment. All of god’s creation, something christians care so little about, really brings into question the role they see for their creator. How could you possibly think that a loving god came down and created this beautiful planet, and didn’t have any expectation of taking care of it?

The decision at the end of this July fourth freedom week is a big victory for coal, yes, that old boyfriend you never thought you’d hear from again. For the court to rule that The Environmental Protection Agency does not have to the authority to regulate industry and protect the environment is so absurd that it’s as if they are prepping for a banana republican open mic night. 

Remember when Obama said that Miami was flooding when the sun was shining? That was seven years ago, and four of those were under the rule of a president who put a former oil executive in charge of the EPA. Climate change is real, like hell apparently, and we appear to be moving closer to that temperature with every stroke of the pen from this group of Salem wanna-be jurists.

When I started speech class, essentially debate, as a required course during high school I was told by our teacher that ‘The O’Riley Factor’ presented an excellent model to emulate. I had already been regularly watching ‘The Daily Show’ for a few years and I tuned in to see what he was talking about. I have a vivid memory of him asking us, “Who runs America?” I raised my hand and said, ‘the big corporations.’

I would pay an unreasonable amount of money to have a meme of this instructors’ face as he simultaneously could not fathom the answer he had just received from an eleventh grader in the middle of nowhere Ohio and was shaking off whatever brand of whiskey was in his coffee. He responded with something to the effect of, “Well that’s true, but…” and then continued with whatever he was intending to say before he was unexpectedly interrupted.

That is Jon Stewart in a nutshell. If you were fortunate enough to have Comedy Central, you were exposed to a light in the dark. Before I knew anything about his political affiliation or my own, I knew he was funny. Even being as young as I was when I started watching, I could appreciate absurdity or irony like any other teenager, and with an open mind and loving parents that blossomed into liberalism in a wasteland of ignorance.

This was a catholic high school which brought with it all the conservatism, stupidity and circumstance you would expect. Another story from the same year, 2004, that I love to tell is how I fulfilled my four hour service requirement for our Junior religion class that quarter. Terrified, but emboldened, I volunteered for a total of four hours cold calling voters for the John Kerry campaign. If it isn’t immediately obvious how big of a middle finger this was, he was pro-choice, and our school paid for kids to go on a bus to Washington every year for the ‘right to life’ march.

My best friend and I wore Kerry/Edwards buttons around school outside of the speech teacher’s class for fear of academic consequences, and responsibly, our parents stopped us from wearing our, ‘Impeach Bush’ t-shirts to school. Jon Stewart allowed two kids that were vastly outnumbered numerically to feel a collective confidence that there was somewhere bigger and better that we could strive to be a part of.

The following year, I started the Democratic and Independent Club along with some like minded peers and a supportive, enthusiastic teacher. There were around fifteen of us in a school of three-hundred, and we met after lunch periodically to discuss politics and the news of the day. None of this would have been possible without the guiding influence of Jon Stewart.

To this day my yearning for truth and the views I seek out to row down the tumultuous river of American life are rooted from the start with Jon Stewart. Luckily others have continued in his lineage, most notably John Oliver with, ‘Last Week Tonight.’ They pay homage to his tradition of truth and comedy as The Kennedy Center honors him with the Mark Twain award for humor this month.

There aren’t a lot of public figures I would genuinely like to say, ‘thank you’ to, but Jon Stewart is one of them. His ability to inspire a generation of what O’Riley frequently called, ‘stoned slackers’ is a testament to not only his greatness but to the possibility of hope and thought as his legacy.

After arriving home from the doctor’s office today I was informed of the decision. I didn’t want to share every meme I liked because this is more important than that. After taking time to think about it again, I couldn’t help but be furious that the same right to medical privacy I had just been afforded would no longer be offered to women by the law. 

It doesn’t matter what I was there for, that’s not important, what is important is that a woman has a right to choose what she does with her own body. This is something that is between her, and her doctor, not anyone else. The right to privacy of medical decisions is tantamount to attorney-client privilege and should never be infringed upon.

To be so disingenuous as to say, ‘use birth control’ or, ‘don’t have sex if you don’t want a child’ is essentially saying: your sovereignty is not legitimate. Birth control is not 100%, and not all forms are available to all people, let me go back to the privacy part: if a woman wants to have an abortion it is none of your fucking business regardless of her reason.

I have tried to keep this free of emotion, and I hope that many states will adopt their own responsible laws on the subject to provide proper medical care for their women, but it’s hard not to. Chick Fil A stock probably rose 1000% today, you can still go there for breakfast, but remember those eggs are unborn, but very much wanted chickens.