I just turned 35 and I was thinking about all of the negatives of getting older, and lower car insurance rates were not a benefit I would trade for youth. Upon reflection of isolation and getting Covid this week I realized that I had forgotten one of the rights I had gained. Look out America, I can run for President of the United States now!

So with that newfound opportunity, and some isolation free time, I decided to pen my platform for running in 2024. I’m a newcomer to the political scene so I have no special interests vying for my candidacy, although if you have read anything on this page you would know I will be running as a Democrat.

Son of two wonderful teachers from northwest Ohio, I am already a higher probability candidate than Biden is for re-election, so humor me at least. My platform will be based on liberal principals that I think the entire country could benefit from, not just the blue states. While I support the current president, I think it is unlikely he will be re-elected.

First, I will promote legislation for a national abortion rights bill, so that all women in the United States can be capable of planning their lives like men are. Part of this legislation will include funding for proper sexual education in schools to prevent unwanted pregnancies, preventing abortions from happening at all is a priority. It will also provide assistance to young women making a difficult, life changing health decision who cannot provide it for themselves.

Second, we will endeavor to prevent union busting practices from taking place, so that workers in this country can re-establish their sovereignty. The erosion of labor representation has caused the quality of life in this country to devolve since the years of Reagan and subsequent leaders to the point that people need to reimagine their workplace.

Third, In accordance with the Paris climate accord that we currently abide by, but can be stripped with a change in political power in Washington we will promote the conversion to green energy. The infrastructure of this country needs to be updated to support electric vehicles. Although this may not please all liberals, nuclear energy in safe areas will need to be a part of the transition to the next phase of our energy economy. When regulated, this is a far safer source of the energy that we need than fracking, and is essential to our independence from other sources.

That’s my starting point, I don’t feel that any of these proposals are unreasonable, and I think they would benefit most Americans. This is a simple proposal of ideas for my candidacy that will never happen, as I have no support as of yet. So far I have taken no contributions from anyone, but if you wanna buy me a beer, I’m your candidate.

As liberals, If we weren’t busy paving the path to hell with good intentions, then we would have idle hands, which I’m told do work for the devil. I’ve been so worn down by this circular stupidity being cast in my direction that if the devil was hiring for a project, I might take him up on his offer out of sheer trying to do something to improve things here.

Meanwhile conservatives, from their curated perch of moral superiority, pave the path to heaven with privately funded toll roads. One can’t get in if he doesn’t pay, and like all those ‘what would Jesus do?’ bumper magnets, it’s just as empty and pointless if it’s filled by the likes of you. Take your weary scratch off tickets and slither back to the deserted wastelands you crawled from.

Of course we’re not just talking about roads here, we’re talking about rights. In my lifetime one party has been about expanding them, the other has been about taking them away from everyone but straight white men, pausing only to defend an outdated musket rights amendment.

Another mass shooting happened in Buffalo last weekend, and I have no confidence any meaningful change will come about as a result. Ten more people will take that stroll up the road to St. Peter, how can he possibly judge them when the crime that caused their death in 2022 was skin color? 

As an imperfect person, what place do I have to judge anyone you might be asking? These are simply observations and criticisms of the world around me that I can talk about with a clean concience because I subscribe to the gospel of: Do no harm. The choices I make and the actions I take in my life are firmly rooted in this concept, and I think there are a lot of people who would do well to follow.

After all, this belief is rooted in the Hippocratic oath that all physicians in the modern world have agreed to abide by. I live my life to do no harm to others with my actions, and limit the consequences of the ones I can live with, like hangovers. I don’t want harm-inducing republican votes to happen, or result in any of the abhorent things they believe in, but I would never attempt to re-engineer the structure of voting to take away the rights of them to make the wrong decisions.

Maybe, they will eventually choose to leave our minds and bodies out of their agenda this time and do no harm to the rest of us, but I doubt it. If the Pennsylvania primary is any indication, we are in for high surf on the sea of stupidity again this year, with no end in sight. The next time you ask the question, ‘What would Jesus do?’ and the answer isn’t, ‘Buy a Prius’ you can drive straight to hell.

I grew up in the middle of nowhere to liberal parents and I will admit that I listened to a lot of conservative radio as a way of re-enforcing my beliefs. At my first job after college I would switch between Rush Limbaugh and American Family Radio to see who was giving the hot take of the day, this was way back in 2010 before they called it, ‘owning the libs.’

They were fronting all kinds of nonsense about Obama at the time, and despite passing the Affordable Care Act, the 2010 election cycle was a bloodbath for Democrats. The vitriol I heard on the christian radio station just 12 years ago has now become the reality, the systemic transition of the rule of the majority to the rule of the minority.

Thanks to three Supreme Court seats being filled by Donald Trump, the christian right has finally achieved its goal to overturn Roe V. Wade. So where do we start with capacity? This is a word defined as the maximum amount something can contain, as in, what is the maximum capacity a female human being in America has to make decisions about her own health care and her body.

I want to pause for a minute and place part of the blame on Democrats for not passing a national law on the topic, considering they have a nearly universal stance on choice, but let me stop there. The idea that a Woman does not have the capacity to make a choice on something as important as bringing or not bringing another life into this world is unconscionable.

Two-Thirds of the country believe abortion should be safe and legal, and this is not a state issue, this is a right like my ability to write this sentence is. Since the time I was listening to the very driven poison on conservative radio they have neglected to speak out against things that cause death in America like mass shootings. Attempts to make meaningful legislative change on the issue have often come down to capacity, as in the capacity of the magazine, as if that would have stopped Sandy Hook from happening.

If the United States government is more concerned about 36 rounds than 36 weeks, we have a major problem. Women don’t have a second amendment to cling to and rely on, so they need the rest of us. Unfortunately, we have a system of electing presidents that gives enough power to a minority of ignorant evangelicals instead of the will of the people.

I count myself lucky enough to have never been in a situation where abortion was on the table, but I don’t take that lightly, and I understand the weight of a decision that important. Several states have adopted ‘heartbeat’ legislation that prevents abortion after 6 weeks or a fetal heart beat can be detected. Mitch McConnell has three children, and there has yet to be a heartbeat detected among them.

Abortion is not an easy topic, but it is a topic that we have to talk about. This is especially true now considering we may now have a generation of unwanted pregnancies that will need care. A six week fetus cannot sustain life on its own anymore than a stack of dirty laundry, and I say this as a joke, but who knows it could be a Republican slogan in 4 years: Masturbation is Murder!

So when we are talking about capacity, the maximum allowable amount, why would we not think that women would have the capacity to make a decision about their own lives? Considering this is something white men have enjoyed since 1789 in the U.S. Constitution, what exactly does this say about the constitution?

Without a 500 person panel like Rolling Stone had to find the 100 best songs of all time, I reverted to my own canny sense of the best of what I’ve heard in my own library. Don’t consider this an all inclusive list, but trust in the fact that I don’t need twitter validation to feel this is a legitimate list.

• 1. Toto – Africa
• 2. The Rolling Stones – Gimme Shelter
• 3. U2 – Beautiful Day
• 4. The Jimi Hendrix Experience – Voodoo Child (Slight Return)
• 5. The Who – Won’t Get Fooled Again
• 6. Oasis – Live Forever
• 7. Dire Straits – Sultans of Swing
• 8. The Verve – Bittersweet Symphony
• 9. Boston – More Than a Feeling
• 10. Blue Oyster Cult – Don’t Fear the Reaper

I know your favorite song was left off the top 10, remain calm, here’s another 10.

• 11. Derek and the Dominoes – Layla
• 12. Neil Young – Heart of Gold
• 13. Foo Fighters – Everlong
• 14. Guns N’ Roses – Sweet Child O’ Mine
• 15. Eminem – Lose Yourself
• 16. Head East – Never Been Any Reason
• 17. The Eagles – Hotel California
• 18. Pink Floyd – Comfortably Numb
• 19. Train – Drops of Jupiter
• 20. The Velvet Underground – Sweet Jane

Still didn’t see it? C’mon, it will be in the next 10.

• 21. Incubus – Drive
• 22. The Guess Who – No Sugar Tonight/New Mother Nature
• 23. Third Eye Blind – How’s it Gonna Be
• 24. Bob Dylan – Shelter From the Storm
• 25. The Wallflowers – One Headlight
• 26. Led Zeppelin – Stairway to Heaven
• 27. Weezer – Say it Ain’t So
• 28. John Mayer Trio – Who Did You Think I Was?
• 29. R.E.M. – Losing My Religion
• 30. Red Hot Chili Peppers – Californication

Maybe we don’t have the same playlist:

• 31. Rod Stewart – Forever Young
• 32. The Stone Roses – Waterfall
• 33. The Rolling Stones – Can’t You Hear Me Knockin’
• 34. U2 – Where the Streets Have No Name
• 35. The White Stripes – Seven Nation Army
• 36. The Strokes – Reptillia
• 37. The Clash – Train in Vain
• 38. Coldplay – Yellow
• 39. The Cars – Just What I Needed
• 40. Cream – White Room

Top 40 under 40 say you will like the next 10.

• 41. Dr. Dre – The Next Episode
• 42. Electric Light Orchestra – Evil Woman
• 43. Elliot Smith – Son of Sam
• 44. Foo Fighters – Times Like These
• 45. Oasis – Supersonic
• 46. Beck – Where it’s at
• 47. Green Day – When I Come Around
• 48. Ice Cube – It Was a Good Day
• 49. The Black Keys – Gold On the Ceiling
• 50. Goo Goo Dolls – Iris

Halftime, and Michigan is down.

• 51. Weezer – Buddy Holly
• 52. The Hives – Hate to Say I Told You So
• 53. The Vines – Ride
• 54. Van Halen – Panama
• 55. Toto – Hold the Line
• 56. Steve Miller Band – Take the Money and Run
• 57. Incubus – Wish You Were Here
• 58. Notorious B.I.G. – Juicy
• 59. Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds – If I Had a Gun
• 60. The Marshall Tucker Band – Can’t You See

Here comes the decade of love.

• 61. Nirvana – Come As You Are
• 62. Oasis – Wonderwall
• 63. Neil Young – Ohio
• 64. Foo Fighters – Learn To Fly
• 65. Jet – Cold Hard Bitch
• 66. Beck – E-Pro
• 67. Audioslave – Cochise
• 68. The Beatles – Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds
• 69. Jimmy Eat World – Bleed American
• 70. John Mayer – Waiting On the World to Change

The final 30.

• 71. The Jimi Hendrix Experience – Purple Haze
• 72. Oasis – Champagne Supernova
• 73. Third Eye Blind – Never Let You Go
• 74. The Who – Baba O’Riley
• 75. MGMT – Time To Pretend
• 76. Muse – Hysteria
• 77. Rage Against the Machine – Sleep Now in the Fire
• 78. The Bravery – Believe
• 79. Phoenix – Armistice
• 80. The Red Hot Chili Peppers – Dani California

The hair band years.

• 81. The Rolling Stones – Jumpin’ Jack Flash
• 82. David Bowie – Heroes
• 83. The Darkness – I Believe in a Thing Called Love
• 84. Dr Dre – Still D.R.E.
• 85. Snoop Dogg – Gin’n’Juice
• 86. The Eagles – Take it Easy
• 87. Iggy Pop – The Passenger
• 88. Jimmy Eat World – The Authority Song
• 89. John Mayer – Slow Dancing in a Burning Room
• 90. Neil Young – Rockin’ in the Free World

Shit, this is a playlist on its’ own.

• 91. Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds – The Dying of the Light
• 92. Jimmy Eat World – Big Casino
• 93. Pavement – Cut Your Hair
• 94. R.E.M. – What’s the Frequency Kenneth?
• 95. Queens of the Stone Age – No One Knows
• 96. Radiohead – Street Spirit (Fade Out)
• 97. The Rolling Stones – Rough Justice
• 98. Rush – Fly By Night
• 99. The Smiths – How Soon is Now?
• 100. The Stone Roses – Love Spreads

From the first moment someone liked what I wrote, agreed with it, or told me maybe it wasn’t for me I knew it. I knew I was trapped in the insane cycle of the creative. Pour your heart into something, work on it more, send it out to people and wait for the inevitable disappointment. I’ve never been a science or math oriented person, so I have no idea what that feels like. I can tell you what it feels like to be an art school graduate who needs to survive, but can’t give up art on the side.

I’m the guy that has a minor aneurism when I see a typo in text. It’s not just vocabulary, that’s like giving a professional set of golf clubs to a beginner. Some words are wasted on the people who use them. I never wanted to be that person, I never knew if I would succeed or fail or run along mindlessly not using my ability.

The world doesn’t give you many opportunities to show yourself unless you do it yourself. I can tell you that nothing made me happier than playing in a band, and that some of the best moments weren’t playing live, but that long post-bar practice session in the middle of the night. That session somehow didn’t get the cops to our place.

The almost universal truth about people who create is pain. I think it is through pain that we recognize how great the high points are. I have had some of those like graduating college or scoring a game winning goal, but nothing compares to the love of creating something and seeing people like it. I always need the audience however small it is.

Playing guitar again has been amazing, and I’m so glad I’ve been able to pick it up again. Writing songs is a challenge, but playing for an audience of nobody is still a satisfying feeling. Composing new things has been a great comfort to becoming the new person that I want to become. Maybe, like the song says, I just wanna fly.

I would be hedging my bets if I told you I believe, so I won’t. What do I believe in? I believe in playing golf with my best friend, who wasn’t fortunate or unfortunate enough to learn the game growing up. Equal parts of me want to appreciate and apologize for my dad teaching me golf as a kid. Similar to him introducing me to the Cleveland Browns.

I understand completely that you have to be of a certain means to play golf, and I hope that changes. I hope to change that perception and possibility in my circle of people. Fuck the Browns. There are almost 8 months of golf weather where you could be enjoying like minded peoples’ company in a far more productive manner.

Happy Birthday Jesus of course, we need to celebrate getting 2nd graders drunk as part of a ritual that makes absolutely no sense, but has continued for far too long. As long as we are celebrating really old things that make no sense, why don’t we give golf a try.

I promise you from the bottom of my worn heart, you will like golf more than Jesus.

As a self proclaimed expert on the subject since 2004 I can tell you that if you listen to these songs in this order, you will be a fan by about song 15.

1. Live Forever
2. Wonderwall
3. Slide Away
4. The Masterplan
5. Champagne Supernova
6. Supersonic
7. Don’t Look Back in Anger
8. If I Had a Gun
9. Cigarettes and Alcohol
10. Lyla
11. The Dying of the Light
12. Talk Tonight
13. Stand By Me
14. Whatever
15. Morning Glory
16. Sad Song
17. Columbia
18. The Importance of Being Idle
19. Half the World Away
20. All Around the World
21. (As Long as They’ve Got) Cigarettes in Hell
22. Rock’n’Roll Star
23. Let There Be Love
24. Some Might Say
25. Cast No Shadow
26. Ballad of the Mighty I
27. Acquiesce
28. Don’t Go Away
29. Let’s All Make Believe
30. Lord Don’t Slow Me Down
31. Riverman
32. Bag it Up
33. Fade Away
34. Falling Down
35. The Shock of the Lightning
36. Stop Crying Your Heart Out
37. Up in the Sky
38. D’Yer Wanna Be a Spaceman
39. Angel Child
40. In the Heat of the Moment
41. Flying on the Ground
42. Cloudburst
43. Stay Young
44. Where Did it All Go Wrong?
45. Everybody’s On the Run
46. Carry Us All
47. We’re On Our Way Now
48. AKA…Broken Arrow
49. The Girl With X-Ray Eyes
50. Sunday Morning Call

There you have it, if you enjoy great music then debate me on the order.

First of all a Corona without a lime and salt is a waste, that would be like you sending chicken wings without sauce.

Fuck Corona virus and all that it is. I’ve been surviving with a mask and staying inside.

I’ve also been NOT going to California with my best friend on the trip of a lifetime that has been postponed until further notice.

While I am livid every single day that I had my vacation taken from me, I am glad I’m where I’m at in central Ohio.

The only positive of this pandemic has been the response of Governor Mike DeWine and Dr. Amy Acton. Without their swift response, we could be in a third world state as far as this virus goes.

Apart from that, the national response has been atrocious. I am too exhausted of Donald Trump’s lies to point out all of their ineptitudes. They knew in January this was a problem and they ignored it, what else can I say?

If I do not survive coronavirus, I want three things to be known:

1. Live Forever is the greatest song of all time
2. The Big Lebowski is the greatest movie ever
3. Zach Crist is my best fucking friend

3.31.13

Seven years later doesn’t make it any better. Every time I think about it, which I’ve conditioned myself not to, it makes me wonder what could have been. Maybe the band we were in had run it’s course, maybe we were never gonna be rock stars, but we were all going to be together in Columbus, what a fleeting feeling now.

What is there to say after seven years? Who knows. I like to think I’ve done something with myself that he would at least find acceptable, low as it might be. The thing I know is he never would have turned on me, never seen me as lower than him, we sweat the same battles on the soccer field, in college, in the band, in life.

I wonder what he would have thought of this coronavirus too, like anyone, we have no reference point. He would probably find a clever one though, or one that would justify more than 10 of us meeting to drink together, scientifically of course. He wouldn’t have been scared to do what he did, and defend the public like he could.

We all have a million stories about how Andrew Tarek Katbi affected our lives, so I’ll tell you mine. We were in a huddle as a soccer team before a game, and our brilliant coach John Munoz finished his speech saying this, “Here’s the captains band, and this is how we do it, I don’t pick it you do.” He then threw the armband down in the middle of us.

It was a tenuous second, maybe a second and a half before Andrew bent down, picked it up, and handed it to me. I like to think everyone had that opinion, but I could be wrong Nobody wanted to win more than him, so if this helped us, fuck-em-all lets go. That’s how I became captain of The Delphos Legend, and that’s how Katbi will live forever.

To all of my non-existent readers out there I’m sure you’re balls-deep thrilled about the fact that I’m going to California. The part that I have neglected to tell you about is who I will be traveling with. Luckily for you, WordPress has given me an unlimited amount of words to describe this asshole, so here goes.

I met Zach at Discover Financial Services in 2014 and in our training class I wasn’t too sure what to think of him. There was then a day when we both started trying to kick a ball of paper into the same trash can at which point soccer came up, and as they say, the rest is a silly, tragic, fun, drunken, unfortunate and fortunate bit of history.

‘You’re for Manchester United?’ ‘I’m for Manchester United.’ What about 200 miles of us growing up in vastly different places couldn’t separate was the beautiful game. The only unfortunate part was that he was a Seattle Sounders fan, and I’m still working on that.

We were inseparable at work from that point on, they asked us to to Q and As with training classes because of our charisma together. We had no offense to addressing the trainees, and we were the best of our class.

Fast forward to my new job that I excelled at for the first few months, and about the same time I’m failing at this new job, Zach calls.

The mother of his child had moved all of her things out of the house he rented while he was at work.

I brought a case of beer and all of my condolences. But that was just a start.

This part is none of my business, so I leave it out.

I was hospitalized for bipolar and Medicated.

Medicated Justin was not who I wanted to be. I took myself off Risperdol in 2016

One of the great things I decided to do while in the hospital that I boned up on was getting season tickets.

We did.

For 2016 Zach and I went to every Crew home game we could make. It was glorious.

Since then we have seen each other as often as possible and will be going to California in a month!

You and I are gonna live forever!