My friend Sean died yesterday at the age of 31. Those are the facts that I know, and they’re the only ones that matter. How and why aren’t important. What’s important is remembering him properly.
About a year before I met Sean, he was treated for a very aggressive form of testicular cancer. Sean didn’t like to talk about unless it was in the form of jokes (e.g., he named his remaining testicle “Flanagan.”) However, according to people who were there, his cancer had metastasized into his internal organs. For a time, it looked like he wasn’t going to make it, but then he went into remission. After all this is when I met him.
Sean wasn’t a veteran, but he had a veteran’s sensibility about his own mortality due to having confronted it at an early age. He had a dark sense of humor and seemed to live his life like he was on borrowed time. This is perhaps why we connected. He encapsulated both the joy of simply being alive and the knowledge that it could come to an end at any moment. He had a great deal of compassion for others, while at the same time he didn’t have patience for people who were shitty to each other. He would gladly call you out for treating others poorly, as he did with me on more than one occasion. He was one of the few people who could successfully shame me for behaving badly, and I’m a better person for having known him. He expected better from us because he knew there wasn’t time to spend our lives doing anything but being kind.
That said, there was also a devil-may-care streak to him which I found in turns hilarious and infuriating. On one night when his boss, Amber, had taken him out drinking, he leaned on a street sign to balance himself and King Arthured the sign out of the sidewalk. He decided this meant that the sign now belonged to him, so they stuffed it in the car and hauled it back to our apartment (Sean and I were roommates at the time.) I found out about this when I heard them clomping up the stairs carrying the damned thing into our living room. I was standing there, toothbrush in mouth, getting ready for my commute to the DHS data center, watching this unfold. Suddenly Sean saw me and said, “Oh, shit! Daddy’s home! Run!” The two of them ran down the stairs laughing and wound up at the Club Ms. Mae’s. Sean thought he’d pulled off the perfect heist.
About a month or two later, I watched the Packers win Super Bowl XLV with him and our other roommate, Irene. They were both rooting for the Packers specifically because I was a Packers fan. Irene came up with the idea to do a shot every time Ben Roethlesberger was a rapist. All three of us blacked out that night.
Sean was more than the sum of whatever anecdotes I can string together. He was a vibrant presence, a compassionate friend, and one of the most genuine people I’ve ever met. He deserved better than he got, but he always gave people better than they deserved. People who knew him are heartbroken at his passing, as am I. Yet I’m also grateful that the cancer didn’t take him the first time around, as I never would have met someone who ended up becoming one of my best friends for a time, and New Orleans was blessed with another decade of having him around.
Sean touched a lot of people’s lives during his short life, and while it saddens me to see my New Orleans friends’ Facebook feeds switch from pictures of Mardi Gras to pictures of Sean, it goes to show how loved he was. I hope he knew.
Saturday, June 27, 2020
Saturday, February 22, 2020
The Hater's Guide to the Democratic Primary
Okie dokie, so since the voting has finally started and the field of candidates has been culled, I'm going to provide my Hater's Guide to the Democratic Primary. Don't read unless you're ready to see your favorite candidate get shit on. You've been warned.
Bernie Sanders: A 78 year-old self-proclaimed socialist who just had a heart attack last year and has a one in three chance of dying in office if elected, Sen. Sanders is the current front-runner and prohibitive favorite to earn a plurality of delegates and force a brokered convention. Sanders has a history of praising communist regimes and took his honeymoon in the Soviet Union, after which he hung a Soviet flag in his office while mayor of Burlington. Normally someone like this would be laughed off the stage, but wait until you get a load of the other candidates.
Joe Biden: A 77 year-old former vice president who is very clearly a shell of his former self, a former self who already lost two bids for the Democratic nomination for the presidency, Biden was the front runner until he started talking and people thought, "Holy crap, this guy's gotten old." And he's not even the oldest candidate running. Seemingly only running because he has nothing better to do.
Michael Bloomberg: A 78 year-old billionaire and former New York mayor (JFC, what is it with septuagenarians running for president lately?), Bloomberg is the C. Montgomery Burns of the Democratic primary. After spending a million dollars a day on ads to try to buy the Democratic nomination, Bloomberg finally set foot on a debate stage and reminded everyone that he's a charmless little troll. Nobody actually likes Bloomberg, and he doesn't even pretend to care. Most likely to enact a purge of "undesirables" and call it a "climate change initiative."
Elizabeth Warren: A 70 year-old Massachusetts senator and former Harvard law professor, Warren has the great fortune of having the previously listed guys to make her seem young by comparison. Warren has a reputation for her keen intellect, and it's well-grounded, given that the only person who repeatedly outsmarts her is herself. Repeatedly. Much like Paul Ryan on the Republican side of the aisle, it isn't enough to simply be well versed in the areas she's well-versed in. She has to present herself as a subject matter expert in literally everything. Thus, while vague plans are good enough for most candidates, she presents a painstakingly detailed health care plan, knowing full well that whatever final product comes out of Congress is not going to bear any resemblance to what she's presenting. She could have been a great candidate, but when you're a bullshitter, people eventually catch on to that and stop listening to what you have to say.
Pete Buttigieg: AAAAAHH!!! *thump* Oh, sorry. I should have brought a rope for that age drop. A 38 year-old former mayor of a small city, why the hell is this guy even in contention? On the Netflix animated show "Bojack Horseman", there was a "character" called Vincent Adultman who was very clearly three kids stacked under a trench coat, and for some reason nobody but Bojack noticed, even as Bojack repeatedly pointed this out. In this scenario, Buttigieg is Vincent Adultman, and Amy Klobuchar is Bojack. Buttigieg has no realistic path to the nomination and would probably get curb-stomped by Trump even if he did win. Seemingly, the only role he's played is blocking the path to the nomination of a more qualified woman (really, either Warren or Klobuchar), which is just... so... typical. Which brings us to...
Amy Klobuchar: A 59 year-old third term senator from Minnesota, Klobuchar is well-regarded by her senate peers, has won three state-wide elections in a key battleground state, and unlike the first four candidates, is below the legal retirement age. She checks every box for being an ideal presidential candidate, so of course she's losing to two candidates at death's door and one candidate is very clearly three kids stacked under a trenchcoat. People talk about Warren being dismissed due to sexism, but for my money, it's Klobuchar who's been treated unfairly, and I literally cannot come up with any reason why aside from the fact that she's a woman. She's pointed out that if Buttigieg was a woman with the same qualifications, nobody would take him seriously. She's right, and we don't even have to look that far to find an example. Which brings us to...
Tulsi Gabbard: Like Buttigieg, she's a veteran with an otherwise thin resume. But there's a key difference: she's a woman of color, so of course the media (at the prompting of Hillary Clinton, for some reason) treats her as a Russian asset. She's just as unqualified and unprepared as Buttigieg, but unlike Buttigieg, she's receiving an appropriate level of support. Finally....
Tom Steyer: What can I say about Tom Steyer? No really, I know literally nothing about the guy except that he's rich. Yet another billionaire trying to buy the nomination like Bloomberg, he's been markedly less successful in buying support, and I half suspect that there's some kind of ongoing bet between him, Bloomberg, and Trump.
Bernie Sanders: A 78 year-old self-proclaimed socialist who just had a heart attack last year and has a one in three chance of dying in office if elected, Sen. Sanders is the current front-runner and prohibitive favorite to earn a plurality of delegates and force a brokered convention. Sanders has a history of praising communist regimes and took his honeymoon in the Soviet Union, after which he hung a Soviet flag in his office while mayor of Burlington. Normally someone like this would be laughed off the stage, but wait until you get a load of the other candidates.
Joe Biden: A 77 year-old former vice president who is very clearly a shell of his former self, a former self who already lost two bids for the Democratic nomination for the presidency, Biden was the front runner until he started talking and people thought, "Holy crap, this guy's gotten old." And he's not even the oldest candidate running. Seemingly only running because he has nothing better to do.
Michael Bloomberg: A 78 year-old billionaire and former New York mayor (JFC, what is it with septuagenarians running for president lately?), Bloomberg is the C. Montgomery Burns of the Democratic primary. After spending a million dollars a day on ads to try to buy the Democratic nomination, Bloomberg finally set foot on a debate stage and reminded everyone that he's a charmless little troll. Nobody actually likes Bloomberg, and he doesn't even pretend to care. Most likely to enact a purge of "undesirables" and call it a "climate change initiative."
Elizabeth Warren: A 70 year-old Massachusetts senator and former Harvard law professor, Warren has the great fortune of having the previously listed guys to make her seem young by comparison. Warren has a reputation for her keen intellect, and it's well-grounded, given that the only person who repeatedly outsmarts her is herself. Repeatedly. Much like Paul Ryan on the Republican side of the aisle, it isn't enough to simply be well versed in the areas she's well-versed in. She has to present herself as a subject matter expert in literally everything. Thus, while vague plans are good enough for most candidates, she presents a painstakingly detailed health care plan, knowing full well that whatever final product comes out of Congress is not going to bear any resemblance to what she's presenting. She could have been a great candidate, but when you're a bullshitter, people eventually catch on to that and stop listening to what you have to say.
Pete Buttigieg: AAAAAHH!!! *thump* Oh, sorry. I should have brought a rope for that age drop. A 38 year-old former mayor of a small city, why the hell is this guy even in contention? On the Netflix animated show "Bojack Horseman", there was a "character" called Vincent Adultman who was very clearly three kids stacked under a trench coat, and for some reason nobody but Bojack noticed, even as Bojack repeatedly pointed this out. In this scenario, Buttigieg is Vincent Adultman, and Amy Klobuchar is Bojack. Buttigieg has no realistic path to the nomination and would probably get curb-stomped by Trump even if he did win. Seemingly, the only role he's played is blocking the path to the nomination of a more qualified woman (really, either Warren or Klobuchar), which is just... so... typical. Which brings us to...
Amy Klobuchar: A 59 year-old third term senator from Minnesota, Klobuchar is well-regarded by her senate peers, has won three state-wide elections in a key battleground state, and unlike the first four candidates, is below the legal retirement age. She checks every box for being an ideal presidential candidate, so of course she's losing to two candidates at death's door and one candidate is very clearly three kids stacked under a trenchcoat. People talk about Warren being dismissed due to sexism, but for my money, it's Klobuchar who's been treated unfairly, and I literally cannot come up with any reason why aside from the fact that she's a woman. She's pointed out that if Buttigieg was a woman with the same qualifications, nobody would take him seriously. She's right, and we don't even have to look that far to find an example. Which brings us to...
Tulsi Gabbard: Like Buttigieg, she's a veteran with an otherwise thin resume. But there's a key difference: she's a woman of color, so of course the media (at the prompting of Hillary Clinton, for some reason) treats her as a Russian asset. She's just as unqualified and unprepared as Buttigieg, but unlike Buttigieg, she's receiving an appropriate level of support. Finally....
Tom Steyer: What can I say about Tom Steyer? No really, I know literally nothing about the guy except that he's rich. Yet another billionaire trying to buy the nomination like Bloomberg, he's been markedly less successful in buying support, and I half suspect that there's some kind of ongoing bet between him, Bloomberg, and Trump.
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