Dammit Jim!

We had a big judo tournament in Philadelphia last weekend. I went and had a lot of fun. My coach put up a few videos (conveniently leaving out the ones where I lost) so I thought I’d link to them here.

They’re both pretty short because I got in lucky throws that were big enough to end them early.

My dad called me today all excited that a congressmen left a message that he wanted to give me an award. He played back the message over the phone and it certainly did sound legit with Patty Cleaver working for Congressman Tom Cole of the National Republican Congressional Committee wanting to award a Congressional Order of Merit so call her back at 1 (866) 264-3583.

Of course my bullcrap detectors were tingling pretty hard at this point. First, they can’t even get my name right (having a hyphenated name sure helps with junk filtering). Second, I’m not really happy with any current party but I certainly don’t see me identifying myself as a Republican any time in the near future. Third, I guess I’m a decent guy but as far as I can recall I haven’t ran into any burning buildings or donated my kidneys to feed starving orphans recently. But then again you never know so I did a quick google (don’t know what I would have done before internet). Luckily there’s a couple blog posts reporting similar experiences. Once you call in, they apparently hit you up for a $500 donation to some ad campaign.

So I thought I’d throw this post up to help warn other people since this seems really really dirty to me. Tom Cole is either selling awards or defrauding people in order to finance his campaign. I don’t see how anyone could look at this and not consider it completely immoral. Any politician that does this deserves to be voted out of office/impeached.

Update: Another (excellently titled) report here (Thanks Alex).

Just in case anyone is in need of a last minute Valentine’s gift, I just thought I’d share what I gave the girlfriend last year (it was her birthday actually but it would work for Valentine’s). And no it’s not some cheesy sappy thing so you don’t have to immediately stop reading. Anyway it was signing us up for ballroom dance lessons together. It’s worked out really well. She really likes it and now we have something to do together every week. We learn things like waltz, samba and jive. We still aren’t very good but we’re improving and having a good time. As an additional bonus, it could probably be set up last minute if you just google a nearby dance studio and call them up. If you’re in the Halifax area, Edgett Dance has been pretty nice for us.