Sure, Why Not?

And… here we are! 2011 has run its course. Let’s review!

January: Unapologetically Fierce

-Nothing like a 7-year-old’s birthday party at a sports bar!
-Missed New Year’s Eve skiing but I’ll get up there some evening.
-Liberty’s restaurant says anyone under 16 must be accompanied by an adult.
-FFFFUUUUUUUUUUU-
-Uh oh! Big snowfall at afternoon rush hour on untreated roads!
-Three hours to go ten miles.
-Come on, car! Don’t get stuck. Doing great…
-Okay, now it’s stuck… just outside my house. Okay, COULD be a lot worse!
-Dinner invite! How nice!

February: A Reclaimed Minuet

-Superbowl Sunday! To Brookside. To climbing gym. To get fried chicken. To bake cookies. And, well, watch the game!
-Hey, lots of free sheet music for classical music online. Public domain!
-Uh oh! Lots of changes and of course fighting over NYRA’s website redesign.
-Yay! #16tovote on the 16th is a year old!
-Helping out in NYRA office on weirdly warm day. And burrito with Dave from weird burrito truck guy.
-WES Auction! I won a big urn!
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And now, an executive directorial edition of…

Here’s to You!!!!

So I raise my glass and say, “Here’s to you, Alex Koroknay-Palicz!”

This may seem awfully strange considering I absolutely blasted him in some recent entries. So, okay, maaaaybe this is also out of guilt.

Alex absolutely drives me insane. I don’t think that will change. I’m sure I return the favor. Sometimes intentionally.

But, no, seriously, he’s alright. I suppose I forget that sometimes. It’s easy to criticize. Fun, too! I don’t agree with a lot of what he says and does. I even stick by most of the criticisms I’ve had about him recently. I’m not going to lie. However, what’s all too common and easy to fall into when going overboard with negative criticism is to forget the positive. Sometimes we think the positives are a given, that it should be assumed that what isn’t negatively criticized should be assumed to be positive.

Saying so is necessary, though. And warranted.
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Weekday:

12:00am, the 16th: Introductory “yay it’s #16tovote on the 16th!” tweet along with link to Top 10 Reasons to Lower the Voting Age

12:02am: tweets some basic voting age point to get things started

12:10am: trying to think of another voting age tweet, comes up with crap

12:15am: finally just tweets link to recent voting age news article, if one’s available

12:30am: facepalms at Max’s “#16tovote or I’ll chop off your dick and shove it down your throat” tweet

1:00am: manages to tweet some good stuff, perhaps a couple tweets and/or retweets from regulars

1:30am: can’t come up with anything else for night but stays up late with it for some reason

2:00am: finally tweets link to NYRA voting age page or something from the downloads section, to get people through night

2:30am: goes to bed, ready to get up and get to work nice and early to resume
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I’ll never understand how there are corporal punishment supporters in NYRA. It’s something that shocked the hell out of me loooong ago when I was new on the forums and found there was anyone in the organization justifying the practice! I mean, in a youth rights context, it should be a no-brainer. One of the most basic aspects of supporting someone’s rights is supporting their right to not be assaulted for supposed “misbehavior”.

Got a reminder of it yesterday when an anti-corporal punishment article was posted to NYRA’s Facebook page. Seriously, click through that and check out all the comments.

Some people are all “WTF? I thought NYRA was only against corporal punishment in schools?!”

*facepalm*

Do they really think our opposition to corporal punishment is about WHO is hitting the kids rather than, you know, the idea of them being hit at all? Or, in general, did they not catch that we’re a “youth rights” organization?

Hell, in 2009, when our opposition to school paddling was added to our Education position paper, someone at the annual meeting out and asked me “this is just for schools, right? so if I had kids, I could still smack them?” I gave him a dirty look that made him recoil a bit and answered plainly “just for schools” and my look that seemed to add “but go fuck yourself”. I mentioned this to Alex later, since that guy was a friend of his, but Alex insisted the guy was joking. Eh, maybe.
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Today I’ve officially completed the sending of the 6th Annual NYRA Holiday Cards! Yay! Last year I sent 570 cards but this year it was back down to 480. No really reason except by the time I went to order more the price had been raised. Oh, well.

It’s teal with snowflakes and some pink gifts on either side of the Annual Meeting picture.

Like 2009, Alex was nowhere to be found with helping with recipients. Though maybe that’s not totally true, as what helped me the most this year was not only some he provided last year but the last two years’ Annual Reports, which he put together.

Anyway, having been doing this for six years now, there are some things that have changed and some that stay the same. So enjoy some fun facts!

-There were 90 cards in the first holiday card run in 2006. They were all sent on the same day.

-Daily batches of holiday cards are always a multiple of 30 because that’s how many labels there are on the Avery label sheets I use.

-Cards are sealed using a moist napkin and clear tape. So, don’t worry, my tongue goes nowhere near them!
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Now for a youth rights, occupied edition of…

Here’s to You!!!

So I raise my glass and say, “Here’s to you, Usiel Phoenix!”

She’s the President of NYRA. Jeffrey Nadel’s the Vice President now. I like having the two of them running NYRA as I strongly believe they are our two greatest youth rights activists, though their powers and specialties are in different areas. Jeff’s a pro with the media and public relations and prestige and legal action and that sort of thing. Usi was an emancipated minor who’s had to not only overcome the conditions that led to her seeking it to begin with but the legal hurdles to at long last obtain it. And now that she’s gotten her freedom, she’s dedicated to doing the same for the other youth. She’s experienced more youth rights violations than most and is about attacking the root of the problem and expanding understanding of it.

And that is just what she’s been doing at Occupy Wall Street! Voting age. Behavior mod. You name it. She even stopped a mother from forcing her 15-year-old daughter home from the protests.

And then she was there when NYPD raided Zuccotti Park.

And the cops attacked her. They tried to suffocate her, but succeeded only in cracking a rib. Later they dislocated her elbow when forcing her to the ground.

NYPD DID THIS

And she battles on.

She’s alright now. But, damn, she is one of the bravest people I’ve ever had the privilege to know.

Technically, since one of the main things she’s been doing there is promoting youth rights, she experienced police brutality in the line of duty, so to speak.

Yet due to some weird technicalities her actions were completely left out of NYRA Freedom.

(Good Lord, our own organization is censoring Occupy stuff from its news! LOL)

And this is only the most recent of her wonderful youth rights endeavors. Last year, when we were rallying at the Supreme Court during the oral arguments for Schwarzenegger v EMA (later changed to Brown v EMA, which you may recall we won 7-2), she gave that amazing speech about free speech and voting rights! Not to mention her work leading up to it to find people to share their thoughts on the value of video games for our Amicus Brief. She’s also helped UTEC Lowell with their campaign to lower the Lowell, MA voting age to 17. She testified in DC against the curfew. She gave a presentation at the 2010 Annual Meeting about her emancipation process. And on top of all that, she’s the only board member besides myself who’s a regular at chats, who is interested in what our members have to say. Plus lots of other stuff I’m surely forgetting.

She’s a fierce fighter for the cause. We’re very honored to have her.

“Sweet days of summer, the jasmine’s in bloom. July is dressed up and playing her tune.” -Seals and Crofts, Summer Breeze

Now for the eleventh time and ten years exactly after the end of the first, here we are on this lovely…

DAY
100

The final day of this eleventh round of the 100 Days of Summer! A tradition dating back to 2001, finishing a round of each day occurring exactly ten years after the corresponding days of the original run. Began May 24 and ends today. Another summer has come by, and goodness, who’d have thought a round of the 100 Days of Summer that begins with me dancing on a giant piano could be so crazy?

Oh, yeah, I danced on a giant piano! Let’s get into the recap.

Day 1, horribly sleep deprived and feverish with an ill-timed late spring cold, I picked up Kathleen O’Neal in Georgetown and headed to Greenbelt, only to get pulled over by a DC cop for going the wrong way down a one-way street. Gah! Despite delay, got to Greenbelt and caught Bolt Bus and by noon we were in New York City! At long last, I got to Ferrara in Little Italy, where I’d wanted to go the last several times I went to the city but wasn’t able to. Then to a piercing place Kathleen wanted to see, then to the Met, then met Gella! Then to FAO Schwarz where I found the Big Piano and played Ode to Joy with my legs. Hehe. And by 7pm we just barely made the bus back to DC.

Day 2, still feverish. Sitting in a hot car fixes that right up!

Day 3, skipped work and went to NYRA office for annual meeting planning.

Day 5, laaaaate night of hanging out with Kathleen!

Day 6, still hanging out with Kathleen since previous day, saw 3am brawl in Adams Morgan, helped buy groceries at like 6am before finally getting home and sleeping! Also, poorly attended board meeting where some troublesome staffing changes were mentioned. And the summer NYRA drama begins!
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And by final boss, I mean the Supreme Court has rendered its verdict in Brown v EMA, formerly known as Schwarzenegger v EMA. This was the case where California has been defending its ban of selling M-rated video games to people under 18. It went all the way to the Supreme Court. On November 2, 2010, day of the oral arguments, we NYRAnians rallied in front of the Court in defense of youth rights and free speech. And Usiel gave this amazing speech, of which I totally shot the video! And after that it was just a matter of waiting and seeing…

And today came the verdict at last…

7-2, in favor of EMA. Two dissenters were Stephen Breyer and (surprising absolutely no one) Clarence Thomas.

WE WON!!!!

Check out the official document here!

I’ve been retweeting a lot of remarks and articles today in response to this ruling, so here’s a nice roundup.
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And here we are. New Year’s Eve 2010, looking ahead to the still uncertain 2011. Though more on 2011 a year from now once it has actually occurred. Right now, let’s have a look back at 2010. It’s a year that from the get-go seemed rather, well, odd. Now through it, well, it was odd, certainly annoying much of the time, and certainly without a lot of the awesome encounters previous years had. Though with two heart-breaking losses. In any case, now for the recap!

January: Check Engine

-I think I’ll make guacamole
-Wow, this guacamole is fucking gross. Ack! Is this earwax?!
-Oh, I got the wrong kind of avocados. Okay.
-Hey, think I’ll check out that “Purity Myth” book… good shit.
-I need to get NYRA’s blog restarted.
-Ugh, NYRA online community is pissing me off, seriously.
-I’ll try this guacamole again, with the right avocados this time…
-Yummy!
-WTF?! Why is my check engine light on?
-Oh, I left the gas cap loose. Lulz
-I think I’ve got an idea for a hashtag Twitter campaign for NYRA.
-Still awkward and uncomfortable, Alex? Well, fuck you too then!
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For the fifth year now, it’s been the same thing. NYRA Holiday Cards! On Wednesday, I completed this year’s sending, starting December 7 and ending December 15, a whopping 570 cards! And, what is mind-blowingly astounding, there weren’t really any problems. Every damn year, usually there’s some annoying setback that pisses me the hell off and results in my fellow board members getting yelled at (well, via e-mail, hehe). Whether they can’t get shit together on who should receiving cards or certainly executive directors screw with the list or whatever else, there’s usually something. This year, holy crap! It was smooth!

Well, almost. There was one teeny tiny thing, back in October when I was first doing the design. I was all set with a lovely design, a green background with some holly on either side of the annual meeting picture! Beautiful. Was ready to show it to the board and await praise. Except… I couldn’t help the feeling it looked too “Christmas only”. What with the red and green, despite not saying Christmas anywhere on it, and being free of Jesus or angels or Santa. So when we met up in the NYRA office around that time, I showed it to Alex, and he thought the card was awesome. I mentioned my concern, though, and he agreed. But, well, Alex and I are lifelong Christians, so we’d be biased, as I said to him. So then Hal showed up at the office, and I asked him, as someone who is Jewish, what he thought of the card. Yeah, he got one look at it and said “no fucking way!” LOL! Alright, can’t use the awesome holly design, so back to the drawing board. My own dumbass fault, really. I’m supposed to be more mindful of it, I guess. It’s alright. I had other choices. My second choice, though, had ornaments on it, and I figured if holly was a no-no, ornaments probably were, too. So I went with my third choice, a blue one with little snowflakes on either side of the bottom of the picture. Averted! And the card is still awesome.

So anyway, since 2007, on the forums, I’ve been posting my own little musical reflection of that holiday card run. Stuff the Cards! Rather unimaginatively on my part, to the tune of Deck the Halls. And here is each one!
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Starting this past February, I’ve been running a little Twitter campaign called #16tovote on the 16th, where we tweet about lowering the voting age throughout the 16th of the month. Today is the eleventh run of the event, which has grown a little since it began, though its success varies month to month, hardly a linear progression.

Anyway, the idea is that there are a lot of tweets on this specific day in support of lowering the voting age, and all tweets must use the hashtag #16tovote. This way, I can watch the search results for the hashtag to see who and what has contributed to the event. Fairly simple. Yet even so, I often find myself having to clarify the same things constantly, to bust some myths that don’t want to be busted. Such as…

Myth: The #16tovote hashtag is for use only on the 16th.

Fact: The #16tovote hashtag is for use whenever, for any tweet about lowering the voting age. The event #16tovote on the 16th of course is special in that it specifically uses the hashtag because of the emphasis on voting age tweeting. Sort of how even though Thanksgiving is about eating turkey, we still eat turkey throughout the rest of the year.
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Five years ago today, I wrote a NYRA Tale called A NYRA Christmas Carol. Funny thing about this, and any of the NYRA Tales, is that it serves as a mild commentary on whatever’s happening in the NYRA community at the time of writing. Christmas time approached in 2005, the year that was the forums’ heyday, and since NYRA Tales were all the rage back then anyway (though I’m so self-absorbed I’ve so far only reposted my own on here), so I felt it appropriate to cram yet another parody of the Charles Dickens classic into existence, featuring our own NYRA members. And since everyone was mad at me back then for being the tyrannical moderator I am, I went ahead and cast myself as Scrooge, despite the fact that I’m easily the most Christmas-loving NYRAnian!

It was Christmas Eve, and well-known mean moderator Katrina wandered through the snow-covered streets to the familiar building. Outside the door hung a sign: Moncure and Miller.

“Ah, Kathleen Miller,” she sighed. “Gone seven weeks today.” She knocked the snow off the sign and entered the building.

I made Kathleen my “Marley” seeing as she wanted tighter control over the forums than even I did. About a month before this was first posted, she finally said “screw it” and left the forums pretty much, not quite seven weeks though.
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And now for a partisan, torturous edition of…

YOU SUCK!!!!

I realize the Republican Party seems to exist for no other reason than to stop the Democrats from doing whatever it is they’re doing, no matter what it is. To be fair, Democrats do the reverse as well, but not quite as much, considering almost no Republicans in Congress or Senate seem to ever vote the “Democrat” side of an issue, while Democratic Congressmen and Senators do so quite a bit. And it’s pisses ordinary Democrats the hell off! But I digress.

So, as part of the Republicans’ agenda of don’t-fucking-let-anything-pass, now they’ve effectively stalled legislation to get teen behavior modification facilities some much needed regulations. HR 911 passed the House and then it’s been in a Senate committee to see if it’ll get put to a full vote before the Senate. We NYRAnians met with the chair of that committee, Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA), to help move it through the committee. The senator agrees with our position on it. The trouble was some pesky Republican Senators on that committee who seemed to have some qualms about some of what this anti-torture school legislation is asking. Seriously, go to the above link to read Alex’s piece about it in Huffington Post. These Republican Senators have a problem with things like forcing school to do things like, oh, NOT withholding food or vital medical treatment from students as therapy.
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That’s right. The calendar says today is August 31, which means it is at last…

DAY
100

So my friends, another hot sunny summer has gone by, yet another round of the infamous 100 Days of Summer, the tenth round in fact! Which means next year’s eleventh round, each day is the tenth anniversary of the days of the original! These days have a way of being crazy, mysterious, wonderful, and terrible. And today we celebrate completing another hundred of them! So let’s review!

Day 1, okay, got a new algae eater yesterday, a gold one. I’ll call him Aurelius!

Day 3, as usual, NYRA board is being annoyingly quiet about important stuff. Do I really want yet another year of this frustration and silence?

Day 7, we can’t let Hyundai and Allstate get away with running ageist ads, at least not without complaints! Get them! Also, saw Soul Asylum!

Day 8, okay, fine, I’ll run for another year on the damn board.

Day 9, wait, crap, I think our AC is broken.

Day 10, yeah, I’d say so. Outside unit isn’t even running!
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The year that began as elusive is now known and past, with of course the expected lulz. So, just like last year, here’s some random highlights by month. Enjoy!

January: Fort Belvoir

-Me to fye: You can’t ban unaccompanied under-15s from the store.
-Cedric?! Why… why aren’t you moving? And lying on the bottom of the tank…?
-LOL my boss set the dumpster on fire with his cigarette
-Holy shit, it’s Vicky!
-The Youngest Candidate viewing at GWU = win!
-Whoa! Slumdog Millionaire is… whoa!
-Vicky, Alexandria is a big place. Where exactly do you need to go?
-Okay, it’s “Fort Belvoir” not “Fort Belvick”. And Fort Belvoir is not in Alexandria.
-Obama! Obama! Obama!
-Screw work, let’s all just watch the inauguration.
-Uh, oh, acetonitrile shortage! If we run out, we’re screwed!
-ZOMG! Case Closed on Funimation channel!!!
-Yeah, great, ski lift, try to rip my arm off!
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Today, I’m proud to announce I have completed the sending of the 4th Annual NYRA Holiday Cards! Largest batch yet by a wide margin, a whopping 480 NYRA holiday cards were sent this year!

I find it interesting that this being the fourth year in a row that I’ve done this whole entry-a-day in December thing, having started that the same December I sent NYRA’s first holiday cards, this is the only time I’ve really specifically mentioned them on here, save for the bit last year about the sentient post office machine and a blurb in the 2007 and 2008 recaps.
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And now for a Christmas miraculous edition of…

Here’s to You!!!!

So I raise my glass and say, “Here’s to you, NYRA!”

For today, after several weeks of toiling and bugging the crap out of everyone for votes in some Facebook contest sponsored by Chase bank, NYRA has met with success. Amazing, breathtaking, miraculous success on this December 16, 2009, nine days before Christmas and 6th night of Chanukah…

NYRA has won $25,000.

For so long, we’ve been a small-budgeted organization, weak next to bigger stronger organizations who can run big ass campaigns and hire staff who aren’t starving to death. For so long, we’ve had members who wanted to help out but didn’t know how and we didn’t know what to have them do. We’ve always been great at keeping ourselves afloat during adversity like a cork in the bath tub, but we’ve still been seemingly without direction and without a future.

Perhaps God showed us mercy. What is known is that all our people had to do was vote for us. What with it not costing anything and being very straight forward instructions, it had a recipe for success. What is known is that, somehow or another, we built our miracle at last, through Keith’s incessant calling of members, through Alex’s exhausting tabling, and the invaluable efforts of our other members, who all came together, believing that this could be done.

We built this Christmas miracle. Or Chanukah miracle, as Hal suggested, seeing as it is Chanukah right now and a lot of our members are Jewish. It wasn’t just handed to us. Well, the opportunity arose, but it took us, all of us, our determination and efforts, and we made it happen. We waited all day today for the results to get posted, biting our nails nervously, worrying it may all have been for naught. And then, around 6pm, Alex got the e-mail. And then, we found the miracle we had been building up had happened, had shown bright before us. Shining bright the future of the youth rights movement that merely six months ago we thought may just be a pipe dream. Shining bright for us to walk into and build it up together.

And… August has come to an end, for today is August 31, which means that once again today is…

DAY
100

Ah, another crazy ass summer full of the usual mixture of lulz and fail. Let’s review.

Got off to a slow start. On Day 7, for the hell of it, drove up to Gettysburg and drove around the battlefield a bit, and climbed on some historically significant rocks.

Day 8 I ate some awesome dumplings.

Day 10, trying to empower and embiggen (yup) the youth rights blogosphere so I started Youth Blog Tuesday on the forums. (I’ll see you in the September 1 installment!)

Day 14, went to the movies and saw Up. Movie about an old widower who somehow makes his house airborne with BALLOONS and flies to Venezuela to visit some waterfall, only for him and the stow-away eight-year-old to get back to the US at the end somehow, though never any mention how he got off the charges of reckless endangerment, crossing international borders illegally, transporting a child across international borders, etc. Cute movie.
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And now for a curfew-destroying, voting age-lowering edition of…

Here’s to You!!!!

So I raise my glass and say, “Here’s to you, NYRA of Southeast Florida!”

They’re a chapter so nice I’ve said “Here’s to you!” to them twice! You may recall the first was last September for their super awesome voting age ad that we had aired on Comedy Central in DC in October. Oh, I’m so happy to say that was only the beginning of their sheer untainted awesomeness.

Because just yesterday, NYRA-SEFL filed a lawsuit against the city of West Palm Beach to get their curfew law struck down. They tried reasoning with the city. They tried protesting. City still wanted to be ridiculous and ageist, so NYRA got litigious. So Jeffrey Nadel and company, with the help of attorney Barry Silver, have filed a lawsuit that the curfew violates a host of constitutional rights. They have videos. They have docs. They have Twitter. West Palm Beach, and all curfew cities for that matter, can consider itself owned.

Here’s the news article about it, too. Go vote Yes in the poll and leave supportive comments. Youth rights supporters shall not be silent!

This has been Day 32 of the 100 Days of Summer, Round 9.

It has been the year 2008, a year that for the preceding year and a half I knew would be turbulent, full of changes, and having just about anything happen. I don’t know why I got that sensation, dating all the way back to mid-2006. Just did. Had this strong feeling that upon going into 2009, the world would be a very different place. And you know what? This year has pretty much lived up to it! So let’s review!
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