so this afternoon i intended to revise a short story, the chameleon and the tiger, with inspiration drawn from amanda mcpherson’s song, fireflies and honeysuckle. i kind of promised her i would, and i still will, at some point; but it’s funny to me how often i can sit down ready to write something but something entirely different comes out.

this is harlem as i see it.

i live in morningside heights, which is a stone’s throw from harlem. in fact, when i exit the d-train five blocks from my apartment at 147th and st nicholas, there’s a mexican restaurant on the corner of amsterdam that advertises itself as “nuevo harlem.” i did my homework before i took this sublet. violent crime and property crime in the area were all down 90-80 percent from the hey-day of the 1970s and ’80s crack epidemic. and the current rates were comparable to everywhere else in manhattan. but i mean, down 80 percent from 1,000 is still 200.

sometimes when i walk to work in my suit-and-tie, someone will yell something at me like, “hey white boy.” when i ride the train, i’m usually the only caucasian in the car. being a minority is a new experience for a heterosexual, white, christian male. i live on the corner of broadway and 149th street in a 2nd-floor walk-up. there is no air conditioning, but i have a window unit that i run at night and in the mornings. all the nearby shops are dirty and foul-smelling. gone are the cosmic cantinas and caribou coffees, replaced with crown fried chickens and dunkin’ donuts. i’ve found a few oases, like the laundromat across the street, where the owner calls me sweetie and does my laundry “extra special.” i tip them obscenely. the dry cleaner up the street, where i take my suits and dress shirts, the owner barely speaks any english and he’s always dismissively busy. but he has the best prices, so i keep going. my super is named maggie and she’s the best. there’s a garden next to our building called “maggie’s garden.” the new york restoration project paid for it be renovated several years ago, and now she takes care of it. she’s always smiling whenever i see her and she asks me how my day was and calls me “sugar.” i like maggie, my super.

there are no tourists on my part of broadway, so it feels lived in. there are lots of families and young kids. one day on my way to the grocery store (c-town, even worse than the tesco basement in prague) i had to dodge a group of seven-year-olds bicycling up and down the sidewalk on broadway. on my stoop there’s always a group of middle- and-high school-aged kids sitting around talking. sometimes there’s a fold-up table set up on the sidewalk where old men play dominoes and cards. at night there are lots of cars and shouting. the other afternoon i watched a guy chase this girl, who i assume is or was his girlfriend, calling her all kinds of obscenities. there’s a stoop near amsterdam where five or six haitians are sitting every day when i pass from work. i see drug deals all the time. sometimes right in front of cops. there’s a police station 8 or so blocks away, which is nice.

summers in new york are oppressively hot. when i go for a run, i run by the hudson river through riverside park where the temperature is a little bit cooler. i take it all the way up to the george washington bridge where the little red lighthouse sits beneath the giant steel skeleton. i like the smells on this run. there are pine trees and hot dog stands and people grilling fat juicy hamburgers. the water doesn’t quite smell salty, and even though i know it’s so dirty no sane human being should ever swim in it, some pleasant and fresh scent always seems to come from the breeze over the calm water. as mantas says, the worst thing about hot weather in new york is how every so often an utterly offensive smell will reach your nose and make you want to vomit. not so in riverside.

but a new york summer is every bit as hot and humid as a north carolina summer. i’m guessing the difference is that new york’s won’t last until october. i take the d-train from 147th down to seventh avenue to get to work. spending more than three minutes inside a subway station results in getting soaking wet from all the sweat. the cars on the d-train are, thankfully, air conditioned. but they’re usually so crowded with bronxians and harlemites commuting to midtown and downtown that i have to stand up for the entire train ride, shoulder-to-shoulder, bumping along with everyone else as the train tumbles down the dark subway paths. sometimes i let go of the handrail and try to see how long i can stay balanced. i call it “subway surfing.” but only when the trains are kind of empty. one time i almost knocked andi down because i wasn’t holding on to a bar. she was not amused.

oh, and there are no cockroaches in my apartment. but yesterday, on the way to the laundromat, i saw the biggest cockroach i’ve ever seen in my entire life. four-and-a-half inches of nuclear-resistant love. no joke.

tried to blog but nothing i wrote was particularly appropriate for this venue. instead, some random, unrelated tid-bits.

this is a heartbreakingly beautiful cover of bright eyes, first day of my life:

this is my new obsession since getting my lsat score: law school numbers

the subway stations are about three degrees below the temperature in hell. my suit is soaked by the time i get to work.

andi and i put in an application for an apartment in brooklyn. i’m really excited and hope it goes through. we’ll be living in cobble hill right off of smith street (google maps). someone called the area “brooklyn village,” which i’m pretty sure is a play on “greenwich village,” my favorite manhattan neighborhood. a new restaurant or bar on smith street gets written up every week. the commute to work is going to be great (~30-35 minutes) and the rent is cheap and our apartment large. much better deal than we could have gotten anywhere in manhattan (literally they only sold sardine cans for $2500+ per month). but after the broker’s fee and the bit of double rent i’m paying at the end of this sublet, all i can say about new york is that the whole damn city is one big scam.

In New York City, everyone is an exile, none more so than the Americans. -Charlotte Perkins Gilman

there is no internet at the apartment. right now i’m stealing from a network called “linksys” that hasn’t worked for the last 3 days, and i have no idea why, at this particular moment, it has chosen to do so with the speed of a great white snail and a connection status of “pretty friggin’ awful.” no complaints though. time warner comes on friday to turn ours on officially. the peasants at 568 w. 149th street will certainly rejoice. my roommates don’t own a tv and don’t want one, and i’m not too concerned. living without tv is one thing, but you start to have physical withdrawal symptoms when google and email and youtube are suddenly and irrevocably removed from your life. i make a 150-block trip down to this tea place on macdougal and third st. just so i can get bubble tea and free wi-fi. tried doing that this afternoon post-lunch, but when i got there, laptop and headphones ready to roll, i searched frantically through my book bag before i would allow myself to accept the fact that i had left my power cord at home, and that my laptop battery was completely run down to nothing from watching a movie the night before. doh. i felt like a real idiot. instead i read some raymond carver, scribbled in my journal, and took the most defeated subway ride ever all 150 blocks back home.

my life is still right now. calm before the tempest. i’ve emptied all the contents of my suitcases into the drawers and shelves in my room. i’ve found a dry cleaner, hooked up the air conditioner, put up curtains, contemplated a new bank, been to the grocery store, refilled the ink cartridge in my pen, made new keys for the mailbox — there’s really not much else to do. tomorrow i’m visiting columbia and nyu’s law schools. i am a wreck waiting on my LSAT score. every day i speculate to myself some number that it could be. but as more time passes, my confidence of placing an accurate number on my score gets weaker and weaker. 162? 167? all i know is without at least a little bit of luck on the logic games, the number could be low. very low. and that worries me. but i think i’ll be okay. on thursday i’m going to visit fordham in the morning, and then andi and i are meeting for lunch to discuss our plan of attack. i forget sometimes that this apartment isn’t really home. it’s a place to live for the summer. but wherever andi and i end up, yea, that place will be like home. sort of like that florescent hospital room in 115 hinton james north, or that cockroach-infested kitchen at 106 cole street. but try as i might, never quite like 3536 bent trace or 4355 peaceford glenn drive.

today i met mantas and paige for lunch. we went to a korean restraunt called hangawi on 32nd street between madison and fifth avenues. the name reminded me of “ungawa,” the command that tarzan would give the animals to make them listen. my dad used to say it sometimes to us kids to make us listen. this connection made me smile.

we entered at 11:40, but they didn’t start seating until noon. we put our name on the list and walked around a little. i was dressed in khaki shorts and a bright blue UNC t-shirt. mantas had just come from a job interview so was wearing a suit and tie. at 6′2 and 6′6 and walking through the tourists standing in line for the empire state building on 34th street, i’m sure we looked ridiculous.

the restaurant is wood-paneled and beams hang from the ceiling. when you enter, they ask you to remove your shoes and put them in a “cubbie” ala kindergarten at nap time. the floors are hardwood and cool to the touch. the tables are low to the ground and have cushions to sit on. there are empty spaces beneath the table, built into the floor, for your feet to go, and these are carpeted. i clinched my toes into the fabric and was reminded of john mcclain in the original die hard. each table has its own little nook jetting into the wall that is filled with oriental works of art. the tables had bamboo place mats and silver chopsticks. white unlit candles with tiny black korean letters wrapping around the sides sat in the middle of each table. the waiters and waitresses all wore loose-fitting clothes, adding to the zen-like atmosphere. the food was expensive, but absolutely delicious. vegetarian only, but that didn’t keep any of us from leaving the table full. i had the mongolian pot lunch special. it was a huge bowl of spicy soup full of mushrooms, onions and sprouts. it came with a smaller bowl of rice and a plate of fresh cabbage for dipping. i would definitely recommend it to anyone and would go back in a heartbeat.

how did i spend the rest of my day? sans internet i played super mario world with an SNES emulator and felt pretty useless. tomorrow though. there will be law school visits. things will get accomplished!

stream of conscious from the first ~24 hrs in new york.

bleary-eyed on the trip here. tried to sleep on the plane but could not. it was that awkward half-sleep where you’re dreaming what’s going on around you. and then you realize that really is the flight attendant asking if you want a drink or not. i was tired because i stayed up all night in chapel hill on andrew’s back porch talking about everything important in life. i mean it. everything important. we covered it. that was after he, christie and i walked 18 holes at hillandale. good little course. not very long, but when you don’t hit it straight like me and are playing out of the marsh, difficult none-the-less. i’m kind of sad because that’s probably the last time i’ll play golf for at least a year. it’s hard to get out of the city and go hit. besides, where would i store my clubs? i think there’s a driving range in chelsea. one of those multi-story things like in japan where space is even more limited than it is in manhattan. nerozumim.

so after two hours of sleep i departed. my mom drove me there and helped carry my bags. it was kind of anti-climactic getting on the plane. i was so tired, it was like i was detached from the whole experience of flying the nest for two years. plus i’ve had lots of practice with going away to college, new york for a summer internship years ago, and prague. still i figured it would be more, i dont know, emotional.

the world is too cold to be moral

i took a cab in. the driver kept asking me all kinds of questions about what i was doing. trying to drive up his tip, i suppose. we found the place. it’s in a busy part of manhattan north of columbia university on the west side of the island where broadway almost runs into the hudson. there were a bunch of people sitting on the stoop of my building listening to music and playing dominoes. broadway is about 100 feet away, with lots of shops and drug stores and restaurants. i drug my suitcases up a flight of stairs and felt ready to collapse.

first impressions of apartment: incredibly nice place. recently renovated, so new doors, new hardwood floors, new paint, new light fixtures, new kitchen counter-top, sink, appliances. bathroom is spacious (which is good because four of us are sharing it). roommates hadnt finished moving in. i wanted to help, but realized i would just be getting in the way. took a train down to greenwich village and visited some of my old haunts from freshman year. disappointed the park is closed. they’re moving the fountain a few feet. sucks. it was one of the best places to hang out and be lazy in the summer where you could listen to the jazz bands and watch the street performers.

took train back, my room has a mattress! so i’ll have a place to stay. one of my roommates asks if i want to go to a “house-cooling” party. i had said earlier i think i would just pass out early because i was so tired. decided i didn’t come all this way just to sleep on my first night. so i agreed, and she and i went to dinner at this great little hole-in-the-wall mexican place near columbia university. we walked there.  took the scenic route, 20 or so blocks along the hudson river through the riverbank park.  after dinner we took a train to meet her friend, and we went up to this apartment where all four of the roommates were moving out at once, hence the title “house-cooling party.” i had a few coors lights, introduced myself to some people i will probably never meet again (including this dookie that actually seemed like a decent human being — perhaps the first and only one?), and we called it an early night around midnight.

got back to my room, the bed had been assembled with the frame and everything. put the sheets on, crawled in, tried to sleep, but could not. and it wasnt for lack of trying. the people on the stoop had multiplied in our absence, continuing to play dominoes and carry on loudly. people honked horns, yelled at each other, car alarms went off. i would have closed the window but it was so hot and we don’t have AC yet (getting it today, hopefully) that i had to keep it open.

so i plugged in my ipod and fell asleep to coldplay. dreamed i was flying through space, then flying over scenes from my life. it was trippy.

i had forgotten how big everything in new york is. and how intensely small it makes you feel. it’s liberating and confining. a paradox of anonymity. i’m looking forward to settling into a routine. my commute to work should be short. need to find a dry cleaner and open a bank account with easy-to-access ATMs (wachovia is sparse in manhattan; bb&t nonexistent).

i guess i should give this an ending? how about:

i dont feel ready to be this old.  time to go to k-mart and make dinner.

So after I posted “Hey roaches, WE GOT YOUR QUEEN!” tons of people asked me where the video is from that night. Well, I found the clips and slapped it together using Windows Movie Maker. Check it out:

So school has ended, which means our email accounts are no good 60 days after graduation. Fear not, most of you might say. I’ve been using gmail/[insert-free-third-party-email-service-here] for the last several years! Well, as my dad pointed out, lots of companies automatically block gmail.com or hotmail.com because free accounts = spammers. And none of us want a precious cover-letter to wind up in the bottom of some prospective employer’s trash heap before he/she even gets a chance to reject it, now do we?

That’s why, with the help of Miss Fang, I’ve put together some tips for keeping our inboxes happy.

Sign up for a gmail account. I know there are probably other services out there, but unless you know of one better, I’m pretty sure that Google has set the standard. The web interface is easy to use, it has lots of customizations for Outlook, Apple Mail, Thunderbird, and hand held devices like Treos and Blackberries. It also has so much storage you’ll likely never be able to spend it all, ala Bill Gates’ fortune. And unlike most free email services, it doesn’t advertise at the bottom of your sent messages, only at the sides of your inbox based on keywords one of its super-engineered algorithms detects.

Forward your UNC webmail to said gmail account. Easiest thing to do before your email.unc.edu goes the way of the Do Do is to go ahead and get used to another service now. Go to http://onyen.unc.edu and click on “Forward email” for easy instructions on how to do this. A bonus: UNC’s spam protection is a lot weaker than gmail’s. After a few weeks you’ll be able to log into both side by side and watch as about 50 messages have been caught by Google but not by ITS. Suckers.

Sign up for an @alumni.unc.edu address. We all love Carolina, so why not show it off? Onyens may expire, but these bad boys are for life. Takes about two seconds on the alumni Web site to set it up. Now this isn’t an email account per se. It’s an address that people can send messages to that UNC will forward to another address. I’d recommend pointing this alumni address to your gmail account and take out the middle-man of your email.unc.edu account. Because as it’s been said so many times in this post, webmail is gone soon. You’ll just have to change it again when it does.

Link your @alumni.unc.edu address to your gmail account. This is the coolest part of the process, and the whole reason I decided to do this post. First of all, this gets rid of the problem I mentioned at the top of the post. Gmail accounts are great, but like I said, a lot of companies block anything that ends in ‘gmail.com’ because it’s an easy way for them to immediately eliminate a ton of spam. But if you link your alumni.unc.edu account to gmail, then all of your outgoing gmail messages will say that they’re from [username]@alumni.unc.edu. So you’re using gmail, but everyone else thinks you have some super-cool alumni.unc.edu account. For me, that made alumni.unc.edu a lot more attractive because when I thought it was a one-way account (people could send to it, but I couldn’t send from it), I thought it would just be a hassel to have two email addresses — one for incoming and one for outgoing. This solves the problem completely. So how do you do it? Like this:

Log into your gmail account. Go to Settings. Go to Accounts. Click ‘Add another email address.’ Follow the verification instructions. Once you’ve done that, go back to Accounts and set ‘alumni.unc.edu’ to your default. From then on, all your outgoing messages will say they’re from [username]@alumni.unc.edu instead of gmail.com. No more blocked resumes and cover letters!

Okay I’m done nerding out. Let me know if you found this helpful!

J.K. Rowling delivered Harvard’s commencement address this year. UNC didn’t get a commencement speaker because of the rain, but this is a good substitute. By the middle I was wishing I could take the LSAT right now no matter how bad I might mis-read a logic game rule.  My favorite part:

So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all - in which case, you fail by default.

Read the full text or watch the video here. Special thanks to Christine for forwarding this to me.

If I never see another cockroach again, it’ll be too soon. We had an infestation in Chapel Hill. I thought that at least one good thing about moving back home would be the absence of cockroaches. But as my mother predicted, they’ve infested themselves in my belongings. My room is full of bags and boxes, and they randomly crawl out of my crap and crawl all over my room. I’m hoping to starve the little sons of bitches. Admittedly, this house is a lot cleaner than our abode at 106 Cole Street in Chapel Hill. In an odd way, I kind of miss Chapel Hill when I look at these little six-legged vermin.

I look at a cockroach, and I’m reminded of the night my housemates and I moved the refrigerator only to find jackpot, the nest, ground zero. We sprayed it with that industrial wasp-killer Raid, taking out as many as we could. Afterward we even triumphantly posted a letter on the microwave letting them know that “WE KILLED YOUR QUEEN, BITCHES!!!”

That was the same night I pulled out the camera and started filming a documentary that we could send-off to the Discovery Channel. Domestic Insects: the Untold Story. It never got sent, unfortunately. I filmed Andrew as he karate chopped cockroaches anytime they crossed his path. It was the “best weapon” for “hunting cockroaches.” It was a goofy tribute to Steve Irwin, minus the accent and “crikeys.” In the middle of filming Daniel walks in all depressed. He had been asked by this girl he was sort of dating to take care of her fish during break. He was excited, in his words, to be “taking care of this living thing.” Well, on the first night he came home drunk, and in the morning he woke up to find that he’d knocked over the table the fish bowl was sitting on. There on his carpet was the fish, the water, and all the little blue pebbles from the bottom of the tank. Needless to say the fish was dead. He told us the story and held up the little dead fish inside a plastic baggie for the camera. We laughed and continued killing the roaches.

At the end of the year we finally caught a white cockroach. I’d seen them around the house before, but people rarely believed me. Trust me when I say we were breeding new species of cockroaches at 106 Cole Street. Animal Planet should have been up our asses to get a film crew over to our place.

My housemates and I were a messy lot, and we didn’t do ourselves any favors in the cockroach department. The cockroaches mostly liked to stay in the kitchen. Duh. That’s where I’d stay too if I had five college students who left out an ample supply of food every night. None of us ever did our dishes after we ate. They piled up for days, sticking up at random angles in the sink, like a skyline from a science fiction novel. The cockroaches enjoyed alfredo pasta and shrimp scampi and chicken nuggets and whatever else we cooked for ourselves. They ate like kings.

In truth, the cockroaches didn’t actually bother me all that much. I always told people that I never saw them in my room, which was a lie I had to tell them, but mostly myself, to make sleeping at night more bearable. I did only see them in my room ~5-6 times, which really isn’t so bad. Every time it happened I blocked it from my memory (until now, of course) and kept pushing through.

In the fall we were so naive. We moved in, assessed the situation, and determined that we could win. We thought we could beat the cockroach infestation. It soon became apparent that we were going to have to live with it. All year. You could blame our messy habits, but that would only be a half-truth. We allowed a bunch of drug-addicts to sublet our house during the summer to try to make back some of June and July’s rent (none of us moved in until August). Unbeknownst to us, squatters also lived in our house and they trashed the place, leaving a dirty kitchen and dogfood piled up in the laundry room (our landlord had a fairly strict “no pets” policy, fish notwithstanding). So the cockroaches were there from the start, the dregs from summer’s cannibals who laid waste to our kingdom and sullied our good lands.

We sprayed. We bombed. We roach bombed the house so many times that fall that our hair began falling out and we all started to get cancer. The night we filmed the documentary and moved the fridge, we laughed so hard at every stupid little joke that it became obvious we were high on Raid fumes. It had to stop, and it did. I remember a text message exchange with Andrew, our house’s chief engineer of poisoning those cockroach sons of bitches:

Andrew: Attn Everyone! Don’t go home until 4 p.m. Roach Bombs!

Me: How many did u do 2day?

Andrew: Seven. We’re going to get those sons of bitches!

Later on that day, in the library, I saw an article on digg where a small house, much like ours, had exploded. The cause? you ask. The owners had set off too many roach bombs. The fumes saturated the atmosphere inside the house, and when it made contact with the pilot light of the stove’s burners, boom. The whole house went up. Like a firecracker on the Fourth of July. I called Andrew and he was like, oh, well, nah, man that can’t happen. But we were both thinking it. I know we were. “Dear Lord, please don’t let our house be blowed up.”

No, all-in-all, sharing our house with roaches wasn’t so bad. They didn’t pay rent. They scared girls. They made cooking a horrible chore (if you didn’t have someone on “roach patrol” to watch any uncovered food that was sitting out while you went to grill or chopped vegetables or whatever, you could guarantee that when you turned back around your plate would be covered with about 5 different species of North American cockroach). The only time I ever actually got pissed off at the roaches was the day before I moved out when I discovered they’d made a nest out of my Wii and clogged the fan. It still works, but damn if those little sons of bitches didn’t try to take me down with them on the last day.

Through it all though, I know I’ll never be able to look at a cockroach again and not be reminded of 106 Cole Street. Of my senior year in Chapel Hill. Of the culmination of college — you know, those best four years of your life. And even though it sucked sharing living space with invertebrates, I can think of worse things.

I’ll never miss those cockroaches, but you know what? They do remind me of Chapel Hill. And I suppose that’s almost a good thing.

Warning: If you receive an email about “new wireless laws” that are supposedly going into effect in North Carolina on 1 July 2008, please disregard. It’s been debunked by WITN (and others maybe?) as a fake. I was going to research the bill myself, but a quick Google search revealed that someone else had already done all the work for me.

The forwarded email is long and fairly detailed, but its main claim is this:

The first [law] prohibits all drivers from using a handheld wireless telephone while operating a motor vehicle. (Vehicle Code (VC) 23123). Motorists 18 and over may use a hands-free device. Drivers under the age of 18 may NOT use a wireless telephone or hands-free device while operating a motor vehicle(VC 23124).

The laws sound legit, and the FAQ format of the email makes them even more believable, as though the DMV was trying to quickly send around a layman’s explanation. Whoever made this definitely has 1) big concerns about the real danger of using a cell phone while driving; 2) incredibly too much free time. A full copy of the email can be found on this boyscout blog, but I don’t know if they’ll keep it up for long. I’m assuming they posted it because they think it’s legitimate legislation.

Pulled from WITN’s Web site, here is a summary of the actual cell phone laws in North Carolina:

There are currently laws in North Carolina prohibiting cell phone use for some drivers. Drivers under the age of 18 may not use a cell phone behind the wheel, with the exception to call their parents or law enforcement. Bus Drivers are also not permitted to speak on cell phones while driving.

The lesson: the internet is sometimes (read: often) not so credible, and when the source of a forwarded email isn’t immediately apparent, you should always do a little fact-checking.

So this Belgian woman, Tania Derveaux, is claiming she will have sex with any virgin who supports net neutrality. I’m pretty sure it’s all a gimmick 1) to get emails to be sold to third parties; and 2) to bring legitimate attention to net neutrality. Some of Tania’s terms of service are absolutely hilarious:

3. General Requirements and Rules of Conduct

Services will only be provided to those who meet the following requirements:

- condom must be used, except if the applicant prefers to release his semen upon Tania’s body without any oral or vaginal contact

- Anal sex is negotiable, although Tania will cease the performance immediately if any form of ’surprise buttsex’ occurs

- multiple participants are not allowed, but applicants are entitled to have an audience observe the performance

- if anywhere along the process, it becomes clear that the applicant is not a virgin, Tania reserves the right to terminate all activity

- applicant agrees that in the event of the applicant infringing upon Terms of Service during the process of the act, Tania is not responsible for any genital injury that the applicant may suffer

- Tania may deny service for hygiene reasons

Conclusion: Belgians are weird.

If you don’t know what net neutrality is, here’s the short version: if Congress allows it, internet service providers will start selling bandwidth to the highest bidder, to the exclusion of other companies (aka, Wachovia signs an exclusive deal so BB&T, Bank of America, etc. don’t get ANY bandwidth). The internet thus becomes tiered. Rich companies will have faster web sites. Think: AOL, Yahoo!, Google, Time-Warner. Little guys will have slow web sites. Think: me, bloggers, ordering Jimmy John’s online.

You might think, So what? That doesn’t matter to me. ISPs own the networks, they should be able to sell it however they want. Property rights! Capitalism! Free market! But consider this: if sites like YouTube, Google, Amazon and Netflix didn’t have the benefit of equal bandwidth in their early days, they might never ever have grown into the companies they are now. In fact, they probably wouldn’t exist at all. And if small websites are pushed out because the government passes affirmative legislation granting ISPs an ability to sell bandwidth at a premium, there would be some serious First Amendment, “chilling effect” issues.

Also, I’ve been told, but have not done the research myself, that out of the three main presidential candidates, Obama has the best platform points about net neutrality. He’s the only candidate with a technology plank at all.