And I'm happy to know that this beer belly will keep me healthier when I get sick, because when you get sick, your body has trouble ingesting and digesting foods, so it relies on whatever supplies you already have stored up.  I need to talk more about this in a later article.
 
Politics:
Affiliation: Independently Liberal
Citizenship: American
Ambitions: Governor of New York
Favorite President: Abraham Lincoln, followed by Bill Clinton, and then Warren G. Harding, though I don't know what he did, only who he did, if you get what I mean. Wink, wink. (Random question: Is it excessive to italicize winks.)
Favorite War: American Civil War, which proved once and for all that democracy was a ‘viable enterprise’.
Congressman: Used to be Tim Bishop, but now that I’m back in Queens, I actually have no idea. I should look that up. I know my councilman is Peter Vallone, Jr, but that’s because the Vallone family has been ruling Astoria with an iron fist since before my dad was born. And that was a long time ago.
Senator: She-Clinton and the dude that repeats his annoying, Girl-Scholarship speech every single year, even though like 10% of the audience already knows the punch-line. I think his name is Charles Schumer, but don’t quote me.
Governor: Pataki Skataki
Mayor: Michael Bloomberg, who is a good mayor, but a horrible politician, if that makes any sense. See, when the apocalypse hit Astoria during the Heat Wave—no power for a week, manholes exploding, outraged citizens, my dad eating out every day—of Summer ’06, I’m sure Bloomberg was logically better off in City Hall managing the response from there. But the people of Astoria needed to physically see him there, because he’s our mayor, and he’s our leader.

Bloomberg doesn’t grasp ideas like that, because he’s not a politician. The people would have preferred he do a worse job at managing the crisis, as long as they saw him in person. That’s politics.
Thoughts on Rudy Giuliani: I was a big fan of his before September 11th, 2001, because I thought he did a lot to clean up the city. Some call him harsh and tyrannical, which he was, but that's what New York needed at the time.  If he was elected mayor today, he would be terrible.  Different situations call for different types of leaders, and he was the right man for the job at the time. Don't see what was so especially great about his 9/11 leadership, but maybe that's just me. Not that he did a bad job, just what's the fuss about?
 
Education:
Elementary School: P.S. 85, Judge Charles J. Vallone School, Astoria, Queens
Secondary: Hunter College High School, Class of 2000, Year of the Apocalypse Cow
Bachelors: Stony Brook University, '04
Masters: Stony Brook University, '05
Special Skills: Emergency Medical Technician, New York State; Notary Public, New York State; Non-Denominational Ordained Reverend, U.S.A.; Emergency Vehicle Operator, Stony Brook Volunteer Ambulance Corps; Founder and President, School of Thought.
Thoughts on Education: I really feel like we are failing our children, not because we as people want to, but because we fail to acknowledge that the very structure of school itself does not exist to educate, but to baby-sit. This idea is often brought to play when people ask me where School of Thought is. Well, it’s not right now in any physical place, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

School of Thought isn’t a babysitting service. It’s a collection of intellects that harnesses the power of groups to construct positive creative endeavors. Or something like that. I don’t know if that was a sentence.
 
Favorite...
Quote: The best is the enemy of the better.
Movies: Lawrence of Arabia, Top Gun, Empire Strikes Back, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zizzou
Books: Ishmael, The Selfish Gene, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, Life of Pi, The God of Small Things
Band: Radiohead, The Beatles, Gomez
Singers: Ella Fitzgerald
Friend: I can’t answer that.
Roommate: Nabeel Girgis, the Caveman himself. Inside joke: “You’re supposed to take the plastic off Hot Pockets before you microwave? Oh…”
Car: 1986 Saab 900S Turbo. You look up dependability in the dictionary and it has a picture of that car. Actually, it also appears in the dictionary next to “sexy”.
Top Five Comedy Shows All-Time: 1. I Love Lucy, 2. Seinfeld, 3. All in the Family, 4. Arrested Development (would have been 3rd but only had two-and-a-half seasons), 5.  Frasier (narrowingly edging out Cheers) 
Show Growing Up: Saved By The Bell, Full House, Family Matters, Perfect Strangers
Current Drama: Lost, Grey's Anatomy, Battlestar Galactica
Artist: Jackson Pollack, Pablo Picasso
Iron Chef: Definitely not Bobby Flay. OK, we get it, you have a nice view from your roof. Have to go with Morimoto here. He’s the Bo Jackson of Iron Chefs.
Ex-Girlfriend: No comment.
Color: I don’t know. 
Thoughts on Favorites: The idea that human beings can have favorites is in and of itself a fascinating fact. Having a favorite is the foundation of love, so it’s sobering to know that many non-human animals demonstrate favoritism towards specific members of their species—in other words, monkeys have crushes too.

A lot of recent scientific material has cast a cynical light on the concept of love, viewing it as base wiring of the human brain, designed to trick people into procreation. But if seems that the mechanism of favorites—manifested whenever we eat or drive or log onto the internet—is the root cause of the love gene, and throwing it out, turning our minds off from this so-called hostile manipulation, may cause us to lose the very purpose of our existence.